The Chaldæan Oracles of Zoroaster
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THE CHALDÆAN ORACLES ATTRIBUTED TO ZOROASTER.
PREFACE

THESE Oracles are considered to embody many of the principal features of Chaldæan philosophy. They have come down to us through Greek translations and were held in the greatest esteem throughout antiquity, a sentiment which was shared alike by the early Christian Fathers and the later Platonists. The doctrines contained therein are attributed to Zoroaster, though to which particular Zoroaster is not known; historians give notices of as many as six different individuals all bearing that name, which was probably the title of the Prince of the Magi, and a generic term. The word Zoroaster is by various authorities differently derived: Kircher furnishes one of the most interesting derivations when he seeks to show that it comes from TzURA = a figure, and TzIUR = to fashion, ASh = fire, and STR = hidden; from these he gets the words Zairaster = fashioning images of hidden fire; -- or Tzuraster = the image of secret things. Others derive it from Chaldee and Greek words meaning "a contemplator of the Stars."

It is not, of course, pretended that this collection as it stands is other than disjointed and fragmentary, and it is more than probable that the true sense of many passages has been obscured, and even in some cases hopelessly obliterated, by inadequate translation.

Where it has been possible to do so, an attempt has been made to elucidate doubtful or ambiguous expressions, either by modifying the existing translation from the Greek, where deemed permissible, or by appending annotations.

It has been suggested by some that these Oracles are of Greek invention, but it has already been pointed out by Stanley that Picus de Mirandula [Giovanni Pico della Mirandula] assured Ficinus [Marcilio Ficino] that he had the Chaldee Original in his possession, in which those things which are faulty and defective in the Greek are read perfect and entire," and Ficinus indeed states that he found this MS. upon the death of Mirandula. In addition to this, it should be noted that here and there in the original Greek version, words occur which are not of Greek extracti6n at all, but are Hellenised Chaldee.

Berosus is said to be the first who introduced the writings of the Chaldæans concerning Astronomy and Philosophy among the Greeks,[1] and it is certain that the traditions of Chaldea very largely influenced Greek thought. Taylor considers that some of these mystical utterances are the sources whence the sublime conceptions of Plato were formed, and large commentaries were written upon them by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Pletho and Psellus. That men of such great learning and sagacity should have thought so highly of these Oracles, is a fact which in itself should commend them to our attention.

[1. Josephus, contra Apion. I.]

The term "Oracles" was probably bestowed upon these epigrammatic utterances in order to enforce the idea of their profound and deeply mysterious nature. The Chaldæans, however, had an Oracle, which they venerated as highly as the Greeks did that at Delphi. [1]

[1. Stephanus, De Urbibus.]

We are indebted to both Psellus and Pletho, for comments at some length upon the Chaldæan Oracles, and the collection adduced by these writers has been considerably enlarged by Franciscus Patricius, who made many additions from Proclus, Hermias, Simplicius, Damascius, Synesius, Olympiodorus, Nicephorus and Arnobius; his collection, which comprised some 324 oracles under general heads, was published in Latin in 1593, and constitutes the groundwork of the later classification arrived at by Taylor and Cory; all of these editions have been utilised in producing the present revise.

A certain portion of these Oracles collected by Psellus, appear to be correctly attributed to a Chaldæan Zoroaster of very early date, and are marked Z," following the method indicated by Taylor, with one or two exceptions. Another portion is attributed to a sect of philosophers named Theurgists, who flourished during the reign of Marcus Antoninus, upon the authority of Proclus,[2] and these are marked "T." Oracles additional to these two series and of less definite source are marked "Z or T." Other oracular passages from miscellaneous authors are indicated by their names.
[2. Vide his Scholia on the Cratylus of Plato.]

The printed copies of the Oracles to be found in England are the following: --

1. Oracula Magica, Ludovicus Tiletanus, Paris, 1563.

2. Zoroaster et ejus 320 oracula Chaldaica; by Franciscus Patricius. . . . 1593.

3. Fred. Morellus; Zoroastris oracula, 1597. Supplies about a hundred verses.

4. Otto Heurnius; Barbaricæ Philosophia antiquitatum libri duo, 1600.

5. Johannes Opsopoeus; Oracula Magica Zoroastris 1599. This includes the Commentaries of Pletho and of Psellus in Latin.

6. Servatus Galloeus; Sibulliakoi Chresmoi, 1688. Contains a version of the Oracles.

Thomas Stanley. The History of the Chaldaic Philosophy, 1701. This treatise contains the Latin of Patricius, and the Commentaries of Pletho and Psellus in English

Johannes Alb. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Greca, 1705-7. Quotes the Oracles.

Jacobus Marthanus, 1689. This version contains the Commentary of Gemistus Pletho.

Thomas Taylor, The Chaldæan Oracles, in the Monthly Magazine, and published independently, 1806.

Bibliotheca Classica Latina; A. Lemaire, volume 124, Paris, 1823.

Isaac Preston Cory, Andent Fragments, London, 1828. (A third edition of this work has been published, omitting the Oracles.)

Phoenix, New York, 1835. A collection of curious old tracts, among which are the Oracles of Zoroaster, copied from Thomas Taylor and I. P. Cory; with an essay by Edward Gibbon.

INTRODUCTION

BY L. O.

It has been believed by many, and not without good reason, that these terse and enigmatic utterances enshrine a profound system of mystical philosophy, but that this system demands for its full discernment a refinement of faculty, involving, as it does, a discrete perception of immaterial essences.

It has been asserted that the Chaldæan Magi [1] preserved their occult learning among their race by continual tradition from Father to Son. Diodorus says: "They learn these things, not after the same fashion as the Greeks: for amongst the Chaldæans, philosophy is delivered by tradition in the family, the Son receiving it from his Father, be mg exempted from all other employment; and thus having their parents for their teachers, they learn all things fully and abundantly, believing more firmly what is communicated to them." [2]

[1. This powerful Guild was the guardian of Chaldæan philosophy, which exceeded the bounds of their country, and diffused itself into Persia and Arabia that borders upon it; for which reason the learning of the Chaldæans, Persians and Arabians is comprehended under the general title of Chaldæan.
2. Diodorus, lib. I.]

The remains then of this oral tradition seems to exist in these Oracles, which should be studied in the light of the Kabalah and of Egyptian Theology. Students are aware that the Kabalah [1] is susceptible of extraordinary interpretation with the aid of the Tarot, resuming as the latter does, the very roots of Egyptian Theology. Had a similar course been adopted by commentators in the past, the Chaldæan system expounded in these Oracles would not have been distorted in the way it has been.
[1. Vide Kabalah Denudata, by MacGregor Mathers.]

The foundation upon which the whole structure of the Hebrew Kabalah rests is an exposition of ten deific powers successively emanated by the Illimitable Light, which in their varying dispositions are considered as the key of all things. This divine procession in the form of Three Triads of Powers, synthesized in a tenth, is said to be extended through four worlds, denominated respectively Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah, a fourfold gradation from the subtle to the gross. This proposition in its metaphysical roots is pantheistic, though, if it may be so stated, mediately theistic; while the ultimate noumenon of all phenomena is the absolute Deity, whose ideation constitutes the objective Universe.

Now these observations apply strictly also to the Chaldæan system.

The accompanying diagrams sufficiently indicate the harmony and identity of the Chaldæan philosophy with the Hebrew Kabalah. It will be seen that the First Mind and the Intelligible Triad, Pater, Potentia, or Mater, and Mens, are allotted to the Intelligible World of Supramundane Light: the "First Mind" represents the archetypal intelligence as an entity in the bosom of the Paternal Depth. This concentrates by reflection into the "Second Mind" representative of the Divine Power in the Empyraean World which is identified with the second great Triad of divine powers, known as the Intelligible and at the same time Intellectual Triad: the Aethereal World comprises the dual third Triad denominated Intellectual: while the fourth or Elementary World is governed by Hypezokos, or Flower of Fire, the actual builder of the world.
CHALDÆAN SCHEME.

The Intelligibles The Paternal Depth
World of Supra-mundane Light The First Mind
-----
The Intelligible Triad
Pater: Mater or Potentia: Mens
The Second Mind
-----
Intelligibles and Intellectuals
in the
Empyræan World Iynges
Synoches
Teletarchæ
(The Third Mind.)
Intellectuals
in the Ethereal World Three Cosmagogi
(Intellectual guides inflexible.)
Three Amilicti
(Implacable thunders).
Elementary World
The Demiurgos of the
Material Universe Hypezokos
(Flower of Fire)
Effable, Essential and
Elemental Orders
---
The Earth-Matter

KABALISTIC SCHEME.

World of Atziluth
or of God The Boundless
The Illimitable
Light Ain Suph.
Ain Suph Aur

A radiant triangle
World of Briah
Divine Forces Kether
(crown)
Binah
(Intelligence) Chokmah
(Wisdom)
World of Yetzirah
or of Formation Geburah Chesed
Tiphereth
Hod Netzach.
Yesod
World of Assiah

Material Form. Malkuth
Ruled by
Adonai Melekh
-----
The Earth-Matter.

CHALDÆAN SCHEME OF BEINGS.

Representatives of the previous classes guiding our universe.

I. Hyperarchii -- Archangels
II. Azonoei -- Unzoned gods
III. Zonoei -- Planetary Deities.
---

Higher demons: Angels
-----
Human Souls
-----
Lower demons, elementals

* Fiery
* Airy
* Earthy
* Watery

-----
Evil demons
Lucifugous; the kliphoth

Chaldæan Theology contemplated three great divisions of supra-mundane things:-- the First was Eternal, without beginning or end, being the "Paternal Depth," the bosom of the Deity. The Second was conceived to be that mode of being having beginning but no end; the Creative World or Empyræeum falls under this head, abounding as it does in productions, but its source remaining superior to these. The third and last order of divine things had a beginning in time and will end, this is the transitory Ethereal World. Seven spheres extended through these three Worlds, viz., one in the Empyraeum or verging from it, three in the Ethereal and three in the Elementary Worlds, while the whole physical realm synthesized the foregoing. These seven spheres are not to be confounded with the Seven material Planets; although the latter are the physical representatives of the former, which can only be said to be material in the metaphysical sense of the term. Psellus professed to identify them but his suggestions are inadequate as Stanley pointed out. But Stanley, although disagreeing with Psellus, is nevertheless inconsistent upon this point, for although he explains the four Worlds of the Chaldæans as successively noumenal to the physical realm, he obviously contradicts this in saying that one corporeal world is in the Empyræum.

Prior to the supramundane Light lay the "Paternal Depth," the Absolute Deity, containing all things "in potentia" and eternally immanent. This is analogous to the Ain Suph Aur of the Kabalah, three words of three letters, expressing three triads of Powers, which are subsequently translated into objectivity, and constitute the great Triadic Law under the direction of the Demiurgus, or artificer of the Universe.

In considering this schema, it must be remembered that the supramundane Light was regarded as the primal radiation from the, Paternal Depth and the archetypal noumenon of the Empyræum, a universal, all-pervading -- and, to human comprehension -- ultimate essence. The Empyræum again, is a somewhat grosser though still highly subtilized Fire and creative source, in its turn the noumenon of the Formative or Ethereal World, as the latter is the noumenon of the Elementary World. Through these graduated media the conceptions of the Paternal Mind are ultimately fulfilled in time and space.

In some respects it is probable that the Oriental mind today is not much altered from what it was thousands of years ago, and much that now appears to us curious and phantastic in Eastern traditions, still finds responsive echo in the hearts and minds of a vast portion of mankind. A large number of thinkers and scientists in modern times have advocated tenets which, while not exactly similar, are parallel to ancient Chaldæan conceptions; this is exemplified in the notion that the operation of natural law in the Universe is controlled or operated by conscious and discriminating power which is co-ordinate with intelligence. It is but one step further to admit that forces are entities, to people the vast spaces of the Universe with the children of phantasy. Thus history repeats itself, and the old and the new alike reflect the multiform truth.

Without entering at length into the metaphysical aspect, it is important to notice the supremacy attributed to the "Paternal Mind." The intelligence of the Universe, poetically described as "energising before energy," establishes on high the primordial types or patterns of things which are to be, and, then inscrutably latent, vests the development of these in the Rectores Mundorum, the divine agents or powers already referred to. As it is said, "Mind is with Him, power with them."

The word "Intelligible" is used in the Platonic sense, to denote a mode of being, power or perception, transcending intellectual comprehension, i.e., wholly distinct from, and superior to, ratiocination. The Chaldæans recognised three modes of perception, viz., the testimony of the various senses, the ordinary processes of intellectual activity, and the intelligible conceptions before referred to. Each of these operations is distinct from the others, and, moreover, conducted in separate matrices, or vehicula. The anatomy of the Soul was, however, carried much farther than this, and, although in its ultimate radix recognised as identical with the divinity, yet in manifested being it was conceived to be highly complex. The Oracles speak of the "Paths of the Soul," the tracings of inflexible fire by which its essential parts are associated in integrity; while its various "summits," "fountains," and "vehicula," are all traceable by analogy with universal principles. This latter fact is, indeed, not the least remarkable feature of the Chaldæan system. Like several of the ancient cosmogonies, the principal characteristic of which seems to have been a certain adaptability to introversion, Chaldæan metaphysics synthesize most clearly in the human constitution.

In each of the Chaldæan Divine Worlds a trinity of divine powers operated, which synthetically constituted a fourth term. "In every World," says the Oracle, "a Triad shineth, of which the Monad is the ruling principle." These "Monads" are the divine Vice-gerents by which the Universe was conceived to be administered. Each of the four Worlds, viz., the Empyræan, Ethereal, Elementary and Material, was presided over by a Supreme Power, itself in direct rapport with "the Father" and "moved by unspeakable counsels." These are clearly identical with the Kabalistic conception of the presidential heads of the four letters composing the Deity name in so many different languages. A parallel tenet is conveyed in the Oracle which runs: "There is a Venerable Name projected through the Worlds with a sleepless revolution." The Kabalah again supplies the key to this utterance, by regarding the Four Worlds as under the presidency of the four letters of the Venerable Name, a certain letter of the four being allotted to each World, as also was a special mode of writing the four-lettered name appropriate thereto; and, indeed in that system it is taught that the order of the Elements, both macrocosmic and microcosmic, on every plane, is directly controlled by the "revolution of the name." That Name is associated with the Æthers of the Elements and is thus considered as a Universal Law; it is the power which marshals the creative host, summed tip in the Demiurgus, Hypezokos, or Flower of Fire.

Reference may here be made to the psychic anatomy of the human being according to Plato. He places the intellect in the head; the Soul endowed with some of the passions, such as fortitude, in the heart; while another Soul, of which the appetites, desires and grosser passions are its faculties, about the stomach and the spleen.

So, the Chaldæan doctrine as recorded by Psellus, considered man to be composed of three kinds of Souls, which may respectively be called:

First, the Intelligible, or divine soul,
Second, the Intellect or rational soul, and
Third, the Irrational, or passional soul.

This latter was regarded as subject to mutation, to be dissolved and perish at the death of the body.

Of the Intelligible, or divine soul, the Oracles teach that "It is a bright fire, which, by the power of the Father, remaineth immortal, and is Mistress of Life;" its power may be dimly apprehended through regenerate phantasy and when the sphere of the Intellect has ceased to respond to the images of the passional nature.

Concerning the rational soul, the Chaldæans taught that it was possible for it to assimilate itself unto the divinity on the one hand, or the irrational soul on the other. "Things divine," we read, "cannot be obtained by mortals whose intellect is directed to the body alone, but those only who are stripped of their garments, arrive at the summit,"

To the three Souls to which reference has been made, the Chaldæans moreover allotted three distinct vehicles: that of the divine Soul was immortal, that of, the rational soul by approximation became so; while to the irrational soul was allotted what was called "the image," that is. the astral form of the physical body.

Physical life thus integrates three special modes of activity, which upon the dissolution of the body are respectively involved in the web of fate consequent upon incarnate energies in three different destinies.

The Oracles urge men to devote themselves to things divine, and not to give way to the promptings of the irrational soul, for, to such as fail herein, it is significantly said, "Thy vessel the beasts of the earth shall inhabit."

The Chaldæans assigned the place of the Image, the vehicle of the irrational soul, to the Lunar Sphere; it is probable that by the Lunar Sphere was meant something more than the orb of the Moon, the whole sublunary region, of which the terrestrial earth is, as it were, the centre. At death, the rational Soul rose above the lunar influence, provided always the past permitted that happy release. Great importance was attributed to the way in which the physical life was passed during the sojourn of the Soul in the tenement of flesh, and frequent are the, exhortations to rise to communion with those Divine powers, to which nought but the highest Theurgy can pretend.

"Let the immortal depth of your Soul lead you," says an Oracle, "but earnestly raise your eyes upwards." Taylor comments upon this in the following beautiful passage: "By the eyes are to be understood all the gnostic powers of the Soul, for when these are extended the Soul becomes replete with a more excellent life and divine illumination; and is, as it were, raised above itself."

Of the Chaldæan Magi it might be truly said that they "among dreams did first discriminate the truthful vision!" for they were certainly endowed with a far reaching perception both mental and spiritual; attentive to images, and fired with mystic fervours, they were something more than mere theorists, but were also practical exemplars of the philosophy they taught. Life on the plains of Chaldæa, with its mild nights and jewelled skies, tended to foster the interior unfoldment; in early life the disciples of the Magi learnt to resolve the Bonds of proscription and enter the immeasurable region. One Oracle assures us that, "The girders of the Soul, which give her breathing, are easy to be unloosed," and elsewhere we read of the "Melody of the Ether" and of the "Lunar clashings" experiences which testify to the reality of their occult methods.

The Oracles assert that the impressions of characters and other divine visions appear in the Ether. The Chaldæan philosophy recognized the ethers of the Elements as the subtil media through which the operation of the grosser elements is effected -- by the grosser elements I mean what we know as Earth, Air, Water, and Fire - the principles of dryness and moisture, of heat and cold. These subtil ethers are really the elements of the ancients, and seem at an early period to have been connected with the Chaldæan astrology, as the signs of the Zodiac were connected with them. The twelve signs of the Zodiac are permutations of the ethers of the elements - four elements with three variations each; and according to the preponderance of one or another elemental condition in the constitution of the individual, so were his natural inclinations deduced therefrom. Thus when in the astrological jargon it was said that a man had Aries rising, he was said to be of a fiery nature, his natural tendencies being active, energetic, and fiery, for in the constitution of such a one the fiery ether predominates. And these ethers were stimulated, or endowed with a certain kind of vibration, by their Presidents, the Planets; these latter being thus. suspended in orderly disposed zones. Unto the Planets, too, colour and sound were also attributed ; the planetary colours are connected with the ethers, and each of the Planetary forces was said to have special dominion over, or affinity with, one or other of the Zodiacal constellations. Communion with the hierarchies of these constellations formed p art of the Chaldæan theurgy, and in a curious fragment it is said: "If thou often invokest it" (the celestial constellation called the Lion) "then when no longer is visible unto thee the Vault of the Heavens, when the Stars have lost their light the lamp of the Moon is veiled, the Earth abideth not, and around thee darts the lightning flame, then all things will appear to thee in the form of a Lion!" The Chaldæans like the Egyptians, appear to have bad a highly developed appreciation of colours, an evidence of their psychic susceptibility. The use of bright colours engenders the recognition of subsisting variety and stimulates that perception of the mind which energizes through imagination, or the ,operation of images. The Chaldæan method of contemplation app ears to have been to identify the self with the object of contemplation; this is of course identical with the process of Indian Yoga, and is an idea which appears replete with suggestion; as it is written, "He assimilates the images to himself, casting them around his own form." But we are told, "All divine natures are incorporeal, but bodies are bound in them for your sakes."

The subtil ethers, of which I have spoken, served in their turn as it were for the garment of the divine Light; for the Oracles teach that beyond these again "A solar world and endless Light subsist!" This Divine Light was the object of all veneration. Do not think that what was intended thereby was the Solar Light we know: "The inerratic sphere of the Starless above" is an unmistakable expression and therein "the more true Sun" has place: Theosophists will appreciate the significance of "the more true Sun," for according to The Secret Doctrine the Sun we see is but the physical vehicle of a more transcendent splendour.

Some strong Souls were able to reach up to the Light by their own power: "The mortal who approaches the fire shall have Light from the divinity, and unto the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift." But what of those of a lesser stature? Were they, by inability, precluded from such illumination? "Others," we read, "even when asleep, He makes fruitful from his own Strength." That is to say, some men acquire divine knowledge through communion with Divinity in sleep. This idea has given rise to some of the most magnificent contributions to later literature; it has since been thoroughly elaborated by Porphyry and Synesius. The eleventh Book of the Metamophoses of Apuleius and the Vision of Scipio ably vindicate this; and, although no doubt every Christian has heard that "He giveth unto his beloved in sleep," few, indeed, realise the possibility underlying that conception.

What, it may be asked, were the views of the Chaldæans with respect to terrestrial life: Was it a spirit of pessimism,. which led them to hold this in light esteem? Or, should we not rather say that the keynote of their philosophy was an immense spiritual optimism? It appears to me that the latter is the more true interpretation. They realised that beyond the confines of matter lay a more perfect existence, a truer realm of which terrestrial administration is but a too often travestied reflection. They sought, as we seek now, the Good, the Beautiful and the True, but they did not hasten to the Outer in the thirst for sensation, but with a finer perception realised the true Utopia to be within.

And the first step in that admirable progress was a return to the simple life; hardly, indeed, a return, for most of the Magi were thus brought up from birth. [1] The hardihood engendered by the rugged life, coupled with that wisdom which directed their association, rendered these children of Nature peculiarly receptive of Nature's Truths. "Stoop not down," says the Oracle, "to the darkly splendid World, For a precipice lieth beneath the Earth, a descent of seven steps, and therein is established the throne of an evil and fatal force. Stoop not down unto that darkly splendid world, Defile not thy brilliant flame with the earthly dross of matter, Stoop not down for its splendour is but seeming, It is but the habitation of the Sons of the Unhappy." No more beautiful formulation of the Great Truth that the exterior and sensuous life is death to the highest energies of the Soul could possibly have been uttered: but to such as by purification and the practice of virtue rendered themselves worthy, encouragement was given, for, we read, "The Higher powers build up the body of the holy man."

The law of Karma was as much a feature of the Chaldæan philosophy as it is of the Theosophy of today: from a passage in Ficinus, we read, "The Soul perpetually runs and passes through all things in a certain space of time, which being performed it is presently compelled to pass back again through all things and unfold a similar web of generation in the World, according to Zoroaster, who thinks that as often as the same causes return, the same effects will in like manner return."

[1. They renounced rich attire and the wearing of gold. Their raiment was white upon occasion; their beds the ground, and their food nothing but herbs, cheese and bread.]

This is of course the explanation of the proverb that "History repeats itself," and is very far from the superstitious view of fate. Here each one receives his deserts according to merit or demerit, and these are the bonds of life; but the Oracles say, "Enlarge not thy destiny," and they urge men to "Explore the River of the Soul, so that although you have become a servant to body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason!"

To this end we are commended to learn the Intelligible which exists beyond the mind, that divine portion of the being which exists beyond Intellect: and this it is only possible to grasp with the flower of the mind. "Understand the intelligible with the extended flame of an extended intellect." To Zoroaster also was attributed the utterance "who knows himself knows all things in himself;" while it is elsewhere suggested that "The paternal Mind has sowed symbols in the Soul." But such priceless knowledge was possible only to the Theurgists Who, we are told, "fall not so as to be ranked with the herd that are in subjection to fate." The divine light cannot radiate in an imperfect microcosm, even as the Clouds obscure the Sun; for of such as make ascent to the most divine of speculations in a confused and disordered manner, with unhallowed lips, or unwashed feet, the progressions are imperfect, the impulses are vain and the paths are dark.

Although destiny, our destiny, may be "written in the Stars" yet it was the mission of the divine Soul to raise the human Soul above the circle of necessity, and the Oracles give Victory to that Masterly Will, which

"Hews the wall with might of magic,
Breaks the palisade in pieces,
Hews to atoms seven pickets . . .
Speaks the Master words of knowledge!"

The means taken to that consummation consisted in the training of the Will and the elevation of the imagination, a divine power which controls consciousness. "Believe yourself to be above body, and you are," says the Oracle; it might have added "Then shall regenerate phantasy disclose the symbols of the Soul."

But it is said "On beholding yourself fear! " i.e., the imperfect self.

Everything must be viewed as ideal by him who would understand the ultimate perfection.

Will is the grand agent in the mystic progress its rule is all potent over the nervous system. By Will the fleeting vision is fixed on the treacherous waves of the astral Light; by Will the consciousness is impelled to commune with the divinity: yet there is not One Will, but three Wills -- the Wills, namely, of the Divine, the Rational and Irrational Souls -- to harmonize these is the difficulty.

It is selfishness which impedes the radiation of Thought, and attaches to body. This is scientifically true and irrespective of sentiment, the selfishness which reaches beyond the necessities of body is pure vulgarity.

A picture which to the cultured eye beautifully portrays a given subject, nevertheless appears to the savage a confused patchwork of streaks, so the extended perceptions of a citizen of the Universe are not grasped by those whose thoughts dwell within the sphere of the personal life.

The road to the Summum Bonum lies therefore through self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the lower to the higher, for behind that Higher Self lies the concealed form of the Ancient of Days, the synthetical Being of Divine Humanity.

These things are grasped by Soul; the song of the Soul is alone heard in the adytum of God-nourished Silence!

THE ORACLES OF ZOROASTER.

CAUSE. GOD.

FATHER. MIND. FIRE.

MONAD. DYAD. TRIAD.

1. But God is He having the head of the Hawk. The same is the first, incorruptible, eternal, unbegotten, indivisible, dissimilar: the dispenser of all good; indestructible; the best of the good, the Wisest of the wise; He is the Father of Equity and Justice, self-taught, physical, perfect, and wise-He who inspires the Sacred Philosophy.

- Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica, liber. I., chap. X

This Oracle does not appear in either of the ancient collections, nor in the group of oracles given by any of the medieval occultists. Cory seems to have been the first to discover it in the voluminous writings of Eusebius, who attributes the authorship to the Persian Zoroaster.

2. Theurgists assert that He is a God and celebrate him as both older and younger, as a circulating and eternal God, as understanding the whole number of all things moving in the World, and moreover infinite through his power and energizing a spiral force.

- Proclus on the Timaeus of Plato, 244. Z. or T.

The Egyptian Pantheon had an Elder and a Younger Horus -- a God -- son of Osiris and Isis. Taylor suggests that He refers to Kronos, Time, or Chronos, as the later Platonists wrote the name. Kronos, or Saturnus, of the Romans, was son of Uranos and Gaia, husband of Rhea, lather of Zeus.

3. The God of the Universe, eternal, limitless, both young and old, having a spiral force.

Cory includes this Oracle in his collection, but he gives no authority for it.

Lobeck doubted its authenticity.

4. For the Eternal Æon [1] -- according to the Oracle -- is the cause of never failing life, of unwearied power and unsluggish energy.

- Taylor. -- T.

[1. For the First Æon, the Eternal one," or as Taylor gives, "Eternity."]

5. Hence the inscrutable God is called silent by the divine ones, and is said to consent with Mind, and to be known to human souls through the power of the Mind alone.

- Proclus in Theologiam Platonis, 321. T.

Inscrutable. Taylor gives "stable;" perhaps "incomprehensible" is better.

6. The Chaldæans call the God Dionysos (or Bacchus), Iao in the Phoenician tongue (instead of the Intelligible Light), and he is also called Sabaoth, [1] signifying that he is above the Seven poles, that is the Demiurgos.

- Lydus, De Mensibus, 83. T.

[1. This word is Chaldee, TzBAUT, meaning hosts; but there is also a word SHBOH, meaning The Seven.]

7. Containing all things in the one summit of his own Hyparxis, He Himself subsists wholly beyond.

- Proclus in Theologiam Platonis, 212. T.

Hyparxis, is generally deemed to mean "Subsistence." Hupar is Reality as distinct from appearance; Huparche is a Beginning.

8. Measuring and bounding all things.

- Proclus in Theologiam Platonis, 386. T.

"Thus he speaks the words," is omitted by Taylor and Cory, but present in the Greek.

9. For nothing imperfect emanates from the Paternal Principle,

- Psellus, 38; Pletho. Z.

This implies -- but only from a succedent emanation.

10. The Father effused not Fear, but He infused persuasion.

- Pletho. Z.

11. The Father hath apprehended Himself, and bath not restricted his Fire to his own intellectual power.

- Psellus, 30; Pletho, 33. Z.

Taylor gives:- The Father hath hastily withdrawn Himself, but hath not shut up his own Fire in his intellectual power.

The Greek text has no word "hastily," and as to "withdrawn -- Arpazo means, grasp or snatch, but also "apprehend with the mind."

12. Such is the Mind which is energized before energy, while yet it had not gone forth, but abode in the Paternal Depth, and in the Adytum of God nourished silence.

- Proc. in Tim., 167. T.

13. All things have issued from that one Fire. The Father perfected all things, and delivered them over to the Second Mind, whom all Nations of Men call the First.

- Psellus, 24; Pletho, 30. Z.

14. The Second Mind conducts the Empyrean World.

- Damascius, De Principiis. T.

15. What the Intelligible saith, it saith by understanding.

- Psellus, 35. Z.

16. Power is with them, but Mind is from Him.

- Proclus in Platonis Theologiam, 365. T.

17. The Mind of the Father riding on the subtle Guiders, which glitter with the tracings of inflexible and relentless Fire.

- Proclus on the Cratylus of Plato. T.

18. . . . . After the Paternal Conception I the Soul reside, a heat animating all things.

. . . . For he placed The Intelligible in the Soul, and the Soul in dull body,
Even so the Father of Gods and Men placed them in us.

- Proclus in Tim. Plat, 124. Z. or T.

19. Natural works co-exist with the intellectual light of the Father. For it is the Soul which adorned the vast Heaven, and which adorneth it after the Father, but her dominion is established on high.

- Proclus in Tim., 106. Z. or T.

Dominion, krata: some copies give kerata, horus.

20. The Soul, being a brilliant Fire, by the power of the Father remaineth immortal, and is Mistress of Life, and filleth up the many recesses of the bosom of the World.

- Psellus, 28; Pletho, 11. Z.

21. The channels being intermixed, therein she performeth the works of incorruptible Fire.

- Proclus in Politica, p. 399. Z. or T.

22. For not in Matter did the Fire which is in the first beyond enclose His active Power, but in Mind; for the framer of the Fiery World is the Mind of Mind.

- Proclus in Theologiam, 333, and Tim., 157. T.

23. Who first sprang from Mind, clothing the one Fire with the other Fire, binding them together, that he might mingle the fountainous craters, while preserving unsullied the brilliance of His own Fire.

- Proclus in Parm. Platonis. T.

24. And thence a Fiery Whirlwind drawing down the brilliance of the flashing flame, penetrating the abysses of the Universe; for from thence downwards do extend their wondrous rays.

- Proclus in Theologiam Platonis, 171 and 172. T.

25. The Monad first existed, and the Paternal Monad still subsists.

- Proclus in Euclidem, 27. T.

26. When the Monad is extended, the Dyad is generated.

- Proclus in Euclidem, 27. T.

Note that "What the Pythagoreans signify by Monad, Dyad and Triad, or Plato by Bound, Infinite and Mixed; that the Oracles of the Gods intend by Hyparxis, Power and Energy."

- Damascius De Principiis. Taylor.

27. And beside Him is seated the Dyad which glitters with intellectual sections, to govern all things and to order everything not ordered.

- Proclus in Platonis Theologiam, 376. T.

28. The Mind of the Father said that all things should be cut into Three, whose Will assented, and immediately all things were so divided.

- Proclus in Parmen. T.

29. The Mind of the Eternal Father said into Three, governing all things by Mind.

- Proclus, Timaeus of Plato. T.

30. The Father mingled every Spirit from this Triad.

- Lydus, De Mensibus, 20. Taylor.

31. All things are supplied from the bosom of this Triad.

- Lydus, De Mensibus, 20. Taylor.

32. All things are governed and subsist in this Triad.

- Proclus in I. Alcibiades. T.

33. For thou must know that all things bow before the Three Supernals.

- Damascius, De Principiis. T.

34. From thence floweth forth the Form of the Triad, being preexistent; not the first Essence, but that whereby all things are measured.

- Anon. Z. or T.

35. And there appeared in it Virtue and Wisdom, and multiscient Truth.

- Anon. Z. or T.

36. For in each World shineth the Triad, over which the Monad ruleth.

- Damascius in Parmenidem. T.

37. The First Course is Sacred, in the middle lace courses the Sun, [1] in the third the Earth is heated by the internal fire.

- Anon. Z. or T.

[1. Jones gives Sun from Helios, but some Greek versions give Herios, which Cory translates, air.]

38. Exalted upon High and animating Light, Fire Ether and Worlds.

- Simplicius in his Physica, 143. Z. or T.

IDEAS.
INTELLIGIBLES, INTELLECTUALS, IYNGES, SYNOCHES, TELETARCHAE, FOUNTAINS, PRINCIPLES, HECATE, AND DAEMONS.

39. The Mind of the Father whirled forth in reechoing roar, comprehending by invincible Will Ideas omniform ; which flying forth from that one fountain issued; for from the Father alike. was the Will and the End (by which are they connected with the Father according to alternating life, through varying vehicles). But they were divided asunder, being by Intellectual Fire distributed into other Intellectuals. For the King of all previously placed before the polymorphous World a Type, intellectual, incorruptible, the imprint of whose form is sent forth through the World, by which the Universe shone forth decked with Ideas all various, of which the foundation is One, One and alone. From this the others rush forth distributed and separated through the various bodies of the Universe, and are borne in swarms through its vast abysses, ever whirling forth in illimitable radiation.

They are intellectual conceptions from the Paternal Fountain partaking abundantly of the brilliance of Fire in the culmination of unresting Time.

But the primary self-perfect Fountain of the Father poured forth these primogenial Ideas.

- Proclus in Parmenidem. .Z. or T.

40. These being many, descend flashingly upon the shining Worlds, and in them are contained the Three Supernals.

- Damascius in Parmenidem. T.

41. They are the guardians of the works of the Father, and of the One Mind, the Intelligible.

- Proclus in Theologiam Platonis, 205. T.

42. All things subsist together in the Intelligible World.

- Damascius, De Principiis. T.

43. But all Intellect understandeth the Deity, for Intellect existeth not without the Intelligible, neither apart from Intellect doth the Intelligible subsist.

- Damascius. Z. or T.

44. For Intellect existeth not without the Intelligible; apart from it, it subsisteth not.

- Proclus, Th. Pl., 172. Z. or T.

45. By Intellect He containeth the Intelligibles and introduceth the Soul into the Worlds.

46. By Intellect he containeth the Intelligibles, and introduceth Sense into the Worlds.

- Proclus in Crat. T.

47. For this Paternal Intellect, which comprehendeth the Intelligibles and adorneth things ineffable, hath sowed symbols through the World.

- Proclus in Cratylum. T.

48. This Order is the beginning of all section.

- Dam., De Prin. T.

49. The Intelligible is the principle of all section.

- Damascius, De Principiis. T.

50. The Intelligible is as food to that which understandeth.

- Dam., De Prin. T.

51. The oracles concerning the Orders exhibits It as prior to the Heavens, as ineffable, and they add -- It hath Mystic Silence.

- Proclus in Cratylum. T.

52. The oracle calls the Intelligible causes Swift, and asserts that, proceeding from the Father, they rush again unto Him.

- Proclus in Cratylum. T.

53. Those Natures are both Intellectual and Intelligible, which, themselves possessing Intellection, are the objects of Intelligence to others.

- Proclus, Theologiam Platonis. T.

The Second Order of the Platonist philosophy was the "Intelligible and Intellectual Triad." Among the Chaldæans this order includes the Iynges, Synoches and Teletarchs. The Intellectual Triad of the later Platonists corresponds to the Fountains, Fontal Fathers or Cosmagogi of the Chaldæans.

54. The Intelligible Iynges themselves understand from the Father; by Ineffable counsels being moved so as to understand.

- Psellus, 41; Pletho, 31. Z.

55. Because it is the Operator, because it is the Giver of Life Bearing Fire, because it filleth the Life-producing bosom of Hecate; and it instilleth into the Synoches the enlivening strength of Fire, endued with mighty Power.

- Proclus in Tim., 128. T.

56. He gave His own Whirlwinds to guard the Supernals, mingling the proper force of His own strength in the Synoches.

- Dam.; De Prin. T.

57. But likewise as many as serve the material Synoches.

- T.

58. The Teletarchs are comprehended in the Synoches.

- Dam., De Prin. T.

59. Rhea, the Fountain and River of the Blessed Intellectuals, having first received the powers of all things in Her Ineffable Bosom, pours forth perpetual Generation upon all things.

- Proc. in Crat. T

60. For it is the bound of the Paternal Depth, and the Fountain of the Intellectuals.

- Dam., De Prin. T.

61. For He is a Power of circumlucid strength, glittering with Intellectual Sections.

- Dam. T.

62. He glittereth with Intellectual Sections, and hath filled all things with love.

- Dam. T.

63. Unto the Intellectual Whirlings of Intellectual Fire, all things are subservient, through the persuasive counsel of the Father.

- Proc. in Parm. T.

64. O! how the World hath inflexible Intellectual Rulers.

65. The source of the Hecaté correspondeth with that of the Fontal Fathers.

- T.

66. From Him leap forth the Amilicti, the all-relentless thunders, and the whirlwind receiving Bosoms of the all-splendid Strength of Hecaté Father-begotten; and He who encircleth the Brilliance of Fire; And the Strong Spirit of the Poles, all fiery beyond.

- Proc. in Crat. T.

67. There is another Fountain, which leadeth the Empyraean World.

- Proc. in Tim. Z. or T.

68. The Fountain of Fountains, and the boundary of all fountains.

- Dam., De Prin.

69. Under two Minds the Life-generating fountain of Souls is comprehended.

- Dam., De Prin. T.

70. Beneath them exists the Principal One of the Immaterials.

- Dam. in Parm. Z. or T.

Following the intellectual Triad was the Demiurgos, from whom proceeded the Effable and Essential Orders including all sorts of Dæmons, and the Elementary World.

71. Father begotten Light, which alone hath gathered from the strength of the Father the Flower of mind, and hath the power of understanding the Paternal mind, and doth instil into all Fountains and Principles the power of understanding and the function of ceaseless revolution.

- Proc. in Tim., 242.

72. All fountains and principles whirl round and always remain in a ceaseless revolution.

- Proc. in Parm. Z. or T.

The Principles, which have understood the Intelligible works of the Father, He hath clothed in sensible works and bodies, being intermediate links existing to connect the Father with Matter, rendering apparent the Images of unapparent Natures, and inscribing the Unapparent in the Apparent frame of the World.

- Dam., De Prin. Z. or T.

74. Typhon, Echidna, and Python, being the progeny of Tartaros and Gaia, who were united by Uranos, form, as it were, a certain Chaldæan Triad, the Inspector and Guardian of all the disordered fabrications.

- Olymp. in Phæd. T.

75. There are certain Irrational Demons (mindless elementals), which. derive their subsistence from the Aërial Rulers; wherefore the Oracle saith, Being the Charioteer of the Aërial, Terrestrial and Aquatic Dogs.

- Olymp. in Phad. T.

76. The Aquatic when applied to Divine Natures signifies a Government inseparable from Water, and hence the Oracle calls the Aquatic Gods, Water Walkers.

- Proc. in Tim., 270. T.

77. There are certain Water Elementals whom Orpheus calls Nereides, dwelling in the more elevated exhalations of Water, such as appear in damp, cloudy Air, whose bodies are sometimes seen (as Zoroaster taught) by more acute eyes, especially in Persia and Africa.

- Ficinus de Immortalilate Animæ, 123. T.

PARTICULAR SOULS.
SOUL, LIFE, MAN.

78. The Father conceived ideas, and all mortal bodies were animated by Him.

- Proc. in Tim., 336. T.

79. For the Father of Gods and men placed the Mind (nous) in the Soul (psyche); and placed both in the (human) body.

80. The Paternal Mind hath sowed symbols in the Soul.

- Psell., 26; Pletho, 6. Z.

81. Having mingled the Vital Spark from two according substances, Mind and Divine Spirit, as a third to these He added Holy Love, the venerable Charioteer uniting all things.

- Lyd. De Men., 3.

82. Filling the Soul with profound Love.

- Proc. in Pl. Theol., 4. Z or T.

83. The Soul of man does in a manner clasp God to herself. Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated with God. For she glorieth in the harmony under which the mortal body subsisteth.

- Psellus, 17; Pletho, 10. Z.

84. The more powerful Souls perceive Truth through themselves, and are of a more inventive Nature. Such Souls are saved through their own strength, according to the Oracle.

- Proclus in I. Alc. Z.

85. The Oracle saith that Ascending Souls sing a Pæan.

- Olymp. in Phæd. Z or T.

86. Of all Souls, those certainly are superlatively blessed, which are poured forth from Heaven to Earth; and they are happy, and have ineffable stamina, as many as proceed from Thy Splendid Self, O King, or from Jove Himself, under the strong necessity of Mithus.

- Synes. De Insom, 153. Z or T.

Query Mithras.

87. The Souls of those who quit the body violently are most pure.

- Psellus, 27. Z.

88. The girders of the Soul, which give her breathing, are easy to be unloosed.

- Psellus, 32; Pletho, 8. Z.

89. For when you see a Soul set free, the Father sendeth another, that the number may be complete.

- Z. or T.

90. Understanding the works of the Father, they avoid the shameless Wing of Fate; they are placed in God, drawing forth strong light-bearers, descending from the Father, from whom as they descend, the Soul gathereth of the empyræan fruits the soul-nourishing flower.

- Proc. in Tim., 321. Z. or T.

91. This Animastic Spirit which blessed men have called the Pneumatic Soul, becometh a god, an all-various Dæmon, and an Image (disembodied), and in this form of Soul suffereth her punishments The Oracles, too, accord with this account; for they assimilate the employment of the Soul in Hades, to the delusive visions of a dream.

- Synesius De Insom. Z. or T.

The word Dæmon in the original meaning of the term did not necessarily mean a bad Spirit, and was as often applied to pure spirits as to impure.

Compare the Eastern doctrine of Devachan, a stage of pleasing illusion after death.

92. One life after another, from widely distributed sources. Passing from above, through to the opposite art; through the Centre of the Earth; and to the fifth middle, fiery centre, where the life-bearing fire descendeth as far as the material world.

- Z. or T.

93. Water is a symbol of life; hence Plato and the gods before Plato, call it (the Soul) at one time the whole water of vivification, and at another time a certain fountain of it.

- Proc. in Tim., 318. Z.

94. O Man, of a daring nature, thou subtle production.

- Psell., 12; Pletho, 21. Z.

95. For thy vessel the beasts of the Earth shalt in habit.

- Psell., 36; Pletho, 7. Z.

Vessel is the body in which the Nous -- thou, dwellest for a time.

96. Since the Soul perpetually runs and passes through many experiences in a certain space of time; which being performed, it is presently compelled to pass back again through all things, and unfold a similar web of generation in the World, according to Zoroaster, who thinketh that as often as the same causes return, the same effects will in like manner be sure to ensue.

- Ficin. De Im. An., 129. Z.

97. According to Zoroaster, in us the ethereal vestment of the Soul perpetually revolves (reincarnates).

- Ficin. De Im. An., 129. Z.

98. The Oracles delivered by the Gods celebrate the essential fountain of every Soul; the Empyrean, the Ethereal and the Material. This fountain they separate from (Zoogonothea) the vivifying Goddess (Rhea), from whom (suspending the whole of Fate) they make two series or orders; the one animastic, or belonging to the Soul, and the other belonging to Fate. They assert that the Soul is derived from the animastic series, but that sometimes it becometh subservient to Fate, when passing into an irrational condition of being,: it becometh subject to Fate instead of to Providence.

- Proclus de Providentia apud Fabricium in Biblioth. Græca., vol.8, 486. Z. or T.

MATTER.
THE WORLD -- AND NATURE.

99. The Matrix containing all things.

- T.

100. Wholly divisible, and yet indivisible.

101. Thence abundantly springeth forth the generations of multifarious Matter.

- Proc. in Tim.. 118. T.

102. These frame atoms, sensible forms, corporeal bodies, and things destined to matter.

- Dam, De Prin. T.

103. The Nymphs of the Fountains, and all the Water Spirits, and terrestrial, aërial and astral forms, are the Lunar Riders and Rulers of all Matter, the Celestial, the Starry, and that which lieth in the Abysses.

- Lydus., p. 32.

104. According to the Oracles, Evil is more feeble than Non-entity.

- Proc. de Prov. Z or T.

105. We learn that Matter pervadeth the whole world, as the Gods also assert.

- Proc., Tim., 142. Z. or T.

106. All Divine Natures are incorporeal, but bodies are bound to them for your sakes. Bodies not being able to contain incorporeals, by reason of the Corporeal Nature, in which ye are concentrated.

- Proc. in P1. Polit., 359. Z. or T.

107. For the paternal Self-begotten Mind, understanding His works sowed in all, the fiery bonds of love, that all things might continue loving for an infinite time. That the connected series of things might intellectually remain in the Light of the Father; that the elements of the World might continue their course in mutual attraction.

- Proc. in Tim.. 155. T.

108. The Maker of all things, self-operating, framed the World. And there was a certain Mass of Fire: all these things Self-Operating He produced, that the Body of the Universe might be conformed, that the World might be manifest, and not appear membranous.

- Proc. in Tim., 154. Z. or T.

109. For He assimilateth the images to himself, casting them around his own form.

110. For they are an imitation of his Mind, but that which is fabricated hath something of Body.

- Proc. in Tim., 87. Z or. T.

111. There is a Venerable Name, with a sleepless revolution, leaping forth into the worlds, through the rapid tones of the Father.

- Proc. in Crat. Z. or T.

112. The Ethers of the Elements therefore are there.

- Olympiodorus in Phæd. Z. or T.

113. The Oracles assert that the types of Characters, and of other Divine visions appear in the Ether (or Astral Light).

- Simp. in Phys., 144. Z. or T.

114. In this the things without figure are figured.

- Simp. in Phys., 143. Z. or T.

115. The Ineffable and Effable impressions of the World.

116. The Light hating World, and the winding currents by which many are drawn down.

- Proc. in Tim., 339. Z. or T.

117. He maketh the whole World of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, and of the all-nourishing Ether.

- Z. or T.

118. Placing Earth in the middle, but Water below the Earth, and Air above both these.

- Z. or T.

119. He fixed a vast multitude of un-wandering Stars, not by a strain laborious and hurtful, but with stability void of movement, forcing Fire forward into Fire.

- Proc. in Tim., 280. Z. or T.

120. The Father congregated the Seven Firmaments of the Kosmos, circumscribing the Heavens with convex form.

- Dam. in Parm. Z, or T.

121. He constituted a Septenary of wandering Existences (the Planetary globes).

- Z. or T.

122. Suspending their disorder in Well-disposed Zones.

- Z. or T.

123. He made them six in number, and for the Seventh He cast into the midst thereof the Fiery Sun.

- Proc. in Tim., 280. Z. or T.

124. The Centre from which all (lines) which way soever are equal.

- Proc. in Euclidem.

125. And that the Swift Sun doth pass as ever around a Centre.

- Proc. in Plat. Th., 317. Z. or T.

126. Eagerly urging itself towards that Centre of resounding Light.

- Proc. in Tim., 236. T.

127. The Vast Sun, and the Brilliant Moon.

128. As rays of Light his locks flow forth, ending in acute points.

- Proc. in P1. Pol. 387. T.

129. And of the Solar Circles, and of the Lunar, clashings, and of the Aërial Recesses; the Melody of Ether, and of the Sun, and of the phases of the Moon, and of the Air.

- Proc. in Tim., 257. Z. or T.

130. The most mystic of discourses informs us that His wholeness is in the Supra-mundane Orders for there a Solar World and Boundless Light subsist, as the Oracles of the Chaldæans affirm.

- Proc. in Tim., 264. Z. or T.

131. The Sun more true measureth all things by time, being itself the time of time, according to the Oracle of the Gods concerning it.

- Proc. in Tim., 249. Z. or T.

132. The Disk (of the Sun) is borne in the Starless realm above the Inerratic Sphere; and hence he is not in the midst of the Planets; but of the Three Worlds, according to the telestic Hypothesis.

- Jul., Crat., 5, 334. Z. or T.

133. The Sun is a Fire, the Channel of Fire, and the dispenser of Fire.

- Proc. in Tim., 141. Z. or T.

134. Hence Kronos, The Sun as Assessor beholds the true pole.

135. The Ethereal Course, and the vast motion of the Moon, and the Aërial fluxes.

- Proclus in Tim., 257. Z. or T.

136. O Ether, Sun, and Spirit of the Moon, ye are the chiefs of the Air.

- Proc. in Tim., 257. Z. or T.

137. And the wide Air, and the Lunar Course, and the Pole of the Sun.

- Proc. in Tim., 257. Z. or T.

138. For the Goddess bringeth forth the Vast Sun, and the lucent Moon.

139. She collecteth it, receiving the Melody of Ether, and of the Sun, and of the Moon, and of whatsoever things are contained in the Air.

140. Unwearied Nature ruleth over the Worlds and works, that the Heavens drawing downward might run an eternal course, and that the other periods of the Sun, Moon, Seasons, Night and Day; might be accomplished.

- Proc. in Tim., 4, 323. Z. or T.

141. And above the shoulders of that Great Goddess, is Nature in her vastness exalted.

- Proc. in Tim., 4, T.

142. The most celebrated of the Babylonians, together with Ostanes and Zoroaster, very properly call the starry Spheres "Herds"; whether because these alone among corporeal magnitudes, are perfectly carried about around a Centre, or in conformity to the Oracles, because they are considered by them as in a certain respect the bonds and collectors of physical reasons, which they likewise call in their sacred discourse "Herds" (agelous) and by the insertion of a gamma (aggelous) Angels. Wherefore the Stars which preside over each of these herds are considered to be Deities or Dæmons, similar to the Angels, and are called Archangels; and they are seven in number.

- Anon. in Theologumenis Arithmeticis. Z.

Daimon in Greek meant "a Spirit" not "a bad Spirit."

143. Zoroaster calls the congruities of material forms to the ideals of the Soul of the World -- Divine Allurements.

- Ficinus, de Vit. Coel. Comp. Z.

MAGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRECEPTS

144. Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carded by the Eternal Will of the Father,. and not for your sake alone. Dismiss (from your mind) the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aërial flight of birds gives no true knowledge nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud:, flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.

- Psel., 4. Z.

145. Stoop not down unto the Darkly-Splendid World; wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth, and Hades wrapped in clouds, delighting in unintellible images, precipitous, winding, a black ever-rolling Abyss; ever espousing a Body unluminous, formless and void.

- Synes., de Insom., 140. Z. or T.

146. Stoop not down, for a precipice lieth beneath the Earth, reached by a descending Ladder which hath Seven Steps, and therein is established the Throne of an evil and fatal force.

- Psell., 6; Pletho, 2. Z.

147. Stay not on the Precipice with the dross of Matter, for there is a place for thy Image in a realm ever splendid.

- Psell., 1, 2; Pletho, 14; Synesius, 140. Z.

148. Invoke not the visible Image of the Soul of Nature.

- Psell., 15; Pletho, 23. Z.

149. Look not upon Nature, for her name is fatal.

- Proc. in P1at. Th., 143. Z.

150. It becometh you not to behold them before your body is initiated, since by always alluring they seduce the souls from the sacred mysteries.

- Proc. in I Alcib. Z. or T.

151. Bring her not forth, lest in departing she retain something.

- Psell., 3; Pletho, 15. Z.

Taylor says that "her" refers to the human soul.

152. Defile not the Spirit, nor deepen a superficies.

- Psell., 19; Pletho, 13. Z.

153. Enlarge not thy Destiny.

- Psell., 37; Pletho, 4.

154. Not hurling, according to the Oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety.

- Dam. in Vitam Isidore. ap. Suidam Z. or T.

155. Change not the barbarous Names of Evocation for there are sacred Names in every language which are given by God, having in the Sacred Rites a Power Ineffable.

- Psell., 7. Nicephotus. Z. or T.

156. Go not forth when the Lictor passeth by.

- Picus de Mirandula, Concl. Z. [Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones, 37.11.]

157. Let fiery hope nourish you upon the Angelic plane.

- Olymp. in Phæd. Proc. in Alcib. Z. or T.

158. The conception of the glowing Fire hath the first rank, for the mortal who approacheth that Fire shall have Light from God; and unto the persevering mortal the Blessed Immortals are swift.

- Proc. in Tim., 65. Z. or T.

159. The Gods exhort us to understand the radiating form of Light.

- Proc. in Crat. Z. or T.

160. It becometh you to hasten unto the Light, and to the Rays of the Father, from whom was sent unto you a Soul (Psyche) endued with much mind (Nous).

- Psell., 33. Pletho, 6. Z.

161. Seek Paradise.

- Psell., 41. Pletho, 27. Z.

162. Learn the Intelligible for it subsisteth beyond the Mind.

- Psell., 41. Pletho, 27. Z.

163. There is a certain Intelligible One. whom it becometh you to understand with the Flower of Mind.

- Psell., 31. Pletho, 28. Z.

164. But the Paternal Mind accepteth not the aspiration of the soul until she hath passed out of her oblivious state, and pronounceth the Word; regaining the Memory of the pure paternal Symbol.

- Psell., 39. Pletho, 5. Z.

165. Unto some He gives the ability to receive the Knowledge of Light; and others, even when asleep, he makes fruitful from His own strength.

- Synes., de Insomn., 135. Z. or T.

166. It is not proper to understand that Intelligible One with vehemence, but with the extended flame of far reaching Mind, measuring all things except that Intelligible. But it is requisite to understand this; for if thou inclinest thy Mind thou wilt understand it, not earnestly; but it is becoming to bring with thee a pure and enquiring sense, to extend the void mind of thy Soul to the Intelligible, that thou mayest learn the Intelligible, because it subsisteth beyond Mind.

- Dam. T.

167. Thou wilt not comprehend it, as when under-standing some common thing.

- Damascius, de primis principiis. T.

168. Ye who. understand, know the Super-mundane Paternal Depth.

- Dam. Z. or T.

169. Things Divine are not attainable by mortals who understand the body alone, but only by those who stripped of their garments arrive at the summit.

- Proc. in Crat. Z. or T.

170. Having put on the completely armed-vigour of resounding Light, with triple strength fortifying the Soul and the Mind, He must put into the Mind the various Symbols, and not walk dispersedly on the empyræan path, but with concentration.

171. For being furnished with every kind of Armour, and armed, he is similar to the Goddess.

- Proc. in P1. Th., 324. T.

172. Explore the River of the Soul, whence, or in what order you have come: so that although you have become a servant to the body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason.

- Psell, 5. Pletho, 1. Z.

173. Every way unto the emancipated Soul extend the rays of Fire.

- Psell., 11. Pletho, 24. Z.

174. Let the immortal depth of your Soul lead you, but earnestly raise your eyes upwards.

- Psell., 11. Pletho, 20.

175. Man, being an intelligent Mortal, must bridle his Soul that she may not incur terrestrial infelicity, but be saved.

- Lyd., De Men., 2.

176. If thou extendeth the Fiery Mind to the work of piety, thou wilt preserve the fluxible body.

- Psell., 22. Pletho, 16. Z.

177. The telestic life through Divine Fire removeth all the stains, together with everything of a foreign and irrational nature, which the spirit of the Soul has attracted from generation, as we are taught by the Oracle to believe.

- Proc. in Tim., 331. Taylor.

178. The Oracles of the Gods declare, that through purifying ceremonies, not the Soul only, but bodies themselves become Worth) of receiving much assistance and health, for, say they, the mortal vestment of coarse Matter will by these means be purified." And this, the Gods, in an exhortatory manner, announce to the moat holy of Theurgists.

- Jul., Crat. v., p.334. Z. or T.

179. We should flee, according to the Oracle, the multitude of men going in a herd.

- Proc. in I Alc. Z. or T.

180. Who knoweth himself, knoweth all things in himself.

- I. Pic., p. 211. Z.

181. The Oracles often give victory to our own choice, and not to the Order alone of the Mundane periods. As, for instance, when they say, "On beholding thyself, fear!" And again, "Believe thy-self to be above the Body, and thou art so." And, still further, when they assert, "That our voluntary sorrows germinate in us the growth of the particular life we lead."

- Proc., de Prov., p. 483. Z. or T.

182. But these are mysteries which I evolve in the profound Abyss of the Mind.

183. As the Oracle thereforth saith: God is never so turned away from man, and never so much sendeth him new paths, as when he maketh ascent to divine speculations or works in a confused or disordered manner, and as it adds, with unhallowed lips, or unwashed feet. For of those who are thus negligent, the progress is imperfect, the impulses are vain, and the paths are dark.

- Proc. in Parm. Z. or T.

184. Not knowing that every God is good, ye are fruitlessly vigilant.

- Proc. in Platonis Pol., 355. Z. or T.

185. Theurgists fall not so as to be ranked among the herd that are in subjection to Fate.

- Lyd., De men. Taylor.

186. The number nine is divine, receives its completion from three triads, and attains the summits of theology, according to the Chaldaic philosophy as Porphyry informeth us.

- Lyd., p. 121.

187. In the left side of Hecate is a fountain of Virtue, which remaineth entirely within her, not sending forth its virginity.

- Psell., 13; Pletho, 9. Z.

188. And the earth bewailed them, even unto their children.

- Psell., 21 ; Pletho, 3. Z.

189. The Furies are the Constrainers of Men.

- Psell., 26; Pletho, 19. Z.

190. Lest being baptized to the Furies of the Earth, and to the necessities of nature (as some one of the Gods saith), you should perish.

- Proc. in Theol., 297. Z. or T.

191. Nature persuadeth us that there are pure Dæmons, and that evil germs of Matter may alike become useful and good.

- Psell., 16; Pletho, 18. Z.

192. For three days and no longer need ye sacrifice.

- Pic. Concl. Z.

193. So therefore first the Priest who governeth the works of Fire, must sprinkle with the Water of the loud-resounding Sea.

- Proc. in Crat. Z. or T.

194. Labour thou around the Strophalos of Hecaté.

- Psell., 9. Nicephorus.

195. When thou shalt see a Terrestrial Dæmon approaching, Cry aloud! and sacrifice the stone Mnizourin.

- Psell., 40. Z.

196. If thou often invokest thou shalt see all things growing dark; and then when no longer is visible unto thee the High-arched Vault of Heaven, when the Stars have lost their Light and the Lamp of the Moon is veiled, the Earth abideth not, and around thee darts the Lightning Flame and all things appear amid thunders.

- Psell., 10; Pletho, 22. Z.

197. From the Cavities of the Earth leap forth the terrestrial Dog-faced demons, showing no true sign unto mortal man.

- Psell, 23; Pletho, 10. Z.

198. A similar Fire flashingly extending through the rushings of Air, or a Fire formless whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding, revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these Symbols into the Form of a Lion.

- Proc. in P1. Polit., 380; Stanley Hist. Philos. Z. or T.

199. When thou shalt behold that holy and formless Fire shining flashingly through the depths of the Universe: Hear thou the Voice of Fire.

- Psell., 14; Pletho, 25. Z.

ORACLES FROM PORPHYRY.

1. There is above the Celestial Lights an Incorruptible Flame always sparkling; the Spring of Life, the Formation of all Beings, the Original of all things! This Flame produceth all things, and nothing perisheth but what it consumeth. It maketh Itself known by Itself. This Fire cannot be contained in any Place, it is without Body and without Matter. It encompasseth the Heavens. And there goeth out from it little Sparks, which make all the Fires of the Sun, of the Moon, and of the Stars. Behold! what I know of God! Strive not to know more of Him, for that is beyond thy capacity, how wise soever thou art. As to the rest, know that unjust and wicked Man cannot hide himself from the Presence of God !

No subtilty nor excuse can disguise anything from His piercing Eyes. All is full of God, and God is in All!

2. There is in God an Immense Profundity of Flame! Nevertheless, the Heart should not fear to approach this Adorable Fire, or to be touched by it; it will never be consumed by this sweet Fire, whose mild and Tranquil Heat maketh the Binding, the Harmony, and the. Duration of the World. Nothing subsisteth but by this Fire, which is God Himself. No Person begat Him; He is without Mother; He knoweth all things, and can be taught nothing.

He is Infallible in His designs, and His name is unspeakable, Behold now, what God is! As for us who are His messengers, We are but a Little Part of God.

Index of Angel names, magical words, and names of God
20:02:18 - Jun 30 2006
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Abbreviations:
A: Arbatel of Magic
Ab: Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
BP: Gollancz, Book of Protection (London, 1912)
Dz: Douze Anneaux
E: Book of Enoch (Charles tr.)
G: Grand Grimoire
GH: Le Grimoire du Pape Honorius
GV: Grimorium Verum
H: Heptameron, Peter de Abano
J: Liber Juratus (Sworn Book of Honorius)
K: Key of Solomon (ed. Mathers)
K3: Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel
K4: Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Quatrieme, par Armadel
L: Lemegeton
MTS: Magical Treatise of Solomon, Harley MS. 5596. See Richard Greenfield's Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1988)
NS: Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae (Jerusalem, 1993)
OP: H. C. Agrippa: Of Occult Philosophy or Magic
P: Picatrix, ed. Pingree, 1986
T: Johannes Trithemius, De Septem Secundeis, 1508
TS: Testament of Solomon
W: Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Z: Zoroastrianism

a: J 1

à Luciat (Name of God): GH

aadon (angel of the 2nd month): J 1

aaen (angel of the day of Mercury): J 1

Aalacho (11th hour of the night): L 3

aall (angel of the day of Mercury): J 1

Aamon (demon): G; L1, Weyer (variant: Amon)

Aariel (aerial spirit): L2

Aarom (angel of the 2nd month): J 1

Aaron (angel of the day of Saturn): J 1

Ab, Ben, Ve-Ruach, Ha-Qadesch, i.e. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: K

Ab (Divine name associated with Saturn): OP2.22; K

Aba (Angel, minister of Sarabotes): H

Abab (Divine name associated with Jupiter): OP2.22

Ababaloy (One of the magic words recited over the magic pen): GV

Abac: K

Abaddon: K

Abadir: Ab

Abael (aerial spirit): L2; NS 201, 202

Abagiron: Ab

Abahin: Ab

Abai (11th hour of day): H

Abai: K

Abalam: L 1

abalay: J 5

Abalidoth (angel, minister of Sarabotes): H; K4

Aban (=Anahita, Aredui Sura Anahita): Angel presiding over Water: Z

Abanay: J 5

Abao, Abaot: NS 66

Abargurna: NS 168

Abariel: K; (aerial spirit): L2

Abasdarhon (angel of the 5th hour of the night): L 3

Abba: J 2

Abbadaia (name of God): J 1

Abbadia: J 5

Abbaton: K

Abbdya: J 5

Abdizu: P iv ix 40

Abdizuel: J 5

Abdon (name of God): J 1, 5; K

Abdou: J 5

Abdyel (angel of the 1st month): J 1

Abednego: K; L 1

Abedumabal: GV

Abelais: K

Abelech: K

Abelul ([Hebrew] name of 4th month): J 1

Abeor: H; L 1, 2

Abercaysdon (angel of 7th month): J 1

Aberer: L 1, 2

Abezithibod: TS

Abhadir: Ab

Abiel: G; (angel of the zodiac) L 3; NS 202

Abigar (demon): G

Abim: H

Abir: NS 217

Abiram: L 1

Abisi: Ab

Abla (One of the magic words to deflect weapons): GH

Ablati: GV

Ablayeyll (angel of the day of Venus): J 1

Ableymez: P iii ix 5

Abliemel: P iv ix 55

ABLTh (Heb. "the glorious name" of God): NS A17:23

Aboc (aerial spirit): L2

Aboezra: GV

Abrac: H; (angel of the 5th month): J 1; L 1, L 2

Abracadabra: K

Abrach: K

Abrachasyn (angel of the day of the Moon): J 1

Abracio (name of God): J 1, 5

ABRAGATEH: K

Abragini (name of the Sun in Autumn): H; J 5

ABRAHACH: K

ABRAHAM: K

Abramacyn (angel of the day of the Moon): J 1

Abranoryn: J 1

Abrasaxia: NS 203

Abrasiel (Lesser angel of the 7th hour of the day): L 3

Abraxas: NS 76, 198, 211, 222

Abraye: H

Abraym (Name of the Sun in Spring): H; J 5

ABRHIMA: magical word used in 'Binding the fever': BP 17c

Abriel (Aerial spirit): L2; NS 236

Abrimael [A: Abrinael]: J 5

abrinael: J 5

Abrine: P iv ix 52

Abrulges (Aerial spirit): L2

Abruna Abarguna: NS 168

abrutim: P iv ii 4

abry (angel of the 7th month): J 1

abrys (angel of the 3rd month): J 1

abrysaf (angel of the 11th month): J 1

absamon (angel of the 2nd month): J 1

Absax: NS 221

abuifor (angel of the 3rd month): J 1

Abuiori (angel of the second heaven): H

Abumalith (angel, minister of Maymon): H

Abusis: Ab

Abutes: Ab

Abuzaha (angel, minister of Arcan): H

abytan: J 1

abytasy: J 1

Acarfa: P i iv 13

acatyery: P i v 27

Acderuz: P iii x 14

Achad: K

Achadan: H

Achael: L 3

achaiah [A: Akaiah] : J 5

Achalich: P iv ix 43

Acham: Demon: GH

Achaniel: Ab

Achaya: P iv ix 34

Acheliah: K

AChIAL (Ahi'el Heb. angel): NS A18:4

Achides: K

Achiel: L 3

Achier: K4

Achim: H

Achol (aerial spirit): L2

ACHSAH: K

Acim (angel): H

Acimoy (angel): H

Acithael: J 5

ACLA (typo for AGLA? q.v.) Name on pentacle: GH

Acorib: GH

Acreba (aerial spirit): L2

Acriuz: P iii x 14

Actarie: P iv vi 13

Acteras (aerial spirit): L2

Acuar: Ab

acya: J 1

acyor: J 1

Aczabi: P iv vii 23

Adan (aerial spirit): L2

adar: J 1; see also Atar

Adares: TS

Adibaga: GH

Adiel (angel of the zodiac): L 3

Adirael: Ab

Adisak: Ab

adiutor: J 5

Admenita: P iii vii 30

admyel: J 1, 5

Admyhel: J 1, 4, 5

Adnachiel: Angel ruling over Sagittarius (OP2.14).

`Adnael: NS 186

Adnar'el: E

ADNI HMLK NAMN: K

ADNI, Adonaï: K

Adon: Ab

Adonaêl: TS

Adônaêl: TS

Adonaêth: TS

ADONAI ELOHIM: K

ADONAI ELOHIM TZABAOTH: K

ADONAI ELOHIM TZABAOTH SHADDAI: K

ADONAI MELEKH: K

ADONAI TZABAOTH: K

Adonai: see Adonay

Adonay, Adonai: BP; G; GH; GV; H; J 1, 2, 3, 4; K; L 1, 2, 3, 4; NS 155, 173, 200; OP2.13

Adoniel: J 1; K; (angel of 12th hour of the night): L 3

Ador: GV; K3

ADRAI: K

Adramelech: K

Adrapan (angel of the 9th hour of the night): L 3

Adricanorom: GV

Adrieb: P iv ix 45

adriel: J 5

Adroziel (angel of the 4th hour of the night): L 3

adryyaac: J 1

aduachiel, advachiel: J 5

Adulex: P iv ix 61

adyanienyn: J 1

adyell: J 1

Adyeruz: P iii x 9

adyysar: J 1

adziryell: J 1

ÆCHHAD: K

Ægalmiel: K

Aegyn, Egin, or Egyn: King of the South according to An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Ad. 36674, fol. 47v) (Alternately called Ariton in Ab.)

ael: J 1

aesal: J 1

Æternus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

aezonyn: J 1

Afarkha'el (Heb. APRKAL angel): NS A18:4

Afarorp: Ab

affaryell: J 1

affaterim (name of the Moon in Winter): H; J 5

affetihe: P i v 27

Affihuz: P iii x 12

Affimuz: P iii x 14

Affludita: P iii vii 30

affrye: J 1

Afloton: Ab

Afolop: Ab

Afray: Ab

Afrayuz: P iii ix 12

Afriduz: P iii ix 12

Agab: Ab

Agafali: Ab

agal: J 2, 3

Agalierap: GV

Agalierept: GV

AGALMATUROD: K

Agapiel (aerial spirit): L2

Agares (demon): G; L 1

Agari: K4

Agasaly: Ab

Agason: GV

Agateraptor: One of the chief demons under Belzebut in Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel

Agchoniôn: TS

Agebol: Ab

Agei: Ab

Agenos: J 2

agessomagy [S: agessomay]: J 2

Agiathon: Angel in K4

Agibol: Ab

Agiel: Intelligence of Saturn (OP2.22); K; K4.

Agilas: Ab

Aginafez: P iii ix 14

Agion (typo for Aglon?): G

Agios: J 3; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Agiqat: NS 211

AGLA (acronym/name of God): Dz; G; GH; GV; H; J 1, 3, 5; K; L 1, 2, 3, 4

Aglaasis: GV

AGLACH: Name on pentacle: GH

Aglafos: Ab

Aglafys: Ab

Aglai [S2: Agla]: J 5; K

Aglanabrath: G

Aglanos: Magic word: GH

Aglas (aerial spirit): L2; magic word: GH

AGLASIS: GV

AGLATA: K

AGLATAI: K

Agle: G

Aglo (10th hour of night): H

Aglon: G; K4

Agloros: J 2, 3

Agnus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Agnvs: J 5 (see Agnus)

agnyel: J 1

Agor (aerial spirit): L2

Agra (aerial spirit): L2

Agragon: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

agrasnydyn: J 1

Agrax: Ab

Agripus: NS 150

agrirazcor [S: agrnazcor]: J 2

agusita (Name of the Moon in Spring): H; J 5

agyos: J 5

Aha: Divine name associated with Venus (OP2.22)

Ahabhon: Ab

Ahadyz: P iii ix 14

Ahariz: P iii x 10

Aharyulez: P iii x 10

Ahatyz: P iii vii 21

Ahayuaraz: P iii x 10

Ahbiel: NS 231

Aherom: Ab

Ahiel: NS 58

AHIH, Eheieh: K

Ahudememora: P iv vi 13

Ahurani: Female angels (Yazads) presiding over water: Z

ahyell: J 1

Aia: H

Aiel (angel associated with sign of Aries): H; L 3

aiguap: J 1

Aim: L 1

AIMA: K

AIN SOPH: K

Airyaman: Angel (Yazad) presiding over friendship and healing: Z, but Indo-Iranian in origin

AISThRA (angel or spirit): NS 22

Aja: Divine name: GH

Ajel (angel of zodiac): L 3

Akae: E

Akael ('Akaêl): Angel (or demon) of 20th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Akahim: Ab

Akanef: Ab

Akatriel: NS 168, 213

Akefeli: Ab

Akesoli: Ab

Akhliton ('Akhlitôn): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Tuesday: MTS

Akhshti: Angel (Yazad) personifying peace: Z

Akium: Ab

Akorok: Ab

Akoros: Ab

Akton: TS

AL, El: K

al: J 1

alacaorynyll: J 1

Alachuc (angel of 11th hour of night): L 3

Aladia: H

Aladiah: J 5

Alafy: Ab

Alagas: Ab

Alahue: P i iv 14; iv ix 41

Alan: Ab

Alaphar: L 3

Alath: TS

ALAZAION: K

ALBAMACHI: K

Albelda: P iv ix 49

Albhadur (aerial spirit): L2

Albimex: P iv ix 62

Albotain: P i iv 3

Albotayn: P iv ix 30

albune: P i v 27

albuth: J 5

albylyn: J 1

Alcab: P iv ix 46

Alcalb: P i iv 19

Alcanor: Ab

Alchamar: P iv vii 23

ALCHEEGHEL: K

Alcilo: K4

ALDAL: K

Aldebaran: P i iv 5; ii xii 45; iv ix 32

Aldirah: P i iv 8

Aldire: P iv ix 35

Aldrusy (aerial spirit): L2

Aleasi (aerial spirit): L2

ALEPH and the TAU: K

ALEPH, BETH, BETH, NUN, VAU, RESH, VAU, CHETH, HE, QOPH, DALETH, SHIN, the sacred name of twelve letters of which each letter is the name of an angel: K

ALEPH, DALETH, NUN, IOD (ADNI, Adonai): K

Aleph, Mem, Shin: K

Aleph: K

alesemony [S: alesemonoy]: J 2

alethon: J 5

Alfareon: J 5

Alfarg posterior: P iv ix 55

Alfarg primus: P iv ix 54

Alferiel (aerial spirit): L2

Alfrael: L 3

alfyton: J 1

alg: J 1

Alga: Divine name: GH (probably a typo for AGLA, q.v.)

Algadenas: Magic word: GH

Algafra: P i iv 16; iv ix 43

Algamidirus: P ii xii 45

Algarf almuehar: P i iv 28

Algebha: P i iv 11; iv xi 38

ALH, Eloah: K

ALHI IShRAL (The God of Israel, common in Hekhalot texts): NS, A1:23; A7:14

ALHIM ChIIM(Heb. "the living God"): NS A17:9

alheniel: J 5

Alhueriz: P iii x 10

alibin: J 5

Alichil: P i iv 18; iv ix 45

Aliel (aerial spirit): L2

Alimiel: L 4

alimos: J 5

Aliscot: G

Aliseon: GV

ALIVN, Elion: GH; K

alkin: J 5

ALKOMAS: K

Alla: G

Allatori (class of spirits): K

allay: J 5

Allazoôl: TS

Alleborith: TS

Alli: G

Alloces: L 1

Alluph: Ab

Alma: K4

Almadiel (aerial spirit): L2

Almahi: K4

Almariziel: L 3

Almas: L 3

Almasor (aerial spirit): L2

Almay: J 5

almeos: J 5

Almesiel (aerial spirit): L2

Almices: P i iv 6

Almiquedam: P i iv 27

ALMIRAS, Master of Invisibility: K

Almizen: P iv ix 33

Almodar (aerial spirit): L2; L3

Almoel (aerial spirit): L2

Almonoyz: L 3

Almouzin (name of God): G

almur: J 1

almyon: J 1

alnamya: J 1

Alnath: P i iv 2;iv ix 29

Alnaym: H; P iv ix 48

alneyryn: J 1

Alogil: Ab

Aloson: Ab

Alpas: Ab

Alpha et Omega: G; GH; H; J 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; K; L 2, TS

ALPHA: H; L 1

alphanay: J 5

Alphaneos: J 5

Alphariza: L 4

alphay: J 5

alpheyeyll: J 1

Alphrois: GV

alrasachysyn: J 1

alsemaya [S: alsemaia]: J 2

alseyryn: J 1

alson: J 1

Alstha (vel Elsta) [S: Alscha]: J 4

Altanor: Ab

Altarib (head of the sign of Winter): H; J 5

Althor (aerial spirit): L2

Altidon ('Altidôn): Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Friday: MTS

altym: J 1

Aluiel: GV

alycas: J 1

alyel: J 1

alyeyll: J 1

alymdrictels: GV

alymyon: J 2

alysaf: J 1

alzamoy: J 2

alzeyeyll: J 1

am: J 1

amabael (an angel of Winter): H; J 5

amabiel: H; J 5

Amabyhel: J 5

Amacor: H; L 1

amaday, Amadai (The name of the earth in the Spring): H; J 5

amadyell: J 1

Amael: J 1

Amaimon, Amaymon: GH; L 1; Ab; King of the West.

Amalekites or Aggressors;: K

Amalin: Ab

Amalym: L 3

Amamil: Ab

aman: Ab; J 1

Amanamanus: NS 199

Amandiel (aerial spirit): L2

Amaniel: Ab

amarya: J 1

Amaryel: J 1

Amasiel (aerial spirit): L2

amasya: J 1

Amathei: K4

Amathia: L 2

Amatia: Ab

Amatiel (an angel of the Spring): H; J 5

AMATOR: K

Amay: G

amayl: J 1

Amaymon: see Amaimon

Amayn: J 5

Amazin: G

Ambael: NS 201

ambanyel: J 1

ambayeyryn: J 1

ambiel: J 5

Ambriel: Angel ruling over Gemini (OP2.14).

Amillis: Ab

Ambolin: Ab

Ambolon: Ab

Ambri (aerial spirit): L2

Ambriel: J 5; L 3

Amchison: Ab

amdalysyn: J 1

Amduscias: L 1

AMECH: K

Ameclo: GV

Amediel (aerial spirit): L2

Ameleouth: TS

Amelson: L 3

Amenadiel: L 2

Ameniel: L 3

Amerany: L 3

Ameta (aerial spirit): L2

Amicram: L 2

Amides: H; K; L 1

`Ami'el (Heb. OMIAL, angel): NS A18:5

`Amiel: NS 162, 211

Amiel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

Amikh ('Amikh): Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Friday: MTS

Amioram: L 1, 3

Amiorem: L 1

Amiorent: L 1

Amir ('Amír): Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Thursday: MTS

Amirez: P iii ix 6

Amisiel: L 3

Amisor: GV

amixiel: J 5

Ammiel: L 3

amnanyneylyn: J 1

amnediel: J 5

amnica: J 2

amnixiel: J 5

Amolom: Ab

Amon: L 1

Amonazy: L 3

AMOR: K

Amorule: H

Amoyr (aerial spirit): L2

ampheneton: J 5

Amphinethon: J 1

Ampholion: Ab

amrael: J 1

Amriel (aerial spirit): L2; L3

Amul: Divine name: GH

amutiel: J 5

Amy: L 1

amya: J 1

amyel: J 1

an: H; J 1, 5

ana: J 5

Anaath: TS

anab: J 5

ANABONA: K; L 4

Anabotas: GV

Anabotos: GV

anabrochz: J 5

Anachiel: K

Anachiet: K4

Anader: Ab

Anadir: Ab

Anael: GV; L; L2(aerial spirit); J 1, 5; K4; L 3; P iv vii 23; T 'Anaél: Angel of Friday/Venus: MTS, H

`Anael: NS 213, 236

anaenym: J 1

Anaghra Raocha (see Anagran)

Anagnostos: Ab

Anagotos: Ab

Anagran (Av. Anaghra Raocha): Angel (Yazad) of 'Endless Light': Z

ANAI: K

ANAIRETON: K

Anakim or Anarchists: K

Anamalon: Ab

Ananel: E

Anania: One of the magic words used in a spell to extinguish fire: GH

Anaphaxeton: K

Anapheneton: K

Anapheta: K4

Anaphexeton (name of God): H; L 1

ANAPHODITION: K

Anapion: L 3

Anarachia: K4

Anasbona (typo for Anabonas? qv): Name on pentacle: GH

anasen: J 5

Anassia: One of the magic words used in a spell to extinguish fire: GH

Anathay: H

Anathi: G

Anatreth: TS

anay: J 5

anaya: J 1

Anayl (angel of first heaven): H

Anazachia: K

Anbetayl: P lv ii 23

ancilla: J 2

Ancor: H; K; L 1

Ancora: P iv vi 13

Andararuz: P iii x 11

Andas (minister of Varcan, angel of Sunday): H

andas: J 1

andebal: J 5

Andrachos: Ab

Andras: L 1

Andrealphus: L 1

andri: J 5

Androcos: Ab

Andromalius: L 1

Andros (aerial spirit): L2

Andruchiel (aerial spirit): L2

Andulez: P iii ix 14; x 9

Anehutyora: P iv vi 13

anenyel: J 1

Anepheneton: J 1, 5

Anephexeton (=Anaphexeton): H; L 2

Aneran: see Anagran

Anereton: GV

Anethi: J 1, 5

aneylyn: J 1

aneynyn: J 1

Angaras: P iv ix 62

angellus: J 5

angiseil: J 5

Angrecton: GV

ANI: K

Anic: H

`Aniel: NS 155, 160, 202

Aniel: H; J 5; K; L2 (aerial spirit); L3

animiter: J 1

Animurez: P iii x 9

Aniphinethon: J 5

Anitor: H; K; L 1

Annael: alternate spelling of archangel Anael found in Dee's Mysteriorum Libri

Annathra: P i iv 9; iv ix 36

Annauel: J 5

Annediex: P iv ix 36

Annucel: P iv ix 47

Annuncia: P iv ix 31

Anostêr: TS

Anoyr (aerial spirit): L2

Ansoel (aerial spirit): L2

Anston: GV

Ansuil: L 3

Antheros ('Anthêrós): Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Friday: MTS

Anthiachar [S: anthiathar]: J 4

antidotum: J 2

ANTOR: K

antorayeyll: J 1

antquyel: J 1

anunalbeh: J 1

Anuxi: P iv ix 56

Anyhyt: P iii vii 30

Anzil: P iv ii 19

aol: J 1

Aosal: second spirit to be called according to An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Ad. 36674, fol. 47v)

Apam Napat, angel (Yazad) of waters: Z, but Indo-Iranian in origin (aka Ahura BErezant, Burz Yazad)

Apelki: Ab

APHARCAR: K

Aphiel: L 3

Apiel (aerial spirit): L2

Apiton: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 25c

Aplex ('Aplêx): Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Thursday: MTS

Apodokiel ('Apodokiél): Angel of Wednesday/Mercury: MTS

Apofael ('Apofaêl): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Monday: MTS

Apolhun: Ab

Apollo: A

Apollyon: Ab

Apologia-Sedes, Apologiae Sedes: H; L 1

Apomios ('Apómios): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Saturday: MTS

Apormanos: Ab

Apormenos: Ab

Apot: Ab

Appiniel: L 3

apripos: J 5

Aprix ('Apríx): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Friday: MTS

APRKAL (Afarkha'el, Heb. angel): NS A18:4

aprops: J 5

Aqua: G; Magic word: GH

AQUACHAI: K

Aquarius: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 6, 25-27; v 24, 25; ii x 81; xi 33-35; xii 32, 40, 45, 50; iii ii 12; iii 23; vii 16; iv ii 7, 15

Aquiel (angel of the fourth heaven): H; Demon: GH

Aquila: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

araaht [S: haraaht]: J 2

ARABONAS: K

arabyell: J 1

arac: J 1

Arach (aerial spirit): L2

Aracuson: Ab

aradon: J 1

'Araêl: TS

Araex: Ab

Arafos (aerial spirit): L2

Araklba: E

Aralim, Thrones, or the Strong: K

Aranchia: K4

Araniel: L 3

Araps ('Araps): Angel (or demon) of 20th hour of Sunday: MTS

Araqiel: E

Arara: TS

ARARITHA: K

ararygugel: J 1

Arathon: Angel in K4

ARATHRON: K

Aratiel (aerial spirit): L2

araton: J 1; K4

Arator: Ab

Aratosael': TS

Aratron (Olympic spirit of Saturn): A

Arauchiah: K

Arayl (aerial spirit): L2

Araz: P iii vii 27

Arban ('Arbán): Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Monday: MTS

ARBARON: K

Arbatel (revealing angel): A

Arbiel (aerial spirit): L2

Arcan (angel of the air ruling on Monday, king): H

archangels: TS

ARCHARZEL: K

Archiel: L 3

Archima: H; J 5

Archyna: J 1, 5

Arcisat (aerial spirit): L2

Arcon: Ab

Ard: see Ashi Vanghuhi

Ardahuz: P iii ix 13

ardarael (autumn): H; J 5

Ardauz: P iii vii 25; ix 3

Ardens: J 2

ardesiel: J 5

Ardu: TS

Arduel: GH

Arduisur: see see Aban

ardyel: J 1

Arean (aerial spirit): L2

Aredafir: P iv ix 38

Aredvi Sura Anahita: see Aban

Arehanah: K

Arel, Angel of Fire: K

Arepach (aerial spirit): L2

AREPO: K

ARESION: K

arfanyel: J 1

Arganatos: G

Argax: Ab

Argetan ('Argêtán): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Saturday: MTS

Argilon: Ab

Argilon: Ab

Arhuz: P iii ix 15

Ariael, 'Ariaêl ('Ariahl) (demon of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

aricasom: J 1

Aridiel (aerial spirit): L2

Ariel (angel): BP 3c; J 5; K; L 3; Ariel (name of God): G; (one of the four rulers of the Elements): K; ’Ariêl, 'Lrihl, (angel of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

Aries: J 1, 5; K; P i iv 2, 3; v 18; ii ii 2; iii 8, 9; x 48; xi 2-5; xii 2, 3, 40, 55; iii ii 1, 2; iii 13; v 3; vi 1; vii 36; ix 12-14, 17; iv ii 2, 6, 8; vi 13; L 3, 4; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Arifiel (aerial spirit): L2

Aril: Ab

Arion: K4

Arios: G

Arioth: Ab

Arito: Ab

Ariton: Ab

Arkidod ('Arkidôd): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Monday: MTS

Armadiel: L 2

armael: J 5

Armany (aerial spirit): L2

Armapy: L 3

armaquieyeyll: J 1

Armaros: E

Armasia: Ab

armatas (name of the Moon in Summer): H; J 5

Armen: E

Armena (aerial spirit): L2

Armesiel (aerial spirit): L2

Armez: P iii ix 12

Armiel: J 5; L 3. Also occurs as a ms. variant (L1202) of SEFONIEL in K

Arminez: P iii x 8

Armmyel: L 3

Armon: J 5; L 4

Armoniel (aerial spirit): L2

Armosiel: L 3

Armosy: L 3

Armulez: P x 12

arnaeyll: J 1

ARNAMON: K

Arnebiel: L 3

Arnen (aerial spirit): L2

arneth: J 5

Arnibiel (aerial spirit): L2

Aroan (aerial spirit): L2

arobylyn: J 1

Aroc (aerial spirit): L2

Arogor: Ab

Arois (aerial spirit): L2

Arolen: Ab

arothatamal [S: Arathotamal.]: J 2

Arotor: Ab

Aroziel (aerial spirit): L2

arphel: J 5

ARPHETON: K; Name on pentacle: GH

Arpiron: Ab

Arquil: P iv ii 24

Arquyl: P iii vii 32

Arrabim: Ab

Arrabin: Ab

Arragon (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Arrexe: P iv ix 56

Arrexhe: P i iv 29

arsabon: J 1

arsafael: J 1

Arshtat, female angel (Yazad) personifying rectitude or justice (aka Ashtad): Z

Artaqifa: E

Artino (aerial spirit): L2

ARTOR: K

Arôtosael: TS

aryeyl: J 1

aryeylyn: J 1

aryhyryel: J 1

arylyn: J 1

arzaf: J 1

Arzuz: P iii ix 5

as: J 1

As, Bas, Gas, ... Tas: NS 211

ASA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:26

ASAC: K

Asach: GV

ASACRO: K

Asael: E

asaf: J 1

Asahel (aerial spirit): L2

Asaliah: J 5

Asamie: H

asaphyn: J 1

Asaraie: H

Asasiel (an angel of Thursday): H

Asassayel: J 5

Asath: GV

Asbeel: E

Asbibiel (aerial spirit): L2

Asboga: Divine name associated with Mercury (OP2.22)

Ascala: GV

ASCOBAI: K

Asel: L 3

Aseliel: L 2

Asens ('Asâns): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Sunday: MTS

Asfa'el: E

ASHAI: K

ASHER EHEIEH: K

Asher: K

Ashi Vanghuhi, female angel (Yazad) personifying and presiding over blessings (aka Ard, Ashi, Ashishwangh, Arshishwang): Z

AShMAZH (Heb. magic name): NS A17:24

Ashmedai (cp Asmodai): NS 156, 217

Ashtad: see Arshtad

Ashtaroth (demon, =Astaroth, qv): K

Asianon: Ab

Asiel: GH

ASIMA: magical word used in 'Binding the fever': BP 17c

Asimel: L 2

Asimiel (aerial spirit): L2

Asimon: NS 150

Asimor: NS 150

aslaom: J 1

Asmadiel (aerial spirit): L2

Asmaiel (aerial spirit): L2

Asmalior: Magical word on third ring in Douze Anneaux

Asman: angel (Yazad) presiding over the sky: Z

Asmiel: Ab; (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

ASMKH (Heb. magic name): NS A17:26

Asmodai ('Asmodaí, 'Asmodai) First Spirit of the North: MTS; from Avestan Aeshma Daeva ("The demon of wrath"). Found in (Apocryphal) Book of Tobit

ASMODAL: K

Asmoday (demon): L 1

Asmodee: Ab, compare Asmoday, Asmodai, Asmodeus

Asmodel: Angel ruling over Taurus (OP2.14). Also J 5; K4

Asmodeus (demon, cf Asmoday): K; TS

Asmodi: Ab

Asonja: E

Asophiel: GV; K

Asorega: Ab

Asoriel (aerial spirit): L2

Aspar (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

Asperim: Ab

Asphiel (aerial spirit): L2

Asphor (aerial spirit): L2

Aspiel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

aspyn: J 1

Asriel: NS 161

Assaba (aerial spirit): L2

Assaibi (angel, minister of Maymon): H

Assaiel: L 3

ASSAMAIAN: K

Assarez: P iv ix 32

Assasell or Assasel: Ruler of the dead according to An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Ad. 36674, fol. 47v)

assassaiel: J 5

Assaylemaht (vel Assailamath): J 2, 3

asser: J 5

ASSIMONEM: K

Assuel (aerial spirit): L2

ASTACHOTH: K

Astael (aerial spirit): L2

Astagna (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Astamatis: P iii x 3

Astarin: GH

Astarot (=Astaroth, demon, grand duke): Ab; G; GH; Magical word on second ring in Douze Anneaux

Astaroth (demon): A; Ab; GH; GV; L 1

Astarte: K

Asteraôth (=Astaroth, qv): TS

Astib (aerial spirit): L2

Astolit: Ab

Astor (aerial spirit): L2

Astrachios: GV

Astrega: Ab

Astrocon: L 3

Astrofiel: L 3

astronday: J 5

Astroniel: L 3

Astroschio: GV

Asturel: Ab

astyeylyn: J 1

asueyryn: J 1

Asuriel (aerial spirit): L2

asymolyn: J 1

asyramon: J 1

Asyriel: L 2

asyzat: J 1

aszrus: J 1

ataliel: J 5

atalsloym: GV

Atar: Angel (yazad) presiding over fire. He is referred to as 'the Son of Ahura Mazda' in the Avesta. (Var: Adar, Atash, Atesh, Adur): Z

Atarf: P i iv 10

Atarfa: P iv ix 37

Atarsiel: NS 236

Ateh: K

Atel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Aterestin: Divine name: GH

ateriathos: J 4

ATHAMAS: K

athanathos [S: "Athanathos"]: J 3, 5

Athanatos: H; K; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Athaya: P i iv 7

athemay (name of the Sun in Summer): H; J 5

Athenatos: L 1

atheniel: J 5

Athesiel (aerial spirit): L2

atheton [S: arethon]: J 2

Athiel: L 3

Athionadabir: J 1, 5

Athir (4th hour of night): H

athithael: J 5

athlas: J 1

Athor: K

Atloton: Ab

Atmefex: P iv ix 61

Atniel (aerial spirit): L2

Atrax: TS

Atriel (aerial spirit): L2

Atrikh ('Atríkh): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Friday: MTS

ATTIH (Heb. name of Metatron): NS 49

Aty: H

Aub: K

Audurez: P iii x 9

aula: J 2

Auleyuz: P iii x 8

Aumauliz: P iii x 8

aumeal: J 1

Aunuhiz: P iii x 9

Auphanim, Wheels: K

aurach: J 5

Aurel: TS

Auriel: K

autarylyn: J 1

Autoduo (Aútoduó) Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Sunday: MTS

Autothith: TS

`Avdiel: NS 173

AVEN: K

Axaula: P iv ix 47

AXINETON: K

Axiôphêth: TS

Axosiel (aerial spirit): L2

Ay: H; J 5

ayhal: J 2

ayhos: J 2

Ayib: K

Ayin: K

aylatricyn: P i v 27

aymsylyn: J 1

ayn: P i v 27

Ayperos (demon): G

Aysaram: J 1

AZA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:24

azac [S: azat]: J 2

Azael: TS

azahat: J 2

azaithon: J 4

Azan ('Azán): Angel (or demon) of 5th hour of Monday: MTS

Azarel: K

Azarfa: P iv ix 40

azariel: J 5

Azazel: E

azday: J 1

Azebene: P iv ix 44

azelechias [S: azelethias]: J 3

Azemo (aerial spirit): L2

Azeruch: P iv ix 44

azeruel: J 5

Azerut: P iv ix 41

Azia: H

Aziel: J 5; L 3; P iv ix 53

Azimech: P i iv 15; iv ix 42

Azimel (aerial spirit): L2

azimor: J 5

Aziziel: angel: BP 3c

Azobra: P i iv 12; iv ix 39

Azoraya: P i iv 4

Azoraye: P iv ix 31

AZOTH: K

Azouboul ('Azouboúl): Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Thursday: MTS

Azrael: One of 'the three holy angels' (along with Gabriel and Michael): BP 39, 42

azrayeylyn: J 1

`Azriel: NS 203

Azriel: angel: BP 3c, 25c

azryel: J 1

Azubene: P i iv 17

Azuhafez: P iii ix 4

azyel: J 1

azyger: J 1

Azzoni: K4

ba: J 1

Baaba (aerial spirit): L2

Baajah: L 3

Baal (demon): A; K; TS

Baal, Belphegor, Moloch, Adramelech: K

Baalsori: Ab

Babel (angel of the second heaven): H

Babet (Babét): Demon of Friday/Venus: MTS

Babiel (angel of the third heaven): H

bacapel: J 1

Bacaron: Ab

baceda: J 5

Bachanael (angel of first heaven): H

Bachiel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

bachramyn: J 1

Bachue [S: bachuc?]: J 4

Baciar (aerial spirit): L2

Baciel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

bacoraye: J 1

BACUHABA: K

BACURABON: K

Badad: Ab

badeylyn: J 1

Bae: TS

Bael (demon. See also Baal): G; L 1

Baël: K

baell (angel): J 1

Bafamal: Ab

Bagalon: Ab

Bagiel: L 3

Bahal: Ab

Baharam: P iii vii 24; lv ix 60

Bahaze: P iii vii 24

Bahol: GH

bahoraelyn: J 1

Baix: P iv ix 63

Bakiel: L 3

Balabos: Ab

Balachem: Ab

balair: J 2

Balaken: Ab

Balalos: Ab

Balam: L 1

Balay (angel of first heaven): H

Balbuch: Magical word on ninth ring in Douze Anneaux

BALDACHIA (the Seat of): K; L1

BALDACHIENSIS: H; L 1

BALDOI: K

Balfori: Ab

balganaychyn: J 1

Balidet (angel, minister of Maymon): H

Baliel: H; L 3

balma: J 2

balna: J 2

Balndier: Divine name: GH

balsamus: J 2

Balsamiach: Magical word on sixth ring in Douze Anneaux

Balsur (aerial spirit): L2

Baltasar (Balrasár): Demon of Friday/Venus: MTS

BALTAZARD, BALTHAZARD: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

Balthial: TS

Balum bar Balum: NS 234

BALUTH: K

balyel: J 1

Bamulahe: Demon: GH

Bangiel: L 3

baniel: GV

banorsasty: J 1

Bantatis: Divine name: GH

banyelyn: J 1

Baoxas (aerial spirit): L2

baquylaguall: J 1

bar: G; J 1

Baraborat (angel of the second heaven): H

BARACATA: K

barachiel: G; J 5; Divine name: GH

barachyel: J 1

Barak: Ab

baranyell: J 1

Baraqel: E

Baraqijal: E

Barbatos (demon): G; L 1

Barbiel: Angel ruling over Scorpio (OP2.14); J 5

Barbil (aerial spirit): L2

Barbis (aerial spirit): L2

barbyts: J 1

barcaran: J 1

Barchia: P iv vii 23

Barchiel [A: Barbiel]: J 5; L2 (aerial spirit); L 4 Angel ruling over Pisces (OP2.14).

Barchesiel: K4

Barefchas: Magic word: GH (variant: Bareschas)

BARESCHAS: Angel: GH; GV

Baresches: GV

Barfas (aerial spirit): L2

barfiell: J 1

Barfos (aerial spirit): L2

bargar: J 1

Bargis: P iii vii 19, 21; iv ix 59

Barhaot: P iv vi 13

Barhurez: P iii ix 16

Barhuyex: P iv ix 63

barhyl: J 1

bariaccoca [S: bariactoca]: J 2

bariachacha: J 2

Bariel: K; L2 (aerial spirit); L 3

Bariol: Ab

Bariz: P iii vii 24

barkalyn: J 1

BARMIEL: L 2

Barmos: L 3

barneyeyl: J 1

Barol (2nd hour of night): H; K

Baros (aerial spirit): L2

Barqiel: NS 237

Barquiel: L 3

Barsafael: TS

barsslylyn: J 1

Barsu (aerial spirit): L2

Bartzachiah: K

BARUC: K

Baruch (aerial spirit): L2; J 1, 5

Baruchas: L 2

Baruchiachel: TS

Baruel: Ab

baryel: J 1

barylaguy: J 1

Barzabel: The spirit of Mars (OP2.22)

basiaccor [S: basiactor]: J 2

Basiel (aerial spirit): L2

basihas: J 2

Basilion: L 3

bastaylyn: J 1

Bat: K

Bata: One of the magic words to deflect weapons: GH

Batarel: E

Batarjal: E

Bath-Kol: The voice that called upon Cain, the murderer, 'Where is thy brother, Abel?': BP 18

BATHAT: H; L 1, 2

Bathim (demon): G

Bathin: L 1

Bathinadir: J 5

Batirmiss: Ab

Batternis.9: Ab

Baviel: L 3

BAXASOXA: K

bayealadyn: J 1

Bayemon (typo for Paymon, q.v.): King of demons, ruling in the West: GH

Bazat: K4

Bazazeth: TS

bazihos: J 2

Beal: L 1

Bebal: L 1

bec: J 1

becabalaf: J 1

becar: J 1

Bechar: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over foul weather

Bechard: Demon in K3

Bechaud: GV

Bechet: Demon: GH

Bectue: P iv ix 49

BEDALIEL (angel): K

Bedary (aerial spirit): L2

Bedizez: P iii ix 11

Bedrimubal: GV

BEDRIMULAEL: K

Beefinez: P iii x 14

Beel: demon in Daniel (aka Bel): H; Beél: Angel of Saturday/Saturn: MTS

beell: J 1

Beelzeboul: TS; Beelzebouêl: Demon of Saturday/Saturn: MTS (manuscript P)

Beelzebub (demon): Ab; K; TS

Béelzébuth (Béelzébut): Domon GH; GV

beerel: J 1

Befranzy: L 3

Begud: Angel in K4

Behartyon: P iv vi 13

behea: J 4

behebos: J 2

Behel: L 3

behelthoi [S: behelthor]: J 2

behem [S: bohem]: J 2

behemiy [S: leheimoy]: J 2

Behemoth: E

behenmyhat [S: behetmiyhat]: J 2

behenos [S: lehenos]: J 2

Beheydraz: P iii x 8

Beheymerez: P iii x 8

Behibilyon: P iv vi 13

beht: J 2

Bel: H; L 1; Magic word: GH

BELAMITH: K

Belbel: TS

beldor: GV

belehothol [S: belohothoi]: J 2

Belem: Demon: GH

Beleth: L 1 (var. of Bileth, Bilt) Demon, subject of Book of Bileth in Maphteah Shelomoh; See also Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites

belhores: J 2

beliabii: J 5

Belial: Ab; L 1; (Bélial) GH

Belifares: Ab

Belligeron: J 5

Belphegor: K

Belsay (aerial spirit): L2

belymoht [S: helymoht]: J 2

Belzebud (demonl cf. Beelz..): Ab

Belzebut (demon; cf. beelz..): G; K3

Bemerot: Ab

BEN: K

Ben Nephalim: demon associated with asthma or melancholy (Bechoroth, 44b), BP xx

Benase: E

BENE: K

benenonyll: J 1

Benethnays: P iii vii 26

Benez: GV

Bengiel: L 3

BENI ELOHIM, Sons of the Elohim: K

Beni Seraphim: Intelligences of Venus (OP2.22)

BENIEL: K

Benodiel (aerial spirit): L2

Benoham (aerial spirit): L2

benyh: J 1

BEODONOS: K

Berakhiel: NS 161

BERALANENSIS: H; L 1

beraquiel: J 1

beraquyell or beraquyel: J 1

Beratiel: L 3

Berferiel: J 5

Berhunez: P iii x 12

Beriel: L 3

Berifay or Berisay: H

Berith: L 1

berithz: J 5

Berka'el: E

Beron (1st hour of night): H; K

beron: P iv vii 3

BEROTH: K

Berukhiel: NS 161

Beruniel: NS 221

beryel: J 1

Beryenuz: P iii x 9

beryon: J 1

Beryudez: P iii x 9

Besam'el (Heb. BSMAL, angel): NS A18:5

besapha: J 2

Beschat: magic word in K3

Beshael: L 3

Betasiel (aerial spirit): L2

Beth: K

Betha: J 1, 5

bethan: J 5

bethar: J 2

Bethel almoda: P iv vii 23

bethnael: J 5

Bethniehus: P iv ix 59

Bethor (Olympic spirit of Jupiter): A

bethtaez: J 1

Betiel: L 3

Betzahuech: P iii vi 1

Bevael: L 3

Beydehydiz: P iii vii 25

Beydeluz: P iii ix 4; iv ix 61

Beyduriz: P iii x 12

beyne: P i v 27

Beyteyl: P iii vii 30, 31

bezezay: J 2

BGDNA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

Biael: L 3

Bialod: Ab

Bialot: Ab

Bianakith: TS

Bidiel: L 2

Bifrons (demon): L 1

Bilek: Ab

Bilet (angel, minister of Arcan): H

Bileth (demon, var. of Beleth): L 1

Bilico: Ab

Bilifares: Ab

Bilifor.12: Ab

Bilifot: Ab

Bime.: L 1

BINAH: K

BINAHEL: K

Biqa: E

Biriel: Ab

Biuz: P iii vii 21

Biz: One of the magic words to counter pleurisie: GH

Bizouk (Bizoúk): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Friday: MTS

BLAUTEL: K

Blekun (Blekún): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Blemen (Blemên): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Bleu: One of the magic words to deflect weapons: GH

BLThI (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

Bobêl: TS

boel: J 1, 5

Böel: K

boell: J 1

Bofar (aerial spirit): L2

bofealyquyn: J 1

Bohel: J 5

boho: J 2

bohorim: P i v 27

Bolfry (demon): L 1

bolon: J 2

bon: J 2

Bonyel (aerial spirit): L2

Borachiel: L 4

Borasy (aerial spirit): L2

borayeyll: J 1

borayn: P i v 27

Bored: K

bornaylon: J 1

Borob: Ab

Borol: Ab

boros [S: horos]: J 2

borzac: J 1

bosephar: J 2

bostyhal [S: bostihal]: J 2

Bothothêl: TS

Botis (demon): G; L 1

Bramiel: L 3

Bramsiel (aerial spirit): L2

Brandiel: L 3

Brasiel: L 3

Brasim: G

Brazo: GV

BRIAH: K

briamathon [S: brihamathon]: J 2

Brieus: TS

brihamocon: J 2

brofylyn: J 1

Bruach: Ab

Brufiel (aerial spirit): L2

BRULEFER: GV

Brumiel: L 3

Brymiel (aerial spirit): L2

Bubana: Ab

Bubanabub: Ab

Bucafas (aerial spirit): L2

BUCON: GV

Budar (aerial spirit): L2

Budarim (aerial spirit): L2

Budiel (aerial spirit): L2

Buer (demon): G; L 1

Bufanotz: L 3

Bufiel (aerial spirit): L2

Buk: Ab

Buldumêch: TS

bulerator: GV

Bulis (aerial spirit): L2

Bultala: TS

Bultin, bultotum: Magic words for sword: GH

Bumahan: Ab

Bune: L 1

Buniel (aerial spirit): L2

Burasen: Ab

Burchat (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Burfa (aerial spirit): L2

Buriel: L 2

Buriol: Ab

Burisiel (aerial spirit): L2

Buriub: Ab

Buriul.3: Ab

Busasejal: E

Busiel (aerial spirit): L2

BUSTIRA: K

Butarab: Ab

Butharuth: Ab

byenyell: J 1

byny: J 1

byrnchata [S: barnothata]: J 2

bysserios: J 5

Caadacohot: P i iv 25

Caadaldeba: P i iv 23

Caadalhacbia: P i iv 26

Caadazod: P iv ix 52

Caaddebolach: P i iv 24

cabake loch: J 1

Cabariel: L 2

Cabarim (aerial spirit): L2

Cabiel (aerial spirit): L2; Cabiel [A: Gabiel]: J 5; L 3

Cabil: P iv ix 33

Cabost: G

Cabot: magic word in K3

Cabron (aerial spirit): L2

cabueyryn: J 1

CABUSTIRA: K

cabyn: J 1

Cacay: K4

Cacodaemones (class of angels): A

cacyrylyn: J 1

cadanagyn: J 1

CADAT: GV

CADATO: K

Cadomir: GV

Cados: GH; H; K4 (often: Cados Cados Cados)

Cadriel (aerial spirit): L2

Cael: L 3

Cäerra: K

caffrnbryn: J 1

cafiel: J 1

Cahadabula: P iii ix 13

Cahael: L 3

cahegilihos [S: cahegililos]: J 2

cahethel: J 5

Cahil: P iv ii 25

cahuene: P i v 27

Cahyluz: P iii ix 5

caiel: J 5

Caila: GV

Caim.: L 1

Cajael: L 3

Cajaiel: L 3

Cakiel: L 3

Calach: Ab

Calamichan: J 5

Calamosi: Ab

Calbat: H; K4

CALDURECH: GV

Calerna (11th hour of night): H

Calevodium: GV

Caliel: J 5

Calim (aerial spirit): L2

calion [S: calyon]: J 2

Calmiron: GV

Calniso: GV

Caluel (angel of the second heaven): H

Calvarnia (aerial spirit): L2

calyrxon: J 1

Calzas (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Camael: Angel ruling the angelic order of Powers in OP2.12; J 5

Camal: Ab

Camalon: Ab

Camar: P iii vii 33

Camarion: Ab

Camarom: L 3

Camary: L 3

Cambriel (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

Came: Ab

Cameron: GV

Cameso: GV

CAMIACH: K

Camiel (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

Camonix: Ab

Camor (aerial spirit): L2

Camory (aerial spirit): L2

Camosiel: L 3

CAMUEL: L 2

Camyel (aerial spirit): L2

cananyn: J 1

canast phasis [S: canastphasis]: J 2

canazay: J 2

canazpharis: J 2

Cancer: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 9, 11; v 5, 16, 34; ii iii 9; x 87; xi 12-14; xii 11, 42, 55; iii ii 5; iii 16; ix 15, 17; iv ii 5, 10, 12, 16; TS

candones: J 2

canel: J 1

CANELOAS: K

Caniel (aerial spirit): L2

Canis: P ii ii 1

canofylyn: J 1

canona: J 5

Cantine: H

canueyl: J 1

Caolos: K4

Capabili (angel of the fourth heaven): H

capeyell: J 1

caphael: J 5

caphamal [S: caphanial]: J 2

caphanal [S has caphanal corrected to caphaval]: J 2

caphar: J 2

caphiziel: J 5

Caphriel (angel): H

Capricorn: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 23-25; ii iii 8; ix 6, 7; xi 30-32; xii 29, 43, 49; iii ii 11; iii 22; vii 16; ix 11, 16; xi 131; iv ii 12

Capriel (aerial spirit): L2

capsa: J 2

Captiel: L 4; P iv vii 23

Caput: P i ii 5; v 1, 8, 9, 30, 34; ii iii 6; iii i 10

Capziel: J 1

Caracasa: J 5

Carah: Ab

caram: J 1

Carasch: Ab

Carasiba (aerial spirit): L2

Caratasa (an angel of the Spring): H

caratheos: J 2

carathos [S: caratheos]: J 2

Carba (aerial spirit): L2

carbyel: J 1

carcyell: J 1

Cardiel (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

CARDIEL: K

Carelena: Ab

Caremaz: L 3

carfzoneyll: J 1

Carga (aerial spirit): L2

cariactera: J 2

Cariel (aerial spirit): L2

caristomon [S: caristomnon]: J 2

Carman: L 3

Carmax (angel, minister of Samax): H

carmelos: J 2

carmelychos [S: carmelithos]: J 2

Carmiel (aerial spirit): L2

carmolehos: J 2

Carnaduyz: P iii vii 21

carnby: J 1

Carnel, Carnol (aerial spirit): L2

Carnesiel: L 2

Carniel (aerial spirit): L2

Carnodiel (aerial spirit): L2

Caro: Magic word: GH

Caroler: K4

Caromos: Ab

Caron: Ab; (aerial spirit): L2

Carpiel (aerial spirit): L2

Carsiel (aerial spirit): L2

Cartael (aerial spirit): L2

cartemat: J 1

cartyel: J 1

Carueyiz: P iii vii 21

caruphylyn: J 1

carybyfyn: J 1

Casael (aerial spirit): L2

Casbriel (aerial spirit): L2

Cashael: J 5

Cashiel: L 3

Casiel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

CASILY: GV

casmaram: J 5

Casmaran (Summer): H

Casmiel: G; GV

Casmiroz: L 3

casmuch: J 1

Casoly: GV

caspa: J 1

Caspiel: L 2

Cassael: K

Cassiel: GH; H; K; L 3

cassylon: J 1

cassziel: J 5

Castiel (an angel of Thursday): H

CASTUMI: K

Casuijah: L 3

Casziel: J 1, 5

cathalihel [S: cathaliel!]: J 2

cathanathel [S: chathanathel]: J 2

cathneylyn: J 1

Catrudiz: P iii x 9

catuhe: P i v 27

Cauda: P i ii 5; v 9, 20; ii iii 8; v 2; iii i 10

Cavayr (aerial spirit): L2

caybeinynyn: J 1

Cayfar: Ab

Cayimuz: P iii x 9

Caynaurez: P iii x 8

caypharim: P iv ii 3

Cayros (aerial spirit): L2

caysaac: J 1

cazaihel [S: tazaihel]: J 2

Cazul (aerial spirit): L2

CColomaithos [S: colomarthos vel colomarnthos].: J 4

CEBON: K

Cechiel: L 3

CEDAHI: K

Cediel: L 3

CEDRION: K; K4

cefafin: J 5

cefanya: J 1

Cegnel: L 3

cehogethos [S: tehogethos]: J 2

cehognos [S: tehognos]: J 2

Cehuz: P iii ix 6

celabryll: J 1

Celan: P iii vii 33

Celez: P iii vii 33

Celiel: L 3

Celuz: P iii ix 17

celydael: J 1

Celyuberon: P iv vi 13

cemaguyll: J 1

Cemluz: P iii ix 15

cemon [S: megnoncemon]: J 2

cenhe: P i v 27

Centus: P iv ix 62

ceradadyn: J 1

Cerim: P iii vii 33

Cerreton: GV

Cesiel: L 3

Cesilcie: K4

cetabyel: J 1

cetenoylyn: J 1

cethal [S: cethalsam]: J 2

Cevorym: L 3

ceyabgos: J 1

Ceylez: P iii ix 12

ceytatynyn: J 1

cezozoy: J 2

ch [R: th]: J 1

Chabel: Magic word: GH

Chabiel: L 3

Chabri (aerial spirit): L2

Chabrion: L 3

Chabriz: L 3

Chades: J 4

Chadiel: L 3

Chadros: L 3

Chael: L 3

chagnoro [S: thagnoro]: J 2

chaharon [S: choharon]: J 2

Chahel: L 3

CHAI: K

CHAIA: K

Chaiel: L 3

Chaigidel, Shells: K

CHAIOTH HA-QADESCH, Holy Living Creatures: K

Chaioth: K

chalchyphay: J 1

Chalib (Chalíb): Demon of Wednesday/Mercury: MTS

chalos: J 2

Chameray: L 3

Chameron: GV

Chamiel (Chamiol) [Sl2731:Chomiel] (aerial spirit): L 2; L3

Chamoriel (aerial spirit): L2

Chamos (aerial spirit): L2

chamyquiol [S: thamyqiol]: J 2

Chanaei (aerial spirit): L2

chanakiah [A: Kavakiah]: J 5

chanaym [S: thanaym]: J 2

Chansi (aerial spirit): L2

chanyham [S: thanyh_a_m]: J 2

Charaby: L 3

Charara: TS

Charas (aerial spirit): L2

Chardiel: L 3

Chariel (aerial spirit): L2; angel in K4; (Cariel) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

Charitas: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Charmy: L 3

Charny: L 3

Charobiel (aerial spirit): L2

Charoel (aerial spirit): L2

Charpon: L 3

Charsiel (aerial spirit): H; L2

Charuch: L 3

charusihoa: GV

Chasan, Angel of Air: K

Chaschmalim, or the Brilliant (or Lucid Ones): K

CHASHMALIM: K

Chasiel: L 3

Chasor (aerial spirit): L2

chauakiah: J 5

Chaunta: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over riches

CHAVAH: K

Chaya: Ab

Chazael: L 3

Chaziel: L 3

Chechiel: L 3

Chedonia: K4

cheduryel: J 1

Chedusitaniel (angel of the third heaven): H

cheibib [S: guygucheibib]: J 4

chelahel: J 2

Chelath: magic word in K3

chemon: J 4

Chemosh (demon): A

chenathon: J 2

Chengiel: L 3

Chenibranbo: GV

Cherasiel: L 3

Chermel: L 3

Chermiel (angel of the third heaven): H

cherobalym: J 2

CHEROS: K

Cherub of the Ark: K

Cherub: J 5; K

Cherubim: E, GV; K; TS

cherubin [S: cherubyn]: H; J 1, 2

cheryon: J 1

Cheth: K

Chetiel: L 3

Chetivel: L 3

chetonay [S: theconay]: J 2

chetorab: J 2

CHEVON: K

Chiamoch: K4

chiathar [S: thiathar]: J 2

chiel [S: thiel]: J 2

chihamon [S: chihamõ] (vel chilamon): J 2

chirmuts: magic word in K3

chiros: J 5

chirotecas [S: chirothechas]: J 1

Chisti (or Chista): Female angel (yazad) personifying religious wisdom. Her name probably means 'Instruction'. Also known as Razishta Chista ('Most Upright Chista')Z

chnblaman [S: chublalaman or chn..?]: J 2

CHOKMAH: K

CHOKMAHEL: K

Chokmahiel: K

chomochomacanay [S: chomo chomothanay]: J 2

Chora: L 1

Choreb: L 3

choremal: J 2

Choriel: L 3

choro: J 2

choto [S: chotorim]: J 2

Chrasiel: L 3

Chremas: L 3

Chremoas (aerial spirit): L2

christ: J 1, 5

Chroel: L 3

Chrubas (aerial spirit): L2

Chrusiel: L 3

Chrymas: L 3

Chthouniel, Chthouniêl (Cqounihl) (demon of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

Chuba (aerial spirit): L2

Churibal (aerial spirit): L2

Chuschi: Ab

Chushel: L 3

Ciajah: L 3

ciarhuht [S: tiarihuht]: J 4

Cid, ms. variant of SID, the great demon (Cid, le grand Démon de votre Maitre) K1

Cimeies: L 1

cinamomum: J 2

cirael: J 5

Cirecas (aerial spirit): L2

cirhos: J 1, 5

Citgara (aerial spirit): L2

ciuitas: J 2

Clamor (aerial spirit): L2

Claniel (aerial spirit): L2

clarapalos: J 2

Clauneck: GV

clementissime: J 5

Clemialh: GV

Cleraca: Ab

Clisthert: GV

CLISTHERT: GV

Clyssan (aerial spirit): L2

Cobel: Ab

Cobusiel (aerial spirit): L2

cocab: See Cochab

Cochab: Hebrew for the planet Mercury. See OP2.13, J 1.

Cociz: P iii ix 16

Codriel (aerial spirit): L2

Coelen: Ab

Coelis: G

Cohen: Ab

coicragon [S: coictagon]: J 2

Colear: K4

colehon: GV

Coliel (aerial spirit): L2

Collen: magic word in K3

colnaphan: J 2

columba: J 2

Colvam: Ab

Comadiel: L 3

COMATOS: K

Comial: L 3

Commissoros (an angel of the Spring): H; J 5

Commutaff, commvtaf (name of the Sun in Winter): H; J 5

CONAMAS: K

Coniel (angel of the third heaven): H

consolatio: J 2

coouachoros [S: cumachoros]: J 2

COPHI: K

Corabael (angel of first heaven): H

Corat (angel of the third heaven): H

Corcaron: Ab

Corcavion: Ab

Core (an angel of the Spring): H; J 5

Corez: P iii ix 1

Coreziel: L 3

Coridal: One of the magic words used in a spell to prevent eating: GH

Corilon: Ab

corithico: J 2

Corocon: Ab

Corodon: Ab

corosay: J 5

corphandonos: J 2

corquenal: J 2

Correncymon (vel Correrimon) [S, S2: Porcenthimon]: J 4

Corson: L 1

cossuro: J 1

costyryn: J 1

cozomerag: J 3

crastozios [S: custrosihos]: J 2

crathon [S: c_n_thon]: J 2

craton: J 2

Crea: K4

Creator: K; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

crehamuos [S: "crehamnos"]: J 3

crememon: J 2

cremymyel [S: c_e_mymyhel]: J 2

Creon: GV

Cricacoeur (Cricacœur): GH

crihicos [S: c_i_hicos]: J 2

crimisaiber [S: crymyzaiber]: J 2

CRIPON: K

crisolsay: GV

cristapholis [S: christopholis]: J 2

cristolepha [S: Christolepha]: J 2

cristos: J 2

crogohen [S: cragohen]: J 2

cromemon: J 2

Cron Octa: K4

crosay: J 2

Crosiel: L 3

Crouay: GH

Cruchan (aerial spirit): L2

Cruhiel (aerial spirit): L2

ctarari (an angel of Winter): H; J 5

Cubi (aerial spirit): L2

Cubiel (aerial spirit): L2

Cuel: TS

Cugiel (aerial spirit): L2

Cukbiel: angel: BP 3c

cullya: J 1

Culmar (aerial spirit): L2

Cultin cultorum: Magic words for sword: GH

Cumariel (aerial spirit): L2

Cumeriel (aerial spirit): L2

cumyryel: J 1

Cuphal (aerial spirit): L2

Cupriel (aerial spirit): L2

Cuprisiel (aerial spirit): L2

Curaniel (angel of first heaven): H

Curasin (aerial spirit): L2

Cureviorbas: GV

Curiel (aerial spirit): L2

Curifas (aerial spirit): L2

Curmas (aerial spirit): L2

Cursas (aerial spirit): L2

Cursiel: L 3

Cuschi: Ab

Cusiel (aerial spirit): L2

Cusriel (aerial spirit): L2

Cusyne (aerial spirit): L2

Cynabal (minister of Varcan, angel of Sunday): H

Cynosbaton: TS

cyophagros [S: cytophagros]: J 2

cyzamanyn: J 1

Daael: L 3

Dabiel: L 2

Dablat: Ab

Dabraylez: P iii x 8

Dabriel (angel of first heaven): H

Dabrinos (aerial spirit): L2

DABUEL: K

Dachael: L 3

Dachiel: L 3

dadyel: J 1

dadyell: J 1

Daena: Female angel (yazad) presiding over the religion, also, Inner Self or Conscience. (aka Den): Z

daffrypeyl: J 1

dafngel: J 1

Dagiel: H; L3; (aerial spirit): L2

Daglas: Ab

Daglus: Ab

Dagnel: L 3

Dagon (demon): A

Daguler: Ab

Dagulez: Ab

DAH: K

Dahanuz: P iii ix 7

Dahaydanuz: P iii ix 13

Dahiel: L 3

Dahm: Angel (yazad) honored on the fourth day after death: Z

Dahma Afriti (or Dahman Afrin): Angel personifying the power of benediction: Z

Damoish Upamana: Angel (yazad) personifying anathema: Z

Dahyeliz: P iii x 8

daihyr [S: dalihir]: J 2

Dajiel: L 3

Dalé: K

Dalep: Ab

Dalet: Magical word on first ring in Douze Anneaux

Daleth: K

DALMAI: K

DALMAII: K

DALMALEY: GV

Dalmay: GV

dalqiel: J 5

dalya: J 1

dalyell: J 1

DAMA: K

Damael (angel of the fifth heaven): H

damahiah [A: Damabiah]: J 5

Damar: L 3

Damarsiel (aerial spirit): L2

Damasiel: L 3

Dameriel: L 3

Damery: L 3

Damiel: K; L 3

DAMNATH: K

Damyel: L 3

Dan: E

Danael: J1; L2 (aerial spirit)

Danahish: NS 127

Danel: E

daner: J 5

DANI: K

Daniel: J5; K; (aerial spirit): L2

Danjal: E

Danochar: GV

danpy: J 1

danroc: J 1

Dansor: L 3

Dant: GH

Dantalion: L 1

danyel: J 1

danyturla: J 1

dapsyon: J 1

Darascon: Ab

Darbori (aerial spirit): L2

Dardariel: L 3

Dardiel (angel of Sunday): H

dardihel: J 5

dardyhel: J 5

Darek: Ab

dargoyeyll: J 1

Darmexim: P iv ix 59

Darochim: Ab

Darokin: Ab

Darosiel: L 3

Darquiel (angel of first heaven): H

Darquiz: P iii vii 21

Daruz: P iii ix 1

daryel: J 1

daryenyn: J 1

Dashiel: L 3

Dasmedias: Divine name: GH

Dathan: L 1

Dathiel: L 3

datquiel: J 5

Datziel: L 3

Dayadebuz: P iii vii 25

Daziel: L 3

Deal Ton: K4

Deamiel (angel of first heaven): H

Debam: Ab

debroz: J 5

DECAION: K

decapochen: J 2

decaponde: J 2

Decarabia: L 1

Decariel (aerial spirit): L2

decarpe: J 2

Decaytus: P iii x 13

Deccal: Ab

December: P iv vii 24

DEDULSAIRA: K

defensor: J 5

Degaliel: K

Degayus: P iv ix 64

Degon: One of the magic words used in a spell to prevent eating: GH

degyon: J 1

Deharayuz: P iii ix 3

Dehataryz: P iii ix 5

Dehedeyz: P iii vii 21

Dehedyz: P iii ix 6

dehel: J 2

Deheniz: P iii ix 17

Deherix: P iv ix 36

Deheriz: P iii ix 16

Dehetarix: P iv ix 62

Deheydemiz: P iii vii 25

Deheydex: P iv ix 59

Deheyfez: P iii ix 4

Dehycayz: P iii ix 14

Dehydemes: P iv ix 60

Dehydemez: P iii ix 3, 13

Dehydez: P iii ix 2

Dehymez: P iii ix 4

deihel: J 2

Deilas (aerial spirit): L2

Deinatz: L 3

Deliel: L 4

delmusan: GV

Deloth: J 4

delqua: J 1

delthis: J 2

Demanoz: L 3

Demaor: L 3

Demarae: L 3

Demarot: L 3

DEMAS: K

Demasor: L 3

Deme: P iii vii 21

Demediel (aerial spirit): L2

Demehuz: P iii ix 2

Demerix: P iv ix 62

Demeuz: P iii ix 12

Demeymes: P iv ix 61

Demoriel: L 2

Den: see Daena

Denaryz: L 3

Denôê: TS

Denediz: P iii ix 17

Deneriz: P iii ix 15

denos: J 3

depymo: J 2

depymon: J 2

DERISOR: K

Deriuz: P iii ix 1

Derix: P iv ix 59

Deriyenuz: P iii x 12

Deriz: P iii ix 2,6, 16

Dermez: P iii ix 2

Dermiz: P iii vii 19

Derniz: P iii ix 11

dersam: J 1

Deryes: P iii vii 21

Deryx: P iv ix 63

DESTATUR: K

detryeyll: J 1

Deus: J 1, 2, 5; P i pr. 1, 2, 4; i 1; ii 5; iv 33; v 5, 39; vi 1; vii 1, 4; ii v 5; x 20; xii 53, 58, 59; iii vii, 1, 16-21, 23-26, 28-33; viii 4; xii 1, 2; iv i 1, 4, 9; iv 61, 63; vi 13; vii 62; ix 27; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Devachiah (or Devachia): K; K4

devil: L 1; J 1

dewhel [S: dem hel]: J 2

Deydex: P iv ix 62

Deydez: P iii ix 5

Deyluz: P iii x 9

Deytuz: P iii x 8

Deytyz: P iii ix 1

Dia: One of the magic words to counter pleurisie: GH

DIES: K

Dihymez: P iii ix 14

Dimirag: Ab

Dimurgos: Ab

Din: Divine name associated with Mercury (OP2.22)

Diniel: angel: BP 3c

DINOTOR: K; K4

Diopos: Ab

dirachiel: J 5

Diralisen: Ab

Diralisin: Ab

Dirba: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 25c

dirigalii: J 5

Diruez: P iii ix 5

disdros: J 5

Dishi ben Dishibin Dashubi: NS 234

Disolel: Ab

Dison: Ab

Dius: P iv ix 58

DIVA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

Diviel (aerial spirit): L 2; L3

Divorcon: G

DNChISh (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

Dobiel (aerial spirit): L2

Dodiel (aerial spirit): L2

Dolefach: Magical word on eighth ring in Douze Anneaux

domathamos: J 2

domengos: J 2

domina: J 2

Dominus: P i pr. i, 2; vii 4; ii x 39; iii vii 29

domogetha [S: domogentha]: J 2

Domol: GV

Domoras: L 3

Domos: GV; one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

domus: J 2

DONACHIEL (angel): K

DONE: K

Donecepheron: K

Doni: Divine name associated with Mercury (OP2.22)

donmedo: GV

DONNIMA: K

DOPHALIA: K

doppeyl: J 1

Dorak: Ab

Doremiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Doriel (aerial spirit): L2

Dormason: L 3

Dorochiel: L 2

dorsamot: GV

Dosom: Ab

Douniel (Dounihl) (angel of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

Drabiel: L 3

Drabros (aerial spirit): L2

drabundin: J 5

Draco: P i ii 5; v 1, 8, 9, 20, 30, 34; ii iii 8; v 2; iii i 10

Dracon: L 3

dragin: GV

DRAGNE: GH; GV

Dragon (aerial spirit): L2

Dramas: Ab

Dramaz: L 3

Dramiel (aerial spirit): L2

Dramozyn: L 3

Drapios (aerial spirit): L2

Drasiel (aerial spirit): L2

Drelmech: L 3

Dresop: Ab

dridmoyl: J 5

Drion: K4

Dromiel: L 3

Drubiel (aerial spirit): L2

Druchas: L 3

drudromoy: J 5

Drufiel: L 3

Drusiel (aerial spirit): L2

Drvaspa: Female angel (yazad) personifying cattle: Z

Dryades (class of spirits): A

Dubarus (aerial spirit): L2

Dubiel (aerial spirit): L2

Dubilon (aerial spirit): L2

Dubraz: L 3

DUCHIEL (angel): K

Dudael: E

duhomelathus: J 2

Duidain: E

dulcissime: J 5

Dulid: Ab

Dumaso: GV

Dumogon: G

Dumosson: GV

dunedryneylyn: J 1

Dusiriel (aerial spirit): L2

duymas [S: dvynas]: J 1

dyaforim: P iv ii 3

dyhamelathos [S: dihamelathos]: J 2

Dyndez: P iii ix 12

Earaoe: Ab

Earos (aerial spirit): L2

Earviel (aerial spirit): L2

ebalohe: J 2

Ebaron: Ab

Ebla: E

EBMISHA: K

Ebra (aerial spirit): L2

ecchothas: J 5

Eckdulon: Ab

Edilta: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

Edoniel: J 1; K

Edriel (aerial spirit): L2; L3

Eduz: P iii ix 11

Effrigis: Ab

Efios ('Efiós): Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Saturday: MTS

Eforit ('Eforít): Angel (or demon) of 12th hour of Friday: MTS

Efrigis: Ab

effygmato: J 1

Efiel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

Efipas ('Efipás): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Egachir: Ab

Egakireh: Ab

egge: J 1

egibiel: J 5

Egin, Egyn, or Aegyn: King of the South according to An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Ad. 36674, fol. 47v) (Alternately called named as Ariton in Ab.)

egiviel: J 5

Eglatus, Egla: Two of the magic words to counter fever: GH

Egribel: P iv ix 46

egyhel [S: egihel]: J 2

Egym: GH; see Egin

Egyn: Ab

egyrion: J 5

egyryon: J 1, 5

ehehii: J 5

Eheie: Name of God associated with Kether in OP2.12

EHEIEH ASHER EHEIEH: K

EHEIEH: K

ehenyton: J 1

EHERES: K

Eheye: L 1

Ehon: K4

Eiael: J 5

Eie: H

Eima: K4

Eistierix: Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Wednesday: MTS

Ekalak: Ab

Ekalike: Ab

Ekdulon: Ab

Ekorok: Ab

El: Name of God; G; GH; H; J 1; K; L 1, 2; NS 161, 240; OP2.13

El Ab: Divine name associated with Jupiter (OP2.22)

EL ADONAI TZABAOTH: K

EL CHAI: K

El Gebil: K

El Qaana: NS 240-241

El Shaddaï: K: NS 126, 156, 211, see also Shaddai, Saday

EL, IAH, IAH, IAH: K

Elafon: Ab

ELAMOS: K

Elamyr: Ab

Elamyz: L 3

Elanel: L 3

Elantiel: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over riches

Elaton: Ab

elbedagrin: J 1

Elbelda: P i iv 22

Elburion: TS

Elcar (aerial spirit): L2

Elechym: L 3

Eleéth: TS

Elelogap: GV

Elemental spirits: K

elemiah: J 5

ELEMIATH: GV

Eleminator: J 2

Elerion: Ab

Elestor: One of the three princes of the demons (along with Lucifer and Belzebut) in Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel

Eleyson: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Elh: G

Eli: K

Elia: K

Elias: G

Elibanoth: magic word in K3

Elibra: H

Eliditor (Êliditór): Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Saturday: MTS

Eliel (aerial spirit): L2

Eligor: L 1

Eligos: L 1

ELIM: Divine name associated with the Moon (OP2.22) K

ELIMIGITH: K

Eliogaphatel: Demon in K3

Elion: GH; H; K; L 1, 2

Eliphamasai: L 4

Elisem ('Elisém): Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Friday: MTS

Elitel (aerial spirit): L2

Elivisa: GV

Elmis: Ab

Elmoym: L 3

ELOAH VA-DAATH: K

ELOAH: K

eloe: J 1

Eloh: Divine name associated with the Sun (OP2.22)

ELOHA: K; Name of God associated with Tiphereth in OP2.13

Elohe: GH; H; L 1, 2

ELOHI TZABAOTH: K

ELOHI: K

Elohim (name of God): GV; H; K; L 1, 2; NS 200, 225, 240

ELOHIM GIBOR: Name of God in K; OP2.12, OP2.13

Elohim qeber, Elohim: K

Elohim Tzabaoth: K

ELOHINU: K

Elohym: K4

Eloim (=Elohim, name of God): G

'Elome'el: E

elomich: J 5

Elomnia: L 4

elon: J 5

Elonim: Ab

Eloy: GH; H; J 1, 2

Eloya: K4

Eloym: GH; GV (var of Elohim, name of God)

Eloyn: K4

Elpinon: Ab

Elponen: Ab

elscha: J 1, 5

Ely: J 1, 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Elyminator [S: Eleminator]: J 3

elynzy: J 1

elyon: J 1

elyorem: J 1, 5

elysafan: J 1

elysu: J 1

Elzegan: Ab

Elzegar: Ab

elzephares: J 1, 5

EMAGRO: K

Emalon: L 3

Emanuel, Emanvel: G; J 1, 4, 5; K; L 1

Emarfiel: L 3

Emarion: L 3

Emarziel: L 3

Ematyel: L 3

emaunel: J 5

Emeriel: L 3

EMETH: K

Emfatison: Ab

Emfiloel, Emfiloêl (Emfilohl) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

EMIAL: K

Emirex: P iv ix 63

Emirez: P iii ix 16

Emisael: One of the magic words used in a spell to extinguish fire: GH

Emmanuel: H, TS ; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH; NS 200

Emodias ('Emodiás): Angel (or demon) of 13th hour of Thursday: MTS

EMOII: K

Emoniel: L 2

Emphastison: Ab

Emuel (aerial spirit): L2

Enaia: Ab

ENAM: K

Enariel: L 3

Enatiel: G

Enatriel: L 3

endiran: J 5

enediel: J 5

Enedil: P iv ix 30

Enei: Ab

Enenuth: TS

Enépsigos: TS

Enêpsigos: TS

Enga: Divine name: GH

Englabis: Divine name: GH

Eniuri: Ab

Enmanuel: GV

entissime: J 5

EOMIAHE: K

Eon Met: K4

Eparinesont: GV

Epios ('Epios): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Thursday: MTS

Epithouanon ('Epiqouanon) (demon of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

ERA: K

ERADIM: K

Erae: E

Eralicarison: Ab

eralyn: J 1

Eralyz: Ab

Eramael: One of five demons under Satanachi in K3

Erato: K4

ercell: J 5

erchothas: J 1

Erdaz: P iii ix 12

Erdegel: P iv ix 42

Erekia: Ab

EREL: K

Erenutes: Ab

Ereth: Female angel (yazad) personifying truth: Z

Ergamen: Ab

Ergatige ('Êgatigá): Angel (or demon) of 23rd hour of Tuesday: MTS

ergediel: J 5

Ergonion: Ab

Ergosil: Ab

Ergotas ('Ergotás): Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Thursday: MTS

erhagel [S: exagal]: J 2

Erigion: Name on pentacle (GH)

erihel [S: exihel]: J 2

erihona: J 1, 5

Erimites: Ab

Erional: K4

ERIONAS: K

Eritherem: magic word in K3

Erkaya: Ab

ERLY: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

Erman ('Ermán): Angel (or demon) of 5th hour of Friday: MTS

Ermaziel: L 3

Ermiel: L 3

Ermihala: Ab

Ermoniel (aerial spirit): L2

Eros: TS

erpyon: J 1

ERYGION: K

eryon: J 1, 5

eryona: G; J 5

Esarchie: Name of God: GH

Escavor: GV

ESCERCHIE: H; L 1, 2

ESCH: K

Escha: H; J 5

Eschiel: K

escor: J 5

Eserchie (=Escerchie): H

esfylyn: J 1

Eshiniel: angel: BP 3c

esmaadyn: J 1

Esmony: GV

ESPIACENT: K

Espoel (aerial spirit): L2

essaf: J 1

Estio: G

Estiot: GV

Esytio: G

Esytion: G

Etaliz: Ab

Ethan: Ab

Ethanim: Ab

Ethanim: Ab

Ethiel (aerial spirit): L2

ethion: J 5

Etimiel (aerial spirit): L2

Etitnamus, Etituamus: G

Etouros ('Êtourós): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Monday: MTS

Euchey: GV

Euknitiel (Eúknitiêl): Angel (or demon) of 23rd hour of Monday: MTS

Evadar: L 3

Evandiel: L 3

Evanuel: L 3

Evarym: L 3

evebychay: J 5

exaccodan [S: exactodan]: J 2

Exagiel: J 5

Exaula: P i iv 20

excelse: J 5

excludo [S: exluso]: J 2

exdromal: J 5

Exe: H

Exenteron: Ab

exhator: J 2

exhedon [S: exheton]: J 2

exhehal: J 4

exheruz [S: exhernz]: J 2

exiophiam: J 2

Existion (var. of Exstion): G

Existioneriona: G

EXISTON: K

exmegan: J 2

exmogon: J 2

exnotheyn: J 4

Exstion: G

EXTABOR: K; K4

Exteron: Ab

Ey: H

Eydulez: P iii ix 4

EYE-SARAY: L 1

eye: H; J 5; K4

ezeleaz: J 2

Ezeqeel: E

ezethomos: J 4

ezey: J 5

eznyah: J 1

EZOIIL: K

ezomathon: J 4

Ezparez, Ezphares: G

Fabariel (aerial spirit): L2

Fabelleronthou: GV

Fabiel: G; L2 (aerial spirit)

faceyeyll: J 1

facifon: J 5

Fadrulez: P iii x 9

fagamesy: J 2

fagamesym: J 2

Fagani: Ab

Faguni: Ab

fais [S: fals]: J 2

falason: J 1

falsari: P iv ii 12

Famaras: L 3

Famiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Famoriel: L 3

fanyel: J 1

farabyn: J 1

Farai: Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Wednesday: MTS

faranyeal: J 1

Fardaruz: P iii x 9

fariel: J 5

farlae: J 5

Farlas (winter): H

Farmos: L 3

fartis: J 1

faryelyn: J 1

Faseua (aerial spirit): L2

Fasma: Ab

father, the: J 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Faturab: Ab

Faurix: P iv ix 63

Faytamurez: P iii x 8

Faytoliz: P iii x 11

Fealech: L 3

fedraza: P i v 27

fegem: P i v 27

Fegot: One of the demons in K3

Felut: GV

Femol (aerial spirit): L2

Femurez: P iii x 8

Fenadros: L 3

Fendeyuz: P iii x 14

fenestra: J 2

Feniz: P iii x 9

Fenosiel: L 3

fenyturla: J 1

Ferala: magic word in K3

FERETE: K

ferlucifin: J 5

Fernebus: Ab

Fersebus: Ab

Ferunt: magic word in K3

Feruz: P iii ix 12

ferymay [S: ferimay]: J 2

festatui, Festativi (name of the earth in Summer): H; J 5

FET: K

feya: J 1

Feyeduz: P iii x 14

Feyleuz: P iii x 14

Feymeluz: P iii x 12

Feymeriz: P iii x 12

feynon: J 1

Fide arrach: P iv vii 23

Filaxon: Ab

filiach: J 5

Filius: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Fimarson: L 3

fimtilis: J 5

Finaxos: Ab

Finis: Divine name: GH

fintingon: J 2

Firiel: GV

Fisti: GH

Flabison: Ab

Flaef (angel, minister of Sarabotes): H

Flauros: L 1

Flaxon: Ab

Fleruty: GV

Fleurety (demon, leut. gen.): G

Flos: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

flum: J 2

flumen: J 2

Focalor: L 1

fons: J 2

Foras (demon): L 1

Forau (demon): G

Forfaron: Ab

Forneus (demon): L 1

Forteson: Ab

fortis: J 5

Fortitudo: J 5

Foruz: P iii ix 2

foylyon: J 1

Fraciel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Framion: L 3

Framoth: L 3

Franedac: L 3

frangam: GV

Frasis: Ab

Frasmiel (aerial spirit): L2

Fremiel: L 3

frenil: J 5

Friagne (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Frimost: Demon: GH (1760 edition); GV

Frimoth: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over passion and lust

Frinafe (Frinafé): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Monday: MTS

Frodinos (Frodinós): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Sunday: MTS

Fromezyn: L 3

Fronyzon: L 3

froseithz: J 5

Frucissière: GV

Frulhel (or Frastiel): One of the demons in K3 with dominion over reanimation

Frutimière: GV

Fubentroty: GV

fuheylyn: J 1

fullarite: J 5

Fulouel (Fulouel) (angel of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

fundamentum: J 2

Furamiel: L 3

Furcas: L 1

Furfur: L 1

Furiel: L 3

Fursiel (aerial spirit): L2

Furtur: L 1

Fustiel: L 3

Futiel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

Futiniel: L 3

fysfyn: J 1

g: J 1

Gaap (demon): L 1

gabal: J 1

gabalyel: J 1

gabanael: J 1

Gabarnish: GV

Gabiel: L 3, 4

Gabio (aerial spirit): L2

Gabots: G

Gabrael (angel of first heaven): H

Gabriach: Magical word on seventh ring in Douze Anneaux

Gabriel, gabryel (archangel): A; BP xxix, 3c; E; GH; H; J 1, 2, 5; K; L 3, 4; NS 155, 163, 170, 173, 177, 202, 213, 236, 240; OP2.12; P iv vii 23; T; TS

Gabrinoz: L 3

Gabriot: Magical word on fifth ring in Douze Anneaux

gabrynyn: J 1

gabyon: J 1

gadabany [S: Gadalany]: J 2

Gadara: TS

gadeff: J 1

Gadgadiel: NS 160

Gadiel: K; L 3

Gadix: P iv ix 61

Gadreel: E

Gagalin: Ab

Gagalos: Ab

Gagison: Ab

Gagolchon: Ab

Gagonix: Ab

Gahel: K4

gahit: J 2

gal: J 1

Galagos: Ab

Galak: Ab

Galant: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over diseases

galatihel [S: galetihel]: J 4

galbyel: J 1

Galdel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

galgal: J 1

Gali: Divine name: GH

Galiel (Galiél): Angel (or demon) of 23rd hour of Thursday: MTS

galiht: J 2

Gallina: P ii ii 1

galmus: J 1

galnel: J 1

galuf: J 1

Galym: L 2

Gamael: L 3

Gamaliel or obscene: K

gamasgay: J 2

Gamchicoth or the Disturbers of Souls: K

GAMIDOI: K

Gamiel: L 2

Gamigin: L 1

GAMORIN DEBALIN: K

Gamsiel: L 3

gamviel [A: Cambiel]: J 5

Gamyel: L 2, 3

gamyhal: J 2

gandryel: J 1

ganeytania: P iv ii 8

Gannus: 'man of fire' invoked (along with Sloonus) in BP § 13 (p. xxxii)

garacap: J 1

Garadiel: L 2

garamanas: J 2

garasyn: J 1

garbona [S: gartona]: J 2

GARDON: K

gargatel (an angel of the Summer): H; J 5

Garnaze: One of the magic words to counter fever: GH

Gariel (aerial spirit): L2

gariliam: J 5

Garinirag: Ab

Garnasu (aerial spirit): L2

Garnesiel: L 2

Garsas: Ab

garytan: J 1

Gasarons: Ab

Gashiel: L 3

gasoryn: J 1

GASPARD: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

gastaset: J 1

gastiel: J 5

gaszyel: J 1

Gathouel (Gathouél): Angel of Friday/Venus: MTS

Gauriel, Gauriêl (Gaurihl) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

gaviel (an angel of the Summer): H; J 5

Gaviol: GH

Gaw: Angel (yazad) personifying cattle: Z

gaym: J 5

Gazaron: Ab

gazay: J 4

gebarbaya: J 1

Gebiel: L 3

gebrutim: P iv ii 4

GEBURAH: K

GEBURAHEL: K

Geburim or Violent Ones: K

gebyn: J 1

gecabal: J 2

geccaholzer [S: gettahol]: J 2

gecebamia: J 5

gechora [S: "gethora"]: J 3

gechoramy [S: "gethoramy"]: J 3

gechors [S: "gethos"]: J 3

Geciel: L 3

gecramathiol [S: gec_u_mathihol]: J 2

gedanabasy [S: Gedalanasy]: J 2

gedebandi: J 2

gederanay: J 2

Gediel: L 2, 3, 4

Gedobonal: L 4

gedonomay: J 2

GEDULAH: K

GEDULAHEL: K

gedulyn: J 1

gefrel: J 5

Gefusieon: J 5

gegemahelay: J 2

gegenol [S: gegegnol]: J 2

gegnognal: J 2

gegohomos: J 2

GEGROPHEIRA: K

Geguhay: J 4

gehamas [S: gelamas]: J 2

gehangno [S: geliãgno]: J 2

Gehel [S: gahel, gegel]: J 2, 3

gehemizay [S: gehemyzai]: J 2

gehen: J 2

gehenignor [S: gehemgnor]: J 2

geherahel: J 2

gehiszefyhor [S: gehszesihol]: J 2

Gehor: J 4

gehoraia: J 2

geht: J 2

geiama [S: gesama]: J 2

geiemamagnosam: J 2

gelamagos: J 3

gelbaray: J 2

Gelemoht: J 1, 5

geles: J 2

gelgemona [S: gelgemana]: J 2

geliel: J 5

geliesmoy: J 2

gelior: J 2

gelisedon: J 5

Geloma: Ab

Gelomiros: L 4

gelomitro: J 5

gelomyhel: J 3

Gelon: J 1, 5

gemahol: J 2

gemaht: J 2

gemail: J 2

gemal: J 2

gemama: J 2

Gemary: L 3

Gematzod: L 3

gemehegate [S: gemehagate]: J 2

Gemehehon: J 4

gemehihel: J 2

gemehol: J 2

gemelam [S: Geromelam]: J 2

Gemen: GV

gemesnay: J 5

gemessyon [S: gemession]: J 2

Gemethor: J 4

Gemezin: L 3

gemiazay [S: gemiazai]: J 2

Gemini: J 1, 5; K; L 3, 4; P i iv 6-8; v 28; ii x 71, 86; xi 9-11; xii 8, 42, 55; iii ii 4; iii 15; iv ii 4

gemizacol: J 2

gemoht: J 2

gemol: J 2

GEMON: K

Gemory: L 1

gemõthar: J 2

gemotheon: J 3

gemyha: J 2

gemyhacal: J 2

gemyochar [S: gemy~hothar]: J 2

genair [S: genayr]: J 2

Genamchor [S: genamohor (?)]: J 4

Genapherim: L 3

Genarytz: L 3

genathely: J 2

Genathores: J 2

genay: J 2

Genealogon: J 2

genenogal [S: gentvogal]: J 2

Geneon: GV

generamoseht: J 2

genges: J 2

Geniel: J 5

Genii: K

GENIO: L 1

geno: J 2

genocomel: J 2

genomos: J 2

genomythoo [S: genomythos]: J 2

Genon: L 4

Genonem: J 1, 5

genorabal: J 2

Genos: J 2, 4

genotheram: J 2

genozabal: J 2

genyda: J 1

genynatol: J 2

genython [S: genithon]: J 2

genzi: J 2

Geofriel: J 5

geogremay: J 2

Geolym: J 2

geon: J 5

Geos: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

Gepheel: L 3

Gera Topar Gadiel: NS 168

geraguaht: J 2

geramathiel [S: geramathihel, geramacihel]: J 2

gerathar: J 2

gerehoinuhaziol [S: gerehona hazihal]: J 2

Gereinin: L 4

Geremiah (name of the Earth in Winter): H

geremon: J 5

gerenia: J 5

gereon: J 5

Gerevil: Ab

Gerfan (Gerfán): Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Monday: MTS

gergeon: J 2

gergion: J 2

gergohen: J 2

Geriel (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

geristel: J 2

geriston: J 2

Geriz: P iv ix 29

gerizo: J 2

gernb [S: gerub?]: J 2

gerohanathon [S: Ierohanathon]: J 2

geromagol: J 2

geromay: J 2

geromaziel [S: geromazihel]: J 2

geromol: J 2

geronehos: J 2

Geror: L 4

gerot: J 3

gerozay: J 2

Gerthiel: L 3

gesatham [S: gethasam]: J 2

Gesegas: Ab

gesemon: J 2

Gesiel: L 3

gesõmay [S has a bar over the om]: J 2

gesrus: J 5

gessemon: J 2

gessenazi [S: gessevazi]: J 2

gessydomy [S: gessidomy]: J 2

geth: J 2

gethage: J 2

Gethidnhal: J 4

Gethiel: L 3

gethor: J 2

gethorem: J 2

Getiel: L 3

getymay [S: ietimay]: J 2

geuaguolos [S: genagnolos]: J 2

geumyturla: J 1

geuolyam [S: genuliam]: J 2

geuomoly [S: genomoloy]: J 2

geuoz [S: genoz]: J 2

geuozempha [S: genozem pha]: J 2

geuozepha [S: genozepha]: J 2

Geush Urvan: lit. 'the soul of the cow (or settlement)'. Personification of animal life: Z (aka Goshorun)

Gevael: L 3

Gevar di Pelekh: NS 168

gey: J 1

geys: J 2

geysethon [S: gezsethon]: J 2

Gezael: L 3

gezagam: J 4

gezamahel: J 2

gezamanay [S: gezamanuai]: J 2

gezamay [S: gezamai]: J 2

gezamel: J 2

Gezamyhor: J 4

gezconos: J 2

gezegatha: J 2

gezelihos: J 3

Gezemachal [S: gezemathal]: J 4

gezeno: J 3

gezero: J 2

gezetiz: J 2

gezezihor [S: gesezihor]: J 2

Geziel: L 3

gezihel: J 4

Gezomel: J 4

gezomelyhon: J 4

gezomothon: J 4

Gezor: J 4

Gezozay: J 4

Ghedoriah: K

GHEMINAIRA: K

Gheuriel: K4

GHEVIALAIRA: K

GHTR: BP 17

ghu [S2: glm; S: glm vel ghu]: J 3

Gida'ljal: E

Giel: L 3

gielotheon [S: grel..]: J 2

giethy: J 2

gigithios: J 4

gigoro: J 2

gihelerathon [S has gilzelerethon corrected to gihelerethon]: J 2

GIHID: BP 17

Gilarion: Ab

Gillamon: Ab

GILTHAR: K

Gimel: K

gimon: J 1

Ginar: Ab

Giram (Girám): Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Monday: MTS

Giriar: Ab

Girmil: Ab

Gisaor (Gisaór): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Tuesday: MTS

giseleccor [S: giselector]: J 2

Gitzar (Gitzár): Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Glanos: TS

Glasyabolas (demon): G

Glasya-Labolas (demon): L 1

glereleon: J 2

Glesi: Ab

Glitia: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over banquets

gloria: J 2, 5

gloriose: J 5

Gluth: magic word in K3

Glysy: Ab

GMHTR: BP 17.

GMIHID: BP 17.

Gnachiel: L 3

Gnadiel: L 3

Gnaheel: L 3

Gnakiel: L 3

Gnaliel: L 3

Gnamiel: L 3

gnanatores: J 2

Gnaphiel: L 3

Gnashiel: L 3

Gnasiel: L 3

Gnathiel: L 3

Gneliel: L 3

Gnethiel: L 3

Gnetiel: L 3

gnohemgnor: J 2

Gnome (class of spirit): G; K

Gnomus: G

Gnotas (Gnôtás): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Saturday: MTS

gnoyoemel [S: gnoyemal]: J 2

gnynzy: J 1

Goap (demon, var. of Gaap): L 1

God: J 1, 3; L 1

Godens: G

GODIEB: K

Godiel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

GODU: K

Gofgamel (vel Gasgamyel) [S: Gasgamel]: J 4, 5

Gofgamep, GofGamep: J 1, 5

GofGar: J 5

Gohathay: J 4

Golab or incendiaries: K

GOLADES: K

GOLDAPHAIRA: K

Goleg: Ab

Golen: Ab

Golog: Ab

golum: J 1

GOMEH: K

GOMERT: Magic word: GH; GV

Gomogin: Ab

gomraoryn: J 1

gonay: J 2

Gonogin: Ab

Gorgopios (Gorgopiós): Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Saturday: MTS

Gorilon: Ab

gortaray: J 2

gorthz: J 5

gosamyn: J 2

Gosegas: Ab

Goshorun: See Geush Urvan: Z

Gossum: Magic word: GH

Got: One of the magic words to deflect weapons: GH

Goth: G

Gotifan: Ab

Goukoumon (Goukoumón): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Wednesday: MTS

Gouriel (Gouriêl): Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Friday: MTS

Gowad: See Vayu: Z

gozimal: J 2

gozogam: J 2

GRABATTO: Magic word on amulet: GH

gracomessihos [S: gcomessihos]: J 2

gracosihos [S: gucosihos]: J 2

graguomoyuhos [S: gragnomoysihos]: J 2

Gram [R: Grani]: J 1

gramaht [S: g_u_maht]: J 2

Gramon: Ab

gramyhel [S: g_u_myhel]: J 2

granal: J 2

granatum femina: J 2

Granon: Ab

Granozyn: L 3

Granyel: L 3

Graphiel: The intelligence of Mars (OP2.22)

Grasemin: Ab

GRASSIL: K

Gremiel (aerial spirit): L2

grenatail: J 3

grephemyon: J 2

grisolis: J 5

Gromenis: Ab

gromyazay [S: gromyhazay]: J 2

gronyeyll: J 1

Gtadafid: Angel (or demon) of 5th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Guabarel (an angel of autumn): H

guabryel: J 1

guabryza: J 1

Guael (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Guagamon: Ab

guahiros: J 4

gualaly: J 1

gualbarel: J 5

guamazihel: J 2

guanrynasnihe: J 1

guara: J 2

guardians: E

guathamal [S: gnathamal]: J 2

guatyell: J 1

Gudiel (aerial spirit): L2

Guebdemis: P iv ix 60

Guernus: P iv ix 64

guesupales: J 1

guetazamanay [S: genetazamanay]: J 2

Gueydenuz iv ix 60

Gueylus: P iv ix 62

Gugonix: Ab

gulahentihel: J 4

Guland: GV

gulyon: J 1

gumyel: J 1

guomagnos [S: gnomãgnos]: J 2

Guomon: J 4

guryel: J 1

Gusion (demon): L 1

Gusoin [Sl.3825] (demon): G; L 1

GUTHAC: K

GUTHOR: K

Gutrix (angel, minister of Suth): H

GUVARIN: K

guygu: J 4

gybryll: J 1

gynbar: J 3

Gyram: J 1

h: J 1

HA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:26

Ha: H

Haa: H

Haagenti: L 1

haaiah: J 5

Haajah: L 3

haamiab [A: Chaamiah]: J 5

haayn: J 1

Habaiel (angel of first heaven): H

Habalon: L 3

habatal [S: halatal]: J 2

Habdanum: Divine name: GH

habena: J 2

Habet: Magic word: GH

Habhi: Ab

Habiel: L 3

habifumaht [S: habisumaht]: J 2

habobel: J 2

habuiah [A: Chabuiah]: J 5

habysanhat [S: habysanahat]: J 2

hacacoharona [S: hacatoharona]: J 2

hacaha [S: hataha]: J 4

hacama: J 2

Hacamuli: Ab

hacaphagan: J 2

hacaros [S: hacacaros]: J 2

hacarraz [S: hacaraz]: J 2

hacaz [S: hataz]: J 2

hacazmazy [S: "hacazamazay"]: J 3

hacca: J 2

haccho [S: hoccho]: J 2

haccisamel [S: hamhaniel]: J 2

Hacel: Demons in K3

Hachael: L 3

hachagnon: J 3

Hachamel: Ab

hachamol: J 2

hachay: J 2

hachemathan [S: hachamathan]: J 4

hacnlam: J 2

hacoronathos: J 2

Hacoronoz: P iii vii 17

hacoylyn: J 1

HacrisentHeon [sic] [S: hacrisientheon].: J 4

hacronaaz: J 2

hadalomob: J 2

Hadiel: L 3

hadozamyr: J 2

hadyon [S: Adyon. Sl.3885 has an "h" in the far left margin, and an "S" just to the left of "Adyon".]: J 3

Hadyz: P iii ix 4

haebal: J 2

Hael [S: halel]: J 2; L3; GV

haemor: J 2

hafar: J 2

Hafkiel: NS 232

Hafriel: NS 232

hagamal [S: haganal]: J 2

haganal: J 2

hagasa: J 2

hagen [S: hage~]: J 2

hagenalis: J 2

hagenerõ [S: hagenoron]: J 2

hagenorem: J 2

hagenorozom: J 2

hagenoy: J 2

Hageyr: Ab

hagiathar: J 4

hagibar [S: hagihar]: J 4

Hagiel: The intelligence of Venus (OP2.22)

hagigel: J 2

Hagion: Ab

HAGIOS: H; L 2, 3

Hagith (Olympic spirit of Venus): A

hagmal: J 2

hagnaht: J 2

hagnathos: J 2

hagnolam [S: hognolam]: J 2

hagnyhosio: J 2

Hagoch: Ab

Hagog: Ab

HAGOS: L 1

hagramos: J 2

Hagrion: Ab

haguliaz [S: hagnliaz?]: J 2

hagyhal [S: hagihal]: J 2

hagyhamal [S: lagyhamal]: J 2

hagynol: J 2

Hagziel: NS 232

hahahel: J 5

Hahaiah: J 5

hahasiah [A: Hachasiah]: J 5

Hahaydiz: P iii ix 13

hahel: J 2

HAHLII: K

Hahuez: P iii vii 24

hahuiah [A: Chahuiah]: J 5

Hahyax: Ab

hahyeylyn: J 1

Haiaiel: J 5

haihaca [S: haihatha]: J 4

haihala [S: hayhala]: J 2

haihatha [S: haihacha]: J 4

haihos: J 2

haila: J 2

hailos: J 2

Hain: Divine name: GH

haiozoroy: J 3

HA-KABIR: K

Hakamiah: J 5

hal: J 2

hala: J 2

halabee: J 2

halabeht: J 2

halabethen: J 2

halabre: J 2

halaco: J 2

halaguha [S: hasagitha]: J 2

halaiz: J 2

halathon: J 4

haley [S: halay]: J 2

halg [S: lialg]: J 1

Haligax: Ab

halimot [S: halmiot]: J 2

halion: J 1

Halla: J 2, 4

hallehuma [S: hallehmua?]: J 2

hallemassay: J 2

hallenomay: J 2

halmay: J 2

halmon: GV

halmoth [S: halmoht]: J 2

halmye: J 2

halna [S: halua]: J 2

halnal [S: hainal corrected to haiual]: J 2

halomora: J 3

halos: J 2

halpha: J 2

Halphas: L 1

Haluiel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

halyasal [S: heliasal]: J 2

halylyn: J 1

halymyz [S: halunyz or halnuyz?]: J 2

halzamyhol: J 2

hama~samel [S: hamansamel hamazamoly]: J 2

hamabihat: J 2

hamacal: J 2

hamacon: J 2

Hamadiel: K4

hamae: J 2

hamagra [S: crosaihamagra]: J 2

hamagrata [S: hamag_a_ta]: J 2

hamagron: J 2

hamalamyn: J 2

hamaliel: Angel ruling over Virgo (OP2.14); J 5

hamamabyhon [S: hamamalyhon]: J 2

Hamamyl: J 4

Hamamyn: J 4

hamanal: J 2

hamanatar [S: hamanacar]: J 2

hamanzathon: J 4

Hamar benabis: P iv vii 23

hamaraziohs: J 2

hamaristigos: J 2

Hamarym: L 3

Hamarytzod: L 3

Hamas (aerial spirit): L2

Hamat: J 2; demon associated with leprosy (Sanhedrin, 101 a), BP xx

hamatha: J 2, 3

hamathalis: J 2

hamathamal: J 2

hamay: J 2

Hamayz: L 3

hamegnar: J 2

hamel: J 2

Hameriel: L 3

Hamerix: P iv ix 63

hamezeaza: J 2

HAMICATA: K

Hamicchiahel (uel Hamathahol) [S: Lamyntnahel vel lamycthiahel]: J 2; J3

Hamiel: J 5

hamiht: J 2

hamina: J 1

haminos [S: hamynos]: J 2

hamissirion: J 2

hamissiton: J 2

hammlstiahel: J 3

Hamnas [S: hãnas]: J 4

Hamnos: J 4

hamognal: J 2

hamol: J 2

hamon: J 2

Hamorphiel (aerial spirit): L2

hamos: J 2

hamphimethon [S: Amphymethon]: J 3

hamsahel: J 2

hamtauery: P i v 27

Hamurez: P iii x 9

hamy: J 3

hamye: J 2

hamyhel [S: hamihel]: J 2

hamyhon: J 3

hamylos [S: hanylos]: J 2

hamyly: J 2

hamynal: J 2

hamynos: J 2

hamynosia: J 2

hamynyr: J 2

hamyphyn: J 2

hamyr: J 2

hamyristos: J 2

hamyrrios [S: hamirrios]: J 2

hamysschon [S: hamisschon]: J 2

hamyssithon [S: hamyssython]: J 2

hamyssitoy [S: hami..]: J 2

hamython: J 2

hamyuos [S: "haminos"]: J 3

hanacor: J 2

hanacristos: J 3

Hanael: Angel ruling over Capricorn (OP2.14); J 5

hanagai: J 2

hanagnil [S: hanagiul]: J 2

Hanahel: J 5

hanaipos: J 3

Hanamel: NS 186

hanamyhos: J 2

hananehos: J 3

Hananel: E; NS 241

hananyhos: J 2

hanaramay: J 2

Hanasichonea [S: hanasichovea]: J 4

hanataiphar: J 2

hanathar: J 2

hanathesion [S: hanthesion]: J 2

hanathie [S: hiehanathihe]: J 2

hanathoios: J 2

hanathos: J 2

hanazay (vel Halacazay): J 3

hanazihatel [S: hanaziachachel]: J 2

hancor (=Ancor, qv): J 2

Handabuz: P iii vii 25

Handemotuz: P iii x 4

handos: J 2

hanethi (vel hamethy): J 4

Haniel: K; NS 161, 237; Angel ruling the angelic order of Principalities in OP2.12

Hanimidiz: P iii x 8

hanomos: J 2

hanosae [S: hanosal]: J 2

hanothos: J 2

hanrathaphael: J 5

hantaraceret: P iv ii 16

hanthomos [S: amhomos]: J 2

hanthonomos [S: hanchonomos]: J 2

Hanun (angel of first heaven): H

hanyell: J 1

hanythel: J 2

haoalos [S: "hagalos"]: J 3

Haokub: Ab

Hapaltiel: NS 168

hapasyri [S: hapasiry]: J 2

haphasy: J 2

haphiles: J 2

haphin [S: haphyn]: J 2

haphot: P iv ii 7

haptamygel: J 2

HA-QADESH: K

HA-QADOSCH BERAKHA: K

Ha-Qadosch: K

hara: J 4

harab [S: horalo]: J 2

Harab-Serapel, or the Ravens of Death: K

haracrihuz.: J 4

haragaia: J 2

Haragil: Ab

harahel [A: Harachel]: J 5

harakel: J 5

haramalon: J 3

haramanay: J 2

haramcha: J 2

haramen [S: haram~]: J 2

haramua [S: haramna]: J 2

haranamar: J 2

Haraoth: Ab

harapheiocom [S: harapheiocon]: J 4

harasynuhon: J 2

harathaciel [S: harathacihel]: J 2

harathamam [S: harathynam]: J 2

harathar: J 2

harayn: J 2

HARCHIEL: K

harcon [S: hacton]: J 2

Hardiel: L 3

hareryn: J 1

harethena: J 2

hariagal: J 2

hariagil: J 2

Hariaz: L 3

Hariel: J 5

Haril: Ab

hariobal [S: hariabal]: J 2

hariomagalathar: J 3

harion: J 2

harionathar [S: harionathor]: J 3

hariothos: J 2

harissim: J 2

haristeiz: J 2

HARISTUM: GV

harmarlemaht: J 2

Harmary: L 3

Harmiel: L 3

Harmiz: P iii vii 21

harmum: P iv ii 10

harnany [S: harana hamany]: J 2

Harngo: J 4

Harnuz: P iii ix 7

Harog: Ab

Harombrub: Ab

Harosul: Ab

Harpax: TS

Harpinon: Ab

Harshael: Angel invoked in protection from sorcerers: BP 42

Harshiel: angel: BP 3c

Haruz: P iii vii 32

haryham [S: hariham]: J 2

haryhat [S: harihat]: J 2

hasa: J 2

hasacapria [S: hasacapha]: J 2

hasagiri: J 2

hasagnanamar: J 2

hasaguar [S: hasagnar]: J 2

hasamypa: J 2

hasaram [S: hazaram]: J 2

hasasylgason: J 1

hasaymam [S: hasayman]: J 2

Hasdiel: NS 213, 236, 237

Ha-Shamain: K

hasihezamay: J 2

hasilihatel [S: hasilihacel]: J 2

Hasin Yah: NS 237

Hasmodai: Spirit of the Moon (OP2.22)

hasomgeri: J 2

Hasperim: Ab

hassahamynel: J 2

hassailamaht, hassailemaht: J 3

hassenethon [S: hassenothy~]: J 2

hassinilop [S: hassimilop]: J 2

hasuayeyl: J 1

hasyn: J 1

hatagamagon: J 3

hatamar [S: hacãman]: J 2

hatamas: J 2

hatamyhel [S: hatamy hel]: J 2

hatanathos [S: hacanathos]: J 2

hatanazar: J 2

hataz: J 2

hatazaihos: J 2

Hathaman [S: hathamam]: J 4

hathamanos: J 2

hathamathay: J 2

hathamaym [S: hathanaym]: J 2

hathamir [S: hathamyt]: J 2

hathamyr: J 2

hathanathay [S: hata..]: J 2

hathanathon [S: hathanaton]: J 2

hathanathos: J 2

Hathanathyos [S: hathanathios]: J 4

Hathanayos: J 4

hathezihatos [S: hathezihacos]: J 4

hathomas: J 2

hatiagra [S: hanhaga]: J 2

Hatiel: L 3

Hatim: H

hatimairos [S: latimairos]: J 2

hator [S: hacor]: J 2

Hau: H; K4

Hauges: Ab

haurane: P iv 27

haya: J 1

Hayamen: Ab

Haydayuz: P iii ix 13

Hayes: G

Haylon: L 3

haymal: J 2

haymasa: J 2

haynosiel: J 2

hayr [S: hair]: J 2

Hayranuz: P iii x 8

Hayras: GV

Haytiz: P iii ix 16

Hayz: P iii ix 11

Hayzoym: L 3

hazaa: J 2

hazab: J 2

hazabamoht: J 2

hazabanas: J 2

hazabanos: J 2

hazabat: J 2

hazachon [S: nazachon]: J 2

Hazacol: J 4

hazagatha: J 2

hazagny [S: hazanuy?]: J 2

hazaheimn: J 2

Hazaiacol: J 4

hazaias: J 2

hazaihemaht: J 3

Hazailzemaht (uel Hasaylemath) [S: Hazailemaht]: J 2

hazaimegnos [S: hazai megnos]: J 2

hazalathon [S: hazabathon]: J 4

Hazamathar: J 4

hazamathon: J 2

hazamegos: J 2

hazamgeri: J 2

hazamguhem [S: hazamagnhem]: J 2

hazamyha: J 2

hazana: J 2

hazanathay: J 2

hazanather [S: hazanathar]: J 2

hazanebal: J 2

hazanechar [S: hazanethar]: J 2

Hazaniel: L 3

hazarach: J 2

Hazaram (vel hazacam) [S: Hazacam]: J 2; J3

hazaramagos: J 3

hazareme: J 2

hazarob: J 2

hazaron: J 2

hazat: J 2

hazata [S: hazaca]: J 2

hazataniel [S: hazacamel]: J 2

hazatha: J 2, 4

hazatham [S: hazathan]: J 2

Hazathar: J 2, 4

Hazathay: J 4

Hazeme: J 4

hazenethon: J 2

hazeoyon: J 2

haziactor [S: hariactar]: J 2

haziamahar [S: hazaamahat]: J 2

haziber [S: haziler]: J 2

Haziel [S: hazihel]: J 2, 5

hazihem [S: hazihe~]: J 2

hazilihatel [S: haziliacel]: J 2

hazimelos: J 3

hazocha: J 2

Hazomathon: J 4

HAZOR: K

hazoroz: J 2

Hazothynathon [S: hazethynathon]: J 4

He: GV, H; K

Head_of_Days: E

headless demon: TS

hearel: J 1

hebalthe: J 2

Hebdegabdis: P iv ix 60

hebel: J 2

hebiot [S: hebehoth]: J 2

hebrel: J 2

hebros [S: hebos]: J 2

hecamazihel [S: "hechamazihel"]: J 3

Heckiel: L 3

hecobay [S: hecohay]: J 2

hecohy: J 3

hecoy: J 2

Hedefiuz: P iii x 8

Hediel: L 3

Hedilez: P iii x 11

Hediz: P iii ix 7

Hedurez: P iii x 8

Hedus: P iv ix 64

Hedyuz: P iii ix 17

He'el: E

heel: J 2

heelmelazar [S: helmelazar]: J 2

Hefemyhel [S: hesemyhel]: J 4

heg: GV

Hegemothon: J 4

hegernar: J 2

hegeto [S: hegetti]: J 2

Hegnel: L 3

Hegneydiz: P iv ix 60

hegonele: J 2

hegrogebal: J 2

hehelilem: J 2

hehemornhos [S: hehem ruhos]: J 2

Heheydiz: P iii ix 3

hehomail: J 2

hehortahonas [S: heortahonos]: J 2

Heia: K4

Heihasai [S: heihazay]: J 4

Heihazar: J 4

Hekiel: L 3

Helahenay: J 4

helamon: J 2

helaph: J 2

Helatay: J 4

helda: J 2

Heldemiz: P iii x 9

HELECH: K

helee: J 2

Helel: Ab

helemasay: J 2

Helemetiz: P iii x 2

Hel'emmelek: E

Hel: G; J 1, 2, 5; L 4

hela: J 2

helestymeym [S: heleshimeym]: J 2

heleys [S: heleis]: J 2

helgezamay: J 2

helgezorabal [S: hel gerozabal]: J 2

helgyon: J 2

Heli: G; L 4

helial [S: helyal]: J 2

heliam [S: heliã]: J 2

helichos [S: helycos]: J 2

Helihel: J 4

helihotas [S: helyhotas]: J 2

Helim: Divine name: GH

helimoht: J 2

HELION: L 4

HELIOREN: H; L 1, 2

Heliot: GH

heliothon: J 2

heliothos [S: helihothos, helyothos, heliotheos]: J 2

heliozo: J 2

helipos [S: helypos]: J 2

heliscemaht, helischemaht, helisemaht: J 2, 3

Helisoe: L 1

helissan: J 5

helitihay: J 2

Hellemay: J 4

Hellestymon [S: helesschymon]: J 4

Hellison: L 4

HELLUJON: L 4

hellyel [S: helliel]: J 2

helma: J 2, 3

helmam [S: helmay]: J 2

helmamy: J 2

Helmas: L 3

helmelazar: J 2

Helmis: Ab

HELOI: L 4

helomany: J 2

HELOMI: L 4

Helon: GV; J 5

helos [S: helas]: J 2

helotey [S: heloty]: J 2

Heloy: GV; J 1, 2, 3, 5

helralathos [S: helralacos]: J 2

helsa: J 2

helseron: J 2

helsethor: J 2

helsezope: J 2

heltamay [S: helcamay]: J 2

heluhama [S: helnhama]: J 2

Hely: J 1, 3, 5

helyccheym [S: helytychcym]: J 2

helyemath [S: heliemath]: J 2

helyhem: J 2

helyhemon [S: "helihemon"]: J 3

helyhene: J 2

helyhor [S: hely_h_oth]: J 2

helymaht: J 2

helymal: J 2

helymam: J 2

helymar [S: helimat]: J 2

helymoht: J 2

helymothos: J 2

helymyhot: J 2

helyna: J 2

helyne: J 2

helynon: J 2

helyot [S: helyhot]: J 2

helyphamassay [S: helipha Massay]: J 2

Helysemath: J 2

Helyuz: P iii ix 15

helzoleam: J 2

hemal: J 2

hemay: J 2

hemdamyhos: J 2

hemeb: J 2

hemegnol: J 2

hemehegon: J 2

hemel: J 2

hemelamp: J 2

hemesna [S has hemesua corrected to hemesva]: J 2

hemiclopos [S: hemyclopos]: J 2

Hemiruliz: P iii x 12

Hemis: Ab

hemol: J 2

hemones: J 2

hemthemos: J 2

hemuoleha [S: hemnoleha]: J 2

hemya: J 2

Hemyluz: P iii ix 15

hemyna: J 2

henahihel: J 2

henaly [S has henaly corrected to hevaly]: J 2

henbezepha: J 2

hendeb: P iv ii 6

Hendeliz: P iii x 9

hendon: J 2

henecyman: J 2

henehenbem [S: hen henbem]: J 2

henemos: J 2

henethemos [S: henethonos]: J 2

Heniz: P iii ix 16

henloramyht [S: helomyht henboramyht]: J 2

henlothant: J 2

henomos [S: henozios]: J 2

henoranaht: J 3

hensazatha: J 2

henthon: J 2

hentynethel: J 4

henzan: J 2

Heon: GV

hepatir: J 2

Hephesimireth: TS

Hephiel: L 3

Hepogon: Ab

Hepoth: One of the demons in K3

Her: G

HERACHIO: K

heracruhit: J 4

heractodam: J 2

Heramael: GV

heramathon: J 2

Herdehus: P iv ix 60

heremogos: J 2

heremynar: J 2

HERENOBULCULE: K

Heresiel (aerial spirit): L2

herezemyhel: J 2

Herg: Ab

Hergotis: Ab

herihegil: J 2

herina [S: henina]: J 2

heriona (vel haryona): J 4

herlo: J 2

hermelazar [S: herinelazar]: J 2

Hermeniz: P iii x 9

Hermiala: Ab

Hermiel: L 3

Hermon (aerial spirit): L2

Herne (aerial spirit): L2

heroniodios [S: heremodios]: J 2

Herphatz: L 3

Herus: P iv ix 58

herymyhothon: J 2

hesaca: J 2

hesacro: J 2

hesacrohen [S: hesacohen]: J 2

hesamem [S: hesame~]: J 2

hesaphopanos: J 2

hesapope [S: hesapopa]: J 2

hesehengnon: J 2

hesely: J 2

hesemelaht [S: hesomelaht]: J 2

Heshael: L 3

hesihel: J 2

HESION: K

hesiothil: J 2

hespnhos: J 2

hessicomalon [S: hessicomal on]: J 2

hessymatel [S: helsimathal]: J 2

hestimpandos [S: hestnnpandos]: J 2

hesuogem [S: hesuoge~]: J 2

HETABOR: K

Hetaytoz: P iii x 8

hetha: J 2

hethaeneho: J 2

hethelilem: J 2

hethemel: J 2

hetidyham [S: hetidihum]: J 2

Hetiel: L 3

hetihel [S: vel hehhel vel helier]: J 4

hety: J 2

heuagnolothegos [S: hagenolo thegos]: J 2

Hevael: L 3

Hey: H

Heya: H

Heyaydez: P iii vii 25

Heydaheydez: P iii ix 13

Heydeyuz: P iii ix 3

Heydinez: P iii x 12

Heydurehiz: P iii x 9

Heyediz: P iii x 9

Heyemiz: P iii x 10

heyerim: P iv ii 12

Heylil: P iii vii 17

heyll: J 1

Heyluz: P iii ix 5

heymemy [heymeiny?]: J 2

Heyudez: P iii x 9

Hezael: L 3

hezaladuha: J 2

hezdmyel [S: hezemyhel]: J 2

hezegon: J 2

hezehengon: J 2

hezelam [S: hezeladam]: J 2

hezelym: J 2

Hezemegnor [S: heze..]: J 4

hezemtinethel [S: hezemtynethel]: J 4

hezetogamyal [S: hezetogamyhal]: J 2

hezidiham [S: hezidih_u_m]: J 2

heziephiat: J 2

hezole: J 2

hiacon: J 2

hialamun [S: "hialamum"]: J 3

hiatregilos: J 2

Hicpacth: GV

hie: J 2

hiebros: J 2

Hielma (uel hyhelyma) [S: Helma]: J 2

hiemaraym [S: hiemarayn]: J 4

hiesacco [S: hiefacto]: J 2

Hifarion: Ab

hihel: J 2, 3

hihelma: J 3

Hilay: Divine name: GH

hillebata: J 2

Hilujaseph: E

Himacth: One of the chief demons under Belzebut in Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel

HIMESERE: K

Hiniel: angel: BP 3c

Hipeton: K

Hipogon: Ab

Hipolepos: Ab

Hipolos: Ab

hiramay: J 3

hirbaionay: J 3

Hirih: Ab

hisihel: J 2

hisistos: J 2

hiskyros: J 5

Hismael: The spirit of Jupiter (OP2.22)

hisomomelyhon [S: hisonomelihon]: J 2

Hissam (aerial spirit): L2

hisychon [S: hysithon]: J 2

HITA: K

hizemazihe: J 2

hizgeocir [S: hizguor]: J 2

HOA: K

Hobraiym: L 3

hocho [S: hotho]: J 2

hocleiste (uel Athanathos): J 3

hocroel, hocroell (angel): J 1

hoctomegos [S: hoccomegos]: J 2

HOD: Divine name associated with Saturn and the Moon (OP2.22); K; L 4.

hoesemolas [S: hesemolas]: J 2

hofely (vel zozely) [S: Hosely]: J 4

Hofob: J 1, 5

hohalym: J 2

hoheihos: J 2

Hoi: GV

Holastri: Ab

Holba: Ab

Holbeke: J 1

holithos: J 2

Holom Jesodoth: Hebrew for the Sphere of the Elements. See OP2.13.

Holop: Ab

holopherno: J 2

Holy Ghost, the: J 1, 2, 5

Homadiel: K

homal: J 2

Homausion: Divine name: GH

homen: J 2

hometibymal [S: hometibimal]: J 2

Hominis: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

HOMNORCUM: GV

Homonoreum: GV

HOMORION: K

homos: J 2

homuogenthon [S: honmou~ genthon]: J 2

homy: J 2

homyhal: J 2

Hon (vel Lynozathemos): J2; J 4

Hondehoyuz: P iii ix 3

hone: GV

honethe: J 2

honzimorib (vel horysmorb) [S: "Homzmorp" corrected from "Honzmab"]: J 4

honzmorib: J 5

Honzmorp: J 1, 5

hoparathos: J 2

Hoqeqiel: NS 178

horaciotos: J 2

HORAH: K

horalathos [S: horalatos horetha horalothos]: J 2

Horamar: Ab

horamylichos [S: horamylithos]: J 2

Horanar: Ab

horay: J 2

horecha [S: horetha]: J 2

horel: J 2

Hores: J 5

Horha: J 1 ; J5

horiel: GV

horihos: J 2

Horiston (vel Horystyon) [S: Horistion]: J 4

Horlon (vel Cadion): J 1, 3, 5

Horminos: Ab

horpovaboceo [S: hornobahoceo]: J 2

horryon: J 1

Horta: G

Hosb: J 1, 5

hosbeke: J 5

Hosbor [S: Hostor]: J 4

hosbr: J 5

Hosel [S2: vosel]: J 4

Hosen: Ab

Hosga: J 1, 5

hosiel [S: hosyel]: J 2

hospitium: J 2

Hospsk: J 5

hosschyhon [S: hosschihon]: J 2

hostosion: J 2

hotanas [S: hetonas]: J 2

Hotarid: P iv vii 23

hotarins [S: hetarius]: J 2

Hotarit: P iii vii 32

hotheihos [S: hoteihos]: J 2

hothemegalon [S: hothomegalon]: J 2

hothos [S: hothes]: J 2

hoton: J 2

Hoviel: L 3

hozoperbiar: J 2

HQDVSh BRVK HVA: K

HSA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:28

Hshahshiel: angel: BP 3c

HShM (Heb. magic name): NS A17:28

HTTIH (Hebrew, name of Metatron in Enoch III, ch. 48D): NS 49

HTVOO (Heb., the "angel who was sent before Israel"): NS A16:22

huanathois [S: hitanathois]: J 2

Huaruyz: P iii ix 11

Huazfat: P iii vii 19

hubisenaar: J 3

HUDAC: K

Hueheyulyez: P iii x 9

Huenadul: P iii ix 11

Huenehenilez: P iii x 9

Hueryreliz: P iii x 14

Huetudiz: P iii x 10

Hueydez: P iii ix 15

Hueyfeduez: P iii x 14

Hueyquitaroz: P iii x 11

Hueytayroz: P iii x 9

Hueyz: P iii ix 7

Hugras: G

Huictiigaras: GV

Hujael: L 3

Humastrau (angel of first heaven): H

Humaziel: L 3

Humet: One of the demons in K3

Humots: GV

Huphaltiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Huratapal, hurathaphel (an angel of Sunday): J 5

huriel: J 2; NS 161

Hurlupapin: GH

Hursiel (aerial spirit): L2

husale: J 2

husurnhnut [S: husurnhu~t]: J 2

hutanathas [S: hycanathas]: J 2

HUZNOTH: K

HVL: K

HVA IZVTh IH IH IH (Heb. names written on the front plate of Aaron): NS 52

Hy: H

hy~bos [S: hymbos]: J 2

Hydriel: L 2

hyeyll: J 1

hyhanenyr [S: hilovenyr]: J 4

Hyla: Ab

hymacton: J 2

hymaliassenon: J 2

hymeylyn: J 1

hymon: J 2

hymycros [S: hymicros]: J 2

Hyn: H

hynaliha: J 2

Hyniel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Hyrys: Ab

Hytyz: P iii ix 6

hyzy: J 1

iabaioge: J 2

iabamiah [A: Iibamiah]: J 5

Iabamiah: J 5

iaboha: J 3

Iacô: TS

Iachadiel: K

iachar [S: Iathar]: J 2

Iacuhosia [S: ramhosia]: J 2

Iae: TS

IAH: Divine name associated with Saturn (OP2.22); K.

Iah Iah Iah: K

Iaha: K

Iahhel: J 5

IAHT: K

Ialon: J 2

Iamai: Ab

Iamam [S: iamã]: J 2

iamaramos: J 2

Iambres: TS

Iameth: TS

Iammeze [S: iam~eze]: J 2

Iamozia: J 2

Iamye: J 2

Iamyhara (uel Hamyhamyharam) [S: Amyhara]: J 3

Ianemyer (vel Zanamyher): J1; J3; J5

Iannes: TS

ianua: J 2

IAPHAR: K

Iaphat: K

iarachon: J 2

Iaran ('Iarán): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Tuesday: MTS

iaratham: J 2

Iaresin: Ab

iasamaht: J 2

iasol: J 2

Iassuarim: L 3

IAT: K

Iathama [S: iochama]: J 4

Iathôth: TS

Iax: TS

Iazabal: J 2

Iazamathan: J 4

Iazeriel: J 5

Ibajah: L 3

ibasil: GV

Ibulon: Ab

Ichdison: Ab

Ichthion: TS

Icosiel: L 2

Idael: J 1

IDEODANIACH: K

IDEODOC: K

Iealô: TS

iebasaly: J 3

Ibel: Magic words on sword, and in other operations: GH

ieblaray: J 2

iebozihel: J 3

iecely [S: ieceley]: J 4

iechampanidos [S: iethampanydos ietham panydos]: J 2

Iechar [S: "iethar"]: J 2, 3

iechoiaphor [S: iethosaphor]: J 2

iechomancha [S: iecomantha]: J 4

Iechonay [S: iethonay]: J 4

iechonomos [S: iethonomos]: J 2

Iechor [S: iethor]: J 2

iechori [S: iethori]: J 2

iechro [S: iethro]: J 2

iecnaphaton [S: ietna..]: J 2

Iecoharnampde [S: iecohornampda]: J 4

Iecologos [S: yetologos]: J 2

iecomagol: J 3

Ieconail [S: ietonail]: J 2

ieconomarum [S: "ieconomaril]: J 3

iecor: J 2

iecoragnos: J 2

iecormay: J 2

Iecornamas [S: iecornanas]: J 4

iecornazay: J 3

Iecornenay: J 4

Iecoruame [S: iecorname]: J 2

iecremai: J 2

Iecrohaly [S: iecrahaly]: J 4

Iecromagnos: J 2

Iecromal: J 4

iecromaym [S: ietromaym]: J 2

iecronamayhala: J 2

iecrosahal: J 2

iecrosamay [S: Ietosamay]: J 2

iegal: J 2

Iegemagnolon: J 2

Iegomaday: J 4

Iegonomay: J 4

Iegromos: J 2

ieguoram [S: "iegnorã"]: J 3

iehalragen [S: zehalrage~]: J 2

iehenas: J 2

iehenua [S: iehemia]: J 2

iehetmagay [S: iehennagay]: J 2

iehir: J 2

iehorna: J 2

Iehuiah [A: Iechuiah]: J 5

Ieiael: J 5

Ieiah: Name on pentacle: GH

Ieialel: J 5

Ieiazel [A:Ihiazel]: J 5

ieizobol: J 2

Ielahiah: J 5

Ielama: J 2

Ielamacrom: J 2

Ielamagar: J 2

ielesamen: J 2

Iôelet: TS

Ieliel: J 5

ielomiuctos [S: Ielomynctos]: J 2

iemalis: J 2

iemamoht [S: gemamoht]: J 2

iemay: J 2

iemazai: J 2

iemeamor : J 2

iemenay: J 2

Iemozihel [S: iemazihel]: J 2

Iemuri: Ab

iemymehel: J 2

Iemyrohal: J 2

ienazar: J 2

ienemeros: J 2

ienenegal: J 2

ienomos [S: genomos]: J 2

Ieô: TS

IERAHLEM: K

ieranyhel: J 2

ieraphay: J 4

ierasiai [S: ierafiai]: J 2

ierathayazai [S: ietachamazai]: J 2

Ierathel: J 5

Ieremabal: J 2

Ieremon (vel ysemon) [S: Seremon]: J1; J4; J5

Ieremyhel: J 2

Ierezonay [S: ietoronay]: J 4

iergohen: J 2

ieristo: J 2

Ierobalym: J 2

ierolen [S: serolen]: J 2

Ierolognos: J 2

ieromegnos: J 2

Ieropaêl: TS

ierothyhon: J 2

ierozabal: J 2

ierthon: J 2

iesagal [S: iosagat]: J 2

iesamahel [S: iesamshel]: J 2

iesamana [S adds iesamanay]: J 2

iesan [S: hazalzetã]: J 2

iesar: J 2

Iesel [R: lesel]: J 4

iesenenay [S: iesenemay]: J 2

iesmar: J 2

iesomabel: J 2

Iesomathon: J 4

iesse: J 2

Iessemon: Name on pentacle: GH

iessonay: J 2

ietemothon [S: iezemothon]: J 3

iethemathon: J 4

iethemuahos [S: iethenmahos]: J 2

iethohal: J 3

iethomagihal: J 2

iethonay [S: iethonas]: J 2

ietrafagon [S: iecrafagon]: J 2

Ietrinaiccho [S: ietrmantho]: J 2

Iezabal: J 2

Iezahel: J 2

Iezalel [A: Ieiazel]: J 5

Iezamathel [S: iezamamel]: J 2

iezamycrathon [S: iezanycathon]: J 2

Iezecromay: J 4

Iezeduhos: J 2

iezehator: J 4

iezel: J 4

iezelem: J 2

iezema: J 2

iezemalo: J 2

Iezemeloht: J 4

iezemo: J 2

Iezemon [S: lezemon]: J 2

iezemonos: J 4

iezemy: J 4

iezeragal [S: rezeregal]: J 2

iezerom [S: iezekom]: J 2

iezetihel: J 4

iezey: J 2

Iezibathel: J 2

Iezochor: J 4

iezolen: J 2

Iezolnohit: J 2

iezomay [S: zezomay]: J 2

iezorahel: J 2

Iezoramp [S: iezoray]: J 4

iezoro: J 2

Igarag: Ab

Igarak: Ab

Igarim: Ab

Igigi: Ab

Igilon: Ab

Igilon: Ab

Igis: Ab

Igurim: Ab

IH, Yah (Heb name of God): K; NS A17:11-16

Ihelur: J 1, 5

IHH: K

IHShVH, Yeheshuah (the mystic Hebrew Name for Joshua or Jesus): K

IHV: K

IHVH (Heb.Jehovah, name of God): A, Ab; NS A16:2, passim

IHVH AChD: K

IHVH ALHINV: K

IHVH, Tetragrammaton: K

IIAI, Yiai: K

Ijasusa'el: E

Ikon: Ab

Ikonok: Ab

Ilagas: Ab

Ilarak: Ab

Ilarax: Ab

Ilekel: Ab

Ilemlis: Ab

Ileson: Ab

Ilfiey: J 5

Ilioram: G

Illirikim: Ab

Illusabio: Magical word on twelfth ring in Douze Anneaux

Ilma: Name on circle: GH

ilnostreon: GV

Iloson: Ab

Ima (angel): H

IMACHEDEL: K

Imagnon: Divine name: GH

Imago: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Imamiah: J 5

IMANEL: K

IMATO: K

Imink: Ab

Immortalis: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

imperatrix: J 2

Imperiequertis: Magic word: GH

Impermutabilis: J 5

in substantia: J 5

Ina (angel): H

Inachiel (aerial spirit): L2

incõmensurabilis: J 5

incorruptibilis: J 5

ineffabilis: J 5

INESSENFATALL: L 1

inestimabilis: J 5

Ingodum: Divine name: GH

inmense: J 5

INNON: K

Inokos: Ab

inuisibilis: J 5

Iobohe: J 2

Iochomeros [S: iethomeros]: J 2

IOD, HE, VAU, HE: K

IOD: K

Iod Jehovah: Name of God associated with Hochmah in OP2.13

Iogion: Ab

Iohabos: J 2

iohel: J 2

Ioht: J 1, 4, 5

Iole: J 2, 4

iolehelney [S: iolehemey]: J 2

iomorihel: J 2

Iomoyhot: J 2

IONA: K

IONAH: K

IONIEL, one of the two Princes of the Universe: K

iosacchin [S: iosaithyn]: J 2

iosany: J 2

iosathin [S: iosathyn]: J 2

iose: J 2

Iosel: J 4

ioselimen: J 2

iosey: J 2

iosoihel: J 2

iotha: J 2

iothe: J 2

iothesezatha: J 2

iothileta: J 2

iotho: J 2

Iothosym: J 4

iothun [S: iothim]: J 2

Iotifar: Ab

Ioviel: A

Iozihon: J 2

Ipakol: Ab

Iparkas: Ab

Ipokys: Ab

Ipos: L 1

Ipreto: Divine name: GH

Iracundus: Divine name: GH

Irasomin: Ab

irasym [S: Irasim]: J 2

Irataton Divine name: GH

Irel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Irion: G

IRLY: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

Irmanotzod: L 3

Irmasial: One of five demons under Satanachi in K3

Irmenos: Ab

Irminon: Ab

Iromas: Ab

Iromenis: Ab

IRPA (Heb. name of God): NS A17:8

Irroron: Ab

Isagas: Ab

Ischigas: Ab

Ischires: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Ischiron: Ab

Ischiros, Ischyros: G; GH; H

ISCYROS: L 1

Isekel: Ab

Ishim: K

Isiael (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Isiel: K4

Isis: A

Irix: Ab

Isiamon: Ab

Isigi: Ab

iskyros [S: "yskyros"]: J 3

Ismael: Name on circle: GH

Ismoli (angel, minister of Samax): H

Istos ('Istós): Angel (or demon) of 13th hour of Sunday: MTS

Itael: L 3

ITEMON: L 1

Ithoth: TS

Ithuriel: K

Itmon: NS 162, 171

Itrasbiel (aerial spirit): L2

Itules (aerial spirit): L2

Iuar: Ab

iubiter (Jupiter): J 1

Iudal: TS

Iudarizê: TS

Iuestre (vel Celieste) [S: Yrestre]: J 4

Iuestre: J 1, 5

Iupiter (cf. Jupiter): P i iii 2; iv 33; v 1, 8, 13, 22, 27, 34; ii iii 6, 14, 15; vi 6, 7; x 3, 9, 15-18, 43-47, 58, 82; xii 4, 13, 15, 24, 35, 40, 42-46, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57; iii i 4; iii 2, 5, 11, 33; vii 2, 3,10, 18-22; ix 2, 12; xi 71; iv ii 20, 24; iv 5, 23, 40, 42, 44, 55, 57-59; v 11; vi 3; vii 1, 23; ix 59

Iupyter: J 5

iuste: J 5

IZACHEL: K

Izamiel: L 3

Izashiel: L 3

Izozon: Ab

izthanacihe [S: izthamhihe]: J 2

Ja: H

Jaajah: L 3

Jaajeh: L 3

Jac: Divine name: GH

Jachiel: Ab; L 3

Jachoroz: L 3

JACOB: K; Divine name: GH

Jacum: Magic word: GH

Jadiel: L 3

Jael: L 3

Jafanym: L 3

Jagiel: L 3

Jah: GH; H; L 1, 2, 4

Jamedroz: L 3

Jameriel: L 3

Jampeluch: Magical word on tenth ring in Douze Anneaux

Jamua: G

Janael (angel of first heaven): H

Janastardy: Divine name: GH

Janediel: L 3

Janic: H

Janiel: H; L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Janna: G

Janofiel: L 3

Janor (second hour of day): H

Janothyel: L 3

Janua (Ianua): One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Japhael: L 3

Japhet: K

Japuriel: L 3

Jariahel (angel of the second heaven): H

Jashiel: L 3

Jasphiel: L 3

Jastrion: L 3

Jasziel (aerial spirit): L2

Jatael: L 3

Jatroziel: L 3

Javael: L 3

Javiel: L 3

Jaym: H

Jayon (10th hour of day): H

Jazel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Je: GV; H

Jebiel: L 3

Jechiel: L 3

Jefischa: L 3

Jehoshua: K

Jehova, Jehovah: GH; GV; L 1, 2, 3; OP2.12

Jehovah Elohim: Name of God associated with Binah in OP2.13

Jehovah Sabaoth: Name of God associated with Hod in OP2.13

Jehovam (=Jehova, name of God): G

Jeia: H

Jen: H

Jenaziel: L 3

Jeniel: L 3

Jenotriel: L 3

Jeqon: E

Jeresous (angel of the second heaven): H

Jermiel: L 3

Jesu: J 3; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Jesubilin: GV

Jesus-Christus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Jet: GH

Jethim: J 2

Jetrel: E

Jezel: L 3

Jezisiel: L 3

Jmonyel: L 3

JOD HE VAU HE (=YHVH, Jehovah, qv): GV

Jod: GV; K4; L4

Johphiel: Intelligence of Jupiter (OP2.22)

Jomel: ms. variant of IONIEL: K

Jomjael: E

Jonadriel: L 3

Jophiel: OP2.13

Josata: GV

Joshua: K

Josta: GV

Joth He vau Deleth: J 1

JOTh: G; H; L 1

Jovial spirits: K

Joviel: A

Jumyel: J 1

Junyel: J 1

Jupiter: A, L 1, 3; T

Kabada: Ab

Kabersa: Ab

Kabriel: L 3

Kabshiel: NS 150, 173, 234, 236

Kachiel: L 3

Kadie (angel of the third heaven): H; K4

Kadolon: Ab

KADOS: GV

Kafles: Ab

Kafshiel: NS 237

KAHITA: K

KAILOETH: Magic word: GH; GV

Kaitar: Ab

Kaite (Kaîté): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Thursday: MTS

Kalgosa: Ab

Kalotes: Ab

Kameron: G

Kamiel: NS 232

Kamusel: Ab

Kamusil: Ab

Kaniston (Kanistôn): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Tuesday: MTS

Kanops (Kanóps): Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Monday: MTS

Kanorsiel: L 3

Kaph: K

KAPHU: K

Kapnithen (Kapnithén): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Friday: MTS

Karatan (Karatán): Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Karel: NS 66

Karelesa: Ab

Karer: J 5

Karex: J 1, 5

kariel [S: karihel]: J 2

KARKAHITA: K

Karron: L 3

Kasbeel: E

Kasdeja: E

Kasieref (Kasieréf): Angel (or demon) of 15th hour of Monday: MTS

Katanikotaêl: TS

Kataron: Ab

Kathos: L 3

Katini: Ab

Katolin: Ab

Katriel: NS 173

Katsin: Ab

Ke'el: E

Kedemel: The spirit of Venus (OP2.22)

Kefuya'el (Heb. KPVIAL, angel): NS A18:5

keineryon: J 1

Kele: Ab

Kelef: Ab

Kelen: Ab

Kemal: Ab

Keninya: NS 162

Keriam (Kêriám): Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Saturday: MTS

Keriel (aerial spirit): L2

Kerub (angel): K

Kerub, (one of the four rulers of the Elements): K

Kerubiel: NS 237

Kerubim: K

kery: J 1

kesphiomoma: J 5

KETHER: K

KETHERIEL!: K

keyalyn: J 1

Keyhven: P iii vii 17

Khaniael: K

Kheel: L 3

Khil: GV

Khirot (Khirôt): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Kigios: Ab

Kiligil: Ab

Kilik: Ab

Kilikimil: Ab

Kingael: L 3

Kipokis: Ab

Kirabar: G

Kirie (Kirié): Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Saturday: MTS

kiriel [A: Kyriel]: J 5

kirihel: J 2

Kirik: Ab

KIS: magic word that appears on pentacles in K4 and other sources

Klarimum: Divine name: GH

Klepoth: GV; K3 (alternate spelling: Kepoth)

Klic (or Kleim): One of the demons in K3 with dominion over earthquakes

Klippoth: GV

Klorecha: Ab

Klothod: TS

Klothon: TS

Kludun: TS

Kmiel: L 3

Kobada: Ab

Kobhan: Ab

Kogiel: Ab

Kokabel: E

Kokaviel: K

Kokolon: Ab

Kokphnêdismos: TS

Kolam: Ab

Kolan: Ab

kolfayelyn: J 1

Kolofe: Ab

Kopinos (Kopinós): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Thursday: MTS

Kore: Ab

Koronez: P iii vii 17

Kosem: Ab

Kphiel: L 3

KPVIAL (Kefuya'el Heb., angel): NS A18:5

Kradalos (Kradálos): Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Friday: MTS

Kralym: L 3

Kranos: L 3

Kranoti: L 3

Kriel: L 3

Kronos: TS

Kshiel: L 3

Kumeatêl: TS

Kumentaêl: TS

Kuno[s]paston: TS

kurgos: TS

Kursoel (Kursoél): Angel of Friday/Venus: MTS

Kurtaêl: TS

Kusiepotos (Kusiepotós): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Monday: MTS

Kutos (Kutós): Angel (or demon) of 12th hour of Saturday: MTS

KUZU: K

KVKB, Kokav, Mercury: K

kyrion: J 2

kyris: J 2

Kyryos: J 1, 5

l: J 1

la: J 1

Laaval: Demon: GH

labana: J 1

labdaio: J 2

labelas: J 1

Laber: Magic word: GH

labimegas [S: labnnegas]: J 2

Labisi: Ab

Laboneton: Ab

Laboux: Ab

labyel: J 1

labynegual [S: labynegnal]: J 2

lacham [S: latham]: J 2

Lachatyl: Ab

Lachiel: L 3

lacramagnal [S: lacamagal]: J 2

lacyel or lantyel: J 1

ladaiedon: J 2

Ladiel (aerial spirit): L2

Ladrotzod: L 3

laell: J 1

laeradonyn: J 1

lafayel: J 1

lafyel: J 1

Lagasaf: Ab

Lagasuf: Ab

lagay: J 2

Laginx: Ab

Lagiros: Ab

Lahaqiel: NS 178, 211, 236

Lama (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Lamael (aerial spirit): L2

lamagil: J 2

lamah [A: Lauiah]: J 5

lamahyhel: J 2

Lamajah: L 3

lamal: J 2

Lamalon: Ab

lamam: J 2

lamamathios [S: lamathios]: J 2

lamanazamir [S: lamanazamyr]: J 2

Lamandy [S: lamandi]: J 4

lamar: J 2

Lamargos: Ab

Lamarhon: L 3

Lamarion: Ab

Lamas (aerial spirit): L2

Lambros (Lâmbros): one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

Lamdomathon: J 4

Lamechalal: TS

LAMECK: GV

Lamed: K

Lamediel: L 3

LAMEDIN: K

Lameht (vel Lameth) [S: Lameth]: J2; J3

lameley: J 2

lamely: J 2

lamen: J 2, 3

Lameniel (aerial spirit): L2

Lameros: L 3

Lamerotzod: L 3

Lamersy: L 3

Lameson: L 3

Lameth [S: Lameht]: J 2, 3

lamezai: J 2

Lamiara: J 5

LAMIDECK: GV

Lamiel: L 3

lammaramos: J 2

Lamo: K4

lamochyamon [S: lamochiamon]: J 2

Lamolon: Ab

lamtara: J 1

lamua [S: lamna?]: J 2

Lamuanaht [S: lamnavaht]: J 4

lamuay [S: lamnay]: J 2

lamyara: J 5

lamyhar: J 2

lamyhel: J 2

lãmyhel: J 2

lanamyhel [S: iãnamyhel]: J 2

lanamyr [S has a bar over the an.]: J 2

lanar: J 2

lanaymos: J 2

Landa: Magic word: GH

landamelyhon: J 2

landamos: J 2

landelyn: J 1

landethe pharon [S: bandethepharon]: J 2

landothes: J 2

lanerecabal [S: laverecabal]: J 2

lang: J 1

Langael: L 3

Lanifiel: L 3

lanos: J 2

Lanoziel: L 3

lanpda [S has lanpda corrected to laupda]: J 2

lanpdan: J 2

lanpta: J 2

lanthamos: J 2

Lantrhots: L 3

lapdaas [S: lapdas]: J 2

lapdaihadon: J 2

lapdamozyhon [S: lapda mozihon]: J 2

lapdamylon: J 2

Lapheriel: L 3

Laphor (aerial spirit): L2

Laquel (angel of the second heaven): H

Larael (aerial spirit): L2

Laralos: Ab

Larfos (aerial spirit): L2

Larfuty: L 3

largitor: J 5

Lariel (aerial spirit): L2; L3

larmanail: J 2

Larmich: L 3

Larmol (aerial spirit): L2

Larphiel (aerial spirit): L2

laryagathyn: J 1

Las (aerial spirit): L2

Lashiel: L 3

Lastor (Lastór): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Thursday: MTS

latebayfanysyn: J 1

latham: J 2

Latiel: L 3

Latisten: H

latrityn: P i v 27

latumine: P i v 27

Lauday: GV

laymateram [S: laymatham]: J 2

laymos: J 2

layna: J 2

layralosyn: J 1

Lazaba (aerial spirit): L2

lazahemor: J 2

LAZAI: K

Lazamar [S: lazamair]: J 4

LBNH, Levanah, the Moon: K

lc: J 1

lebathon [S: lebachon]: J 2

Lebes: L 4

lebrachiel: J 1

Lecabel: J 5

leccos [S: lectos]: J 2

lechanagihel [S: lethanagihel]: J 2

Lechisihel: J 4

lechom [S: lethom]: J 2

lecton: J 2

Ledieha: Divine name: GH

Ledrion: GV

legelime, legelyme: J 2

legenale: J 2

legmes: J 2

Legomezon: J 4

Legomothay: J 4

Legornezon: J 4

legos: J 2

legyn: J 2

lehahiah [A: Lehachiah]: J 5

lehemuyos: J 2

Lehuz: P iii vii 27

Leiste (vel Trayeste) [S: Leyste]: J1; J4; J5

lelahel: J 5

lelalyon: J 1

lemahat: J 2

lemaht (uel Lenthath) [S: semaht]: J 2

lemaiho: J 2

Lemalon: Ab

lemar: J 2

Lemaron: L 3

lematalmay: J 2

lemay: J 2

lemdihon: J 2

Lemdomethon: J 4

lemdra: J 5

lemechiel [S: lemethiel]: J 2

lemegos: J 2

lemehyel [S: lemyhel]: J 2

Lemel: Ab

lemeliham [S: lemelih_u_m]: J 2

lemenron: J 3

lemesey: J 2

Lemodac (aerial spirit): L2

lemogethon: J 4

lemohot [S: lemehot]: J 2

Lemozar: L 3

lemozay [S: lemazai]: J 2

Lemur: L 3

lemyar: J 2

lenat [S: lenat corrected to levat]: J 2

lenayon: J 1

lenezothos [S: lenozothos]: J 3

Lengael: L 3

Leniel: Ab

Leo: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 11-13; v 16, 18, 24, 25, 32; ii ix 2; x 52, 54, 84; xi 15-17; xii 14, 39, 43-45; iii ii 6; iii 17; vii 40; ix 14; iv ii 6; vi 13; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

leonbon: J 2

leosamaht: J 2

leosamaty: J 2

leosemaht: J 2

Lepaca: Ab

Lepacha: Ab

lephez: J 2

lephons [S: lephorijs]: J 2

lephoris: J 2

leprehoc [S: leprohot]: J 2

leprodoz: J 2

lepyron: J 1

Leraje: L 1

Leraye: L 1

lesebator [S: lesehator]: J 4

Letahaymeriz: P iii ix 4

letahemor [S: lota..]: J 2

Lethasiel: J 4

lethellete, lethellethe: J 1, 5

lethomai [S: lethomay]: J 2

lethonas: J 2

lethos: J 2

letiel: J 2

letytyeylyn: J 1

leuiah, leuuiah, Leviah: J 5

Levanah: Hebrew for the Moon. See OP2.13, L 1.

Leviathan: Ab; E

Leviel: L 3

Leyelgane: P iv ix 65

Leyequerich: P iv ix 65

Leyequin: P iv ix 65

Leyequir: P iv ix 65

Leyeric: P iv ix 65

Leyerus: P iv ix 65

Leyexeris: P iv ix 65

leynaht: J 3

leyndra: J 1, 5

leyrayell: J 1

Leyste: H

lezahel: J 2

lezaydi: J 1

lezen: J 2

lezorial [S: lezorihal]: J 2

lhavala: GV

Liachidi: H; L 1

lialon: J 2

liamintho: GV

libares: J 1

libarre: J 1

liber: J 2

liberatrix: J 2

libes: J 5

Libiel (aerial spirit): L2

Libra: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 6, 16-18, 33; v 30; ii iii 9; x 56; xi 21-23; xii 20, 46, 55; iii ii 8; iii 19; v 3; vii 16; iv ii 8

Licanen: Ab

Ligilos: Ab

lihares [S: lyhares]: J 2

lihelma: J 3

Lilita: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 25c

Lilith, the Demon Queen of debaucheries: BP 4b, 1c, 2c; K

LILIThA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

lilium: J 2

Limer (Limér): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Friday: MTS

Lion-bearer: TS

Lior (Liór): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Thursday: MTS

liricom: J 5

Liriel: Ab

Lirik (Lirík): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Saturday: MTS

Liriol: Ab

Lirion: Ab

Lirochi: Ab

Liroki: Ab

Lithidos (Lithidós): Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Tuesday: MTS

lithon: J 3

liulay: J 5

Lobel: Ab

Lobquin (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Locater: Ab

loccosi [S: loctosy]: J 2

Loch [S: hazemeloth]: J 4

Lochos: J 4

lodeho: J 2

Lodiel (aerial spirit): L2

Lodir: GV

loeloon: J 1

loemgemar [S: lornigemar]: J 2

Loginar (Loginár): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Wednesday: MTS

Logos: J 4

Lomiol: Ab

Lomor (aerial spirit): L2

lomtecy [S: Iometety]: J 2

lomyht: J 2

Lon: J 2; Divine name: GH

lopheo: J 2

Loray (demon): G

Lord_of_glory: E

Lord_of_kings: E

Lord_of_Spirits: E

Lord_of_the_mighty: E

Lord_of_the_rich: E

Lord_of_wisdom: E

Loriol: Ab

Losimon: Ab

Losimon: Ab

Lotaym: Ab

lothanan: J 2

lothios: J 2

lothos: J 2

Loutzifer (Loutzifér, Loutzifer) Demon associated with the first hour of Wednesday, First Spirit of the East: MTS; see also Lucifer

loynar: J 2

LTBA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

lubiras: J 5

lucharanochyn: J 4

Luciel (aerial spirit): L2

Lucifer (demon): Ab; G; GH; GV; K4; L 1; see also Loutzifer

Lucifuge, Lucifuge Rofocale (lit. the light-shunner) (demon, prime minister): G; K (Levi's "excerpt")

Luesaf: Ab

luetundium: J 5

Luhiel: NS 160

lulyaraf: J 1

lumen: J 2

Luna: J 2; L 1, 3; P i ii 4; iii 2; iv 1, 2, 6, 18, 31, 33; v 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11-14, 16-19, 23-25, 29, 31, 33, 34; vii 1; ii i 2; iii tit., 1-12, 14-16; v 3; vi 6, 7; x 8, 9, 35-38, 46, 52, 54, 74-79, 87; xii 11, 25, 36, 39-41, 43-45, 47, 49-51, 55-57, 59; iii i 9; iii 2, 10, 11, 33; vi 1; vii 8, 15, 32, 33; viii 1; ix 7, 11-15, 17; xi 1, 71, 96; iv ii tit., 1-10, 12, 14-17, 22, 25; iii 2; iv 4, 21, 34, 38, 41, 52, 55, 59, 64; v 11; vi 8, 13; vii 9, 20, 23, 31, 39, 41, 47; ix 29-49, 51-56, 64

Lunar spirits: K

Lundo: Ab

Lustifion: L 3

Lutais: GH

Lux: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Luziel (aerial spirit): L2

lx [R: lh]: J 1

ly: J 1

Lycurgos: TS

lyncodoneyl: J 1

MA: K

maadon: J 1

maalyel: J 1

maarym: J 1

maasyell: J 1

Mabakiel: Ab

mabareylyn: J 1

Mabiel: L 3

Mabron: Divine name: GH

mabynt: J 1

Macader: P iv ix 58

macalon: J 2

Macariel: L 2

MACBAL: K

maccasor: J 1

MACH: K

machanon [S: mathanon]: J 2

machar: J 2

Machariel: L2 (aerial spirit)

Machasiel: H (angel of the fourth heaven)

Machatan: H

Machatori or Machator (angel): H

machelaglilos: J 2

Machen: H

Machidael: Magic word: GH

machitilon: J 2

Machmag: L 3

Machon: H

Maciem: P iv ix 59

macnayelyn: J 1

macratyf: J 1

macrya: J 1

madaaios [S: madiaaios]: J 2

Madadoel (Madadoél): Angel of Wednesday/Mercury: MTS

Madael: demon: GH

Madail: Ab

maday: J 1

Madiel: H; L 3

Madilon: GV

Madim: Hebrew for Mars. See K and OP2.13.

Madimiel: K

Madiniel: K4

madin: J 1

madoin: GV

Mador (aerial spirit): L2

madrat: J 1

Madriel (aerial spirit): L2

maduch: J 1

Madurez: P iii x 14

Mael: H; L 3

Mafalac: Ab

mafatyn: J 1

Mafayr (aerial spirit): L2

Mafri'el (Heb. MPRIAL, angel): NS A18:4

Mafriel: L 3; NS 58

Mafrus (aerial spirit): L2

maga: J 2

magaal: J 2

Magael (aerial spirit): L2

magal: J 2

Magalast: Ab

magalhamethor [S: Megal..]: J 2

magamagol: J 2

magdyell: J 1

magelhel [S: magel hel]: J 2

mageyoméne: TS

Maggid: Ab

magiel [S: hatamagiel]: J 4; L3

Magiros: Ab

Magnael: L 3

magnarht: J 2

Magni (aerial spirit): L 2

magnl [S: magul?]: J 2

magnol: J 2

Magnus (uel magnys): J 2

Magnus Homo: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

magnyuya: J 1

Mago: K4

Magog: Ab

magol: J 2

magos: J 1

Magot: Ab

Magoth: Ab

Magots: G

Magras: P iv ix 60

Magreuse: G

Magriel: Angel in K4

Maguth (angel, minister of Suth): H

Magyros: Ab

Mahabeyuz: P iii ix 4

Mahagnuz: P iii ix 14

Mahalalel: E

Maharahetym: P iii x 11

Maharaz: P iii vii 25; ix 3

mahasiah: J 5

mahatioten [S: mahatihoten]: J 2

Mahaty: P iii vii 21

Mahaz: P iii ix 12

mahaziel [S: mahazihel]: J 2

Maher: P iii vii 27

Maherimeyz: P iii x 9

Mahiel: L 3

Mahue (aerial spirit): L2

mãhy: J 1

Mahydebyz: P iii vii 25

Maiel: L 3

maihol: J 2

MAIPHIAT: K

mairathal: J 2

Maisadul: Ab

Maithoth (Maithôth): Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Tuesday: MTS

MAITOR: K

Maius: P i v 27

Makael: L 3

Makalos: Ab

Makiel: angel: BP 3c

Malabed: Ab

Malach: Ab

Malachim, or the Kings: K

malamay [S: malamai]: J 2

Malaparos: J 4

Malapatas: J 4

malaquiram: J 1

Malcha: GH; GV

Malcha betharsism hed beruah schehalim: The Intelligency of the Intelligence of the Moon (OP2.22)

malchidael: J 5

Malchidiel: Angel ruling over Aries (OP2.14).

Malcho: L 3

Malgaras: L 2

Malgron (aerial spirit): L2

Malguel (aerial spirit): L2

Malhame: Divine name: GH

malichidael: J 5

malihagnathos [S: malihãgnathos]: J 2

MAL-KA: K

Malkhiel: K

MALKUTH: K

Maloht: J 1, 4, 5

Malphas: L 1

malquia: J 1

malquyel: J 1

malquyell: J 1

Maltiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Malutens: Ab

Malvita: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 1c, 2c, 25c

malysan: J 1

mamail: J 2

Mames: Ab

mamiah [A: Mumiah]: J 5

mamica: J 1

Mamliel: NS 160

Mamounas (Mamounás): Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Monday: MTS

mamyel: J 1

Man: J 1; Magic word: GH

manacham [S: manathã]: J 2

manadel [A: Monadel]: J 5

manay: J 2

mancyel: J 1

Mandesumini: G

Mandousin: GV

mandragores.: GV

mandyel: J 1

Maneloym: L 3

Maner (Manê) Angel (or demon) of 7th hour of Sunday: MTS

Maneyloz: L 3

Maniel (angel): BP 3c; (aerial spirit): L2

manos: J 2

Mansi (aerial spirit): L2

manstitan: J 5

Mantan: Ab

mantanius: J 1

Mantayriz: P iii x 12

Mantiens: Ab

Manties: Ab

manua: J 2

manuat: J 1

Manuel: L 3

manyhas [S: manyahas]: J 2

manyny: J 1

manyt: J 1

Maphueluz: P iii x 9

Mara smyt: P iii vii 36

maraama: J 2

marab: J 2

Maraca: K4

marachihel [S: marathihel nat]: J 2

Marachy: L 3

Marae (aerial spirit): L2

Marag: Ab

Marah: Ab

Maranton: Ab

Maranus: P iv ix 64

Maraos: Ab

Maras (aerial spirit): L2

marathal: J 2

marathos: J 2

maray: J 3

marayhathol: J 2

Marayuz: P iii ix 7

Marbas (demon): G; L 1

Marchiel: L 3

Marchosias: L 1

Marcius: P iv vii 43

marcurie (Mercury): J 1

Marderô: TS

Mardiel: L 3

Mareaiza[Sl2731:Morcaza] (aerial spirit): L2

Marech: P iii vii 24

marenell: J 1

Mareso: GV

Marfiel: L 3

Marguns (aerial spirit): L2

marham: J 1

marhyll: J 1

maria genitrix: J 2

Marianu (aerial spirit): L2

Mariel: (angel): BP 3c; L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Marifiel: L 3

marimoe: J 1

Marinata: H

Marku: Ab

marmamor [S: marmamo]: J 2

Marmaraô: TS

Marmaraôth: TS

Marmarath: TS

marmaryn: J 1

Maroch: L 3

MARON: K; K3

Maroth (aerial spirit): L2

marothon: J 2

marquesnam: J 1

Marrech: P iv vii 23

Mars: J 1, 5; L 3; P i iii 2; iv 2, 6, 31, 33; v 14, 18, 30; ii iii 8, 11,14, 15; vi 7; x 4, 9, 19-21, 28, 48-50, 83; xi 2, 3; xii 2, 12, 16, 23, 27, 37, 39-41, 43-45, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56; iii i 5, 6; iii 2, 6, 11; v 3; vii 4, 6, 11, 16, 23-25, 29, 36, 37; ix 3, 13; iv ii 21, 25; iv 7, 24, 32, 37, 41-43, 53, 55, 56, 59; v ii; vi 4, 13; vii 44; ix 60; T

Martial spirits: K

Martino: GV

Martlos: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 25c

mary: J 1, 4, 5

marybyn: J 1

maryel: J 1

maryhel [S: marihel]: J 4

marylyn: J 1

Masadul: Ab

Masaub: Ab

Maseriel: L 2

Masgabriel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Mashel (aerial spirit): L2

Masiel: L 3

Masloth: Hebrew for Zodiac. See OP2.13.

Massayel: GH

Massias: Divine name: GH (apparently a typo for Messias)

Mastuel (aerial spirit): L2

masulaef: J 1

masym [S: themaremasym]: J 2

matasignais (name of the Moon in Autumn): H; J 5

Matatam: Ab

mater: J 2

mathacon [S: mathathon]: J 2

mathar [S: Acathar]: J 2

matharihon: J 2

Mathiel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Mathlai (angel of the second heaven): H

mathois: J 3

Mathon: G; H (5th hour of night); J2; J4; K

mathyall: J 1

Matiel: L 3

Matiz: P iii ix 2

MATMONIEL: K

matraton: J 5

Matuyel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

MATZPATZ: BP, K (see MZPZ)

Maxar: P iv ix 59

May: J 2; Divine name: GH

mayeylyn: J 1

Maylez: P iii ix 6

maymogos [S: naymogos]: J 2

Maymon (king, angel of the air ruling on Saturday): H

Maz: P iii ix 2

mazay: J 4

mazica: J 1

Maziel [S: gnaramaziel]: J 2; L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Mazpaz (Heb. MZPZ õôöî -- see below): K (Sl. 1307 and Sl. 2383).

MBKLThA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

meahil: J 2

Mebahel: J 5

Mebahiah: J 5

Mebaschel: Ab

Mebbesser: Ab

Mebduliz: P iii x 9

Mebguedex: P iv ix 59

Mebhaer: Ab

Mebhasser: Ab

mechay [S: methay]: J 4

Mechebber: Ab

Mechiel: L 3

Meda: P iii vii 32

Medar (aerial spirit): L2

Medariuz: P iii x 14

Mediat (angel of the air ruling on Wednesday): H

Mediator: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Medicus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Medikit (Mêdikit): Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Medusiel: L 3

medyhos: J 2

Meegius: P iii vi 1

mefenyel: J 1

Megal: J 2, 3, 4

Megalak: Ab

megale: J 2, 3

megall [S: megalis]: J 4

Megalleh: Ab

Megalogim: Ab

megalon: J 4

megalos: J 2

Megalosin: Ab

megnon: J 2

megon: J 2

megonhamos: J 2

megos: J 2

megual [S: "megnal"]: J 3

meguon [S: "megnon"]: J 3

megus: J 2

Mehahiah: J 5

Mehalalel: angel: BP 3c

Mehe: P iii vii 33

mehekiel [A: Mecheiel]: J 5

Mehendiz: P iii ix 6

Mehenediz: P iii ix 13

Meheyediz: P xii ix 3

mehisrampna: J 4

meholim [S: mehohin]: J 2

Mehyelus: P iv ix 64

Mehyras: P iv ix 60

Meichidael.: GV

Meklboc: Ab

Mekhmeth (Mekhméth): Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Sunday: MTS

Mektimanas (Mektimanás): Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Monday: MTS

melahel: J 5

MELAKIM, Kings: K

Melamod: Ab

Melamud: Ab

Melanas: L 3

melany: GV

Melas: J2; L2 (aerial spirit)

Melcha (aerial spirit): L2

Melchal: TS

melche: J 1, 5

MELCHIAEL: GV

Melchidael: Angel: GH; GV

MELCHIOR: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

Melchon (aerial spirit): L2

Mel'ejal: E

MELEKH (Heb. MLK): K

Meletaz: P iii ix 7

Melhaer: Ab

Meliel (aerial spirit): L2

meliha: J 3

Melkejal: E

Melna: Ab

melos: J 2

Melpifron (Melpifrón): Angel (or demon) of 1st hour of Thursday: MTS

Melrotz: L 3

Mêltô: TS

melyon [S: melion]: J 2

melyson: J 1

Mem: K

Memakhth (Memákhth): Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Monday: MTS

Membrot: G

MEMEON: K

memmamiccos [S: menmamitos]: J 2

Memnolik: Ab

memomiccos [S: memomittos]: J 2

memothemath: J 2

memyel, memyell: J 1

mena [S: menya]: J 2

MENADIEL: L 2

Menador (aerial spirit): L2

Menail: One of the demons in K3

Menarchos: L 3

Menariel (aerial spirit): L2

Menarym: L 3

Menas: L 3

Menasiel: L 3

Mendrion: L 3

menehon: J 4

Menemeyduz: P iii x 8

Menesiel: L 3

Menhueriz: P iii x 11

Meniel [A: Menkiel]: J 5; L3

Menolik: Ab

MENOR: K

Menoriel: L 3

menya: J 2

Menydez: P iii x 9

meon: GV

mepathon: J 2

Merach (aerial spirit): L2

Meras (aerial spirit): L2

Merasiel (aerial spirit): L2

merassamaty [S: merasamacy]: J 2

meray: J 4

Meraye: Divine name: GH

Mercoph: L 3

Mercurial spirits: K

Mercurius: P i iii 2; v 23, 28, 33; ii iii 6, 14, 15; v 3; vi 7; x 7, 9, 31-34, 68-73, 86; xi 2; xii 6, 8, 17, 22, 31, 33, 40, 44, 49, 55; iii i 6, 8; iii 2, 9, 11, 33; vii 7, 14, 32; ix 6, 16; iv ii 8, 10, 17, 21, 24; iv 26, 34-36, 44, 55, 56, 59; v 11; vi 7, 10; vii 48, 61; ix 63

Mercury: J 1, 5; L 1, 3; T

Meresyn: L 3

Merhuyez: P iii ix 6

merhyll: J 1

Meriel: L 3

merkernon: J 1

merkerpon: J 5

merloy: GV

Mermo: Ab

Merniz: P iii ix 17

MEROD: K

Merosiel (aerial spirit): L2

Meroth (aerial spirit): L2

MERROÉ: GV

Mersilde: GV

MERTALIA: K

Mertiel (or Inertiel): One of the demons in K3 with dominion over transportation

meryel: J 1

merygall: J 1

Mesaf: Ab

MESHACH: K

Mesial: L 3

Mesriel: L 3

Messah (typo for Messiah?) Name on pentacle: GH

Messamarathon (vel Azeffamadathon): J 4

Messiach: K

Messias: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH; G; J 1, 5

Messies: Divine name: GH (evidently a typo for Messias, q.v.)

messihel: J 2

messyas: see Messias

Metafel: Ab

Metathiax: TS

METATRON (great angel, who is the Prince of the Angels): GV, K; NS 49, 162, 213 OP2.12 (also spelled Metattron)

Metayruz: P iii x 9

METEMAUZ: K

methalamathon: J 2

METHE: K

methonomos: J 2

methos: J 2

Methraton: K

Methridan (Methridán): Angel (or demon) of 23rd hour of Sunday: MTS

Metiel: L 3

Metlurez : P iii x 8

Metnegayn: P iv ix 61

metorylyn: J 1

Metoseph: Ab

Metosite: GV

METRATOR: K

Metziel: L 3

Meviel: L 3

Mexifron (Mexifrôn): Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Monday: MTS

Meyefurez: P iii x 11

Meyer: P iv ix 63

Meylus: P iv ix 62

Meyneluz: P iii ix 7

Meytaryz: P iii ix 15

Meyurneyz: P iii x 9

MH (Heb. magic name): NS A17:25

MHDR (Heb. "splendid", an epithet of God): NS A17:29

MHVDR (Heb. "splendid", an epithet of God): NS A17:29

Miag (Miág): Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Wednesday: MTS

micemya [S: mtemya]: J 2

Michael [Heb. MIKAL; A: Mihael, Mikael, Michaêl] (archangel): A; BP xxix, 3c; E; H; J 1, 2, 5; K; L 1, 3; NS (passim); OP2.12; P iv vii 23; T; TS; Angel of Sunday/the Sun, (Micahl) MTS

michathon: J 5

Michiael: GV

micho [S: mycho]: J 2

michoyn [S: mycholhyn]: J 2

micron [S: mitron]: J 2

MIDAEL Chief and Captain of the Celestial Army: K

Midot: NS 95

Miduch: name of demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 4b, 6b

Miel: H; J 5; L 3

MIES: K

Migaroth: magic word in K3

Mihel: J 5; L 3

Mihyraz: P iii ix 13

MIKAL (Michael, Heb., angel): NS A18:5

Miliom: Ab

Milki'el: E

Millant: One of the magic words to counter headache: GH

Milliel (angel of the second heaven): H

Milon: Ab

Miltas: P iv ix 64

Miltaz: P iii ix 17

Mimosa: Ab

minathil [S: mynathil]: J 2

Minosel: H

MINOSON: GV

Miqon: NS 162

Mirach: K4

MIRAEL Chief and Captain of the Celestial Army: K

Mischiros: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

miserecordia: J 5

misericordiæ: J 5

misericordiam: J 2

misertrix: J 2

Mishael: NS 161, 234

Misiel (aerial spirit): L2

Missabu (angel, minister of Arcan): H

Misteri: P iii vii 19, 21

Mitey: G

Mitrathon: G

Mitraton: GV; H (angel of the second heaven)

Mizrael: J 5

MPVAR (An epithet of God): NS 18.

MLK (Heb. King, an epithet of God): NS A1:24; A3:1,3, passim

MLVIThA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

mochora [S: mothora]: J 2

moderiel: J 5

Modiat (angel of the air ruling on Wednesday, var. of Mediat): H

mogal: J 2

Mokaschef: Ab

Molael (aerial spirit): L2

Molin: Ab

Moloch: K; TS

Momel (aerial spirit): L2

MOMERTON: K

momoht [S: memoht]: J 2

Monachiel: K

Monael (aerial spirit): L2

Monasiel: L 3

mone [= Moon]: J 1, 5

monhon: J 1, 3, 5

Monikonet (Monikonét): Angel (or demon) of 15th hour of Thursday: MTS

monocogristes: J 3

monorail: J 2

Monosriel: J 5

monoym: J 5

montazyn: J 1

montyelyn: J 1

monychyon: J 1

monyham: J 2

monyteon: J 1

Moon, moone: E; J 1, 5; L 1, 3; T; TS

Moracha (aerial spirit): L2

Morael (aerial spirit): L2

Morail: GV

Morax: L 1

morayeyll: J 1

Moreh: Ab

Morel: Ab

Morias (aerial spirit): L2

Moriel (aerial spirit): L2

Morilen: Ab

Morilon: Ab

morothochiel [S: morothothiel]: J 2

Mortoliel (aerial spirit): L2

Moschel: Ab

most_secret_ones: E

mothana [S: mochana]: J 2

motheham: J 2

Mouelta: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

Moym, Moyn: G

moys: J 4

Moziel (aerial spirit): L2

Mozm (var. of Moym): G

MPRIAL (Mafri'el Heb. angel): NS A18:4

MRKBIATh (Heb. name of God): NS A17:9

MSA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:27

Mubrynayz: P iii ix 17

Mudirel (aerial spirit): L2

Mugiens (les Mugiens): GH

Mulach: Ab

mulier: J 2

Mulin (Múlin): Angel (or demon) of 20th hour of Friday: MTS

Munefiel (aerial spirit): L2

MUOBOII: K

Murahe (aerial spirit): L2

Muriel: Angel ruling over the Zodiacal sign of Cancer (OP2.14). Also J5; K.

Murmur: L 1

Mursiel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

muryon: J 1

MUSALIA: K

MUSIL: K

Musiniel (aerial spirit): L2

Musiriel (aerial spirit): L2

Musisin: GV

Musor (aerial spirit): L2

Mustery: P iv vii 23

Musuziel (aerial spirit): L2

muthon: J 2

Muviel: L 3

myacha: J 1

mybacaiab [S: mybancaiab]: J 2

mybhahal [S: nybahal]: J 2

mychael: J 5

mychathomos: J 2

mychaze: J 1

mychyn: J 2

mycracosmos [S: myc_a_cosmos]: J 2

mycraton: J 1

myeraton: J 1

mygerozoma [S: nygerozoma]: J 2

myhabal: J 2

myhamy: J 3

myhayhos [S: myhaylos]: J 2

myhel: J 5

myheon: J 2

myheragyn: J 2

myheromos [S: myleromos]: J 2

mymyhel: J 2

mynab: J 2

mynael: J 1

mynamchanamaycha [S: mynãtanamaytha]: J 2

mynaron: J 2

Mynymarup: Ab

myphos [S: nyphos]: J 2

myrahel: J 2

myrecagil: J 2

myremoht: J 2

Myrezyn (aerial spirit): L2

Myrmo: Ab

myryel: J 1

myschyel: J 1

myssyn: J 1

mytinab [S: mythynab]: J 2

MZH (Heb. magic name): NS A17:24

MZPZ (Name of God, Heb. õôöî): BP and see Gollancz' introduction, p. xii discussing the Ring of King Solomon. This mystical name "occurs in other works of a similar nature as a transposition of letters for the Tetragrammaton (JHVH) äåäé according to the principle ù''á ú''à, i. e. the interchange of the first and last letter, the second and last but one letter, and so on of the Hebrew alphabet. Thus: M (î) would stand for J, Z (ö) for H, P (ô) for V and Z (õ) for H — hence JHVH (äåäé)."

Naajah: L 3

naamab: J 1

naaseyn: J 1

Nabam: Demob: GH

Naberius: L 1

Nabhi: Ab

nabnell: J 1

naboon: J 1

nabramala [S: nahamala]: J 2

nabsuf: J 1

nabyafsyn: J 1

nabyalyn: J 1

naccameryf: J 1

nacery: J 1

nachairo [S: nachano]: J 2

nachall: J 1

nachama [S: nathama]: J 4

Nacheran: Ab

Nachiel: The intelligence of the Sun (OP2.22)

naclya: J 1

nacpas: J 1

nactif: J 1

Naderabar [S: vaderabar]: J 4

Nadrel (aerial spirit): L2

Nadriel: L 3

Nadroc (aerial spirit): L2

Nadrusiel (aerial spirit): L2

nadys: J 1

nafac: J 1

Naffayz: P iii x 8

naffreynyn: J 1

nafya: J 1

Nagael: L 3

Nagan: Ab

Nagani: Ab

Nagar: Ab

Nagedarom [S: vagedarom]: J 4

nagem: J 2

nagenay: J 2

Nagid: Ab

Nagoa: King of the East: GH

nagron: J 1

Nahalon: L 3

Nahaym: P i iv 21

Nahema, the Demon of Impurity: K

Nahiel (aerial spirit): L2

nahuzihis: J 2

Najin: Ab

Nalael (aerial spirit): L2

NALE: K

namacar: J 2

Namael: L 3

Namalon: Ab

namathar: J 4

Nambroth: Demon: GH

Nameal: L 3

Namedor: L 3

Nameron: L 3

Nameroyz: L 3

Nameton: L 3

Namiros: Ab

namor [S: namar]: J 2

namylyn: J 1

Nanael: J 5

nanagen [S: navagen]: J 2

Nangariel: K

Nanitaynuz: P iii x 8

nanyseyorar: J 1

Naphael: L 3

napybael: J 1

Naquirus: P iv ix 61

nar: J 5

naragal: J 2

Naras (aerial spirit): L2

narath: J 1

naratheos: J 2

narbeyll: J 1

Narcoriel: L 3

Nardac: One of the magic words used in a spell to prevent eating: GH

Narel: E

nargeron: J 1

nariel (or vriel): J 5

Narmiel (aerial spirit): L2

Naromiel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

narraabylyn: J 1

Narsial (aerial spirit): L2

Narzael (aerial spirit): L2

Nasael: L 3

Nascelon: Ab

Nasi: Ab

nascyasori: J 1

Nasiniel (aerial spirit): L2

Nasnia (3rd hour of day): H

Nasnia: K

naspaya: J 1

naspyell: J 1

nassa: J 1

nassam: J 1

Nassar (aerial spirit): L2

Nastegeon: J 5

Nastoriel: L 3

Nastros (aerial spirit): L2

Nastrus: L 3

Nastul: L 3

nastyfa: J 1

nasyby: J 1

nasyel: J 1

Natalon (12th hour of day): H

Natalis: Ab

Nataniel: NS 236

Naôth: TS

Nathalon: K

natham: J 2

nathanathoy: J 5

nathaniel: J 5

nathanothasy: J 1

nathanothay: J 5

natharathon: J 2

Nathath: TS

Natheel: L 3

nathi: J 1, 5

Nathmiel: L 3

nathoes [S: nathes]: J 2

Nathriel (aerial spirit): L2

Natolico: Ab

natryel: J 1

Naveriel: L 3

Naveron: L 3

Naveroz: L 3

Naviel: L 3

Naycahua: P iii ix 11

Naydrus: GV

naylyn: J 1

naym [S: ietharnaym]: J 2

nazaihemaht: J 3

naziathos [S: nazihathos]: J 2

nazihacol: J 2

nazihatel: J 2

NDBAL (Nedav'el, Heb., angel): NS A18:5

neapry: J 1

Nearach: Ab

Nebiel: NS 217

Nebiros (demon, maréch. de camp.): G

Nebirots: GV

necad: J 1

necamya: J 1

nechamyha: J 4

nechir: J 5

Nechorym: L 3

neciel: J 5

Necol: P iv ix 39

necpys: J 1

Nedabor: L 3

Nedarym: L 3

Nedav'el (Heb. NDBAL, angel): NS A18:5

Nedeyrahe: P iv ix 34

Nedriel (aerial spirit): L2

Nedroz: L 3

Nedruan: L 3

nedylar: J 1

nedyr: J 1

Nefarym: L 3

Neforuz: P iii x 12

Nefrias: L 3

Nefthada: TS

negal: J 2

negemar: J 2

negemezihol: J 2

Negen: Ab; J 2

negero: J 2

neginather: J 2

negiogge [S: negioggen]: J 2

Nehariel: Angel in K4

Nenisem: Ab

negon: J 2

negora: J 2

neguabel [S: negnabel]: J 2

nehehom [S has nehehom corrected to vehehom]: J 2

nehel: J 2

nehihahon: J 2

nehubaell: J 1

nekyff: J 1

Nelapa (angel of the second heaven): H

nelchael [A: Nelkael]: J 5

Neliel: L 3

nelomannathar [S: velomanathar]: J 3

neloreos mohan [S: velozeosmohu; the "u" has an "n" written above it.]: J 3

nelos: J 2

Nemamiah: J 5

Nemariel (aerial spirit): L2

nemenomas [S: nemenomos]: J 2

nemenomos: J 2

nenanryn: J 1

neodamy: J 2

neomahil: J 2

neomail: J 2

neothatir: J 2

nepenyelyn: J 1

Nephalez: P iii x 14

Nephilim or Voluptuous Ones;: K

Nephthada: TS

neptaliam: J 5

Neqael: E

Nerastiel: L 3

Nercamay: Ab

Neriel (aerial spirit): L2; NS 160

Nermas: L 3

Nerohin: magic word in K3

Neron (9th hour of day): H; K

nerothinay: J 2

Nesbiros: GV

Neschamah: Ab

nesfis: P iv 27

nesgnyraf: J 1

Nesisen: Ab

Nestabor: K4

Nestoriel: L 3

Nestorii: L 3

Nestoroz: L 3

Neszomy: L 3

nethi: J 2

Netoniel: K; K4

Netos (7th hour of night): H; K

NETZACH: K

neyeyll: J 1

neynehos [S: phateneyneos]: J 2

Neyrgat: P iv ix 62

niangaroryn: J 1

nidar: GV

Nierier (Nieriér): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Thursday: MTS

Nifon (Nifôn): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Friday: MTS

Nikem (Nikém): Angel (or demon) of 5th hour of Saturday: MTS

Nikon (Nikôn): Angel (or demon) of 15th hour of Sunday: MTS

Nilen: Ab

nili: J 5

Nilima.17: Ab

Nilion: Ab

Nimalon: Ab

Nimerix: Ab

nimieri: P iv 27

Nimirix: Ab

Nimorup: Ab

Nintiaf (Nintiáf): Angel (or demon) of 16th hour of Sunday: MTS

Niokhel (Niokhél): Angel (or demon) of 18th hour of Monday: MTS

Nisa: GV

nisan: J 1

nisquem: J 1

Nistik: Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Sunday: MTS

Nithael: J 5

nitthaiah: J 5

nm [S: vm]: J 1

Noaphiel: K

Noard: GV

Nodar (aerial spirit): L2

noelma: GV

Noga: Hebrew for Venus. See OP2.13 and J 1

Nogah: Ab

Nogahiel: K

Nogar: Ab

Nogen: Ab

Noguiel (aerial spirit): L2

nohorim: P iv 27

Nolicheil: J 5

Nolom: Ab

nomemal: J 2

nomeros: J 2

Nominon: Ab

nomios: J 5

nomygon: J 1, 5

norizane: J 2

noryel: J 1

nosmyel: J 1

nosulaceps: J 1, 5

NOTH: K

nothi: J 5

Notiser: Ab

Novissimus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

noymos: J 1, 5

noynemal: J 2

Nuberus (demon): G

nubes: J 2

Nudeton: Ab

Nuditon: Ab

Nufeneguediz: P iii vi 1

Nun: K

nupuryn: J 1

Nuriel: angel: BP 3c; NS 173, 202, 234

nuthaiah [A: Nithhaiah]: J 5

Nuthon: Ab

nutrix: J 2

nuyym: P iv 27

NVGH, Nogah, Venus: K

nyazpatael: J 1

nybyryn: J 1

nycheos: J 2

nycromyhos.: J 2

nydeht: J 2

nydoccicib [S: nydocricib]: J 2

nyenyolyn: J 1

nyguedam: J 1

Nymphes (class of spirits): A

nyrylyn: J 1

nysan: J 1

nytheromathum: J 2

nyzozoronba [S: nyzozoroba]: J 2

oadyon: J 1

Oarios: G

Oaspeniel (aerial spirit): L2

Obagiron: Ab

Obdadia (vel Abladya) [S: Abbadya]: J 4

Obedama: Ab

Obedamah: Ab

Obizuth;: TS

Obu: Divine name: GH

Occinomos: K

Occymomos (name of God): J 1, 5

Occymomyon: J 1, 5

occynonenon: J 5

Och (Olympic spirit of the Sun): A

Ochothas: J 5

Ocleiste, ocleyste: J 1, 5

OCTINOMON: K

OCTINOMOS (name of the conjurer): H; L 1, L 2

October: P iv vii 24

Octynnomos: J 5

Odax: Ab

Odiel (aerial spirit): L2

Oemiel (aerial spirit): L2

Ofafiel, Ofafi'el (Heb. VPPIAL, angel): NS A18:4, p. 58

Ofetes ('Ofétês): Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Ofisiel (aerial spirit): L2

Ogia: Divine name: GH

Ogilen: Ab

Ogologon: Ab

ohoc: J 1

Ohodos: K4

Oholem: Ab

Okhlor ('Okhlór): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Thursday: MTS

Okirgi: Ab

Okiri: Ab

Ol: L 3

Olaáky: Ab

Olemdemis: Divine name: GH

Olisermon: Ab

OLIZ (Heb. name of God): NS A17:10

Olosirmon: Ab

olyab: J 1

Olyaram: G

olydeus: J 1, 5

olyeyll: J 1

Olympic Spirits (class of angels): A

Omael: J 5

Omages: Ab

Omagos: Ab

Omalharien: L 3

Oman: Ab

Omary: L 3

omaza (vel Phet): J 4

Ombalafa: Ab

Ombalat: Ab

Ombonar: J 1, 5

Omedriel: L 3

OMEGA: H; L 1

Omeliel: K

Omeliet: K4

Omerach: L 3

Omet: Ab

Omiel (aerial spirit): L2

omis [S: onus]: J 2

Omnipotens: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

omor: GV

Omyel (aerial spirit): L2

omyell: J 1

OMIAL (`Ami'el, Heb., angel): NS A18:5

On: Name of God: Dz; GH; GV; H; J 1, 5; K; L 1, 2, 3; One of the magic words to counter pleurisie: GH

onath: J 5

onay: J 5

Onayepheton: K

Onei: Ab

ONEIPHETON: K

ONEMALIA: K

Onera: G

Oneypheon: K

onfilmetoii: J 5

onlepot: J 5

Onoitheon, Onoytheon: J 5

Onoskelis: TS

onoxyon (angel of the day of Saturn): J 1

Onoytheon (name of God): J 1

ONZO: K

OOH (Heb. name of Metatron in Enoch III, ch. 48D): NS 49

Ooukh ('Ooúkh): Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Thursday: MTS

OPERA: K

Ophaniel: OP2.12

Ophannin: E

ophicen: J 5

Ophiel: A (Olympic spirit of Mercury); K

Opilm: Ab

Opilon: Ab

Opios ('Opiós): Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Sunday: MTS

Opnax ('Opnáx): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Wednesday: MTS

opron: J 5

Opun: Ab

Opyron: J 1, 5

oragon: J 2

Orariel (aerial spirit): L2

Orasim (var. of Brasim): G

Orax ('Oráx): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Sunday: MTS

orchyne: J 1

orfyell: J 1

Orgosil: Ab

OrHa: J 5

Orian ('Orián): Angel (or demon) of 17th hour of Tuesday: MTS

Orias: L 1

Oriel: A; G (demon?); L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Oriens: Ab; King of the East, and third spirit to be called according to An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Ad. 36674, fol. 48r)

Oriet: GV

Orifiel: K3; T. On Orifiel, see also Johannes Trithemius, De Septem Secundeis, 1508 and Steganographia, Book 3.

Origatiumgu: Divine name: GH

Origo: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Orinel: Ab

Orinos ('Orinós): Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Thursday: MTS

Orion: J 1, 5

oriphiel: J 5

oristion, Oristyon: J 1, 5

ORISTON: H; L 1, 2; Name of God: GH

Orjares: E

orleunyon: J 1

Ormael: L 3

Ormas: L 3

Ormenu (aerial spirit): L2

Ormezyn: L 3

Ormion: Ab

Ormonas: Ab

Ormyel: L 3

Ornai ('Ornaî) Angel (or demon) of 2ndt hour of Sunday: MTS

ornath: J 5

Ornias: TS

Ornich (aerial spirit): L2

Orniel ('Orniél): Demon of Thursday/Jupiter: MTS

Orobas: L 1

Oroia: Ab

OROII: K

Oroya: Ab

Orpaniel: NS 150

Orpemiel (aerial spirit): L2

Orphaniel: H

orpheniel: J 5

Orphiel: L 3

Orphitue: Name of God: GH

ORTAGU: K

ortophagon: J 2

ortus: J 2

oryel, oryell: J 1, 5

Oryhel: J 1, 5

Oryn (aerial spirit): L2

orynyn: J 1

oryon: J 5

Oryoram: G

os: J 5

Osael (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Osanna: J 5

Ose: L 1

OSIANDOS: K

Osmadiel: L 3

Osmie ('Osmié) Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Sunday: MTS

osmyn: J 1

Osogyon: Ab

Ossidiel (aerial spirit): L2

Osurmy: GV

Ot: NS 201

Otheos: J 2, 4, 5; L 1; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Othie: G

Othiel (aerial spirit): L2

Otim (aerial spirit): L2

OTTO: Magic word on amulet: GH

Oualielo (Oúalielô): Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Thursday: MTS

Ougariel (Ougariel) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

Ouia: G

Ouistos (Oúistós): Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Monday: MTS

Ouniferitousz (Oúniferitoúsz): Angel (or demon) of 24th hour of Friday: MTS

Ouril (Oúríl) (angel of Tuesday/Mars): MTS

Ourer (7th hour of day): H; K

ourylyn: J 1

Outael (Oútaêl): Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Thursday: MTS

Ouyar: GV

Ovis: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

OYZROYMAS: K

paafyryn: J 1

Paajah: L 3

paamyel: J 1

Pabel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Pachahy: Ab

Pachei: Ab

Pachid: Ab

paciencia: J 5

pacifica: J 2

pacrel: J 1

pacrifon: J 1

pactryell: J 1

pacyta: J 1

Padiel: L 2

Pafesla: Ab

Paffran (angel, minister of Samax): H

Pafiel (aerial spirit): L2

Pagalust: Ab

Pagat: NS 211

pagnlan: J 1

pahaliah: J 5

Pahamcocyhel: J 5

pahanitoriel: J 5

Paimon (AKA Paymon): King of the North, Ab; King of the Northwest: L 1, W

Paimoniah: K

Pakid: Ab

palathoros [S: pallathoros]: J 2

Pallantre: GH

palliticatos [S: pallititatos]: J 2

paltamus: J 1

PALTELLON: K

paltifur: J 1

paltnya: J 1

palyel: J 1

palylet: J 1

palytam: J 1

Pamachiel: Angel in K4

PAMERSIEL: L 2

pamhynyel: J 1

pamilihel [S: pamylihel]: J 2

Pammon: L 3

PAMOR: K

Pamory: L 3

pamphilos: J 2

Pamyel: L 3

Pan: GV

Panael: L 3

PANCIA: GV

panconuegos [S: pancomnegos]: J 2

Pandiel (aerial spirit): L2

Pandoli: Ab

Pandor (aerial spirit): L2

Pandroz: L 3

panetheneos: J 2

Panezur: L 3

Pangael: L 3

PANI: K

Paniel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3; NS 240

Panis: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

PANORAIM HEAMESIN: K

panten: J 1

panteron: J 1

pantheon: J 1, 5

Pantheriel: Angel in K4

PANTHON: GV

panyon: J 1

paphalios: J 2

PAPUENDOS: K

Paqmiel: NS 203

Parabiel (aerial spirit): L2

parachbeyll: J 1

Parachmon: Ab

Paracle: Magic word: GH

Paracletos: H

PARACLETUS: L 1; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Paraclitus: J 1, 5

Paramor: Ab

paramyhot [S: paramyhoc]: J 2

paranyemol: J 5

Paras (aerial spirit): L2

Parasch: Ab

Paraschon: Ab

Paraseh: Ab

Parasiel: K; K4

Pareht: Ab

Parek: Ab

Parelit: Ab

parhaya: J 1

Pariel (aerial spirit): L2

Parinoscon: G

parithomegos: J 2

Parius (aerial spirit): L2

Parmatus: Ab

Parniel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

paron: GV

Parsifiel (aerial spirit): L2

Partus: Divine name: GH

Parusur: Ab

paryel: J 1

paryneos [S: parineos]: J 2

Parziel: L 3

Pasiel: L 3

Paskarbuel: NS 150

Pasniq: NS 171

pasntes: J 5

Pasriel: L 3

passamaht: J 2

pastama: J 1

Pastor: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

PATACEL: K

pataceron: J 1

pataron: J 1

Pater: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

PATHATUMON: L 1

PATHEON: K

Pathiel: NS 160, 178

Pathier (aerial spirit): L2

PATHTUMON: K

Patid: Ab

Patiel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Patir: J 2, 3, 4

patnelyn: J 1

Patrozyn: L 3

patyel: J 1

Paul (Saint): K

PAUMACHIAE: H; L 1

Paymon (AKA Paimon, King of demons, ruling in the West): Ab; GH; OP2; OP3; Weyer

Pax: J 5

paxon: J 1

paxonyon: J 1

paxylon: J 1

paysthar: J 5

pazehemy: J 1

pazomyhol [S: pazamyhol]: J 2

pbab: J 5

Pe: K

Peatham: GV

peb: J 1, 5

Pechach: Ab

pegal: J 1

Pegiel: L 3

pegner: J 1

Pegoga (or Pegogha): one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b, 25c

Pelakouel (Pêlakouél): Angel of Friday/Venus: MTS

Pelariel (aerial spirit): L2

Pellipis: Ab

peloym: GV

Pelusar (aerial spirit): L2

Pemael (angel of the third heaven): H

Pemfodram: Ab

Pemiel: L 3

Pemoniel: L 3

Penador (aerial spirit): L2

Penaton: Divine name: GH

Pentagrammaton: GH

Penaly: L 3

Penargos: L 3

Penat (angel of the third heaven): H

Penatiel: L 3

Penel: J 5

Penemue:: E

Peniel (aerial spirit): H; K4; L2

Penoles: L 3

Pentagna: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

PENTAGNONY: GV

PENTAGRAMMATON: K

pep: J 5

Perathoui (Pêrathoui) Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Sunday: MTS

Perchiram: Divine name: GH

Perdikoim (Perdikoim) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

Peresch: Ab

Pereuch: Ab

pergamidam: J 5

Periel: L 3

Perigaron: Divine name: GH

peripaton [S: pipaton]: J 2

Perman: L 3

Permases: Ab

Permaz: L 3

Permiel: L 3

Permon: L 3

perpheta: J 5

Perpi (or Perpi Klarimum): Divine name: GH

Persiel: L 3

Pertikeel (Pertikeél): Angel of Wednesday/Mercury: MTS

Peruel: NS 58

Petan: G

Petanop: Ab

Peter (Saint): K

pethio: J 2

petonahal [S: peconahal]: J 2

Petra: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Petunof: Ab

peunt: GV

Phaa: H

phabal: J 2

phabogheton [S: phaboghecon]: J 4

phabos: J 2

phagnora: J 2

phagor: J 2

phagora [S: phagora]: J 2

PHAIAR: K

Phaleg (Olympic spirit of Mars): A

phalezethon: J 4

phalomagos: J 2

phalomgros: J 2

phalymyt: J 2

phamal: J 2

Phaniel (aerial spirit): L2

Phanuel: E; L2 (aerial spirit)

pharamepht [S: pharameht]: J 2

pharamnee [S: pharampnee]: J 2

pharanhe [S: pharanehe]: J 2

pharen: J 2

pharene: J 2

Pharol (aerial spirit): L2

Pharon (aerial spirit): L2

Pharos: K4

phasamar: J 2

phate: J 2

Phaton: Divine name: GH

pheamycros [S: pheamicros]: J 2

pheleneos: J 2

phelior: J 2

pheta: J 5

phetalon [S: phethalon]: J 2

phetalonamie [S: phethalonamie]: J 2

phetaloym [S: phethaloym]: J 2

Phêth: TS

phicrose: J 2

philei: J 2

philosen: J 5

phin: J 5

phitach: J 5

phnerezo [S: phnerezo corrected to phverezo]: J 2

Phnunoboêol: TS

phobos: J 2

phodel: J 3

Phoenix: L 1

pholior [S: pholihor]: J 2

phomos [S: hephomos]: J 2

Phorlakh, Angel of Earth: K

Phorsiel: L 3

Phorsy: GV

Phosphora: Ab

Phthenoth: TS

Phul (Olympic spirit of the Moon): A

pie: J 2

Piez (Piéz) Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Sunday: MTS

Pigmies (class of spirits): A

piissime: J 5

Piliour (Pilioúr): Angel (or demon) of 12th hour of Sunday: MTS

PINE: L 4

pinmybron: J 1

PIRICHIEL: L 2

pirirm: J 5

Pisces: J 5; K; L 3; P ii x 85; xi 36-38; xii 35, 41, 55; iii iii 24; ix 12,15; iv ii 17

Pischiel (aerial spirit): L2

Piscis: P i iv 27-29; v 22, 23, 34; ii x 46; xii 51, 55; iii ii 13

Pisqon: NS 162, 171

PIThIH (Heb. magic name): NS A17:27

Pithona: G

Pixitor (Pixitór): Angel (or demon) of 15th hour of Friday: MTS

PLAIOR: K

Plamiel: L 3

Platiel: L 3

Platien: Ab

Plegaton: Divine name: GH

Plegit: Ab

Pleiades: TS

Pliades: P iv ix 31

Plirok: Ab

Pliroky: Ab

Plison: Ab

Plorim: GV

pmla: J 1

Pnidor (Pnidôr): Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Podekoulator (Podêkoulátor): Demon of Thursday/Jupiter: MTS

Poemi: G

Poiel: J 5

polimas: J 1

polypon: J 1

Pomiel: A

Pommeriel: Angel in K4

pons: J 2

porho: J 1, 5

Porna (angel of the third heaven): H; K4

porta: J 2

portenthymon: J 1, 5

portus: J 2

postadar: J 1

postremus: J 1

Potencies: K

potentissime: J 5

Poter: Ab

Pother: Ab

potian: J 5

Potiel (aerial spirit): L2

power, angels of: E

Praredun: GV

Prasiel (aerial spirit): L2

Prasiniel: L 3

Praxeel (aerial spirit): L2

Praxiel: L 3

Preches: Ab

predolmassay: J 2

Premoton: Divine name: GH

Premy: GV

Prenostix: L 3

PRERAI: L 1

Presfees: Ab

prihici [S: prihiti]: J 2

primellus: J 5

PRIMEUMATON: K; L 1, 2, 3

primogenitus: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Primus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH (Latin: "First")

princeps: J 2, 5

principalities: E

principium: J 1, 5

Principium et finis: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

PRION: K

pristorides: J 5

probihos: J 3

Procel: L 1

PROCULO: GV

PROFA: K

PROFAS: K

Profi: Angel (or demon) of 15th hour of Tuesday: MTS

Promachos: Ab

Promakos: Ab

Propheta: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

protector: J 5

prothabeon: J 5

prothophares: J 5

Protizekatour (Protizêkátour): Demon of Friday/Venus: MTS

Proxonos: Ab

Proxosos: Ab

Prukiel: angel: BP 3c

Prumosy: GV

Pruslas (demon): G

PThKRA (Heb. name of angel or spirit): NS 22

PTzP''TzIH (Heb. äéö''ôöô): BP: "the 'great Angel' appointed as the champion of Israel on the day on which the 'Cornet' is blown."

puella: J 2

PUERI: K

PUIDAMON: K

Pursan (demon): G

Purson (demon): L 1

puteus: J 2

Putisiel: L 3

pynsylon: J 1

pyon: J 1

pyrteplyn: J 1

pysses (Pisces): J 1

q~uor: J 1

Qadosch (Heb. QDVSh, "holy," an epithet of God): K; NS A17:22f

Qafsiel: NS 155

Qamsaniel: NS 160

Qanqaniel: NS 160

Qantiur: NS 241

Qaspiel: NS 236

QDDK (Heb. magic name): NS A17:26

Qedushiel: NS 237

Qoph: K

Quabriel: L 3

Quabrion: L 3

Quartas: Ab

Quehinen: P iv ix 58

Quel: Magic word: GH

quelamya: J 5

Quemis: P iv ix 58

quemon: J 1

quenanel: J 1

Quenol: L 3

Queriel: L 3

Quermiex: P iv ix 58

Quesdor: L 3

queue: P i v 27

Queyhuc: P iv ix 48

quibari: P i v 27

Quibda (aerial spirit): L2

Quirix: L 3

Quision: Ab

quislep: J 1

quisyell: J 1

Quitta (aerial spirit): L2

Quosiel: L 3

quybon: J 1

quyhym: J 1

quyron: J 1

ra: J 1

RA: K

raacpel: J 1

Raajah: L 3

raam: P i v 27

Ra`amiel: NS 240

raamyell: J 1

rabaly [S: rabali]: J 2

rabannie: P i v 27

Rabarmas: J 1, 5

Rabas (aerial spirit): L2

rabasadail: J 2

Rabdos: TS

Rabel: Magic word: GH

Rabianara, rabianira (name of the earth in Autumn): H; J 5

Rabiathos [S: rabihathos]: J 4

Rabidandes (or Rabidanadas): (name of spirit): GV

Rabiel (aerial spirit): L2

Rablion (aerial spirit): L2

Raboc (aerial spirit): L2

rabsylyn: J 1

Rabuch: J 5

Rabur: H; J 1, 5

rabyhel [S: rabihel]: J 2

Rabyz: P iii ix 17

Rachiar: Ab

Rachiel (an angel of Friday): H

rachyn: J 1

raconcall: J 1

racyelyn: J 1

racyno: J 1

Radarap: Ab

Raderaf: Ab

Radiaha: Divine name: GH

radix: J 2

radyel: J 1

Rael (angel of the second heaven): H

Rafael: TS; see also Raphael

raffylyn: J 1

ragael: J 1

ragahal: J 2

ragahel: J 2

Ragalim: Ab

Ragaras: Ab

ragen: J 2

rageyel: J 1

ragia: J 2

ragiomab: J 2

ragion: J 2

Ragna: J 2, 3

ragnaht: J 2

ragnali [S: ragnali ranal corrected to raguali ranal]: J 2

ragnathi: J 2

ragua: J 3

raguam: J 2

Raguel: E

Rahatiel: NS 173

Rahmiel: NS 186, 234, 237

Rahumel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

raictotagti [S: rai_?_totagn]: J 2

Rakhaniel: K

Rakidon ('Rakidôn): Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Tuesday: MTS

ramagay: J 2

ramaht: J 2

Ramaratz: Ab

ramasdon: J 1

Ramat: GH

Ramay: J 2, 4

Ramaziel: L 3

Rameel: E

ramel: J 2

Rameriel: L 3

Ramersy: L 3

Ramesiel: L 3

Ramica (aerial spirit): L2

Ramison: Ab

Ramiuson: Ab

Ramlel: E

Ramna: J 4

Ramoras: Ab

ramuel: J 1

Rana (6th hour of night): H

Rana: K

ranahel [S: tanahel]: J 2

ranaihel [S: ramaihel]: J 2

ranal: J 2

Ranar: Ab

Ranciel (aerial spirit): L2

Raner: Ab

raneyl: J 1

Raniel (angel of the third heaven): H

Ranix: P iv ix 64

ransyel: J 1

Rantam: GH

Rapha: TS

Raphael (Heb. RPAL: A; E; angel of Wednesday/Mercury: H; J 1, 2, 5; K; L 3; NS (passim); OP2.12; P iv vii 23; T; TS; 'Rafaêl: Angel of Thursday/Jupiter: MTS

Raphaim, or Cowards: K

Raphan: TS

Raphiel: L 3

Rapsiel (aerial spirit): L2

rapynes: J 1

rapyon: J 1

raqiel: J 5

Raquie: H

Raquyel: J 5

rarafeyll: J 1

Rariof ('Rariôf): Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Friday: MTS

rarorhyll: J 1

rasahanay: J 2

Rasamarathon: J 1, 5

rasamen: J 2

rasay: J 2

rasaym [S: iasym]: J 2

Raschear: Ab

rasegar: J 1

rasersh: J 1

rashyel: J 1

rasiohs [S: rasihos]: J 2

rassy: J 1

Rath: TS

rathan: J 5

Rathanael: TS

Rathiel: L 3

rathion: J 2

Ratziel: L 3

Raubeil: P iii vii 21

Raubel: P iv ix 37

Raubeyl: P iii vii 25

Raucahehil: P iii vii 24

Raucayehil: P iii vii 19

Raum: L 1

Raus: P iii vii 19

Rax: Ab

Rayel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Rayetanz: P iii x 1

raym: J 5

raymara: J 2

rayoryn: J 1

Raysiel: L 2

Rayziel: L 3

RAZIEL: K

razyarsady: J 1

razyell: J 1

RBIBAVTh (Heb. magic name): NS A17:27

re: J 1

Rebiel: L 3

RECABUSTIRA: K

rechihamos: J 2

Reciel (aerial spirit): L2

recreatrix: J 2

RECTACON: K

Redemptor: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

redemtrix: J 2

Redimez: P iii ix 1

reealologon: J 2

refaebylyon: J 1

reffylyn: J 1

Regadamer: magic word in K3

Regael: L 3

Regerion: Ab

regina aurora: J 2

Reginon: Ab

REGION: K

regnya: J 1

regon: J 2

Rehael: J 5

Reiiah [A: Reiiel]: J 5

reiial: J 5

reil: J 5

Rekhodiah: K

relamye: J 2

relmalaguoram [S: relmalagnoram]: J 2

reloymal [S: regoymal]: J 2

relyon: J 1

remafydda: J 1

remanthar [S: remanathar]: J 3

remasym: J 2

Remasyn: L 3

remay [S adds renay]: J 2

remelthot [S: remelthet]: J 2

remelyhot [S: remelihot]: J 3

remiare: J 5

Remiel: E

Remis: K4

Remischat: magic word in K3

remolithos [S: remohthos]: J 2

Remoron: Ab

Rengliel: L 3

reniayeyll: J 1

Reniolithos (vel Remolohos [S, S2: "Remolithos"]: J 3

requiel: J 5

res: J 1

resamarathon: J 5

resaram: J 2

resaym: J 2

Reschith ha-gallalim: Hebrew for Primum Mobile (see OP2.13)

Resh: K

Resochin: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over affairs of state (alternate spelling: Roschim)

resphaga: J 2

Ressurectio (sic *Resurrectio): One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Rethel: J 1, 5

Retragrammaton (typo for Tetragrammaton?): G

reuilsemar [S: renylsemar]: J 2

reycat: J 1

riahaccon [S: riahacton]: J 2

Riajah: L 3

ribbarim: P iv ii 3

Richel (aerial spirit): L2

Rigios: Ab

Rigolen: Ab

Rikorgos: NS 201

Rimezyn: L 3

Rimog: Ab

Rion: G

Rissasoris: Name of God: GH

robrinez: J 5

robyca: J 1

Rocobem: G

Roehel [A: Raehel]: J 5

roel: J 5

Roêlêd: TS

Roelhaiphar: K

Roffles: Ab

Rofocale (see Lucifuge): G

rofynyel: J 1

rogay: J 3

Roggiol: Ab

rognohon [S: rognhon]: J 2

rogonbon: J 2

rogor: J 2

Roler: Ab

Romages: Ab

romasim: J 2

romayl: J 1

Romeroc: Ab

Romiel (aerial spirit): L2; L 3

Romoron: Ab

Romyel (aerial spirit): L2

romyel: J 1

ronala: J 2

ronayeyll: J 1

Ronove: L 1

Roquiel: P iv ii 20

Rorêx: TS

Roriel (aerial spirit): L2

ros: J 2

rosa: J 2

Rosaran: Ab

ROTAS: K

Rotho: magic word in K3

Rothon: J 1, 5

rothos [S: rochos]: J 2

Rotor: Ab

Roustat ('Roustát): Angel (or demon) of 23rd hour of Wednesday: MTS

Rouvayet: GH

RPAL (Raphael Heb. angel, q.v.): NS A18:4

Ruach: Ab; K

RUACHIAH: K

Ruax: TS

rubbelyn: J 1

Rubiel (angel): G

Rubiphaton: Divine name: GH

rubyeyel: J 1

Rudefor: L 3

ruffar: J 1

rufibian: J 5

Ruhiel: NS 236

ruhos: J 2

Rukum: Ab

Rumael: E

Rumjal: E

Rymaliel: L 3

saaysac: J 2

sabaarna [S: sabarna]: J 2

sabaday: J 1

sabahel: J 2

sabahot [S: sadahot]: J 3; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

sabal: J 2

sabam [S: satam]: J 2

Sabaot (=Sabaoth): G

Sabaoth (name of God): GV; J1, 5; NS (passim) OP2.12; TS

sabar [S: sabat]: J 2

Sabas (aerial spirit): L2

sabat: J 1

Sabbac: H

Sabbathi: Hebrew for Saturn. See OP2.13.

Sabbatum: P iv ii 19, 23

Sabeel (Sabeél): Angel of Tuesday/Mars: MTS

Sabiel: L 3

sablachom [S: sablathom]: J 2

Sabnach: L 1

Sabrael: TS

Sabrathan: L 3

sabsacom: J 2

Sabunê: TS

sabybyall: J 1

sacadyel: J 1

Sacamap: J 4

Sacas: P iii vii 17

saccail: J 2

saccamaht [S: lattamaht]: J 2

saccynyel: J 1

sacdon: J 1

Sacerdos: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Sachael: L 3

Sacharios: J 4

Sachiel: Ab; K; L 3; angel of Friday/Venus: H

sachir: J 5

Saclay: H

sacqiel: J 5

sacra: GV

sacramagay [S: secumagay]: J 2

sacramalaip: J 2

sacramathon [S: sacramathan]: J 4

sacramay: J 2

sacramazaym: J 4

sacramyzan: J 4

sacrarium: J 2

sacrehos [S: satrehos]: J 2

Sacriel (angel of the fifth heaven): H; angel in K4

Sacromaahe [S om.]: J 4

sacromehas [S: secomehal]: J 2

Sacromohem: J 4

sacronalon [S: setronalon]: J 2

sacronomay [S: saconomay]: J 2

sacstoyeyn: J 1

Sadai: see Saday

sadail: J 2

Sadain: magic word in K3

sadam: J 2

sadamiel: J 2

Sadar (aerial spirit): L2

Saday, Sadai: H; J 1, 2, 4, 5; K4; L 1, 2; OP2.13; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH (Shaddai)

sadayne [S: ordayne]: J 2

Saddiel (aerial spirit): L2

Sadedali (5th hour of day): H; K

Sadiel: L 2 (aerial spirit); L 3

Sa`diel: NS 161

Sadiniel: L 3

Sadqiel: NS 203

saduch: J 2

saduhe [S: saduht]: J 2

Sadyon (vel Herlon): J 3; J5

Saefarn (aerial spirit): L2

Saefer (aerial spirit): L2

Saemiel (aerial spirit): L2

saffyell: J 1

saforac: J 1

Safuelor: J 1

safyda: J 1

Safsafiel: NS 160

Safyel: NS 203

sagaht: J 3

Sagani (class of spirits): A

Sagares: Ab

Sagatana: GV

Sagel: L 3

Sagiel: L 3

Sagittarius: J 1, 5; K; L 1, 3; P i iv 6, 20-22; v 34; ii x 45, 82; xi 27-29; xii 26, 48, 55; iii ii 10; iii 21; ix 11, 12; iv ii 10

sagnaht: J 2

sagnanar: J 2

Sagnel: L 3

sagomossyn [S: fagomossyn]: J 2

sagriel [A: Tagriel]: J 5

saguaht [S: sagnaht]: J 3

Sagun: H

Sahael: L 3

sahalat [S: sahaletromar]: J 2

sahaman: J 1

sahamuhã [S: sahamuhum!]: J 2

Sahariel: angel: BP 3c

Sahel: L 3

sahgragynyn: J 1

Sahiel: L 3

sahinyel: J 1

sahuhaf: J 1

saibaiol: J 2

Saima: J 4

salaht: J 2

salaihel: J 2

salail: J 2

salaior: J 2

salaiz: J 2

Salam (12th hour of night): H; K

salamaht: J 2

Salamandrae: G

salamatha: J 2

Salamia (angel): H

salamothono [S: salomothono]: J 2

salamyel: J 1

salamyhym: J 3

salatabel [S: salatambel]: J 2

salatehen: J 2

salatelli: J 2

salatelly [S: salatelli]: J 2

salathaam [S: lalathaam]: J 2

salatiae: J 2

Salatiel [S: sabatihel]: J 4

salatoham: J 2

salatyal [S: salatial]: J 2

Salay: H

salchmeon: J 5

saleht [S: laleht]: J 2

salem: J 2

salemanasay [S: salemanasai]: J 2

Saleos: L 1

salepatir: J 2

saletha: J 2

Salguyel: J 5

salha: J 1

salhy: J 1

Salla (4th hour of day): H; K

Sallaht: J 1

Sallales (angel, minister of Mediat): H

salmana: J 2

salmatha: J 2

salmatihal: J 2

Salmay: GV

salmazaiz: J 2

salmeht: J 2

Salmel: J 5

Salmios: one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 25c (called Samyos in 6b)

Salnaquil: P iv iii 2

saloht: J 2

saloseey [S: salasay corrected to salaseey]: J 2

Salouel, Salouêl (Salouhl) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

salpha: J 2

salquihel: J 2

Salus: J 2, 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Saluxio: Magic word: GH

Salvator: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Salvor (aerial spirit): L2

salyhelethon [S: "salihelethon"]: J 3

salym [S: salephusalym]: J 2

salyon: J 1

samachily [S: samachili]: J 2

Samael: H; J1; J5; K (or jugglers); L3; NS 155, 201, 217, 236; P iv vii 23

samagoy: J 2

Samahel: J 5

samahot: J 3

samaht: J 2, 4

samal: J 2, 3

Samalabactany: Divine name: GH

samalanga: J 2

samalerihon: J 2

Samalo: Ab

samalyhon: J 2

samamar: J 2

samanachor: J 2

samanathos: J 2

samanay [S: samãnay]: J 2

samanazay: J 2

samanlay: J 2

samar: J 2

samaril [S: samara]: J 2

samatihel [S: lamatihel]: J 2

Samax (king, angel of the air ruling on Tuesday): H

samay: J 2, 4

samaychel [S: sanayhel]: J 2

samayelyn: J 1

samayhel [S: samyhel]: J 2

samaym: J 5

samayrlyazer [S: lamairhazer]: J 2

Samazaraht [S: samazataht]: J 4

Samazarel: J 4

samaziel [S: famazihel]: J 2

samaziho: J 2

sameht: J 2

Samekh: K

samel: J 2

Samelon: L 3

samennay: J 2

Sameon: L 3

Sameriel: L 2

Sameron: L 3

Samerym: L 3

samhel: J 2

samhyell: J 1

Samiel: (angel): BP 3c; L 2 (aerial spirit); L 3

samiht: J 2

samina [S: sam~a]: J 2

saminaga: J 2

Samjaza: E

Samlazaz: E

samma [S: sam~a]: J 2

sammazihel: J 2

samna: J 2

samochia [S: samothia]: J 2

SAMOEL: K

samohaya [S: samohaia]: J 2

samoht: J 2

Samores maymon: P iv vii 23

Samoy: GV

Samsapeel: E

samua [S: samna, senma]: J 2

Samuel: L 3; T

Samy: J 4

samyb: J 2

samychy [S: samychi]: J 2

Samyel: J 1; L 2 (aerial spirit)

samyey: J 2

samyha: J 2

Samyhahel [S: samyhehel]: J 4

samyhan: J 2

samyhas [S: samayhas]: J 2

Samyhel: J 2, 5

samyl: J 2

Samyos (Sâmyos): one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

samysarach: J 1

Samyyhel [S: samyhel]: J 4

sanaday: J 2

Sanael: L 3

sanaioho [S: senaibi]: J 2

sanamam [S: sanam&atlde;]: J 2

sanamathocos [S: sanamathotos]: J 2

sananazihel [S: sanazihel]: J 2

sanatihel [S: sanacihel]: J 2

Sanayfar: L 3

sanaziel [S: sanazihel]: J 2

sancti: J 2

sanctissima: J 2

Sanctus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Sanctus Pater: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Sandalphon: K

sandalson: J 1

sandamruch: J 5

Sandaruz: P iii x 9

saneinas: J 1

sanfael: J 1

SANGARIEL (angel): K

Sangiel: L 3

sangos: J 1

Saniel: L 3

Sanigron: NS 171

sanihay: J 1

sansany: J 1

Sant: GH

Santanael (angel of the third heaven): H

santon: J 1

sanytyell: J 1

Sapason: Ab

saphar [S: saphur]: J 2

saphara: J 2

Saphathoraél: TS

saphay: J 2

saphiamon: J 2

saphomoron: J 2

saphor: J 2

saphorenam: J 2

saphoro: J 2

saphrez [S: saphiez]: J 2

saphya [S: saphia]: J 2

Sapiel (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Sapientia: J 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

sapinon [S: sapynon]: J 2

Sapipas: Ab

Sar: H

Sarabotes (king, angel of the air reigning on Friday): H

sarabyhel [S: sarabihel]: J 2

Sarach (aerial spirit): L2

saracu: J 1

Saradon: GH

Saraehelyhel [S: samehelihel]: J 4

Sarael (aerial spirit): L2

Sarafiel: NS 232

sarahihel: J 3

Saraht [S: sarahe]: J 4

saraht: J 2

saramany: J 2

saramel: J 2

Saranana: L 4

sarananuf: J 1

Sarandiel: L 3

Sarao: K4

Saraph: Ab

Saraphiel: L 3

sarapiel: J 5

Saraqael: E

sarara: E

Sarasim: Ab

Sarason: Ab

saratihai: J 2

saraumay [S has saraumay corrected to ?sarammay]: J 2

Saraye: H

Sarbanael: NS 186

Sarbiel: NS 155

Sarca: P iii vii 30

sarcihate: J 2

Sardiel: L 3

Sarfiel: L 3

Sargon: NS 202

sarib: J 3

Sariel: E; L2 (aerial spirit)

Sarietur: GH

sarimalip: J 2

SARION: K

saripel: J 5

Saris: Ab

Sarisel: Ab

sarmalaip: J 2

sarman: J 1

Sarmon: L 3

Sarmozyn: L 3

sarnelohatehus [S: sarvelo hatehus]: J 3

saromegall [S: filiomegal]: J 2

saron: J 1

Saroy: GV

Sarphiel: angel: BP 3c, 10c, 25c

Sarra: Ab

sarramazili: J 2

sarranay: J 2

sarsac: J 1

sarsall: J 1

Sartabakim: Ab

sarthamy: J 3

sartharay: J 3

Sartiel: NS 202

Sarviel (aerial spirit): L2

sarycam: J 1

saryel, saryell: J 1

sarynõ: J 1

Saryyel: J 5

Sasael: L 3

Sasajah: L 3

Sasangen bar Faranges: NS 76

sascunyel: J 1

sascy: J 1

sase: J 1

sasnyeil: J 1

saspy: J 1

Sasquiel: L 3

Sassur (9th hour of night): H; K

sastyracnas: J 1

sasuyell: J 1

satabis [S: satabis]: J 2

Satael (an angel of Tuesday): H

satalmagu: J 2

Satan (devil): A; Ab; K; NS 187, 217; TS

Satanaschi: One of the chief demons under Lucifer in Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel

Satanachia (demon, grand gen.): G; GV

Satanackia: GV

Sataniciae: GV

Sataniel: NS 232

Satans: E

Satarel: E

Satariel or concealers: K

Satarin: A spirit: GH

satel: J 5

Satgaron: NS 162

sathabmal [S: sathabinal]: J 2

sathabynhel: J 2

sathamac [S: lathamat]: J 2

sathamenay: J 2

sathamyanos: J 2

sathamyham: J 2

Sathan (Satan): J 1; L 1

sathanael: J 2

Satanas: Demon: GH

sathanos [S: lathanos]: J 2

satharios: J 2

sathonomay [S: sathomanay]: J 2

Satiel: GH; L 3

Satifirl (aerial spirit): L2

satihel: J 5

SATOR: K; GH

satpach: J 1

Satquiel, satquyel: J 1, 5; P iv vii 23

satuel: J 1

SATURIEL: A; K

Saturn: J 1, 5; L 1, 3, T

Saturnites: K

Saturnus: P i ii 4; iii 2; iv 2, 6, 31, 33; V 8, 15, 24, 31; ii iii 8, 14, 15; v 2; vi 6, 7, ix 6, 7; x 2, 9, 11-14, 41, 42, 81; xii 7, 10, 18, 21, 29, 32, 39-41, 43-45, 47-50, 55, 56; iii i 3, 6; iii 2, 4, ii 2, 4. 11, 33;vii 2, 9, 10, 16-19, 23, 38; viii tit., 2, 3; ix 1, 11; iv ii 3, 19; iv 5, 22, 39, 55, 59; vi 2, 3, 8, 11; vii 8, 9, 31, 44; ix 58

Satyhel: J 5

satymn: J 1

Satziel: L 3

Sauriel, Sauriêl (Saurihl) (angel of Sunday/the Sun): MTS

Savael: L 3

Savaniah (or Savania): K; K4

Saviel: L 3

sayher: J 2

Saylemaht: J 3

saymanda: J 4

Sazamay: J 4

Sazamaym: J 4

sazanachoray: J 2

sazanyhel [S: cazanyhel]: J 2

sazaratha: J 2

sazatham [S: samzatham]: J 3

Saziel: J 4; L 3

Sbarionat: Ab

Sbirouel (Sbirouél): Demon of Tuesday/Mars: MTS

scamburion: J 5

SCEABOLES: K

scetaburous: J 5

Schabuach: Ab

Schaluach: Ab

Schaluah: Ab

Scharak: Ab

SCHECHINAH: K

Sched: Ab

Schedbarschemoth Scharthathan: Spirit of the spirits of the Moon (OP2.22)

Schelagon: Ab

Schelegon: Ab

scheliel: J 5

SCHEMES-AMATHIA: H; L 1

SCHEMES: Hebrew for the Sun. See OP2.13 and L 2.

schemhamphoras, [S2: semenphoras; S: shemhamphorash], sememphoras: J 1, 5

Scheva: G

Schii: K

Schioel: K

Schyphaon: J 5

Scies: K4

Scingin: GV

Scircigreur: GH

Scirlin: GV

Sclavak: Ab

Scorpio: J 1, 5; K; L 3; P i iv 18-20, 33; v 14, 25; ii i 2; ix 4; x 50, 83; xi 24-26; xii 23, 41, 47; iii ii 9; iii 20; vii 29,36, 37; iv ii 9

Scrilis: Ab

SCYRLIN: GV

scyystalgaona: J 5

Sealiah: J 5

Sebach (aerial spirit): L2

sebanay: J 2

sebanthe: J 2

sebar [S: sehar]: J 2

sebarnay: J 2

sebemuay [S: selamnay]: J 2

sebranay: J 2

Secabim: Ab

secalmana: J 2

secasehagihon [S: secasehogyhon]: J 2

secastologyhon [S: secastologihon genagnolos]: J 2

sechamy [S: "sethamy"]: J 3

Sechce (vel Sethye) [S: Sethce]: J 4; J5

SECHEZZE: K

Sechiel: Divine name: GH

sechoiro [S: sethoiro]: J 2

Sechothamay [S: sethothamay]: J 4

sechyel: J 1

secomathal: J 2

Secozam [S: lecoram]: J 4

Secozomay: J 4

secranal: J 4

secray: J 2

secrmagnol [S: secromagnol]: J 2

Sedames: G

Sedomazay [S: sedomasay]: J 4

Sedo An: K4

SEDON: K

Seehiah: J 5

Seere: L 1

SEFONIEL, one of the two Princes of the Universe: K

Segaht: J 3

Segal: GV

seghehalt: J 2

segher: J 2

SEGILATON: K

SEGON: K

Segrael: GV

segyhon: J 4

sehan: J 2

sehã [S: sehant?]: J 2

seheliel: J 5

Sehix: P iv ix 63

sehon: J 2

sehor: J 2

Sehumeny: J 4

Sehva: K4

seiha: J 2

seihel: J 2

Sekabin: Ab

Sekiel: L 3

selapati: J 2

selchora: J 3

Selehe: P iv ix 35

sellaht: J 5

sellal: J 5

selmahat: J 2

selmar: J 2

selops: J 5

Selytarel: One of the demons in K3 with dominion over light

selyypon: J 1

sema thiotheos [S: semathyotheos]: J 2

semacheher [S: sematheher]: J 2

semagar: J 2

semagel: J 2

semaharon: J 2

semahel: J 2

semaht: J 2

semail: J 2

semal: J 2

semale: J 2

semalet: J 2

semalgay: J 2

semalsay: J 2

semaly: J 2

semam: J 2

semamarym [S: semamarim]: J 2

semana: J 2

semanay: J 2

semar: J 2

semarnail: J 2

semasgyy: J 2

semassaer: J 2

Semathy (uel Senrathy): J 2

semay: J 2

semazihar: J 2

semear: J 2

semegey: J 2

semeham: J 2

semehel: J 2

Semeht (uel semeth): J 2, 3

semelay: J 2

semeliha [S: semeltha]: J 2

sememamos [S: sememanos]: J 2

sememay: J 2

semenos: J 2

Semenoyn [S: semonoyn]: J 4

semeol: J 1

Semeot: Ab

semession: J 2

semethay: J 2

semezai [S: semazai]: J 2

semezi hel [S: semezihel]: J 2

semhazylyn: J 1

semhel: J 2

semichros [S: semicros]: J 2

semiha: J 2

Semiphoras: G

semiramoht [S: lemiramoht]: J 2

semita: J 2

Semitis: K

Semjaza: E

Semlin: Ab

semnay: J 2

semohit [S: zemohit]: J 2

Semoht (vel Gymath, vel Lemoth) [S: Lemoth]: J 2, 3

semoiz: J 2

Semorgizethon [S: sezorgizechon]: J 4

semozhat [S: semobzhat]: J 2

semozihot: J 2

semua [S: samna]: J 2

semuazliel [S: semnazliel]: J 2

semyday: J 2

semyha: J 2

semyhahes: J 2

semyhamaym [S: lemyhamaym]: J 2

semyharicht [S: semyhariht]: J 2

semyhel: J 2

semyhor: J 2

semyhot: J 2

semyhylym: J 1

semylihel: J 2

semymarithaton [S: semymartchaton]: J 2

semyna themas [S: Seminathemas]: J 2

semynar: J 2

semyr [S: sennyr]: J 2

semysenue [S: semysenne?]: J 2

senac: J 2

senachar: J 2

senadar [S: senadae]: J 2

Senael: L 3

senahel [S: senasel]: J 2

Senales: J 2, 4

senam: J 2

senar: J 2

senather: J 2

senayhel: J 2

senegalon: J 4

Sengael: L 3

seniquiel: J 1

senon [S: lenon]: J 2

senos: J 2

senosecari: J 2

senoz: J 2

senuales [S: sennales]: J 2

senyha: J 2

Sepasqiel: NS 161

sepha: J 2

sephamanay: J 2

sepharaym: J 2

sepharma [S: sephalzna]: J 2

sephastaneos: J 2

sephatihel: J 2

sephatya: J 1

sephay: J 2

SEPHERIEL: K

sephet: J 2

sephey [S: sephei]: J 2

sephezium [S: sephezimu]: J 2

sephormay: J 2

sephoros: J 2

Sephosiel: K

sephyron: J 5

sepizihon: J 2

seplatihel: J 2

Sequiel (aerial spirit): L2

Serabilem: GV

serail: J 2

Seranna: magic word in K3

Seraph: GV; K; K (one of the four rulers of the Elements)

seraphie: P iv ii 9

Seraphiel: H; L 3

Seraphim, Fiery Ones: GV, K; TS

Seraphin: E; J 1

Seraphyn: J 1, 2

Seraquiel (angel): H

seray: J 2

seremanay [S: setemanay seremany]: J 2

seremyhal: J 4

sereryel: J 1

Sergen: GV

Sergomazar: J 4

Sergulas: demons in K3

Sergulath: GV

Sergutthy: GV

serihon [S: seryhon]: J 2

Sermeot: Ab

Sernchiel: magic word in K3

Serognegnos (uel seregneguos): J 2

seroguomay [S: serognomay]: J 2

Seronea: J 4

Serpefeel (Serpefe&eacirc;l): Angel of Thursday/Jupiter: MTS

serpens: J 5

Serquanich: L 3

Sersael: L 3

Serugeath: GV

seruph (or nathaniel): J 5

Serupulon: Ab

Serviel: L 3

seryel: J 1

seryhon: J 2

sesalihel: J 2

sessle: GV

Setchiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Sethô: J 1

sethar: J 2

Sethee: J 5

sethei: J 2

sethemaesal: J 2

Sethiel: L 3

sethoham: J 2

sethor: J 2

Setiel: L 3

sexagip: J 5

seymaly: J 2

sezamagua [S: "sezamagna"]: J 3

sezehacon: J 4

sezimel: J 2

seziol: J 2

sezior: J 2

sezyhel [S: sezihel]: J 2

SGBAVThThIIK (Heb. magic name): NS A17:24

shabtai/Saturn?: TS

SHADAI: L 4

Shaddai, Shaddaï: Name of God; K (often written Saday, see also El Shaddai); NS 155, 156, 177, 225

SHADRACH: K

Shakhmuel: NS 241

Sha`mael: NS 186

Shamain: H

Shamiel: angel: BP 3c

Shamshiel: angel: BP 3c

Shax: L 1

ShBThAI, Shabbathai, Saturn: K

SHEMA: K

Shemeshiel: K

Shemhazai: NS 232

Shibbeta: demon associated with 'throat affections' among children (Taanith, 20 b), BP xx

Shin: K

ShMARIH (Heb. name of God): NS A17:10

ShMA (Heb. magic name): NS A17:24

ShMSh, Shemesh, the Sun: K

shocodothos [S: sehocodothos zehocodos]: J 2

ShRM (Heb. magic name): NS A17:28

Shufiel: angel: BP 3c

ShVMRAK (Heb. name of God): NS A17:8

Si: magic word in K3

Siar (Si´r): Angel (or demon) of 13th hour of Saturday: MTS

Sibolas: Ab

sichiron: J 2

sicragalmon [S: sicagalmon]: J 2

sicromagal: J 2

sicromemior [S: sicrogamõ]: J 2

sicrozegamal [S: sicrozeganial?]: J 2

SID, the Great Demon: K (var Cid, le grand Démon)

Sidqiel: NS 155, 213

SIDRAGOSAM: GV

Siely: P iv ix 35

Sifon: Ab

Sigis: Ab

Sigos (Sigós): Angel (or demon) of 12th hour of Thursday: MTS

sihotil [S: honl]: J 2

Sikastin: Ab

Sikastir: Ab

Silat: GV

Silido (Silidô) Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Sunday: MTS

sillezaleht: J 2

Silma: magic word in K3

Silouanel (Silouanêl): Demon of Wednesday/Mercury: MTS

silymal [S: silimal]: J 2

silymythu [S: silimythu]: J 2

Simapesiel: E

simazihel [S: simaziel]: J 2

Simulaton: Divine name: GH

SIMULATOR: K

Sinachi: Alternate spelling for Sirachi in K3

Sinchateriel: J 5

Singambuth: GV

siothos: J 2

Siphon: Ab

Sipillipis: Ab

Sirachi: One of the chief demons under Lucifer in Clavicules du Roi Salomon, Livre Troisieme, par Armadel

Sirath: magic word in K3

Sirchade: GV

Sirechael: One of the demons in K3 with ability to animate

Sirgilis: Ab

Siriton (Siritón): Angel (or demon) of 20th hour of Monday: MTS

Sirmon: divine name: GH

Sirumel (or Selytarel): One of the demons in K3 with dominion over light

Sitael: J 5

Sitgara: L 2

Sitri: L 1

SITTACIBOR: K

Skamidinos: Angel (or demon) of 7th hour of Monday: MTS

Skitogiri: Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Skolion (Skolión): Angel (or demon) of 2nd hour of Monday: MTS

Skonin: Angel (or demon) of 14th hour of Tuesday: MTS

Slahta: spirit of pain in the head: BP 1c. Cf. Talmud, T. Sabbath, 90 a; Gittin, 68 b, &c.

slevor: GV

Sloonus: 'man of fire' invoked (along with Gannus) in BP § 13 (p. xxxii)

snazihel [S: senazihel]: J 2

Sobe: Ab

Sobel: Ab

Sobhe: Ab

socagamal: J 2

socalma: J 2

socalmata: J 2

Sochas (aerial spirit): L2

Sochen: Ab

Socodiah: K

Socohiah: K

socromagnol [S: socromgnol]: J 2

soctaht [S: sotthaht]: J 2

soday: J 2

Sodiel (aerial spirit): L2

Sodierno: G

Sodirno: GV

Sodxer: G

sodyel: J 1

sohomythepoten [S: Sohomythepoten]: J 2

Sol: J 5; L 1, 4; P i iii 2; iv 2, 6, 31, 33; v 8, 16, 18, 24, 31, 32, 36, 44; ii iii tit., 1-7, 11, 12, 15, 16; v 3; vi 6; x 5, 9, 22-25, 39, 51-54, 82, 84; xi 1, 2, 39; xii 3, 14, 28, 39-51, 53, 55, 57-59; iii i 1, 6; iii 2, 7, 11, 33; v 3; vi 4, 5; vii 5, 12, 27-29, 36-38, 40; viii tit., 1, 2; ix 4, 11-17; x 11; xi 1, 71, 74, 88, 92, 96, 106, 131; iv i 12; ii 7, 12, 17, 22; iii 1, 2; iv 3, 20, 29, 37, 39, 52, 55; v 11; vi 5, 13; vii 8, 11, l3, 20, 38, 39, 41, 49; ix 19, 61; Name of God: GH

Solar spirits: K

Soler (typo for Soter>): G

Soleviel: L 2

solin: J 5

Solymo: GV

Somis: Ab

Son: K

Son_of_Man: E

Soncas (angel of the fifth heaven): H

sonne (= the Sun): J 5

sonne, the (= the Son): J 1, 2, 5

Sophiel: K

sophornay: J 2

Sorath: The spirit of the Sun (OP2.22)

sorathim [S: lorathim]: J 2

Soriel (aerial spirit): L2 (2)

sornadaf: J 1

soromono: J 2

Sorosma: Ab

sorosomay [S: sorosamay]: J 2

sorozomay [S: sorozamay]: J 2

Sorriolenen: Ab

Soter (var. of Sother): G

Soterion: Ab

sothal: J 2

Sotheano (aerial spirit): L2

Sother: J 1, 2, 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

sothiron: J 2

sothoneya: J 2

sozena: J 2

sozienziha [S: sozihenziha]: J 2

sozor (vel soror): J 2

Spandarmad, Spendarmad (MP), Spenta-Armaiti (Av) Archangel (Amesha-Spenta) associated with Devotion, presiding over the Earth: Z

Spendonim (Spendonim) (angel of Monday/the Moon): MTS

Speraton: Divine name: GH

Spes: J 2; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Sphandôr: TS

Sphendonaêl: TS

Sphênêr: TS

sphray: J 5

Spirits of the woods (class of spirits): A

spiritus: J 2

splendor: J 2, 5

Spondor (Spondôr): Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Saturday: MTS

Sponsa: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

sponsa filia: J 2

sponsus: J 5

Sporgon Go, sporgongo: J 1, 5

spugliguel (The head of the sign of the Spring): H; J 5

stanazihel: J 2

stancchel [S: stanithel]: J 2

Stelfa (Stelfá): Angel (or demon) of 11th hour of Saturday: MTS

Stephanata: One of the chief demons under Belzebut in K3

stella aurea: J 2

steluyel: J 1

sterlunilon: J 5

stilmon [S: scilmon]: J 2

stimulamathon: J 5

Stimulamaton: G

Stimulator: GV

stoexhor: J 5

stola: J 2

Stolas: L 1

stomicopten [S: scomicopoten]: J 2

stomycros [S: scomycros]: J 2

Stratiget (Stratigét): Angel (or demon) of 13th hour of Friday: MTS

strinabelion: J 5

Strubiel: L 3

strymay [S: sirymay]: J 2

Stymulamathon: J 1, 5

Suceratos (angel of the fourth heaven): H

sucyel: J 1

Sudoron: Ab

Suffugiel: One of five demons under Satanachi in K3

sugni: J 1

Sugunth: One of five demons under Satanachi in K3

Suiajasel: L 3

Summum bonum infinitas: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Sumuran: Ab

Sun: E; L 1, 3, 4; T

Suni (named alonmg with Susunaos): NS 203, 209

Sunigerom (Sunigêrôm): Angel (or demon) of 7th hour of Saturday: MTS

Sunopigos (Sunopigós): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Sunday: MTS

suphniohet [S: suphn Iohel]: J 2

Suphonaym [S: sophonaym]: J 4

suphu: J 2

Supipas: Ab

Suquinos (angel, minister of Mediat): H

surail: J 1

Surana: G

Surdaniel: NS 236

Surgat: GV

Surgatha: One of the demons in K3

surgell or suryel: J 1

Suriel (aerial spirit): L2 ; NS 200, 202

suryel: J 1

Susniel: angel: BP 3c

Suspensus: GH

Sustugriel: GV

susuagos: J 1

Susunaos (named along with Suni): NS 203, 209

Suth (king, angel of the air governing Thurday): H

SUVANTOS: K

Svesy: G

syamathon [S: syliemathon]: J 2

sycromal [S: hicromal]: J 2

Syhel [S: sihel]: J 4

syimnoy: J 5

Sylereht [S: silereht]: J 4

Syloht [S: siloth]: J 2, 4

Sylphae: G

symalyel [S: simaliel]: J 2

Symiel: L 2

symychos [S: ieristosymythos]: J 2

syney: J 2

synoy: J 2

syon: G; J 2

Syrach: GV

systos [S: sistos]: J 2

sython [S: lython]: J 2

syumelyel: J 1

szarzyr: J 1

szeyeyll: J 1

szncaryell: J 1

TA: K

taanat: J 1

Taba'et: E

Tabbat: Ab

tabernaculum: J 2

Tablas (Tablás): Angel (or demon) of 12th hour of Wednesday: MTS

tablic: J 1

Taborix: Ab

Tabots: G

Tabrasol: GV

tabryell: J 1

Tabtalios (Tabtálios): Angel (or demon) of 7th hour of Friday: MTS

tabynya: J 1

Tacaros: Ab

tacayhel: J 2

Tachael: L 3

Tachan: Ab

Tachiel: L 3

tafanyelyn: J 1

Tafrac (8th hour of night): H; K

tagahel: J 3

Tagam: magic word in K3

Tagaririm, or Disputers: K

Tagat: NS 211

Tagiel: L 3

Tagla (name of God): G

Tagnon: Ab

Tagora: Ab

Tagriel: J5; P ix 54

Tahaytuc: P iii ix 1

Tahiel: L 3

Tahix: P iv ix 59

Tahytos: P iv ix 58

Tainor: Angel in K4

Tajael: L 3

Takhmnan (Takhmnán): Angel (or demon) of 22nd hour of Friday: MTS

Takifiel: angel: BP 3c

Talbit: P iii ix 11

talguaf: J 1

talgylueyl: J 1

Taliahad, Angel of Water: K

Taliel: L 3

TALMAÏ: K

talraylanrayn: J 1

talui: J 5

Talvi (Spring): H

talyel: J 1

Talyz: P iii ix 1

Tamael: H; K3; L 3

TAMAII: K

Tam'aini: E

Tamaniel NS 66

TAMEN: K

Tameriel: L 3

Tameruz: P iii x 8

Tamiel: L 3; NS 241

Tamines: P iv ix 58

Tamiz: P iii ix 2

Tamlel: E

tamtyel: J 1

tamygell [S: tamygel]: J 2

tamyl: J 2

Tamyz: P iii ix 12

Taneha: H

TANGEDEM: K

Tangiel: L 3

tanyn: P i v 27

taphamal: J 2

Taphat: K

Taphthartharath: Spirit of Mercury (OP2.22)

Tarados: Ab

Tarahim: Ab

Tarajah: L 3

Taralim: Ab

Tarat (Tarát) Angel (or demon) of 10th hour of Sunday: MTS

Tarchimache: GV

Taret: Ab

Tareto: Ab

Tarfo: K4

targuarra: J 5

Tariel: angel: BP 3c

Tarihimal: GV

tarmanydyn: J 1

Tarmiel (angel of the second heaven): H

Tarmytz: L 3

Taros (aerial spirit): L2

tarquam (an angel of autumn): H; J 5

Tarquaret (head of the sign of Autumn): H

tartalyn: J 1

tartalyon: J 1

Tartaroel (Tartaroêl): Angel (or demon) of 21st hour of Sunday: MTS

Tartarouel ('Tartarouel) (demon of Monday/the Moon): MTS

Tartys: L 3

taryel, Tariel (an angel of the Summer): H; J 5

Tashiel: L 3

Tasma: Ab

tatgryel: J 1

TATONON: K

Tau: GV; K

Taueduz: P iii x 10

Taul: GV

Taurus: J 1, 5; K; L 3, 4; P i iv 4-6; v 5, 6, 24, 25, 30, 31, 34; ii ix 3, 5; x 85; xi 2, 6-8; xii 5, 40, 41, 43, 55; iii ii 3; iii 14; vii 38; iv ii 3, 8

taututa: P iv 27

Tavael: L 3

Tavar: K4

Taxpon (Taxpón): Angel (or demon) of 13th hour of Wednesday: MTS

Taydurez: P iii x 9

Tayhaciedez: P iii ix 12

Taymex: P iv ix 64

Tayros: P iv ix 59

Tayuz: P iii ix 11

Tebdeluz: P iii ix 14

tebethe: J 1

Tebondriel: J 5

Tedeam: Ab

Tediel: L2 (aerial spirit); L3

Tefrael (Tefraêl): Angel (or demon) of 20th hour of Tuesday: MTS

tegon.: J 2

teguamathal [S: tegnamathal]: J 2

Tehiel: L 3

Tel: Magic word: GH

TELANTES: K

telemoht: J 5

Teliel: L 3

Tely: GV

Temael: L 3

Temas: L 3

Temeyz: P iii ix 15

templum: J 2

Temterans: magic word in K3

temualamos [S: te~nalamos]: J 2

Temuniel: NS 66, 173

Tenaciel (angel of the third heaven): H

TENDAC: K

tenealogo: J 2

tenebyel: J 1

teneloyhos [S: teneloihos]: J 2

TENET: K

tenonem: J 5

tentercenta: J 5

Tephras: TS

TERATA: K

Terath (aerial spirit): L2

TERLY: Spirit invoked in construction of hand of glory: GH; GV

Terrae: G

Tesael: L 3

Tetagram (typo for Tetragram?): G

Teth: K

tethapiel: J 5

Tethel: J 5

Tetra: H

Tetragram: G

Tetragramathon, tetragramaton, Tetragrammaton: Ab; G; GH; GV; H; J 1, 3, 5; K; L1, 2, 3, 4

TETRAGRAMMATON ELOHIM: K

TETRAGRAMMATON TZABAOTH: K

tetragramos [S: tetragrammos]: J 2

Tetrarchin: J 5

TEVENI: K

Texai: Ab

Teyluz: P iii ix 5

Tezael: L 3

tezamahal [S: cezamahal]: J 2

Thaazaron: L 3

thabal: J 2

thael [S: thahel]: J 2

Thafot (Thafôt): Angel (or demon) of 4th hour of Thursday: MTS

thagail: J 2

thagromothon [S: thagromathon]: J 2

thahamathon: J 2

thahonos [S: thahanos]: J 2

Thainé: K

thalamus: J 2

Thalbus (aerial spirit): L2

Thallal: TS

thamal [S: thamahel]: J 2

thaman [S: thamam]: J 2

thamar: J 2

thamasal: J 3

thamazihel: J 2

Thamic (8th hour of day): H

Thamiel [S: tacayhelthamyel]: J 2; K (or Double-Headed Ones)

Thamur (6th hour of day): H; K

thanacon [S: thanathon]: J 2

Thanatiel (aerial spirit): L2

thanccha [S: tharialtha]: J 2

thanoctomas: J 2

thansethay: J 2

Thanu (3rd hour of night): H; K

Thapnix: Angel (or demon) of 8th hour of Friday: MTS

Tharas (aerial spirit): L2

tharathos [S adds tronios _nomay_ nebay tharato_h_s]: J 2

tharhal [S: tharahal]: J 2

Thariel (aerial spirit): L2

tharietha [S: tharihetha]: J 2

Tharotheos [S: tarotheos]: J 4

Tharshis: K

Tharsis (one of the four rulers of the Elements): J5; K

Tharson (aerial spirit): L2

theageta: J 2

theal: J 2

thedony [S: theodony]: J 2

thefelyn: J 1

thega: J 2

thegos: J 2

thehe [S: ehehe]: J 2

THEIT: K

thelamoht: J 2

thelihem: J 2

theloy: J 5

thelthir [S: thelthis]: J 2

themaay [S: themay]: J 2

themamohi [S: themamoth]: J 2

themamoht: J 2

themare: J 2

themay: J 2

Themaz: L 3

themegoman: J 2

themelyhen [S: themelihen]: J 4

Themiz: P iii vii 21

themohan [S: themohn with a u above the n perhaps indicating that the transcriber couldn't determine which was intended in his Ms.]: J 2

thenaly: J 2

thenuathol [S: themiathol]: J 2

THEODONIAS: H; L 1

theodonos [S: theodonas]: J 2

theodropham: J 5

theogethos [S: thehogethos]: J 2

theohon: J 2

theomegen [S: theomogen]: J 2

theomeguos [S: theomegnos]: J 2

theomiros [S: themyros]: J 2

theomithos [S: theomythos]: J 2

theomogenos: J 2

theomythos: J 3

Theon: J 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; NS 76

theonehos [S: theonthos]: J 2

Theoriel: L 3

Theos (uel Itheos): H; J 1, 2, 3, 5

theoton: J 2

theou: J 2

thephagayn [S: thephagagayn]: J 2

theromagen [S: theromogen]: J 2

thesirara: J 2

thetendyn: J 2

thethagranys [S: thethaganys]: J 2

Thetodof (Thetodóf): Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Monday: MTS

Thetragrammathon: K4 (variation of Tetragrammaton)

Thetron: K4

Theu: GV

Thiel (angel of the second heaven): H

thihel: J 2

thimas: J 2

thiothot: J 2

Thirama: Ab

thnitingren [S: thyntyngren]: J 2

Thoac (aerial spirit): L2

Tholomanos: J 4

tholumgay [S: tholinngay]: J 2

tholynthay [S: cho lymchay]: J 2

thomegen: J 2

thon [S: theon]: J 2

thoneihos [S: thoneos]: J 2

Thonios (Thónios): Angel (or demon) of 9th hour of Saturday: MTS

thophares: J 5

thothios: J 2

threhodios [S: trehodios]: J 2

Thribiel: L 3

thromahos (vel thromahnos): J 3

thrones: E

THSIMA: magical word used in 'Binding the fever': BP 17c

Thurcal (aerial spirit): L2

Thuriel (aerial spirit): L2

thurigium: J 2

Thurmytz: L 3

Thuros: L 3

thus: J 1

Tibiel: L 3

tichiz: J 5

tifrat: P iv ii 12

Tigara (aerial spirit): L2

Tigrafon: Ab

Tigraphon: Ab

Tiiel: L 3

TILATH: K

TILEION: K

TILONAS: K

TIMAYAL: K

Timez: P iii ix 7

Timira: Ab

Timo: GV

Tinakos: Ab

Tinira: Ab

tintingethe [S: turtingethe]: J 2

Tioron: Ab

TIPHERETH: K

TIRA: K

Tiragisneil: J 5

Tiraim: Ab

Tirana: Ab

Tiriel: Divine name associated with Mercury (OP2.22); GH

tirigel: J 4

tirimar: J 2

Tiron: Divine name: GH

TISTATOR: K

TITACHE: K

Titeip: H

TIXMION: K

tobell: J 1

tobenor: J 1

tobyell: J 1

tocius: J 5

Todidedos (Todidedós): Angel (or demon) of 19th hour of Tuesday: MTS

Tolet: Ab

Tolima: G

tolomay: J 2

tolquaret: J 5

Tomas, a name of the Sun: E

Ton: K4

tonelyn: J 1

Tonucho: Magical word on fourth ring in Douze Anneaux

Topinoch: Magical word on eleventh ring in Douze Anneaux

Torfora: Ab

tors: J 5

Tos: P iv ix 58

tosgac: J 1

tosgar: J 5

Toun: Ab

toupyel: J 1

Toxai: Ab

Toz: P iii ix 1, 11

Traci: Ab

Trajael: L 3

tralyeylyn: J 1

tranfyel: J 1

TRANSIDIM: K

TRANSIN: K

Trasiel: L 3

Tremendum: Divine name: GH

Trimasael: GV

Trinitas: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Trapis: Ab

Trisacha: Ab

Trisaga: Ab

Tromes: Ab

Trubas: L 3

TTNDIAL (Heb. name of Metatron): NS 49

Tual: L 3

tuam deprecor: J 2

Tuberiel: L 3

tubeylyn: J 1

Tubiel (head of the sign of Summer): H; J 5

Tugaros (aerial spirit): L2

Tuigaros: L 2

Tulmas: L 3; Angel invoked in protection from sorcerers: BP 42

Tulot: Ab

tulyell: J 1

Tumael: E

Turael: E

Turel: E

Turi'el (Heb. TVRIAL, angel): NS A18:5

Turiel (angel of the third heaven): H

Turitel: Ab

TURLOS: K

Turmiel: L 3

turris: J 2

Turtiel: L 3

turtur: J 2

Tus (minister of Varcan, angel of Sunday): H

Tutelar spirits (class of angels): A

tutheon: J 1, 5

Tuymeryz: P iii ix 14

TVRIAL (Turi'el, Heb., angel): NS A18:5

tyaf: J 1

tyagra: J 1

tycmar [S: hafartitmar]: J 2

tyfonyon: J 1

tylzdyell: J 1

Tymez: P iii ix 17

tyngehen [S: cyngehen]: J 2

tyngeny: J 2

tynognale: J 2

Tyr: P iii vii 32

tysyryn: J 1

Tzabaoth: K

Tzaddi: K

Tzadiqel: K

Tzakiel: L 3

Tzangiel: L 3

Tzapheal: L 3

TZAPHNIEL: K

Tzaphqiel: K

TzDQ, Tzedeq, Jupiter: K

Tzedeqiah: K

Tzethiel: L 3

Tzippat (Tzippát): Angel (or demon) of 5th hour of Thursday: MTS

Tzisiel: L 3

uauis: J 2

Ubarin: Ab

ucham [R: veham]: J 1

Ucirnuel (angel of the second heaven): H

Udaman: Ab

Udiel (aerial spirit): L2

ue [R: Ve]: J 1

Ugales: Ab

Ugalis: Ab

Ugesor: Ab

Ugirpen: Ab

Ugirpon: Ab

Ugobog: Ab

Ugola: Ab

Uli: G

Umariel: L 3

Umeyruz: P iii x 9

Umiel: angel: BP 3c

UMSA: K

UN: K

Unitas: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

unryon: J 1

Uraniel: L 3

Urbaniel (aerial spirit): L2

Urenia: K4

Urgido: Ab

Uriel [S: "uryhel"] (archangel): E; GV; H; J 3; K4; TS; (aerial angel): L 2, 3; NS 173, 202, 213

Urigo: Ab

Ursa: P ii ii 1; iii vii 26

Ursiel (aerial spirit): L2

Uruel: TS

Uruêl: TS

Usiel: L 2

Usiniel (aerial spirit): L2

usion [S: usyon]: J 2, 3

usiryon: J 1

Ustael (angel of the fourth heaven): H

usyon [S: usion]: J 2, 3

Utifa: Ab

Utiridan: J 5

V (=Vau): H

Va: H

Vaa: H

Vabiel: L 3

Vacdez: P iii vi 1

vaceyll: J 1

Vachat (var. of Bathat): H

Vadriel (aerial spirit): L2

Vadros (aerial spirit): L2

Vagael: L 3

Vagel: L 3

Vah: One of the magic words to counter headache: GH

Vahajah: L 3

Vahejah: L 3

Vajael: L 3

Valac: L 1

Valax: GH

Valefar (demon): G; L 1

validiol [S: valiaiol]: J 2

Valiot: GH

vallis: J 2

Valnum (angel of first heaven): H

Valoi: Magic word: GH

Valuerituf: GV

Vameroz: L 3

Vamiel: L 3

Vanescor: L 3

Vanesiel: L 3

Vaniel: L 3

Vanosyr: L 3

Vaol: K

VAPHORON: K

Vapula: L 1

VARAF: GV

Varcan (angel of the air runing on Sunday): H

Varf: GV

Variel: L 3

Varios: G

Varmay: L 3

Varpiel (aerial spirit): L2

varthalyn: J 1

vas: J 2

Vasariah: J 5

Vasenel (aerial spirit): L2

Vashiel: L 3

Vaslos (aerial spirit): L2

Vassago: L 1

Vathmiel: L 3

Vatiel: L 3

Vau: K

Vay: H

Vaycheon: G

Vaziel: L 3

veal: J 1

VEGALE: K

Ve-Ha-Aretz: K

vehemuos [S: behemmos]: J 2

Vehiel: K

Vehuel: J 5

vehuiah: J 5

vehych: J 1

Veil: L 3

Vel (angel of the second heaven): H

Velel (angel of the second heaven): H

VELOUS: GV

velum cella: J 2

Vemael: L 3

Vemasiel: L 3

Vemedeyz: P iii x 9

Venahel (angel of the second heaven): H

Venaydor: L 3

Venehulez: P iii x 12

Venerean spirits: K

Venesiel: L 3

VENIBBETH: K

Venochnabrat: G

Venomiel: L 3

Ventariel: L 3

Venus: J 1, 5; L 1, 3; P i ii 4; iii 2; iv 33; v 1, 5, 6, 8, 13, 16, 22, 33, 34; ii iii 6, 12, 14, 15; vi 6, 7; ix 5; x 6, 9, 20, 26-30, 46, 55-67, 85; xi 2; xii 5, 9, 19, 20, 30, 34, 40, 46, 48-50, 55, 57; iii i 7; iii 2, 8, 11, 33; v 3; vii 4, 6, 13, 30, 31; ix 5, 15; xi 96; iv ii 8, 20, 23; iv 8, 25, 32, 38, 40, 43, 55, 56, 59; v 11; vi 6; vii 23, 43, 60, 61; ix 62; T

Vepar: L 1

Vequaniel: L 3

vera peccatorum medicina: J 2

verbum: J 5

verchiel: Angel ruling over Leo (OP2.14); J 5

verday: J 1

veremedyn: J 1

Veritas: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

vermias: GV

vermis: J 5

versiel: J 5

vertus: J 5

Vessur (aerial spirit): L2

Vestas Assa: K4

Vesturiel: GV

Vetuel (angel of first heaven): H

veualiah: J 5

Vevaphel: K

veyn: J 1

Via: J 2; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Vianuel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

Viculus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Videgoram: G

VILLAQUIEL: K

Vine: L 1

Vionairaba (angel of the fourth heaven): H

Viordy: GV

virga: J 2

Virgo: J 1, 5; K; L 1, 3; P i iv 6, 13-15; v 13, 28; ii xi 18-20; xii 17, 40, 45, 55; iii ii 7; iii 18; iv ii 7, 17

Virtues: K

Virtus: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Visio: One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Vision: Ab

Vita: J 2, 5; One of the 72 holy names of God: GH

Vitalot: One of the magic words to counter headache: GH

vitrea: J 2

vitulus: J 5

vlysacyaia: J 1

vmahel [A: Umabel]: J 5

vna malum: J 2

vnaraxidyn: J 1

vnlylyn: J 1

Vonton: G

vos [S: Avs(?)]: J 1

VPPIAL (Ofafi'el, Heb., angel): NS A18:4

Vraniel (aerial spirit): L2

vridithian: J 5

Vriel (aerial spirit): L2 (2); J 5

vsararyeyll: J 1

vsiologihon [S: ustio..?]: J 2

vsion [S: usyon]: J 2

vsiryon: J 5

vsiston: J 5

vsyon [S: usion]: J 2

vsyryon: J 5

Vuael (angel of first heaven): H

Vual: L 1

vueryn: P i iv 27

VULAMAHI: K

Vulcaniel: L 3

Vulnavij: GV

vyxasmyon: J 1

Watchers: E

Xamyon: L 3

Xanoriz: L 3

Xanthir: L 3

Xanthyozod: L 3

Xantiel: L 3

Xantropy: L 3

Xantros: L 3

Xemyzin: L 3

Xemz: P iv vii 23

Xermiel: L 3

Xernifiel: L 3

Xerphiel: L 3

Xirmys: Ab

Xymalim: L 3

y (=Yod, Yaw): H; J 1

ya: H; J 1, 5; Name of God: GH (variant of Yah, Jah, Iah)

yabassa: J 1

yabtasyper: J 1

yadna: J 1

YAH: K; NS 161, 241

Yahbiel: NS 186

Yahel: K

yahnt: J 1

YAII: K

yalgal: J 1

yalsenac: J 1

YAMENTON: K

yamla: J 1

Yamnos (Yâmnos): one of the names of the demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 6b

Yanor: K

yar: J 1

yaran: J 5

yareth: J 5

YARON: K

yaryel: J 1

Yashiel: K

yasmyel: J 1

yasrozyn: J 1

yassar: J 1

yatayell: J 1

YAYAI: K

yayat: J 1

yayell: J 1

yayin: J 1

Yayn (first hour of day): H; K

Yayon: K

Yazed Mahdat: NS 132

Yazemiz: P iii vii 27

Ybarion: Ab

Ychigas: Ab

ycolmazay [S: ycolmazai]: J 2

ydolmassay: J 2

ydroel: J 5

ye: J 1

yebel: J 1

Yebil: P iv ii 22

yebyryn: J 1

yedemkyeyl: J 1

Yefefiya: NS 213

YEH: K

yehuyha: P i v 27

Yekahel: K

yel: J 1

yelbrayeyell: J 1

yelur: J 5

yemay [S: iemay]: J 2

YEMETON: K

yeremon: J 5

YES-CHET: K

YESHIMON: K

yesmachia: J 1

YESOD: K

Yetaydez: P iii x 10

Yetayroz: P iii x 11

yetulmassaye [S: yenilmassay]: J 2

YEVIE: K

YEZE: K

yfaramel [S: "ylaramel"]: J 3

yfaryamy: J 1

Ygata: K4

YIAI: K

ylurahyhel: J 5

Ym: J 5

ymalihor: J 2

ymas: G; J 2, 5

ymathon: J 2

ymei: J 5

Ymeynlethon: J 1, 5

ymiamos: J 2

ymos: J 2

ymraell: J 1

ymuathon: J 2

ynel: J 1

yoas: J 1

yocaleme: J 1

YOD HE VAU HE: K

Yod: K

Yomiel: angel: BP 3c

Yopiel: NS 224

YOVA: K

ypalis [S: ypolis]: J 2

Yparchos: Ab

ypile: J 2

ypomehiles: J 3

Yragamon: Ab

Yritron: Ab

ysa: J 2

ysael: J 1

ysail: J 2

ysameht: J 2

ysamya [S: ysamyha]: J 2

ysaramana: J 5

ysaray: J 2

ysathay: J 2

ysiscos [S: ysistos]: J 2

Yskyros: J 1, 5

ysmarelion: J 5

ysmas: J 1, 5

Ysmiriek: Ab

Ysquiron: Ab

ysrael: J 1

ystana: J 1

ysyston: J 1, 5

ythanay: J 5

ytrnt: J 1

yturahihel: J 5

yvestre: J 5

ZA (or ZA ZA) (Heb. magic name): NS A17:28

Zaadalahbia: P iv ix 53

Zaadebola: P iv ix 51

Zaajah: L 3

zaan: J 5

zaare: P i v 27

zaarmethihail [S: zaarmatihail]: J 2

Zaazenach: L 3

zabahal: J 2

zabahat: P i v 27

zabaihon [S: labayhon]: J 2

zabay: J 2

zabayel [S: zabahel]: J 2

zabday: J 2

zabele: J 5

zabin: J 5

Zabriel (aerial spirit): L2

zabuather: J 1, 5

zacahel [S: zatahel]: J 2

zacdon: J 1

Zachamay: J 4

Zachamos: J 4

Zachana: J 4

Zachariel: J 5; L 2, 3; T

zachhar [S: zathhar]: J 2

Zachiel: L 3

Zachriel: L 3

Zaciel: L 3

Zackiel: L 3

ZACRATH: K

zadaanchyos [S: zadanthios]: J 2

zadan: J 5

zadanay: J 5

ZADES: K

Zadiel: L 3

Zadifor (Zadifór) Angel (or demon) of 6th hour of Sunday: MTS

Zadikiel: angel: BP 3c

Zadkiel: Angel ruling the angelic order of Dominations in OP2.12; J5

zagahel [S: zaguhel]: J 2

Zagal: Ab

Zagalo: Ab

Zagan: L 1

Zagiel: L 3

zagnam: J 2

Zagnazael: NS 213

zagnel [S: zagnhel or ?zaguhel]: J 2

ZAGVERON: K

zahamany: J 2

zahamir [S: zahamyr]: J 2

zahayr: J 5

ZAHIPHIL: K

Zahudaz: P iii ix 16

ZAINON: K

Zajel: L 3

Zakiel: angel: BP 3c

zalamatha: J 2

Zalanes: Ab

Zalay: GV

zalcycyll: J 1

Zaliel (angel of the fifth heaven): H

zallaehatos [S: zallachatos]: J 2

ZALMAII: K

zalymebor [S: zalimebor]: J 2

zalymylos: J 2

zama: J 2, 3

zamaanel: J 1

zamachamar [S: zamathamar]: J 2

zamachoray: J 2

Zamael: J5; K

Zamahyl: P iii vii 33

ZAMAII: K

Zamanyl: J 4

zamaram: J 2

zamarzathon: J 4

zamath [S: zaniath?]: J 2

zamatihel: J 2

zamay: J 4

Zamazchel [S: zamazthel]: J 4

zamazihal: J 2

zamazynyn: J 1

Zamiel: K4; L 3

zamiht: J 2

zammazazay [S: zamma zazay]: J 4

Zamoni: K4

Zamor (aerial spirit): L2

zamoyma: J 3

zamyel: J 1

Zamyn: J 4

zamynel: J 2

zamyrel: J 2

zanaile [S, S2: zanailt]: J 3

zanay: J 2

Zaniel (angel of first heaven): H

zanogromos: J 2

zanothoros: J 2

Zaphkiel: Angel ruling the angelic order of Thrones in OP2.12, OP2.13

zapkiel: J 5

Zaqiel: E

zarafyll: J 1

Zaragil: Ab

zarahoren [S, S2: "zarahoron"]: J 3

zaralamay: J 2

Zaramahe [S: zaramahem]: J 4

Zaramohem [S: zaramahem]: J 4

zaramyhel: J 2

zaraney: J 5

zaraphamy: J 4

Zarathiel [S: zarachiel]: J 4

zarayll: J 1

Zardiel: L 3

Zarduch: name of demon called the "strangling mother of boys": BP 4b, 6b, 1c, 2c, 25c

Zarel: GV

Zargigin: demon (?) sea-monster (?): BP 23c

Zargin: demon (?) sea-monster (?): BP 23c

Zariatnatmik (name of God): G

ZARMESITON: K

zarmioch: J 5

ZARON: K

zarsayeyll: J 1

zarthaiual [S: zarchamal]: J 2

zaryalyn: J 1

zasamar: J 2

Zasnor: L 3

Zasviel: L 3

zaszyell: J 1

zathon [S: zamayzathon]: J 4

Zatriel: angel: BP 3c

Zauceb: P iv vi 13

Zavael: L 3

zay [S: zai]: J 2, 4

Zayin: K

zaynos: J 2

zazacco [S: zazaico]: J 2

zazaiham: J 2

ZAZAII: K

Zazamanp [S: zazomanp]: J 4

zazamar [S: zamamar]: J 2

Zazar: Magic word: GH

zazarahel: J 2

zazarharon [S: zazar haron]: J 2

ZAZEAN: K

Zazel: The spirit of Saturn (OP2.22); K; K4; GH

Zaziel: J 1

Zazyor: L 3

Ze Shem Rav: NS 211

Zeanon: K4

Zebahot: GH

ZEBAOTH (=Sabaoth, Tzabaoth, a name of God): H; L 1, 2, 3

Zebechia: K4

zebial: J 2

Zeboul (Zeboúl): Demon of Saturday/Saturn (complement of its angel, Beel): MTS

zebracal: J 2

Zebul: H

zechar: J 2

ZECHIEL (angel): K

zechor [S: zethor]: J 2

zecromanda: J 4

zedabanay [S: Zedalanay]: J 2

zedach: J 2

zedaich [S: zedaizh]: J 2

zede: J 2

Zedeck: Hebrew for Jupiter. See OP2.13.

Zedeesia: K

Zedeezia: K

ZEDEREZA: K

Zedet: J 1

Zedezias: K

zedrociel: J 5

zefaell: J 1

zegahaton [S: zegahathon]: J 2

Zegiel: L 3

Zegomothay: J 4

zehanphaton [S: zahan..]: J 2

zehemphagon: J 2

zeherem: J 2

zehetyn: J 2

zehez: J 2

zeheziehelmos [S: zehe ziehelmos]: J 2

zelamye: J 2

Zelebs'el: E

Zelezyon [S: zelezion]

zelfayeyll: J 1

zelidron: J 5

zelimal: J 2

zelmora: J 3

zely: J 2

zelybron: J 1

zelyhon [S: zelihon]: J 2

zelym: J 2

zemabar: J 3

zemahal [S: hemahel]: J 2

zemaher: J 2

zemayl: J 1

zemazadair [S: zemadazan]: J 2

zemazphar [S: zemasphar]: J 2

zemegamary: J 2

zemehet: J 2

zemeihacon [S: zemeihaton]: J 2

zemelaza: J 2

zemeney: J 2

zemey [S: zemei]: J 2

Zemeyel: P iv ii 21

zemeziham [S: zemoziham]: J 2

Zemoel: L 3

zemohay: J 2

zemolym: J 2

zemonoma: J 2

zemothor: J 2

zemyhot: J 2

zenam: J 1

Zenard: K (corruption for Zevaoth = Sabaoth); K4 (pentacle)

zenaziel: J 2

zenel: J 2

zenelyhos: J 2

zenolozihon: J 2

zenon: J 2; K4

Zenoroz: L 3

zenos: J 2

zenozmyhel: J 2

zeomaphar: J 2

zeomasphar [S: zeomaspar]: J 2

zeomonriel [S: zomonrihel]: J 2

Zepar: L 1

zepharonay: J 2

zephastonomos: J 2

zephyrs, spirits of all: E

Zequebin: P iv ix 51

zeregal: J 2

Zeriel (aerial spirit): L2

zeromay [S: seromay]: J 2

zeron: J 2

zerothay: J 2

Zeschar: L 3

zetchora [S, S2 om.]: J 3

zethemalo: J 2

zetheneran [S: zethenaram]: J 2

zethesaphir: J 2

Zethiel: L 3

zetogamyaal [S: zetegomyhal]: J 2

ZEVANION: K

ZEVARON: K

zezael [S: zehahel]: J 2

zezamanay: J 2

zezecca [S: zezetta]: J 2

zezegta: J 2

zezehas: J 2

Zeziel: L 3

Zerizin: demon (?) sea-monster (?): BP 23c

zezihel [S: sezihel]: J 2

zezocha [S: zezoca]: J 2

zezochthiam: J 2

zezor [S: rezor]: J 2

zezoray [S: zezocay]: J 2

zezorias [S: zehorias]: J 2

ZIANOR: K

zicaran: J 1

ZIDEON: K

Zidkenu: Name of God in OP2.12

zihanati: J 2

zihoton: J 2

Ziminiar: L 1

zimphoros [S: zymphoros]: J 2

ZIO: K

ZITANSEIA: K

Zobaa marrach: P iv vii 23

Zodiel: L 3

Zoeniel (aerial spirit): L2

Zoesiel: L 3

Zohal: P iii vii 17; iv vii 23

zohanphaton: J 2

ZOHAR: K

Zohara: P iii vii 30; iv vii 23

zolmazathol: J 2

zoma: J 2, 3

ZOMEN: K

zomize [S: zomye]: J 2

zomyhel: J 2

zopascanelyhos: J 2

ZOPHIEL: K

zorol: J 2

Zorzorath (Zorzoráth): Angel (or demon) of 3rd hour of Friday: MTS

Zosiel (aerial spirit): L2

zosomeraht: J 3

Zotiel: E

Zoymiel: L 3

zozagam: J 2

zozena: J 2

Zôrôêl: TS

Zugola: Ab

ZUMECH: K

Zuriel: Angel ruling over Libra (OP2.14); J 5

ZUSIMA: magical word used in 'Binding the fever': BP 17c

zyhazanagar [S: zihazanagar]: J 2

Zymeloz: L 3

ZZZZ (Heb. name of God): NS A17:9

AN ANCIENT BOOK OF MAGIC.THE SWORD OF MOSES
20:00:49 - Jun 30 2006
Times Read: 16

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

FROM AN UNIQUE MANUSCRIPT.
II. TRANSLATION
I. The Sword of Moses.

In the name of the mighty and holy God!
NOTES:

Four angels are appointed to the "Sword" given by the Lord, the Master of mysteries, and they are appointed to the Law, and they see with penetration the mysteries from above and below; and these are their names -- SKD HUZI, MRGIOIAL, VHDRZIOLO, TOTRISI. [CQD HUZI MRGIZIAL, UHDRZIULU, TUTRISI] And over these are five others, holy and mighty, who meditate on the mysteries of God in the world for seven hours every day, and they are appointed to thousands of thousands, and to myriads of thousands of Chariots, ready to do the will of their Creator, X1 [AHI HI HIH], the Lord of Lords and the honoured God; these are their names -- X [MHIHUGTzI PJDUThThGM, ASQRIHU, CIThINIJUM, QThGNIPRI]. And the Master of each Chariot upon which they are appointed wonders and says: "Is there any number of his armies?" And the least of these Chariots is lord and master over those (above) four. And over these are three chiefs of the hosts of the Lord, who make every day tremble and shake His eight halls, and they have the power over every creature. Under them stand a double number of Chariots, and the least of them is lord and master over all the above Chiefs (rulers); and these are their names -- X [ASHHI CTRISHUIH SHUThGIAIH]. And the name of the Lord and king is X [PSQThIH], who sits, and all the heavenly hosts kneel, and prostrate themselves before Him daily before leaving X [GQTZ''CLAH], who is the Lord over all.

1. X stands for the mysterious names, which have not been transliterated, N for the name of the person who conjures. -TG

I have inserted some of the names in [] -JHP

And when thou conjure him he will attach himself to thee, and cause the other five Chiefs and their Chariots, and the lords that stand under them, to attach themselves to thee just as they were ordered to attach themselves to Moses, son of Amram, and to attach to him all the lords that stand under them; and they will not tarry in their obeisance, and will not withhold from giving authority to the man who utters the conjuration over this "Sword," its mysteries and hidden powers, its glory and might, and they will not refuse to do it, as it is the command of God X [ABDUHU] saying: "Ye shall not refuse to obey a mortal who conjures you, nor should you be different to him from what you were to Moses, son of Amram, when you were commanded to do so, for he is conjuring you with My Ineffable names, and you render honour to My name and not to him. If you should refuse I will burn you, for you have not honoured Me."

Each of these angels had communicated to him (Moses) a propitious thing for the proper time. These things (words) are all words of the living God and King of the Universe, and they said to him: --

"If thou wishest to use this 'Sword' and to transmit it to the following generations, (then know) that the man who decides to use it must first free himself three days previously from accidental pollution and from everything unclean, eat and dring once every evening, and must eat the bread from a pure man or wash his hands first in salt (?), and drink only water; and no one is to know that he intends using this 'Sword,' as therein are the mysteries of the Universe, and they are practised only in secret, and are not communicated but to the chaste and pure. On the first day when you retire from (the world) bathe once and no more, and pray three times daily, and after each prayer recite the following Blessing: --

"Blessed art thou [QUSIM], O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who openest the gates of the East and cleavest the windows of the firmament of the Orient, and givest light to the whole world and its inhabitants, with the multitude of His mercies, with His mysteries and secrets, and teachest Thy people Israel Thy secrets and mysteries, and hast revealed unto them the "Sword" used by the world; and Thou sayest unto them: "If anyone is desirous of using this 'Sword,' by which every wish is fulfilled and every secret revealed, and every miracle, marvel, and prodigy are performed, then speak to Me in the following manner, read before Me this and that, and conjure in such and such a wise, and I will instantly be prevailed upon and be well disposed towards you, and I will give you authority over this Sword, by which to fulfil all that you desire, and the Chiefs will be prevailed upon by you, and my holy ones will be well disposed towards you and they will fulfil instantly your wishes, and will deliver to you my secrets and reveal to you my mysteries, and my words they will teach you and my wonders they will manifest to you, and they will listen and serve you as a pupil his master, and your eyes will be illuminated and your heart will see and behold all that is hidden, and your size will be increased." Unto Thee I call, X [SUQIM], Lord of the Universe. Thou art He who is called X [IHUGH HU], King of the Universe. Thou art called X [AThHU], merciful king. Thou art called X [PHUZGH], gracious king. Thou art called X [ZHUThGIHH] living king. Thou art called X [TZHPRUHU HUH], humble king. Thou art called X [SPTHUThHU], righteous king. Thou art called X [QGIUHI HU], lofty king. Thou art called X [CHRU SGHURI], perfect king. Thou art called X [SPQS HPIH], upright king. Thou art called X [QThThH GThHI], glorious king. Thou art called X [PThRIS HUPIHU], youthful king. Thou art called X [ROPQ TzIUHIH], pleasant king. Thou art called X [JUSH IHU], and thou listenest to my prayer, for Thou hearkenest unto prayer; and attach unto me Thy servants the lords of the "Sword," for Thou art their king, and fulfil my desire, for evening is in Thy hands, as it is written: "Thou openest thine hand and satisfiest every living being with favour."

"I conjure you, Azliel [AZLI-AL] called X [HURI ZHI]; I conjure you, Arel [ARAL] called X [SQRISIHIH], Ta'aniel [TONI-AL] called X [AAThRTzAHIH], Tafel [TPAL] called X [HUPQI HUH AHIH], and the most glorious of these Yofiel Mittron [IUPIAL MITTRUN] called X [HLIKIH HUH], the glory from above. With the permission of my king (I conjure) Yadiel [IDIAL] called X [SGHUH HIH], Ra'asiel [ROCI-AL] called X [MHUPThKIHIITz], Haniel [JNIAL] called X [RHU PGTIH], Haniel [HNIAL] called X [PHUTzPNIGIH], Asrael [AShRAL] called X [ThHMUThIHIH], Yisriel [UIShRIAL] called X [QNIThI PTzIH], A'shael [OShHAL] called X [IHUTh NTHIHIH], Amuhael [OMUHAL] called X [RUPNIGIH USSIH], and Asrael [UATzRAL] called X [ShHGNU ThGIHH], that you attach yourselves to me and surrender the "Sword" to me, so that I may use it according to my desire, and that I find shelter under the shadow of our Lord in heaven in the glorious Name, the mighty and awe-inspiring X [HU HI HHI HU HH AH UH IH IH HUI HU HI HU NA HUH IHU IA HU HU IH IHU HI HU IA IH UH HU IA HU HUA HU IH UH IH HU HUH IHI HU IH AHIH MH UH], the twenty-four letters from the Crown; that you deliver unto me with this "Sword" the secrets from above and below, the mysteries from above and below, and my wish be fulfilled and my word. hearkened unto, and my prayer (supplication) received through the conjuration with the Ineffable name of God which is glorified in the world, through which all the heavenly hosts are tied and bound; and this is the Ineffable Name -- X [HH HH HUH HHII IUHH AH UH NIH HUH PH UHU HIH TzHU AH UH HIH ThH UH IH UH IH SIH UH IH UI H], blessed be he! (I conjure you) that you shall not refuse me nor hurt me, nor frighten and alarm me, in the tremendous Name of your king, the terror of whom rests upon you, and who is called X [PRZMUThGIH SRJUQThIH: HIGNIThIH: TRSNIHIH: QRZMThHU: TZNIH IH UH HIH HU HI HA HUH AHH HHI AH UH HUH HIH AH UH IH IHH IHU IHI AU HH AH HH HA HIH AH ZQDIDRIH]. Fulfil for me everything that I have been conjuring you for, and serve me, for I have conjured you not with the name of one who is great among you but with that of the Lord over all, whose name ties and binds and keeps and fastens all the heavenly hosts. And if you should refuse me, I will hand you over to the Lord God and to his Ineffable name, whose wrath and anger and fire are kindled, who honours his creatures with one letter of his name, and is called X [ZRUG DQNTA QTzUPTzJThIH: AHUH-SJThI GIH NIGIM: HIGIH HU IH HNIH HUH QLTzG]; so that if you refuse he will destroy you, and you will not he found when searched after. And you preserve me from shortness of spirit and weakness of body in the name of X [JZQAI AHIH UH IH HH IHH IH UH HH IH HIH AHIU IH HIU IHI UHUI HI HUI IH QQHUH SQQHUH], the guardian of Israel. Blessed art Thou, who understandest the secrets and revealest the mysteries, and art king of the Universe.'"

A voice warn heard in the heavens, the voice of the Lord of heavens, saying: "I want a light (swift) messenger (to go) to man, and if he fulfils my message my sons will become proud of the 'Sword' which I hand over to them, which is the head of all the mysteries of which also my seers have spoken, that thus will my word be, as it is said: 'Is not my word like as fire? saith the Lord'" (Jer. xxiii, 29). Thus spoke X [PGNININU GSIH], the lord of heaven and earth; and I, Assi Asisih and Apragsih [APRGSIH], the light (swift) messenger, who am pleased with my messages and delighted with my sending, ascended before Him, and the Lord over all commanded me: "Go and make this known to men who are pious and good and pure and righteous and faithful, whose heart is not divided and in whose mouth is no duplicity, who do not lie with their tongues and do not deceive with their lips, who do not grasp with their hands and are not lustful with their eyes, who do net run after evil, keep aloof from every uncleanness, depart from every defilement, keep themselves holy from contamination, and do not approach woman." When the Lord ever all commanded me thus, I, X [ASSI ASS UAS IS-IH UAPRGSIH], the swift messenger, went down to earth, and I said on my way: "Where is the man who possesses all these that I should go to him and place this with him?" And I asked myself, and thought in my heart that there is no man who would do all this that I wished; and I found none, and it was heavy unto me. And the Lord over all conjured me by His mighty right arm, and by the lustre of His glory and His glorious crown, with an oath of His mighty right arm, and He conjured me, and the lord over all strengthened me and I did not fall. I thus stood up, I, X [ASSI ASS U ASIS IH UAPRGSIH], to put NN in the possession of the desired covenant, in the name of X [QMBGL-OQMH-UH ZRUMTzIH-IH IKRUQ-ZNUThIH IRPHU-JThIH QTzI UTzIHTz-IHTz-IHTz]."

"This is the great and glorious Name which has been given as a tradition to man -- X [IH BIH ATz AH BAH HUI HU HU UH IA HU ZH UH UH AH IH IHU HH IHU IHU AQP HI HH IIAH HH HAH HUAH HHUH HII HU HU HI], holy, glorious, glorious, Selah. Recite it after thy prayers. -- And these are the names of the angels that minister to the son of man -- Mittron, Sgrdtsih, Mqttro, Sngotiqtel, etc., etc., etc. (28 names) [MITTRUN SGRDThTzIH MQTTRUN SNGUThIQThAL NGIQThGAL IGUAThQThIAL ANThGQSAL ANThUSSThIAL MIKAL-SRUG-GBRIAL CQThKNIH HDQRUNThIAL ANHSGAL IHUAL ThIZRThNSIAL SIGSTHAL ONPI QQPIAL NHR GSGNHIAL IKNI AThIHAL AQThQLIQAL INH GIThIAL IH]." "In a similar manner shall you serve me NN; and receive my prayer and my orisons, and bring them to God [IHUH] X [HH SHH AHH HH UH UH], blessed be He! for I adjure you in His name, and I extol you (to ascend), like unto the bird that flies from its nest, and remember my meritorious deeds before Him and (make Him) forgive now my sins on account of my words of supplication, and you may not refuse me in the name of X [HH-HH-UH-UIH- IH-UIH-UH-UH-UIHH- UIH-AH-HHUI-AHU-IA- HI-HI-HU-HU-IHU-H H-HUH-IH-UH], blessed be He! Sabaoth, Sabaoth [TzBAUTh, TZBAUTh], Selah. His servants sanctify Him and praise Him with sweet melody, and say: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of holy name; the whole earth is full of His glory"; and do not refuse me, in the name of X, who lives for ever, and in the name of Ditimon, etc., X, and in the name X of the great One from whom nothing is hidden, who sees and is not seen, and in the name of Him who is the chief over the heavens and is called X. And the King of the Universe utters (this name) also in a different manner, thus -- X. You swift messenger, do not tarry and do not frighten me, but come and do all my wants in the name of X, the great One, who sees and is not seen, AHVH, whose Ineffable Name is revealed to the heavenly hosts; and I conjure you by this Ineffable Name, such as it was revealed to Moses by the mouth of the Lord over all, X, the Lord Sabaoth is His name. Blessed art thou, O God, lord of mighty acts, who knowest all the mysteries."

And which are the letters which X communicated to Moses? He said to him: "If thou wishest to get wise and to use the 'Sword,' call me, and conjure me, and strengthen me, and fortify me, and say: 'X, with the great, holy, wonderful, pure, precious, glorious, and awe-inspiring secret Name X, with these letters I conjure thee to surrender to me and make me wise and attach to me the angels which minister to the "Sword," in the name of the Revealer of mysteries. Amen.'"

Write with ink on leather and carry about with you during those three days of purification, and invoke before and after prayer the following Names communicated to Moses by Mrgiiel, X, by Trotrosi, X, etc. (the 13 Chiefs mentioned at the beginning, and a long string of other mysterious names which are said to have been communicated to Moses). "And they have not hidden from him any of these sacred Ineffable names or letters, and have not given him instead the Substitutes of any of these sacred letters, for thus were they ordered by the Lord of all mysteries to communicate to him this 'Sword,' with these Names which constitute the mysteries of this 'Sword'; and they said to him 'Command the generations which will come after thee to say the following blessing prior to their prayer, lest they be swept away by the fire': 'Blessed art Thou, X [AIZVA AIZVNIS], who wast with Moses; he also with me, Thou, whose name is X. Send me X, who is the cover of the Cherubim, to help me. Blessed art Thou, Lord of the Sword.'"

Whoever is desirous of using this 'Sword' must recite his usual prayers, and at the passage "Thou hearkenest to prayer" say: "I conjure you four princes X, servants of Hadirion, X, that you receive my invocation before I pray, and my supplication before I entreat, and fulfil all my wishes through this 'Sword,' as you have done to Moses, in the glorious and wonderful name of the Lord of wonders, which is interpreted thus -- X." He must then call the five superior Chiefs and say: "I conjure you, X, that you accept my conjuration as soon as I conjure you, and you attach to me those four princes and all the hosts of Chariots over which you preside, to fulfil all my wishes through this 'Sword' by this beloved name X." He must then call the three angels that are superior to these, and say: "I conjure you, X, the beloved of X, who is Hadiririon, that you attach yourselves to me and attach to me X, who are standing under your rule, to fulfil all my wishes through this 'Sword' by this unique name X." And then he must lay hold of the highest Chief over all and say: "I conjure thee, X, strong and powerful Chief over all the heavenly hosts, that thou attachest thyself to me, thou and not thy messenger, and attach to me all the Chiefs that are with thee, to fulfil my wishes through this 'Sword,' by the name X, which has no substitute, for thou art beloved and he is beloved, and I am from the seed of Abraham called the beloved. Blessed art thou, King of the mysteries, Lord of the secrets, who hearkenest unto prayer."

And he is not to touch this "Sword" ere he has done all these things; afterwards he will be able to do whatever he likes, everything being written here following in its proper order.

II. This is the "Sword."

[It consists of a series of mysterious names of God or angels, to which the recipes in Part III refer. The first list commences with Tobat, Tsbr, etc. (1-5). These numbers are added by me to make the formulas run parallel with their magical applications in Part III, as already explained in the Introduction. I refer to them as they break up this part in convenient smaller portions, and are easily discernible. After these follow the words]: "With these your Names, and with the powers you possess, to which there is nowhere anything like (I conjure you) to show me and to search for me, and to bring me X to do all my bidding in the name of X," and, again, a list of names, that have no special characteristic in common. Nos. 20-24 are all names commencing with JJ; some of these finish with JH. 24-36 all these names have the word Sabaoth attached to them. To 41-47 HVH is added. From Nos. 51-93 all the names are composite; they appear as names of sons, the name of the father being added to each of these, close upon 160 names, e.g.: Sagnis, son of Srngia; Ssgn, son of 'Arggis; Atumi, son of Batumi; Ahsuti, son of Kkthus; Agupi, son of Abkmi, etc. Every name from 102 on to the end of this part finishes with -el, after which follow varying syllables and words: some are only JH or JV (Nos. 102-105), or a word commencing with 'A- and finishing with -JH (Nos. l06-lll). Nos. 112-121 are followed by ARVH, whilst 122-l27=JHVHH, and Nos. 128-134=HVJH. They conclude with the following words: "Ye sacred angels, princes of the hosts of X, who stand upon the thrones prepared for them before Him to watch over and to minister to the 'Sword,' to fulfil by it all the wants by the name of the Master over all; you Chiefs of all the angels in the world, X, in the name of X the seal of heaven and earth, ministers of X the most high God; through you I see X in the world; you are lording over me in all the place of the Master over all: I pray of you to do everything that I am asking of you, as you have the power to do everything in heaven and upon earth in the name of X, as it is written in the Law, 'I am the Lord, this is My name!'"

III.

1. If at full moon (?) a man wishes to unite a woman with a man that they should be as one to one another, to destroy winds (spirits), demons, and satans, and to stop a ship, and to free a man from prison, and for every other thing, write on a red bowl from Tobar, etc. (No. 1). -- 2. To break mountains and hills, to pass dryshod through the water, to enter the fire, to appoint and to depose kings, to blind the eyes, to stop the mouth, and to speak to the dead, and to kill the living, to bring down and to send up and to conjure angels to hearken unto thee, and to see all the mysteries of the world, write Nos. 1 and 2 upon the saucer of a cup and put in it the root of genip-tree (genipa). -- 3. Against a spirit that moves in the body write on a plate No. 3. -- 4. Against a spirit that burns write No. 4. -- 5. Against a spirit in the whole body write No. 5-6. Against a demon (shidda) write No. 6. -- 7. Against shingles write No. 7. -- 8. Against quinsy (erysipelas?) say the words of No. 8 over oil of roses and put it over his face. -- 9. For pains in the ear whisper in the painful ear No. 9. -- 10. For aches in the eye say the words No. 10 over water three days running in the morning, and wash the eye with it. -- 11. For cataract say the words of No. 11 over oil of sesame, and anoint the eye with it during seven mornings. -- 12. For grit in the eye say over Kohl No. 12, and fill the eye with it for three mornings. -- 13. For blood that runs from the head whisper No. 13 over the head early in the morning for three days, when you wash your hands before getting out of bed. -- 14. For paralysis say seven times over a vessel full of water and seven times over sesame-oil the words No. 14, "that it should move away and leave NN, Amen, Amen, Selah"; and throw the pail of water over his head and anoint him with the oil, and do this for three days; then write an amulet with the words from, "I conjure you " till "Amen, Selah," and hang it round his neck. -- 15. For pains in one half of the head (neuralgia?) and for bad singing in the ear, write No. 15 and hang it round the neck. -- 16. For the bad deafening (of the ear) write No. 16 and hang it round the neck. -- 17. For pains in the ear say into the left ear the words No. 17 backwards. -- 18. For deafness say over hemp water, whilst mixing it with oil of "Idi" (sesame?), the words of No. 18, and put it into his ear as soon as it has become a little dissolved (or warm). -- 19. For scabs, ulcers, itches, mange, shingles, etc., that befall mankind, say over olive oil No. 19 and anoint with the left hand. -- 20. For jaundice say the words No. 20 over water in which radish has been soaked, and let him drink it. -- 21. For pains in the nose and for the spirit in the nose say No. 21 over oil of "Idi" (sesame?) and put it into his nostrils. -- 22. For pains in the stomach (lit. heart) and in the bowels say No. 22 over water, and drink it. -- 23. For hot fever say No. 23 over water in which rose-laurels are soaked, and he is to bathe in it. -- 24. For tumors, etc., say No. 24 once over them and once over olive oil, and anoint them for three days, but do not let any water come near them -- 25. For an evil occurrence (?) say No. 25 over seven white cups of water, filled from the river, and throw them over the head. -- 26. For ulcer (diphtheria?) spit out before him, and say over his mouth, and over a cup of strong drink, No. 26, and make him drink, and watch what is coming out of his mouth. -- 27. For a man bitten by a snake or by another (!) poisonous insect, he must say over the place of the bite or over the painful spot No. 27 and drink it; the same he is to do whenever hurt by any creeping thing. -- 28. For a woman who has seen blood before the time my No. 28 over an ostrich egg, then burn it, and she be smoked with it. -- 29. For pains in the mouth say No. 29 over risen flour, and put it upon his mouth. -- 30. For quinsy (croup) and for pains in the shoulder, say No. 30 over wine and drink. -- 31. For a painful nerve write No. 31 on a scroll and speak these words over olive oil, and rub some of it on the scroll and smear it over the painful spot and hang the amulet round his neck. -- 32. For stone my over a cup of wine No. 32, and drink it. -- 33. For hemorrhoids take tow and put salt on it and mix it with oil, saying over it No. 33, and sit on it. -- 34. For a man who suffers from swelling and from venereal disease (?), he is to say No. 34 over water in which radishes are soaked, and drink. -- 35. For sprains, either you take a plate and write upon it No. 35 and put it upon the place, and all around it will be healed; or you take a ball of wool and dip it in oil of (sesame?), and say those words upon it and put it upon the sprain. -- 36. When injured or hurt by iron, and for every blow that it should not fester, say No. 36 over white naphtha and rub it over the place of the blow. -- 37. For (cramps?) and for pains of heart say over spinach and oil No. 37, and drink it. -- 38. For the gall and the bowels take the water in which raisins have been soaked, saying over it No. 38, and drink it. -- 39. For the spoiled liver take (a drink) a sixth measure of water-lentils and say No. 39, and swallow it slowly (?). -- 40. For the milt say No. 40 over wine-lees and drink it, and repeat it for three days. -- 41. For the spirit who rests on the womb, say No. 41 on camphor oil and put it on it with a ball of wool. -- 42. For a woman who has a miscarriage, say No. 42 on a cup of wine, or strong drink, or water, and let her drink it for seven days; and even if she should see blood and she repeats it over a cup of wine, the child will live. -- 43. For a man who is bald, say No. 43 over nut-oil and anoint with it. -- 44. To conjure a spirit write on a laurel-leaf: "I conjure thee, prince whose name is Abraksas, in the name of (No. 44) that thou comest to me and revealest to me all that I ask of thee, and thou shalt not tarry." And the one bound by thee will come down and reveal himself to thee. -- 45. To remove a rich man from his riches, say No. 45 upon the dust of an ant-hill and throw it into his face. -- 46. To heal leprosy, take the patient to the side of the river and say to him: "I conjure thee, leprosy, in the name of (No. 46) to disappear and to vanish, and to pass away from NN. Amen, Amen, Selah"; and he is to go down and dip seven times in the river, and when he comes out write an amulet with the words "I conjure -- Selah," and hang it round his neck. -- 17. For diarrhea write No. 47 on a red copper plate and hang it round his neck.

-- 48. If thou wishest that the rain should not fall upon thy garden, write out No. 48. -- 49. If thou wishest to see the sun (!) take . . . from a male tree and stand in front of the sun and say . . . which art called on the . . called . . . and the ears of barley (?) the words of No. 49;2 and he will appear unto thee in the form of a man dressed in white and he will answer thee upon everything that thou askest him, and he will even bring a woman after thee. -- 50. Whosoever wishes to enter a furnace is to write No. 50 on a silver plate and hang it upon his haunch.

2. There is something probably missing here.
-- 51. If thou seest a king or a ruler and thou wishest that he follow thee, take a basin of water and put into it the root of genip-tree, and the root of purslane, and the root of (Artilochia), and say No. 51, and place it on fiery coals in a white earthen vessel and throw upon them leaves of olive-tree, and whatever thou decreest he will bring unto thee, even a woman thou canst command. -- 52. If you wish to overawe them, take water from the fountain and say upon it No. 52 and throw it into their faces. -- 53. For loosening (any charm) say over water No. 53 and throw it over him and write it as an amulet and hang it round his neck, and also for freeing a man from prison. -- 54. To catch fish, take a white potsherd, and putting into it leaves of olive-tree say over them No. 54 at the side of the river. -- 55. If thou wisheat a woman to follow thee, take thy blood and write her name upon a newly-laid egg and say towards her No. 55.--56. If a man is to follow thee, take a new potsherd and dip it in black myrrh (gall) and pronounce over his name the words of No. 56, and walk on without looking backwards. -- 57. For a tree that does not produce fruits, write the words No. 57 upon a new potsherd and bury it under the root of the fruitless tree, and water all the trees and these also which do not produce the fruit. -- 58. For illness (dog) in the fruit write on a new potsherd No. 58 and bury it in the cistern (watering-place), and say these words also over water, ashes, and salt, and water the earth with it. -- 59. For a suckling babe write on an onyx slab No. 59 and whisper it into its ears three times, spitting out after the whispering; then repeat them over a cupful of water 70 times and give it the child to drink. -- 60. For one bitten by a rabid dog, write No. 60 on the halter of an ass and let the ass go; then repeat these words over sesame oil and let him anoint himself with it and put on new clothes and hang that halter (?) round him. -- 61. For fever and small fever, write on the skin of the brains of a ram or a goat No. 61, and hang it round his neck. -- 62. If anyone lose his way he is to say No. 62 over the four corners of his belt (?). -- 63. If thou wishest to ask anything of thy neighbour, say No. 63 over oil of sesame or of . . . or of . . . -- 64. If thou wishest that a woman is to follow thee write thy name and her name with thy blood upon her door, and the same upon thy door, and repeat the words of No. 64.-65. If thou wishest to know whether thy journey will be lucky, take a field lettuce with open leaves, and standing before the sun say the words of No. 65 and watch the lettuce: if the leaves close and shut, then do Dot go; but if they remain in their natural state, proceed, and thou wilt prosper. -- 66. If thou wishest to deliver a man from prison (?) say No. 66 once to him, and once to the sun, and once to the prison (?) house. -- 67. To conquer (collect?), take dust from thy house and say over it seven times in the road of the town the words of No. 67, and then take dust from the road and do likewise and throw it into thy house. -- 68. If you wish to kill a man, take mud from the two sides of the river and form it into the shape of a figure, and write upon it the name of the person, and take seven branches from seven strong palm-tree. and make a bow from reed (?) with the string of horse-sinew, and place the image in a hollow, and stretch the bow and shoot with it, and at each branch (shot) say the word. of No. 68; and may NN be destroyed . . . -- 69. To send plagues, take (parings?) from seven men and put them into a new potsherd, and go out to the cemetery and say there No. 69, and bury it in a place that is not trodden by horses, and afterwards take the dust from this potsherd and blow it into his face or upon the lintel of his house. -- 70. To send dreams to your neighbours, write No. 70 upon a plate of silver and place it in the mouth (?) of a cock and kill it when it has gone down its mouth, and take it out from the mouth and put it between its legs and bury it at the end of a wall, and put thy foot upon that spot and say thus: "In the name of X, a swift messenger is to go and torment NN in his dreams until he will fulfil my wish." -- 71. If a snake follows thee say No. 71, and it will dry up. -- 72. To stop a boat in the sea, say No. 72 over a potsherd or on a rounded flintstone and throw it against it into the sea. -- 73. To loosen it (from the charm), say No. 73 over dust or a clod of earth and throw it into the water, and as this dissolves the boat gets free to go. -- 74. If thou wishest to prevent an oven or furnace or pot from becoming destroyed (unclean?), say No. 74 over dust and throw it over them. -- 75. If thou wishest them to be hot, spit in front of them and say No. 75, and they will boil. -- 76. If thou wishest to pass dryshod through the sea, say upon the four corners of the head-dress (turban) No. 76, and take one corner in thy hand and the other is (?) to precede thee. -- 77. If thou wishest to curse anyone, say in the 'Eighteen benedictions' No. 77, in the name of X. -- 78. To speak with the dead, whisper No. 71 into his left ear and throw into their holes (?). -- 79. To kill a lion, bear, an adder, or any other hurtful animal, take the dust from under the right foot, say over it No. 79, and throw it into their faces. -- 80. To catch them, take the dust from under your left foot, saying No. 80, and throw it into their faces. -- 81. To open a door, take the root of lotos reed and place it under the tongue and say No. 81 against the door. -- 82. To kill an ox or another beast, say into its ear No. 82-83. To inflame his heart, say No. 83 over a piece of raw meat, and give it to him to eat. -- 84. To make a fool of one, say No. 84 over an egg and place it in his hands. -- 85. To destroy the house of thy neighbour, say No. 85 over a new potaherd and throw it into his house. -- 86. To expose (?) your neighbour, say No. 86 over oil of . . . and smear it at the bottom of his jug (?). -- 87. To make your neighbour disliked, take blood from phlebotomy, say upon it No. 87, and throw it upon his lintel. -- 88. To make a woman have a miscarriage, say No. 88 over a cup of water and throw it over her lintel. -- 89. To make a man ill, say No. 89 over olive ol and let him anoint himself with it. -- 90. To know whether a man a sick person will die or live, say before him No. 90: if he turns his face towards you he will live; if away, he will die. -- 91. To catch a lion by the ear, say No. 91 and make seven knots in the fringes of thy girdle and repeat these words with each knot, and you will catch him. -- 92. To make thy renown go throughout the world, write No. 92 as an amulet and bury it in thy house. -- 93. To shorten the way, say No. 93 over a single lotos reed. -- 94. To cure hemorrhoids, take kernels of dates . . . and burn them in fire and say No. 94, and mix it with oil of olives and place it as an amulet over it, and it will be good. -- 95. For every spirit write upon a bowl No. 95 and hang it round the neck. -- 9b. For subtle poison, as cumin-seed and calamint, write No. 96 upon an egg and put it into wine, and repeat over it the same words and then drink it. -- 97. For the thunder that comes from heaven, take a ring (round piece) of iron and lead, and hang it on the spot you wish (to protect), and say over it No. 97.-98. To go before king or lord, say No. 98 over a piece of lion's skin dipped in black hemp (?) and pure wine, and take it with thee. -- 99. For blight, if it happen, take a sinew and soak it in turnip-juice in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, and say No. 99 over it; on the morrow sprinkle that water over the field. -- l00. If the fruit gets worm-eaten, take a worm from the mud and put it into a tube and say No. 100 over it; then close the tube and bury it in that place. -- l01. To free a man from prison (? shame), say over the grounds of Kappa (?) and unripe dates No. 101, and give it to him to eat. -- 102. For a field that does not produce fruits, take eight cups from eight houses and fill them with water from eight rivers, and put salt into them from eight houses, and say over them No. 102 eight times, and pour out two cups at each corner, and break them on eight paths. -- 103. If one does not know what a man is ailing from, soak mullein (verbascum) in water, and say over it No. 103, and let him drink it when he is thirsty. -- 104. To make war, take the dust from under the left foot, say over it No. 104, and throw it into the (enemies') face, and there will appear knights with weapons in their hands who will fight for thee. -- 105. To throw thy fear upon mankind, write No. 105 upon a leaden plate and bury it on the west side of the Synagogue. -- 106. To have always light in the darkness, write No. 106 upon a chart (paper) and carry it always with thee. -- 107. To catch (blind) the eye, write No. 107 upon a scroll and expose it in a wicker-basket to the stars, but you must not speak when writing. -- 108. To send a sword which should fight for thee, say No. 108 over a new knife wholly of iron, and throw it into their face. -- 109. If thou wishest that they kill one another, say No. 109 over a new knife wholly of iron and bury it with your heel into the earth, and keep the heel upon it in the earth, and they will kilt one another, until you take it out from the earth. -- 110. To make them pause, take the dust from under the right foot, and, saying the same word. again backwards, throw it into their face, and they will stop. -- 111. If an enemy has got hold of thee and wishes to kill thee, bend the little finger of the left hsnd and say No. 111, and he will run away from thee like one who runs away from his murderer. -- 112. To catch the eye (blind), say No. 112 over the skin of a lion and carry it with thee, and no one will be able to see thee. -- 113. If thou fallest into a (?) and wishest to come out, say No. 113, and thou wilt come out in peace. -- 114. If thou fallest into a deep pit, say in thy fall No. 114, and nothing will hurt thee. -- 115. When thou fallest into a deep river say No. 115, and thou wilt come out in peace. -- 116. If any burden or weight falls upon thee, say No. 116, and thou wilt be saved. -- 117. If the king's servants lay hold on thee, bend the little finger of the left hand and say No. 117 before king or judge, and he will kill these people who have laid hands on thee. -- 118. If a host has surrounded thee, turn thy face towards the west and say No. 118 before king or judge, and they will be like unto stones and will not move. -- 119. If thou wishest to release them, turn thy face towards the east and repeat these words backwards. -- 120. If thou walkest in vales or on the mountains and hast no water to drink, lift thine eyes to Heaven and say No. 120, and a fountain of water will he opened unto thee. -- 121. If thou hungerest, lift thine eyes to Heaven and spread out thine arms and say No. 121, and a spirit will stand before thee and bring thee bind and meat. -- 122. If thou wishest to call the angel (prince) of man, say over thy mantle (?) No. 122, and the angel bound by thee will come to thee and will tell thea whatever thou wishest (to know). -- 123. If thou wishest to let him go (depart), say before him the same words backward, and he will depart. -- 124. If thou wishest that any heavenly prince is to come to thee and teach thee, say No. 124 and conjure him in the third hour of the night from: "in the name of the Lord over the holy ones (No. 136) to the and of the 'Sword,'" and "Send him to me that he reveal unto me and teach me all that is in his power," and he will then disappear (!). -- 125. To walk upon the water without wetting the feet, take a leaden plate and write upon it No. 125 and place it in thy girdle, and then you can walk. -- 126. To become wise, remember for three months running, from the new moon of Nissan onwards, the words of No. 126, and add in the 'Eighteen benedictions': "May the gates of wisdom be opened to me so that I should meditate in them." -- 127. To remember immediately all thou learnest, write on a new-laid egg No. 127, then wash it off with strong wine early in the morning and drink it, and do not eat anything for three hours. -- 128. To make another forget what he has learned, write No. 128 in his name on laurel-leaves and bury them under his lintel. -- 129. To send an evil spirit against thy neighbour, take a green grasshopper and say over it No. 129, and bury it in an earth-hill and jump over it. -- 130. To send a plague, take the bone of a dead man and dust from under him in a pot and tie it up in a woven rag with saliva, and say upon it No. 130 in his name, and bury it in the cemetery. -- 131. To tie and to fasten thiefs and robbers, say No. 131, and whilst saying it put your little finger in the ear. -- 132. To release them, say No. 132, and take thy finger out of the ear. -- 133. To guard thy house from thieves, say No. 133 over a cup of water and pour it out round thy roof. Thus also to guard a house. -- 134. To guard a house from hosts (robbers), take earth from an ant-hill and strew it round the roof, repeating the words of No. 134.-135. To guard thyself from Mazikim, say: "In the name of 'Nos. 1-5' may I, NN, pass in peace and not in hurt." The same must be done to excommunicate them when you meet them. -- 136. For every other thing that has not been mentioned say, No. 136 to the end of the "Sword."

And upon every amulet that you write from this "Sword" write first: "In the name of the Lord of all the holy ones, may this 'Sword' be effectual to do my services, and may the lord of it approach to serve me, and may all these powers be delivered over to me so that I be able to use them, as they were delivered to Moses, the son of Amram, perfect from his God and no harm befalling him!" If he will not act accordingly the angels of wrath, ire, fury, and rage will come near him to minister to him, and they will lord over him, and strangle him, and plague him all over. And these are the names of their leaders: the leader of the angels of wrath is Mzpopiasaiel; the name of the leader of the angels of ire is Zkzoromtiel; the name of the leader of the angels of fury is Kso'ppghiel; the name of the leader of the angels of rage is N'mosnikttiel. And the angels that stand under them are numberless, and these all will have power over him, and will make his body like unto a dunghill.

May the Lord preserve you from every evil. Amen!

End of the "Sword," with the assistance of God feared in the council of the holy ones. End, end.

APPENDIX I.

In the name of the Lord. The Sword of Moses.

I. [A long list of mystical names; then follows:] and the angel over the animals, whose name is Ittalainma; and the angel over the wild beasts, Mtnisl; and the angel over the wild fowls and over the creeping things, Trgiaob; and the angel over the deep waters and over the mountains, Rampel; and the angel over the trees, Maktiel; and the angel over the sweet-smelling herbs, Arias; and the angel over the garden fruit, (vegetables), Sofiel; and the angel over the rivers, Trsiel; and the angel over the winds, Mbriel; and over man, X. -- . . . hours are proper for man to pray aad to ask for mercy upon man, be it for good or evil; and it is said that every hour is proper for man to pray, but during the three first hours in the morning man is to pray and to mention the hundred sacred names and the mighty ones, whose sum amounts to three hundred and four. Amen. Selah!

............ X give me healing ....

Which is the great light? All the . . . . X, I conjure you, mother of the (whether?) male and mother of the (or?) female, you, the "Twins," I conjure you, the hard (strong) spirits, in the name of God, the mighty hero, the living one [Michael], in the name of God [Gabriel], . . Raphael (save) me from the Lions, the powerful ones (Archon?), and the Twins. I conjure you, strong spirits, in the name of God, the mighty hero, IH, IHVH, IHVH, I, N, son of N..

II. Verily, this is the ("Sword of Moses") with which he accomplished his miracles and mighty deeds, and destroyed all kind of witchcraft; it had been revealed to Moses in the bush, when the great and glorious Name was delivered to him. Take care of it and it will take care of thee. If thou approachest fire, it will not burn thee, and it will preserve thee from every evil in the world. -- 1. If thou wishest to try it take a thick (green) branch and utter this "Sword" over it five times at sunrise, and it will dry up. -- 2. To catch fish, take sand from the sea and the root of the date (tree) (or the kernel of the date), and repeat this "Sword" over them, and the fish will come to the spot where thou throwest the sand. -- 3. To walk on the waters of the sea take the wooden helve of an axe, bore a hole through it, pass a red thread through it, and tie it on to thy heel, then repeat the words of the "Sword," and then you may go in and out in peace. -- 4. To run quickly (?), write the "Sword" on "Chartis hieratikon," then put water into a new earthenware pot, and let them drink it and wash their faces, and they will he victorious! -- 5. To break it (?), write the "Sword" on a plate of copper (kyprinon) and put it in . . and they will be broken. -- 6. To subdue a woman, write with the blood of thy hand thy (?) name upon thy gate, and write thy name upon a scroll of leather of a hart with the blood of thy finger, and say this "Sword," and she will come to thee.

-- 7. To make thyself praised in the community, take in thy left hand porret-seed and utter over it the "Sword," and throw it between them,3 and descend (?) until the sun sets, and he will carry thee wherever thou wishest, and fast for three days, and burn incense and the smoke of white flower, and repeat the "Sword" in the morning and the evening, and he will come instantly and speak to thee and do thy bidding.

3. There is something probably missing here.
-- 8. To get information through a dream, take balm and write upon "Chartis hieratikon," and repeat the "Sword" in front of a light, and put out the light with a stick of olive-wood, and lie down. -- 9. If thou wishest to go to a great man, take rose-oil and repeat the "Sword" over the oil and anoint thy hands and face with it, and he will hearken unto thee. -- 10. To make strife in the community, take the left hand full of mustard, speak the "Sword" over it, and throw it amongst them, and they will kill one another. -- ll. To separate a man from his wife, take ass's meat in thy hand and say over it the "Sword," and no harm will befall thee (?). -- 12. To destroy thy enemy, take a leaden plate and some of his halr and clothes, and say the "Sword" over them, and bury them in a deserted house, and he will fall down. -- 18. To walk in the street and not to be recognized by anyone, take wormwood, perfumes, and soot, and moke thyself with it, and take the heart of a fox, and say the "Sword," and go out in the street. -- 14. If you are on the sea and the storm rages, stand up against the waves and say the "Sword" to them, and they will go down; then write on a plate, or potsherd, or a piece of wood, and hang it in front of the ship, and it will not founder. -- 15. To break an enemy, write the "Sword" upon a potsherd that has not yet hem burned, and plaster it over, and throw it into his house. -- 16. To obtain anything thou likest, take into thy right hand wormwood, and say over it the "Sword" facing the sun, and everything will be fulfilled, and purify thyself for seven days, and thou wilt prosper in everything. Do kind deeds to thy friends, take heed not to take an oath, and walk modestly, and thus thou wilt prosper.

Write X upon the palm of thy left hand, take then a new lamp and fill it with olive-oil and naphtha, and put on new clean clothes, and sleep in a clean house, and the angel will come at once and wake thee,, and reveal unto thee everything that thou wishest.

III. R. Akiba asked R. Eliezer the great: "How can one make the Angel of the Presence descend upon earth to reveal to man the mysteries from above and beneath, and the speculations of the foundations of heavenly and earthly things, and the treasures of wisdom, cunning, and help?" He said thereupon to me: "My son! I once made him come down, and he nearly destroyed the whole world, for he is a mighty prince and greater than any in the heavenly cohort, and he ministers oontinually before the King of the Universe, with purity and separation, and with fear and dread of the glory of his Master, because the Shekinah is always with him." And he said to him: "My master, by the glory which thou hast bestowed upon me, I conjure thee to instruct me how to attach him to me." (And he replied) : "In that hour when I wish to attach him to me and to employ him, I sit and fast on that very day ; but prior to it one must keep oneself free for seven days from any nocturnal impurity, and must bathe in the fountain of water, and not speak at all during those seven days, and at the end of this purification, on the day of the fast, he must sit in the water up to his throat, and before he utters the conjuration he must first say: 'I conjure you, angels of dread, fear, and shaking, who are appointed to hurt those who are not pure and clean and desire the services of my heavenly servants -- I conjure you in the name of X, who is mighty over all, and rules over all, and everything is in His hands, that you do not hurt me, nor terrify me, nor frighten me; verily, in the name of the powerful, the head of . . .' After this he may commence his conjuration, for now he has fortified himself and has sealed himself with the name of God of 42 letters, before which all who hear it tremble and are frightened, and the heavenly hosts are terror-struck. He must then again conjure, and say: 'X, chief, who of all the destroying angels is the most hurtful and burning, with this Name and in this way I call thee AVZHIA, angel of the Presence, youthful minister before the King of the Universe, who art a prince and chief of the heavenly hosts; I conjure thee and decree upon thee that thou attachest thyself to me to fulfil my wish and to accept the decree of my conjuration and to accomplish my desires and fulfil my wishes, and do not frighten me, nor terrify me, nor overawe me, and do not make my frame shake and my feet vacillate, nor cause my speech to be perverted; but may I be fortified and strengthened, and may the conjuration be effective and the (sacred) Name uttered properly by my throat, and may no vacillation take hold of me and no trembling of the feet by thy ministering angels confuse me and overawe me, and weaken my hands, and may I not be overcome by the fire and flame of the storm and whirlwind which precedes thee, O wonderful and exalted one, whose Ineffable name is X, of whose wrath the earth trembles, and nothing can withstand his anger, twice blessed. Again I conjure thee by thy 14 (!) names by which thou didst reveal thyself to thy prophets and seers, to place in their mouths sweet words of prophecy and to utter pleasant words; and these are the Ineffable names and their surnames (Kunya): Spirit Piskonnit, kunya, X; Atimon, kunya, X; Piskon (?), Hugron, kunya, X; Sanigron, kunya, X; Msi, kunya, X; Mokon, kunya, X; Astm, kunya, X; Sktm, kunya, X; Ihoaiel, kunya, X; lofiel, kunya, X; Ssnialiah, kunya, X; Kngieliah, kunya, X; Zabdiel, kunya, X. I conjure thee with these fourteen names, by which all the secrets and mysteries and signs are sealed and accomplished, and which are the foundations of heaven and earth. Four of these are engraved upon the heads of the Hayoth (Holy Greaturee), namely -- X, the lord of powers; X, master of miracles; X, master of purity; and X master of the yoke. And four are engraved upon the four sides of the Throne, namely -- X, three times holy; X, Adir, Adiri, Adiron, etc., the king of kings. And four are engraved upon the four crowns of the Ofanim (wheels) that stand against the Holy Creatures, as it is said: "When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood" (Ezek. i, 21); and these they are -- X, who is the mightiest over all; X, who rules over all the inhabitants of the heights (?), and in whese hands everything is. And two are engraved upon the crown of the most exalted and high King, and these they are -- X, before whom every knee bends and every mouth utters praises; X, besides him there is no God and helper. With these names I conjure thee, and firmly decree upon thee to descend quickly to me, N, son of N, thou and not thy messenger. And when thou comest down do not turn my mind, but reveal unto me all the secret mysteries from above and beneath, and the hidden secrets from above and beneath, and all the secrets of wisdom and the cunning of helpfulness, just as a man speaks to his neighbour. For I have conjured thee with these Names, that are great and mighty and wonderful and awe-inspiring, and proved and arranged in proper order, through which the glorious throne has been established and the beautiful seat of the Most High, which has been wonderfully wrought, long before thou and the heavenly hosts had been created, "While as yet He had not made the earth nor the fields, and the inhabitants of the earth and the creatures therein" (Prov. viii, 26).

"'I call thee further by (the power) of the five selected Names, to which only one is superior, and this is their form -- X. I conjure thee by these five Names, which correspond to the five names of God, whose letters are written on burning fire, and they circle round the throne of glory, one ascending and the other descending, so that the angels of the Presence should not behold them, and this is their equivalent and form and glory -- X. I conjure thee by these, as thou knowest their praise and greatness, which no mouth can utter, and no ear can hear, no, not even one of them. Thou hast been commanded and ordered by the Most High: "as soon as thou hearest anyone conjuring thee with these names, to do honour to My Name, and to descend quickly and fulfil the wish of the man who makes thee hear them; but if thou tarriest I will push thee into the fiery river Rigayon and place another in thy stead." Do it, therefore, for His Name, and come quickly to me, N, son of N, not in a terror, and not in fear, not with fiery coals, not with hailstone, and not with the sleet and treasures of snow, and not with the howling of the storm, and not with the provinces of the whirlwind that usually accompany thee, and do my bidding and fulfil my desire, for everything is in thy hand; by the permission of thy God, the master over all and thy lord, and with His Names I conjure thee to attach thyself quickly to me; come and fulfil my wish, and do not tarry.

"'I further call thee with the greatest of thy Names, the pleasant and beloved one, which is the same as that of thy Master, save one letter, with which He created and formed everything, and which He placed as a seal upon all the work of His hand; and this is its equivalent -- X, and the other in the language of purity (permutations of the letters Yod, He) is read so -- X. I conjure thee with the right hand of sanctity and with His beloved Name, in whose honour everything has been created, and all are terror-struck by His mighty arm, and all the sons of the internal heavenly cohort (servants) tremble and shake of Him fear, which is X, and its equivalent by means of JHVH is X. Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. And all praise and extol thy Name, for they love thee. I conjure thee, and decree upon thee firmly, not to disobey my words, and not to alter my decree and my decision with which I conjured thee, and decreed upon thee, and established in peace. In the Name X, blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever, depart in peace, and do not frighten me in the hour of thy departure; in the name X, Lord, most high and holy, in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel's battalions; in the name of the holy living Creatures, and in the name of the Wheels of the Chariot, and in the name of the river of fire, Ih, Zii, Ziin, and all His ministers, and in the name of IH, Ziin, Sabaoth, Z, El Z, Shaddai Z, X revealed Himself on Mount Sinai in the glory of His majesty.

"'With these Names, terrible and mighy, which darken the sun, and obscure the moon, and turn the sea, and break the rocks, and extinguish the light, I conjure you, spirits, and . . and Shiddim, and Satanim, that yen depart and disappear from N, son of N.'"

APPENDIX II.

I. Against an enemy. -- I call thee, evil spirit, cruel spirit, merciless spirit. I call thee, bad spirit, who sittest in the cemetery and takes away healing from man. Go and place a knot in NN's head, in him eyes, in his mouth, in his tongue, in his throat, in his windpipe; put poisonous water in his belly. If you do not go and put water in his belly, I will send against you the evil angels Puziel, Guziel, Psdiel, Prziel. I call thee and those six knots that you go quickly to NN and put poisonous water in his belly and kill NN whom I mean (or, because I wish it). Amen, Amen. Selah.

II. Against an enemy. -- Write upon a new-laid egg on a Nazarene cemetery: "I conjure you, luminaries of heaven and earth, as the heavens are separated from the earth, so separate and divide NN from him wife NN, and separate them from one another, as life is separated from death, and sea from dry land, and water from fire, and mountain from vale, and night from day, and light from darkness, and the sun from the moon; thus separate NN from NN his wife, and separate them from one another in the name of the twelve hours of the day and the three watches (?) of the night, and the seven days of the week, and the thirty days of the month, and the seven years of Shemittah, and the fifty years of Jubilee, on every day, in the name of the evil angel Tmsmael, and in the name of the angel Iabiel, and in the name of the angel Drsmiel, and in the name of the angel Zahbuk, and in the name of the angel Ataf, and in the name of the angel Zhsmael, and in the name of the angel Zsniel, who preside over pains, sharp pains, inflammation, and dropsy, and separate NN from him wife NN, make them depart from one another, and that they should not comfort one another, swiftly and quickly."

NEW AND COMPLETE ILLUSTRATION OF THE OCCULT SCIENCES:
19:59:58 - Jun 30 2006
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IN FOUR PARTS.
PART I.

AN Enquiry into, and Defence of, Astrology; with an interesting Discourse on Natural and Occult Philosophy -- in which the Wisdom and Omnipotence of God; the intellectual Faculties of Angels Spirits, and Men; the Order, Harmony, Sympathy, and wonderful Properties, of the Celestial and Terrestrial Worlds; the Signs, Influences, and Effects, of the Heavenly Bodies upon all animal, vegetable, and mineral, Subtances; the Number of the Spheres; the Method of erecting the Horoscope to cast Nativities; and the Doctrine of Horary Questions; are clearly exemplified and explained.

PART II.

EXAMPLES for acquiring a Practical Knowledge of Astrology, with Rules for calculating, rectifying, and judging, Nativities; by which the Reader is enabled to discover, with Precision and Accuracy, every material Incident of his future Life and Fortune. Illustrated by a variety of new, entertaining, and curious, Questions, lately resolved, upon every material Occurrence in public and private Life. With a Collection of the most remarkabl Nativities tha have been cast for Kings, Princes, and other eminent Men, by the most celebrated, Professors of this science, in all Ages of the World; with astonishing Instances of their exact Completion.
PART III.

METEOROLOGICAL Astrology defined and explained: Wherein certain Rules are laid down for prejudging the Revolutions, Vicissitudes, and Misfortunes, with which every Part of the habitable World may be occasionally threatened. General Effects produced by great Conjunctions, Eclipses, Transits, Comets, Blazing Stars, and other extraordinary Phænomena; with the Art of calculating Eclipses, Tides, and Weather, for any Number of Years to come. To which is added, a Collection of improved TABLES, contrived to answer all the Purposes of Astronomical Calculations.
PART IV.

The Distinction between Astrology and the Diabolical Practice of Exorcism; in which the Methods used for raising up and consulting Spirits are laid open, with various instances of their Compacts with wicked Men. Account of Apparitions and Spirits; including a general Display of the Mysteries of Witchcraft, Divination, Charms, and Necromancy. Compiled from a series of intense Study and Application, and founded on real Examples and Experience.

- ARGOL. ASTR. Lib. ii. c. 8.

The Sun, Moon, and Stars, hath God distributed unto all Nations under Heaven. They declare the Glory of God, and shew forth his Handywork: Day and Night do continually tell of them, and their Voice is heard in all Languages, and their Words are gone into the Ends of the Earth. -- Deut. iv. 19. Psal. xix. 1-5.

By E. SIBLY, M.D. F.R.H.S.

Embellished with Curious COPPER-PLATES.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, AND SOLD BY CHAMPANTE AND WHITROW, JEWRY-STREET, ALDGATE; AND AT THE BRITISH DIRECTORY-OFFICE, AVE-MARIA LANE.

Frontispiece

A COMPLETE

ILLUSTRATION

OF THE ASTROLOGICAL AND

OCCULT SCIENCES.

PART THE FOURTH.

CONTAINING THE

DISTINCTION between ASTROLOGY

AND THE

WICKED PRACTICE OF EXORCISM.

WITH A GENERAL DISPLAY OF

WITCHCRAFT, MAGIC, AND DIVINATION,

FOUNDED UPON THE

EXISTENCE OF SPIRITS GOOD and BAD, and their

AFFINITY with the Affairs of this WORLD.

By E. SIBLY, M.D. of the King's College in Aberdeen; and Fellow of the

Harmonic Philosophical Society in Paris.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR; AND SOLD BY CHAMPANTE AND WITHROW, JEWRY-STREET, ALDGATE; AND AT THE BRITISH DIRECTORY OFFICE, AVE-MARIA-LAND.

[1059]

AN

ILLUSTRATION

Of the CELESTIAL SCIENCE of

ASTROLOGY.

PART THE FOURTH.

FROM what has been premised in the foregoing parts of this work, it will now become manifest to every unprejudiced reader, that Astrology and Magic, how much soever they have been confounded with each other, and considered by the vulgar as one and the same doctrine, are nevertheless two very opposite and distinct pursuits. The one not only supposes, but in truth is, an attainment of the contingencies and events of futurity, from a natural cause implanted in the motion and influence of the spheres, which it is at once honourable and praiseworthy to study; the other, an acquirement of particular events to come, or mischiefs to be performed by means of occult spells, diabolical incantations, the agency of spirits, or confederacy with the devil. This constitutes what is termed Magic, Exorcism, Witchcraft, and Divination, very aptly termed, "The Black Art," which it shall be the principal object of the following pages to illustrate; as well to give the reader some rational idea of that very ancient but mischievous practice, as to clear the sublime contemplation and study of the stars from the gross imputations it hath on that account sustained.

I have no doubt but the greater part of my readers, and perhaps the bulk of mankind at this day, totally disbelieve the possibility of witchcraft, magic, or divination; because, they deny the very existence of spirits, the agency of the devil, and the appearance of ghosts or spirits of deceased men, upon which belief the practice of the black art entirely depends. But however incredulous the wisest critic may be, as to what has been related on this subject, certain it is, that such spirits really do exist, and that confederacy and compact with them was in former times [1060] no uncommon thing. Blackstone seems to have established this fact in a very satisfactory manner, where he speaks of the laws formerly provided in this country against magicians and witches, and those who held confederacy with spirits; which to disbelieve, would not only be found to militate against numerous important passages of Scripture, but would call in question the express words of our Saviour himself, and give the lie to authors and attestators of the first reputation and character. Indeed, the force of Revelation, and the doctrine of Christ, depend entirely upon our opinion of the existence of spirits; for that, being confessed or doubted, either affirms or denies the eternity of the soul.

Those persons, who have taken pains to contemplate the nature and structure of man, will have no difficulty to believe, from the principles of reason and common sense, that a soul, essence, or spirit, absolutely exists within his body, totally independent of all material functions or desires; that flies in his face upon the commission of every unjust or improper act, and that leads the human ideas to a state of being, infinitely beyond the bounds of the terrestrial globe, and unconstrained by the limits of time. This applies to the essence, soul, or spirit, of man; whereas the body, being compounded of the elements of this world, is swayed, ruled, and eventually overcome, by them, in proportion as the elements operate upon one another, so as to produce diseases, imbecility, and death.

As it is agreed by all authors, and admitted in the creed of all sects and persuasions of people, that before the fall, the seasons and elements were in one unalterable state of perfection and harmony; to the condition of man was not then under the power of the elements, but he was cloathed with purity and immortality as with a garment. The external gross elements had then no sway; and the astral powers, instead of inflaming his desires, contributed unto him the influences of like unto like, forming an union of delectable ideas between soul and body, which led to the unabated praise and adoration of his beneficent Creator. The pure elements were then congenial to his state of immortality, and the astral powers were turned upon his back, while innocence and incorruptibility smiled on his brow. His food was not limited to palpable matter, but was combined with the pure etherial spirit of the universe, which perfumed the air, and enriched the seat of paradise.

Such was the prime-eval happy state of Man. But departing from his innocency, by the secret insinuations infused into his mind by the fallen spirit Satan, he lusted after palpability in the flesh, turned his face to the elements, deserted his reason and his God, and fell from his ethereal [1061] state into all the perils mortality and death. Having no longer all powers under his subjection, he became subject to sidereal and elementary influx, with his understanding darkened, and his mental faculties abridged; which I have exhibited by the four figures in the annexed plate.

The first represents the prime-eval state of man, with his hand lifted up to his head, denoting the seat of comprehensive sensibility, to which the light of reason and sense flowed from the mirror of the Deity, in whose image he was formed. The second figure shews the elementary and astral influence in the prime-eval state of man, as having no action whatever internally, but falling on his exterior or back part; whilst his face, turned to the light, received the beatific vision of immortality and life from the gate of heaven. The third figure shews the internal action of the elementary and planetary influx after the fall, upon the vital parts of man, whence diseases and death follow in a direct and regular course. For, as the action of the stars on man are agents, and the elements of which he is composed patients, the same as in the outward world, so we find, as they are situated in the outward world at the time of birth, either as to strength or imbecility, so shall be the inward weakness or vigour of the vital parts of man born under them; and of such shall be the inbred quality of the disease thus implanted in our fallen nature to bring on corruptibility and death. The fourth figure is intended to shew a faint resemblance of an abandoned and more degenerated state of fallen human nature, when the will and passions of man are to vice, and contaminated with the gross or bestial quality of deadly sin and wickedness. He is led captive by an evil spirit, the agent of Lucifer, having his will darkened, and every spark of light extinguished, that could flow from the intellectual faculties of the soul, or from the collision of virtue and sense. Such are the men described by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, chap. i. ver. 28, 29, 30.

In this action of the stars upon man, it leaves the will and the soul totally unconstrained; whilst the body or corruptible part only is influenced, which allures and attracts the will; and, as observation and experience shew us, too commonly leads it captive to all the excesses and intemperance of the passions. But, as this is the utmost effect the force of the stars, or the power of the elements, is found to produce in our nature; so the doctrine of astrology goes no further than to define and explain them through all the tracks of occult speculation and science. Whereas the art of magic, of divination, and exorcism, forms an alliance with the agents of the devil, lusts after compact with damned souls, and holds converse with the departed spirits of men.

[1062]
To illustrate this extraordinary practice of the ancients, I shall here consider the nature of the world of: spirits, their quality and office, and the affinity which they bear to this world, agreeable to the doctrines laid down by those ancient authors, whose works are now rarely to be seen, though sanctioned by the most remarkable experiments, and confirmed by the strongest evidence that can be collected at so distant a period.

The noble and learned Swedenbourg, whose nativity we have considered in the foregoing part of this work, has with great ingenuity explained the nature and situation of the departed spirits of men, after their recess from this life. The world of spirits, says this author, is neither heaven nor hell, but a place or state betwixt both, into which man immediately enters after death; and, after staying there a certain time, longer or shorter, according to what his past life had been in this world, he is either received up into heaven, or cast down into hell. It must be noted here, that this intermediate state has nothing in it of the probationary kind; for that is all over with the life of this world; but is a state of a separation or reducing every one to his own proper prevailing principle and, as such finally preparatory for an eternal happiness or misery.

In the world of spirits is always a very great number of them, as being the first sort of all, in order to their examination and preparation; but there is no fixed time for their stay; for some are translated to heaven and others configned to hell soon after their arrival; whilst some continue there for weeks, and others for several years, though none more than thirty, this depending on the correspondence or non-correspondence between the interior and exterior of men. As soon as they arrive in the world of spirits, they are classed according to their several qualities, inclinations, and dispositions. The evil, with such infernal societies as they had communication within this world, in the ruling passion; and the good, with such heavenly societies as they had communicated with, in love, charity, and faith. But, however they are diversely classed, they all meet and converse together in that world, when they have a desire so to do, who have been friends and acquaintances in this life; more especially husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, etc. But if they are, according to their different ways of life, of different inclinations and habits of mind, they are soon parted; and it may be observed, both concerning those who finally go to heaven, and those that go to hell, that, after their arrival in those two different kingdoms, they no more see or know one another, unless they are of like minds and affections. The [1063] reason why they meet and know one another in the world of spirits, and not so in heaven or hell, is because in the world of spirits they pass through the same state they were in in this life, and so from one to another; but afterwards all are fixed in one permanent state respectively according to the state of that love which prevails in them; in which one knows another from similarity of condition; for similitude joins, but dissimilitude separates.

As the world of spirits is a middle state with man, between heaven and hell, so it is also a middle place, having the hells underneath and the heavens above; all the hells are shut next to that world, except that some holes, or clefts, like those in rocks or caverns, are left open; and these so guarded, that none can pass through them but by permission, which is granted on particular occasions. Heaven likewise appears as fenced all round, so that there is no passing to any of the heavenly societies, but by a narrow way, which is likewise guarded. These outlets and inlets are what in scripture are called the doors and gates of heaven and hell.

The world of spirits appears like a valley, between mountains and rocks, here and there sinking and rising; the doors and gates opening to the heavenly societies are only seen by those who are in their preparation for heaven; nor are they to be found by any others. To every society in heaven, there is an entrance from the world of spirits, after passing which there is a way, which as it rises branches into several others: nor are the doors and gates of the hells visible to any but those that are going to enter therein, to whom they are then opened; at which time these appear like as it were dark and sooty caverns, leading obliquely down to the infernal abyss, where there are also more gates. Through these dark and dismal caverns exhale certain fœtid vapours, which are most offensive to the good spirits; but which the evil ones are greedily fond of; for, as were the evils which any one took most delight in when in this world, such is the stink corresponding thereto which most pleases him in the other; in which they may be aptly compared to those birds or beasts of prey, as ravens, wolves, and swine, which are attracted by the rank effluvia emitted from carrion and putrid carcasses.

There are also in every man two gates, the one of which opens towards hell, and to all that is evil and false proceeding therefrom; the other gate opens towards heaven, and to all that good and truth issuing thence. The infernal gate is open in those who are in evil, and they receive from above only some glimmering of heavenly light, just sufficient [1064] to serve them to think, reason, and talk, of heavenly things; but the gate of heaven stands open in those who are good and in truth. There are also two ways leading to the rational mind in man; the superior, or internal, by which good and truth are communicated from the Lord; and the inferior, or external, by which evil and falsehood are communicated from hell; and the rational mind is in the midst of these two ways; hence it is, that, as much of the heavenly light as any man receiveth into his mind, so far is he truly rational; and so much as he admits not of it, in such proportion he is not rational, however he may think himself so. These things, here offered, shew the correspondence that subsists between man and heaven and hell; for his rational mind, during the formation of it, corresponds to the world of spirits, things above it being in heaven, and things beneath it in hell; the former are opened and the latter (as to all influx of evil and falsehood) are shut, with respect to those who are in their preparation for heaven; but, on the other hand, the things from beneath are opened, and the things above are shut (as to all influx of good and truth) with respect to those who are in their preparation for hell; consequently the latter can only look down to the things beneath them, or to hell, and the former only to things above them, or to heaven. Now to look up is, by correspondence, to look to the Lord; who is the common center to which all heavenly things point their aspect and tendency; but to look downwards is to turn from the Lord to the opposite center of attraction, and consequently to all things of a hellish nature.

These considerations are applied only to the immediate after-state of the soul and spirit of man, as the consequence of the mortality of this world. Many there are, however, who entirely disbelieve the faculty of the soul, or the existence of the spirit; but whoever rightly considers the matter, cannot but know, that it is not the body, or material part, but the soul, or spiritual part, that thinks within him. Now the soul is his spirit, immortal in all its properties, and receptive of what is spiritual, as having a spiritual life, which consists in thinking and willing; consequently, the whole of the rational life appertains thereto, and not to the body, though manifested therein: for the body is only thoughtless matter, and an adjunct or instrument to the spirit of man, whereby it may manifest its vital powers and functions in this natural world, where all things are material, and, as such, void of life: it is indeed customary to ascribe action, motion, and power, to the body in the common forms of speaking; but to suppose that the properties belong to the instrument, and not solely to the principle that actuates it, is erroneous and absurd.

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As all vital power, both of acting and thinking, appertains solely to the spirit, and in no wise to the body, it follows, that the spirit is truly and properly the man, and that without its influence and operation there is neither thought nor life from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: consequently, that the separation of the body from the spirit, which we call death, takes nothing from that which in reality constitutes the man. For man would not be capable of thinking and willing, unless there were in him a substance to serve as the subject of these operations; and to suppose otherwise would be ascribing existence to non-entity, as may appear from man's not being able to see without that organ which is the subject of vision, or to hear without the organ of hearing; these senses being nothing without such subjects of their operations. Now thought is internal vision, or the sight of the mind, as perception is the internal hearing; and these without internal organized substances, as their proper subjects, cannot exist: so that the spirit of a man has equally a form, and that a human one, as also its sensory and senses, when divested of its material body, as it had before; for all the perceptive life of the eye and the ear, and of every other sense that appertains to man, is not from his material body, but from his spirit and the vital powers thereof, in all and singular the organs and parts of his body: hence it is, that spirits see, hear, and feel, as well as men, in the spiritual world*, though not in this natural world after their separation from this mortal body. That the spirit had natural sensations in this world, was owing to its union with a natural or material body; but then also it had its spiritual senses in various modes of thinking and willing.

[* To suppose a human spirit void of a human form and senses, is to annihilate the very idea of spirit; for as every essence has its proper form, and every form its own essence, (they being necessary corrolatives,) so every spirit has its body suited to the world it belongs to, according to that distinction laid down by the apostle: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body:" and indeed, it is as rational to conclude, that a human spirit would have a human, organized, body, endued with spiritual senses in a spiritual world, as that the same spirit should be invested with a material organized body with natural senses in this natural world. It is to be lamented, and the more for its tendency to promote infidelity, that many of the learned, so called, have in a manner defined and refined spiritual nature into nothing, by divesting it of substantiality, to which it has a more peculiar right by far than matter; nor is the body of an angel less substantial in a proper sense of the word than a solid rock, though not according to the condition of material nature. Upon the whole, the common ideas of the vulgar and illiterate come much nearer to the truth and reality of heavenly things, than the vain conceits of such speculating sciolists.]

The foregoing doctrine is here offered, to convince the rational reader, that man, considered in himself, is a spirit, and that the corporal part of his composition annexed to him in this natural and material world is in order to his relation thereto, and what he has to do therein, but is not the man himself, but only designed to be instrumental to the operations of his spirit: but, as few are capable of receiving abstract reasonings, [1066] and many are apt to run them into matter of doubtful disputation, by arguments from fallacious appearances of sense, I chuse, for confirmation of the doctrine in hand, to appeal to truths founded on experience. Such as have confirmed themselves in the belief of the contrary side, are given to think, that, as the beasts have life and sensations as well as men, so they have both the same spirit and the same end; but, this is a gross error, as the spirit of a beast immensely differs from that of a man, as being destitute of that sublime principle of a heavenly life, by which the latter is made receptive of the divine influx, and capable of being exalted to a participation of the divine nature; and therefore it is that man is so highly privileged above the beasts, that he can think of God, and the things pertaining to his kingdom both in heaven and earth, and be led thereby to love the Creator, and to be united to him: now that which is in the capacity of such union is not liable to perish, like that which is not. For there is in every angel and in every man an inmost and supreme degree or part, which more immediately admits the divine influx from heaven, whereby all that is within man in the inferior degrees are orderly disposed and regulated. This inmost or supreme part of the spirit or soul may be called the Lord's entrance into angels and men, nay, his very habitation in them; and hereby it is that man is distinguished from the brute animals, which have it not, and is rendered capable of near communications with heaven in the inner man, of believing in the Deity, of loving him, and of seeing him; nay, from hence it is that man is a recipient of understanding and wisdom, and also that he is endowed with a rational life, and an heir of immortality: but how or what the Creator operates, in this inmost recess or supreme part of man, exceeds the capacity of an angel to comprehend.

When the body of a man is no longer able to perform its natural functions corresponding to the thoughts and affections of his spirit, and which are derived to him from the spiritual; world, then he is said to die; which comes to pass when the lungs and the heart cease their respiratory and contractile motions; not that man then suffers extinction of life, but only is separated from that corporeal part of his composition which served him for an instrument of usefulness in this world; but he still continues a living man, and that in a proper and literal sense of the expression, inasmuch as man receives his denomination not from his body, but from his spirit, since it is the latter that thinks in him, and that thought, with affection, essentially constitute the man; so that, when any man is said to die, it means no more than that he passes from one world into another; and hence it is, that by Death in the Scripture, according to the internal sense of the word, is signified resurrection, and continuation of life.

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There is a very near communication and correspondence betwixt spirit and respiration, and the motion of the heart (systole), betwixt thinking and respiration, and betwixt the affection of love and the heart; so that when these two motions cease in the body, a separation presently ensues; for these two motions, viz. that which is respiratory in the lungs, and that which is called the systole or contractile power of the heart, are the two bonds of union, which, when broken, the spirit is left to itself, and the body, being destitute of life from the spirit, becomes cold and putrefies. That so intimate a communication subsists between the human spirit and respiration, and the heart, is, because all the vital motions in this world depend thereon, not only in common, but also in every particular part of the body.

The spirit of a man remains some little time in the body after all signs of life disappear, but not longer than till a total cessation of all power in the heart ensues, which varies according to the nature of the disease he dies of, for the motion of the heart continues long after in some, but not so in others; but, as soon as the total cessation of it happens, the resuscitation of man commences, and this by the sole power of the Lord. By resuscitation here is meant the liberation of the spirit of a man from his body, and the introduction of it into the world of spirits, and commonly called Resurrection. That the spirit of a man is not separated from his body before all motion and power in the heart entirely ceases, is because the heart corresponds to the affection of love, which is the very life of man, for it is from love that every one derives his vital heat; therefore, so long as this conjunction lasts, so long the correspondence continues, and it is from correspondency that the spirit actuates and communicates life to the body.

That the form of the spirit of a man is a human form, or, in other words, that the spirit is the true formed man, may be evinced from many articles, particularly from these, viz. that every angel is in a perfect human form, and also, that every man is a spirit as to his inner man; and that angels in heaven are from the human race. This also more evidently appears from man's being denominated man from his spirit, and not from his body, and because the corporeal form is an adjunct to the spirit after its form, and not contrariwise, the former being but the clothing of the latter. Moreover, the spirit is the sole moving power in man, acting upon and actuating every the most minute part of the body, insomuch that, when any part no longer derives vital influence therefrom, it presently dies. Now, the ruling powers, which govern the body as their subject, are the thought and the will; but these are from the spirit only, nay, constitute its very essence. The reason why we do not see any [1068] separate spirit, nor yet that of another man whilst in his body, in its human form, with our present organs of sight, is because these organs of vision are material, and therefore only capable of discerning objects of a material nature, whereas spiritual things must be seen by a spiritual eye*; but, when the corporeal sight is extinguished by the death of the body, and the spirit's eye is opened, then spirits appear to one another in their human form, not only in the spiritual world, but they also see the spirits of those who yet live here in the body.

[* It is to be noted here, that, when spirits are seen by any one in the body, they are not seen with the corporeal organs of vision, but by the spirit of the beholder abstractedly from the body, though the appearance is exactly the same in both cases, as implied in those words of the Apostle, where, speaking of his visions, he says, "Whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell."]

That a human form is proper to a human spirit, follows from man's being created in the form of heaven, and also receptive of all things of a heavenly nature and order, consequently with the faculty of receiving understanding and wisdom; for, whether we express it by the words, faculty of receiving understanding and wisdom, or, the faculty of receiving heaven, it comes to one and the same thing. So that what has hitherto been said on this subject, may be understood by the rational man, from his view of causes and their effects, of premises and their consequences; but not so by the obstinately irrational, and that for many assignable reasons; but principally, because he is averse to all doctrines which are contrary to the false principles that he has adopted in the room of truths; and, he that has thus shut up his mind hath shut the gate of heaven against himself, so that no light from thence can illuminate his rational faculties; and yet that gate might be opened, if his will did not resist. This makes it evident, that they, who are in false thinking from an evil principle, might be possessed of a rational understanding, if they were in a willing disposition for it; and, that the reason why they are not so, is because they love the false above the true, as more agreeing with the evil they have adopted, and which they chuse to follow. It is to be observed, that to love and to will a thing is the same; for, what a man wills he loves, and what he loves that he also wills.

When the spirit of a man first enters into the world of spirits, which is soon after his resuscitation, (of which mention has been made, before,) he as yet retains the same face and voice that he had in this world, as being hitherto in his exterior state, that of his interior being yet unmanifested; and this is his first state after death: but some time after, his face becomes entirely changed, so as to correspond with the particular affection or love that possessed his spirit when in the body; for the face of a man's spirit differs greatly from that of his body, the latter being [1069] derived from his parents, but the former a correspondent to his predominant affection, of which it is the signature or image, and. which becomes appropriated to man in the other world, upon the manifestation of his interior state; for the spirit of a man, rightly considered, is the same with his predominant affection or love, and his face is the external form of it. This change respecting faces, in those who pass from hence into the other world, is founded on this law, that no dissimulation or counterfeiting is there allowed, but all must appear to be what they really are, and, consequently express their thoughts in their words, and their affections and desires in their looks and actions, so that the faces of all there represent their minds respectively. Hence it is, that, though all who knew one another in this world are alike mutually acquainted in the world of spirits, yet it is otherwise in heaven and hell.

The faces of hypocrites undergo not their proper change so soon as the faces of others, and that because they have by custom contracted a habit of forming their minds to a kind of imitation of good sentiments and affections, and therefore they appear not uncomely for some time; but as the disguise gradually wears off, and their inmost thoughts and affections manifest themselves, they appear more ugly than others. The hypocrites here spoken of, are such as know how to talk like angels upon divine subjects, and yet in their hearts exalt nature on God's throne, and disbelieve all heavenly truths, acknowledged in the Christian church.

It is to be observed, that the human form of every man after death is beautiful in proportion to the love he had for divine truths, and a life according to the same, for by this standard things within receive their outward manifestation and form, so that the deeper grounded the affection for what is good, the more conformable it is to the divine order in heaven, and consequently the more beauty the face derives from its influx. Hence it is, that the angels of the third or inmost heaven, whose love is of the third or highest degree, are the most beautiful of all the angels; whereas they whose love for divine things had been in a lower degree, or more external than that of the celestial or highest angels, possess an inferior degree of beauty; and the translucent lustre in their faces, as proceeding from a smaller degree of divine virtue within them, is comparatively dim; for, as all perfection rises in degrees from the inward to the inmost, so the external beauty, to which it gives life and vigour, has its degrees in the same proportion.

When a man passes from this natural world into the spiritual, which is at the time of his death, he takes with him all that belonged to him as [1070] man, and possesses every sense, both external and internal, that he possessed before. Thus, for instance, all in heaven have their sight, their hearing, and all their senses, in far greater perfection than when in this world, and also their minds more abundantly replete with wisdom: for they see by the light of heaven, which greatly exceeds that of this world, and they hear through the medium of a spiritual atmosphere to which that of our earth is not comparable. The comparative difference between these two senses there and here, is as that of a bright sky to a thick fog, or as the lustre of the meridian sun to the dusk of the evening. Now the light of heaven, which is divine truth, makes manifest the minutest things to the perception of angels; and, as their external corresponds to their internal or intellectual sight, so by mutual influx they co-operate in forming the high perfection of angelical perspicuity. In like manner their sense of hearing corresponds to their perception, both in the understanding and will; so that in the sound of the voice, and in the words of the speaker, they can trace the minute particulars of his affections and thoughts; in the sound what relates to his affections, and in the words what concerns his mind or thoughts; but it is to be observed, that the other senses of the angels are not in the same high degree of perfection with those of sight and hearing, and that because the latter are subservient instruments to their understanding and wisdom, and not so the others, which, if equal in power, would lessen their preference to intellectual delights over and above those of their spiritual bodies, as we find to be the case with men in this world, who, according to their greater relish and indulgence as to their grosser senses, have the less appetite and sensibility with respect to spiritual things.

A few words shall here be spoken concerning the cultivation of the rational faculty in man. Genuine rationality consists in truths, not in falsehoods. Now truths are of three kinds, civil, moral, and spiritual: civil truths relate to judicial matters, and such as respect public government, and, in a general consideration, justice and equity: moral truths have relation to the conduct of life with respect to societies and inferior connections; in general, to sincerity and rectitude; and in particular, to virtues of every class; but spiritual truths relate to the things of heaven, and of the church on earth; and in general to the good of love, and the truths of faith. There are three degrees of life in every man: the rational part in man is opened to the first degree by civil truths; to the second by moral truths; and to the third by spiritual truths. But let it here be observed, that man's rational part is not opened and formed merely by his knowing such truths, but by living according to them, when [1071] known, that is, by loving them with a spiritual affection, or the affection of his spirit, or, in other words, by loving justice and equity as such; sincerity and rectitude of manners as such, and good and truth as such; whereas, to love them only from external regards, is loving them for the sake of self, for one's own character, honour, or profit; and therefore such a love, as it terminates in self, gives not a man any right to the character of rational, as such a one uses truths as a lordly master uses his servants, viz. for his pleasure or interest; and, where this is the case, they make no part of the man, nor open so much as the first degree of life in him, but only have a place in his memory, like other scientifical ideas, under a material form, where they unite with the love of self in mere animal nature. Hence it may appear, how man becomes truly and properly rational, viz. in the third or highest degree, by the spiritual love of good and truth, or the things of heaven, and its representative the church; in the second degree, by the love of sincerity and rectitude; and in the first degree, by the love of justice and equity; which two last loves become spiritual by influx of the spiritual love of good and truth from the highest degree, by joining itself to the inferior loves, and forming in them its own likeness. There are three degrees in man corresponding to the three heavens; and, as the third or highest heaven does, as it were, sanctify the two inferior heavens by the descending influx of its celestial superior virtue, so the spiritual love of all that is good and true in man (corresponding to the third heaven) spiritualizes or sanctifies his virtues, though of an inferior class: thus, to give a cup of cold water to another is a little thing; but, when it is the most we can do, and love is in the doing of it, the act has in it the essence of Christian charity.

There are three states which man goes through after death, before he enters into heaven or hell; the first respects his exterior part; the second his interior; and the third is his state of final preparation. These states man passes through in the world of spirits; however, there are exceptions, as some are immediately after death taken up into heaven, or cast into hell; of the former class are they who are regenerated, and so prepared for heaven in this world, and that in so high a degree as to need only the putting off all their natural impurities, in order to be carried by the angels into heaven. On the other hand, such as have been internally evil, under the mask of externally apparent goodness, and so have filled up the measure of their iniquities by hypocrisy and deceit, using the cloak of goodness as a means whereby to deceive others; these are immediately cast into hell. There are also some who are committed to caverns immediately after their decease, and so separated from others in the world of spirits, but afterwards released, and remanded thither by turns; such are they who, under civil pretexts, dealt fraudulently with their neighbours; [1072] but the fore-mentioned are very few compared to the many classes of those who are detained in the world of spirits, in order to their preparation for heaven or hell, according to the established order of divine economy.

As to the first state before-mentioned, or that which respects the exterior, this man enters upon immediately after death. Every one's spirit has belonging to it properties exterior and interior; the former are those by which he governs and accommodates the corporeal functions in this world, more especially the face, speech, and bodily gestures, according to his social connexions; the latter are proper to his will and free thoughts, which are seldom made manifest by the face, speech, and outward behaviour, man being accustomed through education and example to counterfeit friendship, sincerity, and benevolence, and to conceal his true thoughts even from his infancy. Hence it is, that so many learn the external practice of morality and good manners, however different they may in reality be within, and so, mistaking custom for principle, know not themselves, nor enter into any examination concerning the matter.

As the life of men newly become spirits is so like to their natural life in this world, and as they are at first strangers to their new state, without knowing any thing more of heaven and hell than what they have learned from the letter of scripture, and their preachers; therefore, after wondering for some time at their being clothed with a body, and possessing every sense as in this world, and also at their seeing things under the like appearance as before, they find themselves urged by a desire of knowing what and where heaven and hell are: upon which they are instructed by their friends in things relating to eternal life, and are conducted to various places, and different societies, and some into cities, gardens, and beautiful plantations, and more particularly to see magnificent buildings, as such external objects suit with the present external state of their minds. Then they are led to inspect those interior sentiments and ideas, which they had in this life concerning the state of souls after death, and concerning heaven and hell, not without indignation to think of their own past ignorance, and also that of the church, in relation to these important subjects. Almost all in the world of spirits are desirous to know whether they shall go to heaven or not, and the greater part judge in favour of themselves as to this particular, especially such as had lived by the external rules of morality and civil obligation here; not considering that both good and bad do the same to outward appearance, as also do many good offices to others, and in like manner go to church, hear sermons, and bear a part in the public worship; not reflecting that these external [1073] acts, and this outward form of worship, avail nothing in themselves, considered separately from the disposition and principle of the; worshipper, and that it is the interior or inner man that stamps the character and value upon the outward work and form; but scarcely one in a thousand knows what is meant by the interior, and, even after being taught it, place all in the words and bodily service; and such is the greater part of those who at this day pass from the Christian world into the other.

The second state of man after death is called his interior state, as he then passes into the more recondite things of his mind, or of his will and thoughts, whilst the more external functions of it, as exercised in his first state, are then quiescent or dormant. Whoever carefully attends to the lives, words, and actions, of men, may soon find that every one has both his exterior and interior thoughts and intentions; thus, for example, the man of civil connections and manners forms his judgment of others by what he knows of them by character and conversation; and, though he should find them to be far otherwise than men of probity and worth, yet he does not speak and behave to them according to his real sentiments of them, but with something of seeming respect and civility: and this is still more strongly exemplified in the behaviour of persons addicted to dissimulation and flattery, who speak and act quite contrary to what they think and mean; and also in hypocrites, who can talk of God, of heaven, and spiritual things, and also of their country and neighbour, as if from faith and love, when at the same time they have neither the one nor the other, and love none but themselves. This evinces that there are thoughts in the same mind of two different complexions, the one interior, and the other exterior, and that it is common for men to speak from the latter, whilst their real sentiments in the interior are contrary thereto; and that these two arrangements of thoughts are of distinct and separate apartments in the mind, appears from the pains such persons take to prevent those that are interior from flowing into the exterior to manifestation. Now, man was so formed by his original creation, that both these were as one by correspondence and consent, as is the case now with the good, who both think and speak what is good and true; whereas, it the evil the interior and the exterior are divided, for they think evil, and speak good, thus inverting the order of things, whilst the evil is innermost, and the good outermost, the former exercising rule over the latter, and using its services for temporal and selfish ends, so that the seeming good which they say and do is corrupted and changed into evil, however the undiscerning may be deceived by its outward appearance. On the other hand, they who are in the good principle stand in the divine order of God's creation, whilst the good in their interior flows into the [1074] exterior of their minds, and thence into their words and actions. This is the state in which man was created, and thus they have communication with heaven, and have the Lord for their leader. Thus much may serve to shew, that man thinks from two distinct grounds, the one called the interior, the other the exterior; and, when we speak here of his thinking, we include likewise his faculty of willing, as his thoughts are from his will, neither can they exist separately.

After that man, now become a spirit, has gone through his first state, which is that of his exterior thoughts and will, he then passes into his second or interior state, and this he enters upon insensibly, which resembles that of a man in this world, who, finding himself at liberty from every restraint and dissipation, recollects himself, and enters into the most secret recesses of his soul. Now in this state of introversion, when he thinks freely from his inmost disposition and affections, he is properly himself, or in his true life. All without exception enter into this state in the other world, as proper to spirit, for the former is assumed and praised in accommodation to society and transactions in this world; and therefore, though it remains with man for some time after death, yet it is not long continued in, as not being suitable to the nature of a spirit, for the following reasons; first, because a spirit thinks and speaks from the governing principle of life without disguise; nay, the same is the case of man in this world, when he enters into his inmost self, and takes an intuitive view of his inward man, in which kind of survey he sees more in a minute than he could utter in an hour. Secondly, because in his conversation and dealings in this world, he speaks and acts under the restraint of those rules which society ha s established for the maintenance of civility and decorum. Thirdly; because man, when he enters into the interior recesses of his spirit, exercises rule over his outward economy, prescribing laws thereto, how to speak and act in order to conciliate the good will and favour of others, and that by a constrained external behaviour. These considerations may serve to shew, that this interior state of liberty is not only the proper state of the spirit of a man after death, but even in this life. When a spirit has passed into this second or interior state, it then appears outwardly what manner of man he had been in this world, as he now acts from his proper self; thus, if he had been a wise and good man before, he now manifests still higher degrees of rationality and wisdom in his words and actions, as being freed from those corporeal and earthly embarrassments which had fettered and obscured the inward operations of his mind, whereas the bad man evidences greater folly than before; for, whilst in this world, he fashioned his external behaviour by the rules of prudence, in order to save appearances; but, not being under the like restraints now, he gives full scope to his insanity.

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All who in this world lived uprightly; and preserved a good conscience, walking in the fear of God, and in the love of divine truths, applying the same to practical use, seem to themselves as men awaked out of sleep, and as having passed from darkness to light, when they first enter upon their second or interior state; for they think from the light of pure wisdom, and they do all things from the love of goodness; heaven influences their thoughts and affections, and they are in communication with angels. But the condition of the evil in this state is according to his particular concupiscence. They who had been absorbed in self-love, so as not to attend to the good uses of their respective offices and functions, but discharged them only with a view to their own estimation and honour, appear more stupid than others; for, in proportion to the degree of self-love in any one is his distance from heaven, and consequently from wisdom: but they, who to the evil of self-love had added crafty devices, and by means thereof advanced themselves to worldly honours, associate themselves to the worst of spirits, and addict themselves to the magical arts, which are profane abuses of the divine order, by means of which they molest and vex all that pay them not honour; the praising of insidious wiles, and to kindle strife and hatred, yield them the highest pleasure; they burn with revenge, and long fore nothing more than to tyrannize over all that submit not to their will; and all these wicked passions they gratify as far as their evil associates give them assistance; nay, so far does madness hurry them on, as to make them wish to scale heaven, either to subvert the government of the holy kingdom, or to cause themselves to be worshipped for gods therein. As to those who in this world ascribed all creation to nature, and so in effect denied a God, and consequently all divine truths, such herd together in this state, calling every one a god who excelled in subtlety of reasoning, and giving him divine honour. Such in the world of spirits are seen in their conventicle worshipping a magician, holding conferences concerning nature, and behaving more like brute-beasts than human creatures, and among them some who were dignitaries in this world, and had the reputation of being learned and wise, and others of a different character. From thus much we may gather what they are, the interior of whose minds is shut against divine things, as theirs is, who receive no influx from heaven through looking up to God and a life of faith.

The third state of man, or of his spirit, after death, is the state of instruction, which is appointed for those that go to heaven, and become angels; but not for those that go to hell, as such are not in a capacity of instruction, and therefore their second state is their last, and answers to the third in others, as it terminates in their total change into that prevailing love which constitutes their proper principle, and consequently [1076] into a conformity to that infernal society with which they have fellowship. When this is accomplished, their will and thoughts flow spontaneously from their predominant love, which, being infernal, they can only chuse the evil and false and reject all that apparent good and truth which before they had adopted, solely as means subservient to the gratification of their ruling passion. On the other hand, the good spirits are introduced from their second into their third state, which is that of preparation for heaven by the means of instruction; for none can be qualified for heaven, but through the knowledge of spiritual good and truth, and their opposites, evil and falsehood, which can only come from previous instruction. As to good and truth in a civil and moral sense, commonly called justice and sincerity, these may be learned from the laws of nations, and from conversation in virtuous company; but spiritual good and truth, as ingrafted principles in the heart, are only received by the teachings of a divine light: for though they are literally set forth in the scripture, and the doctrines of the Christian churches founded thereon, yet they only gain the efficacy of a vital principle from a celestial influence manifesting itself in a conscientious obedience to the divine laws, as promulgated in the written Word, and that in respect to the divine authority of them, and not from selfish and worldly motives; then a man is in the heavenly life, or in heaven, even whilst in this world.

The way of conveying instruction in the other world differs from that on earth, inasmuch as truths there are committed, not to the memory, but to the life; for the memory of spirits is in their life's principle, and they receive and imbibe only what is conformable thereto, for spirits are so many human forms of their own affections. As the nature of spirits is such, therefore they are continually inspired with an affection for truth for the uses of life; for the Lord has so ordered it, that every one should love the uses that accord with their particular gifts and qualities; which love is likewise heightened by the hope of their becoming angels; for in heaven all particular and singular uses have relation to the general use or good of the Lord's kingdom, and may be considered as so many parts of one whole so that the truths which they learn are both truths and the uses of truths conjunctly: thus the angelical spirits are prepared for heaven. The affection or love of truth for the purposes of use is insinuated into them many ways not known in this world, more particularly by various representations of use under such delightful forms as affect both their minds and senses with unspeakable pleasure; so that, when any spirit is joined to the society for which he was prepared, he then enjoys life most when he is in the exercise of its proper uses. Hence it may appear, that not the ideal knowledge of truths, as things without us, but an implantation [1077] plantation of them in the affections and life for the purpose of uses, is that which qualifies for the kingdom of Heaven.

After that the angels are duly prepared for heaven in manner described, which comes to pass in a short time, as spiritual minds are of quick comprehension, they are then clothed in angelical garments, which, for the most part, are white as of fine linen, and conducted to the way which leads up to heaven, and delivered to the guardian angels there: after which they are received by other angels, and introduced to different societies, where they partake of various delights: after this every one is led by the Lord's guidance to his particular proper society, and this by various ways, sometimes direct, sometimes otherwise, not known to any of the angels, but to the Lord only. Lastly, when they are come to their own society, their inmost thoughts and affections open and expand themselves, which meeting with the like returns of cordial sympathy from their fellow-angels, they are immediately known and received by them with a joyful welcome.

An equilibrium is necessary to the existence and subsistence of all things, and consists in the equality of action and re-action between two opposite powers, producing rest or equilibrium; and this according to an established law through the natural world, observed in the very atmospheres, in which the lower and denser air re-acts on the superincumbent columns; nay, even betwixt heat and cold, light and darkness, dry and moist; and the middle point is the temperature or equilibrium. The same law obtains throughout the three great kingdoms of this world, the mineral, vegetable, and animal; wherein all things proceed and are regulated according to action and re-action, or actives and passives, producing or restoring an equilibrium in nature. In the physical world, the agent and re-agent are called power and conatus; and in the spiritual world, life and will, as being living power and conatus; and here the equilibrium is called liberty. Thus there exists a spiritual equilibrium or liberty betwixt good and evil, by the action of one, and the re-action of the other; for example, in good men this equilibrium is effected by the action of the good principle, and the reaction of the evil principle; but, in bad men, evil is the agent, and good is but the re-agent. That there is a spiritual equilibrium betwixt good and evil, is because every thing appertaining to the vital principle in man, has relation to good or evil, and the will is the receptacle of both. There is likewise an equilibrium betwixt true and false; but this depends on the equilibrium betwixt good and evil, according to their kinds respectively. The equilibrium betwixt truth and falsehood is similar to that which is betwixt light and darkness (umbram), [1078] which operates, according to the heat and cold therein, on the subjects of the vegetable kingdom; for that light and darkness have no such operation in themselves alone, but only through the heat in them, may appear from the similarity there is betwixt the light and darkness in winter and in spring. The comparison of truth and falsehood with light and darkness is from correspondency; for truth corresponds to light, and falsehood to darkness; and heat to the good of love. Spiritual light also is the same with truth; and spiritual darkness is the same with falsehood.

There is a perpetual equilibrium betwixt heaven and hell; from the latter continually exhales and ascends a conatus of doing evil; and from the former continually emanes and descends a conatus (tendency to or will) of doing good. In this equilibrium is the world of spirits, which is situated in the midst betwixt heaven and hell; and this may appear from hence, that every man immediately after death enters into the world of spirits, and there continues in the same state in which he died; is examined and proved thereby, as a touchstone of his principles; and remains under the same free will, which all indicate an equilibrium; for such a spiritual equilibrium there is in every man and spirit, as observed before. The particular kind and tendency of this liberty or free will is well known by the angels in heaven, by the communication of thoughts and affections; and it appears visibly to the evangelical spirits, by the paths and ways which they chuse to walk in, as the good spirits take those which lead to heaven, and the evil spirits those which lead to hell; for such ways and walks have actually a visible appearance in that world; and this is the reason that the word way or ways in scripture signifies those truths which lead to good, and, in an opposite sense, those falsehoods which lead to evil; and hence also it is, that to go, walk, or journey, signify the progressions of life in the same sacred writings.

That evil continually exhales and ascends from hell, and that good continually flows and descends from heaven, is because every one is surrounded by a spiritual sphere, flowing or transpiring from his vital affections and thoughts; and consequently the same from every society celestial or infernal, and collectively from the whole heaven and the whole hell. This universal efflux of good from heaven originates in the Lord, and passes through the angels without any mixture of their property or selfhood; for this is suppressed in them by the Lord, who grants them to live in his own divine property; whereas the infernal spirits are in their property of selfish nature, or what only belongs to themselves, which, as unblessed with divine communications from the sole fountain of all good, is only evil in every one continually.

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The heavens, in the general, are distinguished into two kingdoms; the one of which is called the celestial, the other the spiritual kingdom. The hells likewise are distinguished into two kingdoms; the one of which is opposite to the celestial, the other to the spiritual. That which is opposite to the celestial is in the west, and they who belong to it are called genii; and that which is opposite to the spiritual kingdom is in the north and south, and they who belong to it are called evil spirits. All in the celestial kingdom excel in love to the Lord, and all that are in the hells opposite to that kingdom are under the prevailing power of self-love; all that belong to the spiritual kingdom are distinguished in excellence by love to their neighbour, and all that are in the hells opposite to this kingdom are slaves to the love of the world; so that love to the Lord and the love of self are in the same diametrical opposition to each other as the love of our neighbour and the love of the world. Effectual provision is made by the Lord, that no power of evil, from the hells that are in opposition to the celestial kingdom, may reach the subjects of the spiritual kingdom, as the consequence in that case would be the subversion of the latter. Thus does the Lord keep the balance betwixt good and evil in his own hand for the preservation of his kingdoms.

As good and evil, truth and falsehood, are of a spiritual nature, so also is that equilibrium in which consists the power of thinking and willing the one or the other, and the liberty of chusing or refusing accordingly. This liberty, or freedom of the will, originates in the divine nature, but is given to every man by the Lord for a property of his life, nor does he ever take it back again. This good gift to man is to the end that he may be regenerated and saved, for without free will there is no salvation for him; but that he actually possesses it, he may know from the operations of his own mind, and what passes inwardly in his spirit, he being able to think and chuse either good or evil, whatever restraints he may be under from uttering or acting the latter in respect to laws divine or human. Now this inward experience evinces, beyond a thousand arguments, that liberty belongs to man, as his spirit is his proper self, and it is that which freely thinks, wills, and chuses; consequently, liberty is to be estimated according to the inner man, and not from what he may be outwardly through fear, human respects, or other external restraints.

That man would not be capable of being reformed or regenerated without free will, is because he is by the original constitution of his nature born to evils of every kind, which must be removed in order to his salvation; and that can only be by his knowing, owning, renouncing, and abhorring, them. To this end, he must be instructed in the nature of [1080] good; for it is by good only that he can see the evil, but by evil he cannot see the good; accordingly, he must be early educated in the knowledge of spiritual truths, by teaching, by reading the scriptures, and by the preaching of the word, that so he may attain to a right understanding of what is good; as he is likewise to cultivate his mind with the knowledge of moral and civil truths from his intercourse with society in the different relations of life; all which imply the use and exercise of freedom. Another thing to be considered is, that nothing becomes appropriated to man, or can be called his own, that is not received into the affectionate part; other things he may apprehend or form an ideal knowledge of, but what enters not his will or love, which is the same thing, (for what a man wills he loves,) that makes no part of him, nor abides with him. Now, man being naturally prone to evil, he could not receive its contrary, the good, into his will or love, so as to become appropriated to him, unless he were endowed with liberty or freedom of will, seeing that the good is opposite to the evil of his nature.

As man is possessed of liberty or free will, in order to be capable of regeneration, therefore he can have communication in spirit with heaven or with hell; for evil spirits from the one, and angels from the other, are present with him; by the former he possesses his own evil; by the latter he is in the principle of good from the Lord; and herein stands his equilibrium or liberty. Not that this conjunction of man with heaven or hell is an immediate conjunction, but mediate only, and that through the spirits that belong to the world of spirits; for these are the spirits that attend on man, and not any immediately from heaven or hell. By the evil spirits belonging to the world of spirits, man joins himself to hell; and by the good spirits of the same world he has communication with heaven; for the world of spirits is intermediate between heaven and hell, and constitutes the true equilibrium. Let it be observed, as touching those spirits that are appointed to be man's associates here, that a whole society may hold communication with another society, and also with any individual wheresoever, by means of any emissary spirit, which spirit is called, The subject of many. The case is similar with respect to man's communication with the societies in heaven and in hell, by the intervention of his associate spirit from the world of spirits. The good spirits belonging to the world of spirits, being in their final preparation for the angelical state, are called angelical spirits; and, as they have immediate communication with the heavenly angels, so has man, through them, a mediate communication with the same. And the bad spirits vice versa. Thus all communications between man, and the highest and lowest in heaven and hell, are conducted through mediums adapted to his nature and states respectively.

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What has been delivered concerning heaven, the world of spirits, and hell, will appear obscure to those who have no relish for spiritual truths, but clear to such as take delight therein, more especially to all who are in the love of truth for its own sake. What we love, we readily receive and understand; and, where truth is the object of our affections, it recommends itself to the mind by the evidence it brings with it; for truth is the light, by which all things are known and distinguished.

Such is the opinion of Baron Emanuel Swedenbourg, with respect to the spirits and departed souls of men. But the Magi, or wise men of the east, have defined spirits, good and bad, of a great variety of kinds and orders, whereof some are suited to the purposes of witchcraft and exorcism, and others not. The form and nature of spirits, say they, are to be considered according to the force to which each caterva doth belong; for some, being altogether of a divine and celestial nature, are not subject to the abominable conjurations and enchantments of vicious men; whilst others, of a diabolical and infernal nature, are not only ready upon all occasions to become subservient to exorcists and magicians, but are ever watching opportunities of exciting evil affections in the mind, and of stirring up the wickedly inclined to the commission of every species of iniquity and vice. As to the shapes and various likenesses of these wicked spirits or devils, it is generally believed, that, according to their different capacities in wickedness, so their shapes are answerable after a magical manner, resembling spiritually some horrid and ugly monsters, as their conspiracies against the power of God were high and monstrous when they fell from heaven. For the condition of some of them is nothing but continual horror and despair, whilst others triumph in fiery might and pomp, attempting to pluck the Almighty from his throne; but the quality of heaven is but from them, and they can never reach it, which as upon them as an eternal source of torment and misery. But that they are materially vexed and scorched in games of fire, is only a figurative idea, adapted to our external sense, and by no means to be literally understood; for their substance is spiritual, and their essence too subtil for any external torment. Their misery is unquestionably great and infinite; but not through the effect of outward flames; for their bodies are capable of piercing through wood and iron, stone, and all terrestrial things. Neither is all the fire or fuel of this world able to torment them; for in a moment they can pierce it through and through. The endless source of their misery is in themselves, and stands continually before them, so that they can never enjoy any rest, being absent from the presence of God; which torment is greater to them than all the tortures of this world combined together.

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The wicked souls that are departed this life, are also capable of appearing again, and of answering the conjurations and magical questions of exorcists, because, the quality of their minds, and the bent of their inclinations, being similar to those of the fallen angels or devils, it cannot be conceived that their torment and pursuits hereafter are much different; for the Scripture saith, that every one is rewarded according to his works; and, that which a man sows, that he shall reap. Hence it follows, that, as the damned spirits of departed men, while they lived on earth, heaped up vanity, and loaded their souls with iniquity and vice; so, when they enter the next world, the same abominations which here they committed serve them to ruminate and feed upon, and, the greater these offences have been, the greater is the torment arising from them every moment. But very contrary to this is the state of the righteous souls departed, who are entered into eternal rest; and of the different degrees and orders of the angelic host, which appertain to heaven, and have places in the mansions of the blessed. Nor is it possible for any one, how expert soever in magical experiments, to compel these blessed spirits, of any degree, order, or quality, of creation, to be exorcised, or called up, or made appear, at the will of the magician, by any forms of convocation or communication, or by the power of magical rites and ceremonies of any class or description whatsoever. It may indeed be believed, and it is by most authors admitted, that infinite numbers of the angelic host are employed for the glory of God, in watching over and protecting the pursuits of good men; but they are not subject to spells or conjurations of any kind set on foot by the impious professors of the Black Art.

Of a different opinion, however, are some of those who attempt to justify the magic art under sanction of the holy scriptures, and for this purpose instance the supplication of Saul to the witch of Endor. This passage undoubtedly serves to shew, how greatly the practice of exorcism reigned amongst the Jews, and proves the possibility of raising up spirits in those ancient times; but that the exorcist never meant to bring up the spirit or ghost of Samuel, but that of an evil dæmon to represent him, is apparent from her exclamations to Saul, when she accuses him of having deceived her; and is a convincing proof, that this particular instance, of the similitude of a blessed spirit being called up by a professor of spells and incantations, was owing to the immediate permission of the Deity, for the purposes of forwarding the Jewish dispensation, and manifesting his peculiar regard to the person of David, through whose loins the Messiah was to come.

Such spirits as are termed astral spirits, which belong to this outward world, and are compounded of the elemental quality, having their [1083] source from the stars, and being subject to a beginning and ending, may be solicited and brought into league with magicians and witches; and can also inform them of many wonderful and occult properties in nature, and of many important concerns relating to the state and affairs of men in this terrestrial world. This description of spirit is said to occupy various places of the earth; as woods, mountains, waters, air, fiery flames, clouds, stars, mines, sea-shores, ancient buildings and ruins, and places of the slain. They are capable of hunger, grief, passion, and vexation, being in some measure temporal, and compounded of the most spiritual part of the elements, into which they are eventually resolved, as ice into water; and have been more or less celebrated by historians and poets in all ages of the world.

There are likewise another species, called igneous or fiery spirits, that inhabit the burning mountains of Hecla, Vesuvius, Ætna, Poconzi, &c. which some authors have affirmed to be infernal spirits, and damned souls, who, for a term of years, are confined to these burning mountains for their iniquities. But the most received opinion is, that they are of a middle vegetative nature, and perishable, which, at the dissolution of the media natura, shall be again reduced into their primary æther. And from natural causes it may be easily demonstrated, that there is great correspondence betwixt such substances and the element of fire, by reason of the internal flagrant and central life proceeding from the quintessence of one only element, which upholds them in motion, life, and nourishment; as every natural and supernatural being is upheld and maintained out of the self-same root from whence it had its original. So the angels feed upon the celestial manna; the devils upon the fruits of hell, which is natural to the propensity of their appetites; the astral spirits upon the source of the stars, and the gas of the air; upon a principle that every thing is nourished by its mother, as infants at the breast, or chickens from the egg, &c. The proper nourishment of fiery spirits, however, is radical heat, and the influence of the airy region; nor is it to be wondered, at that they are so much delighted with the fiery quality, in regard of their affinity and near approach to the essence and quality of infernal spirits or devils, whose state and being is altogether damnable and deplorable; for, although they have not the ability of attaining either the heavenly or infernal quality, by reason that they are utterly void of the innermost centre, and may be rather termed monsters than rational animals, yet, because they are compounded of the outermost principle, such is their innate affinity and unity with the dark world or infernal kingdom, that they often become the devil's agents, to propagate his works upon the face of the earth. Thus by the instigation of infernal spirits, and [1084] their own promptitude, they often terrify men with nocturnal visions; provoke melancholy people to suicide; tempt drunkards and incendiaries to set houses on fire, to burn those who are in them, and allure careless servants and others to sound and incautious sleep; that such unlucky accidents might happen besides innumerable other ways they have of executing the devices of iniquitous spirits through malicious instigations, or secret stratagems, projected for the overthrow and destruction of mortal men; especially when the work to be effected by the devil is too hard for his subtle and spiritual nature to effect, because the same belongs to the outward source or principle to which these dubious spirits more immediately belong. For, being compounded of the fiery element, they are most officious in this kind of service, being such as the antecedent matter hath sufficiently demonstrated; but, according to their different ranks and orders, some of them are much more inveterate and malicious in their agency than the rest. These, as well as every other kind of astral spirits, are more or less obsequious to the kingdom of darkness; and the devil, it seems, can effect little or nothing without their assistance in this outward or elementary world, upon the passions of mankind; because their bodies are too crude for the direct conveyance of their influence, either in dreams, charms, visions, raptures, or other sort of alluring means. These fiery spirits are likewise apt for conjuration, and are always ready at the call of the magician, for the execution of any cruel or diabolical purpose.

Distinct from fiery spirits are a species which properly belong to the metallic kingdom, abiding in mountains, caves, dens, deeps, hiatas or chasms of the earth, hovering over hidden gold, tombs, vaults, and sepulchres of the dead. These spirits are termed by the ancient philosophers "protectors of hidden treasure," from a principle or quality in their nature whence they exceedingly delight in mines of gold and silver, and places of hidden treasure; but are violently inimical to man, and envy his benefit or accommodation in the discovery thereof; ever haunting those places where money is concealed, and retaining malevolent and poisonous influences to blast the lives and limbs of those who attempt to make such discoveries; and therefore extremely dangerous for magicians to exorcise or call up. It is recorded in several of the ancient British authors, that Peters, the celebrated magician of Devonshire, together with his associates, having exorcised one of these malicious spirits to conduct them to a subterranean vault, where a considerable quantity of treasure was known to be hid, they had no sooner quitted the magic circle, than they were instantaneously crushed into atoms, as it were in the twinkling of an eye. And in this particular we have too many fatal examples [1085] upon record, of the sudden destruction of those who by magical spells had called upon this description of spirits, for the purpose of discovering hidden gold; which examples seem to prove, that these spirits have more affinity with the infernal than with the astral hierarchy; and that they are the diabolical agents of Mammon bringing about all the evils of this world, which spring from an insatiable lust after gold; whence the saying in scripture, that "we cannot serve God and Mammon," and that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven;" hyperbolically spoken, in reference to the innumerable sins and wickedness committed by mankind, for the sake of temporary wealth and riches! Hence too a reason offers, why, of all other subordinate spirits, these are the most pernicious to mortal men. The nature of them is so violent, that in the histories of the gold and silver mines abroad, it is recorded that whole companies of labourers have been destroyed by them at once; and that their delight is in tormenting, killing, and crushing to death, those who most greedily lust after and seek for such treasures. The richest and largest silver mine in Germany was haunted by one of these spirits, who sometimes used to appear in the shape of an he-goat, with golden horns, pushing down the workmen with uncommon violence; and at others in the shape of a horse, breathing fiery flames and pestilential vapours at his nostrils, till, by continual destruction, fear, and alarm, they were obliged to desist from working that mine any longer; and it continues shut to this day.

Thus far we have considered spirit subordinate, or such as properly belong to the elementary or outward world. We will now take a view of the infernal spirits or devils, and damned souls; which are to be classed according to their respective ranks and orders, exactly correspondent or opposite to the choirs and hierarchies of the angels, or blessed spirits, in heaven.

The origin of devils and infernal spirits, as scripture revelation hath confirmed and established, proceeded from conspiracy and rebellion in heaven, under the arch-fiend Lucifer, who was originally of the highest order of the angelic host; because it is written of him, "In Cherubim extentus, protegeus, posui te monte sancto Dei" -- Extended upon a Cherubim, and protecting, I have put thee in the holy mountain of God. And further, because it is also written, "Quomodo enim mane oriebaris, Lucifer" -- For then didst thou rise in the morning, O Lucifer. Various are the opinions as to the express occasion of his fall. Some say, it was for speaking, these words: "Ponem sedem meam in aquilone, similis ero [1086] altissimo" - I will put my seat in the North, and I will be like the most High. Others affirm, that it proceeded from his utterly refusing felicity, and holding the blessings of heaven in derision. Some again, because he asserted that all his strength proceeded from himself, and not from God. Others because he attempted to effect that by himself and his own strength, which was alone the proper gift of God. Other opinions say, That his condemnation proceeded from his challenging the place of the Messiah; whilst others insist, that it was because he impiously challenged the omnipotency of God, with whom he claimed equal power. But the Christian church in all countries agree, that it was for all these crimes put together, and many more; exclusive of his drawing aside the allegiance of other angels, and suborning the whole of his own legion in conspiracy, to attempt to pluck the Almighty from his Throne; whereupon a dreadful conflict ensued between Michael the archangel with the heavenly host on one side, and Lucifer and his rebellious tribes on the other, which ended in their total extermination from the mansions and light of heaven, to suffer eternal torment in the dark abodes of the infernal regions.

Here began the kingdom of darkness, and the devil's enmity to mortal man; who being created of a nature inferior to the angels, but, by a state of probation, capable of arriving to the same degree of excellence, and of filling up the vacancy in heaven, occasioned by the fall of Lucifer and his legions, it excited his envy still the more, and laid the ground of that ceaseless warfare, which, from the fall of Adam, to the present hour, hath existed between the king of darkness and the souls of men. And though this conflict is not conducted by outward and visible means, yet it is effected by secret snares and ambuscades, which take us at unawares, and when we are most off our guard. For the devil, while we feed, allures us to sin by gluttony; he thrusteth lust into our generation, and sloth into our exercise; into our conversation, envy, into our traffic, avarice; into our correction, wrath; into our government, pride; he putteth into our hearts evil cogitations; and into our mouths, lies. When we awake, he moveth us to evil works; when we sleep, to evil and filthy dreams; he provokes the jocund to lasciviousness, and the sad to despair; whence spring the various evils with which frail human nature is surrounded; and which nothing, but a full confidence in heaven, and the gospel dispensation, can alleviate or remove.

But, as to the locality or circumscription of the kingdom of darkness, it is far otherwise to be considered than the common and vulgar idea of it, which esteems the infernal habitation as a distinct chasm or gulph in a certain place, either above, under, or in the centre of, the earth, where [1087] innumerable devils and wicked souls inhabit, and are perpetually scorched and tormented with material flames of fire. This is the opinion which the vulgar are naturally addicted and prone to believe. But; if we rightly consider the kingdoms of heaven and hell, in respect of each other, we must look upon the similitude of light and darkness in this outward world which is not circumscribed, nor separate, as to locality, from one another; for, when the Sun rises, the darkness of the night disappears; not that it removes itself to some other place or country, but the brightness of the light overpowers and swallows it up, so that, though it disappears, yet it is as absolutely there as the light itself. The same similitude is also to be considered in the description of the habitations of good and evil beings, that they are really in one another, yet not comprehended of one another; neither indeed can they be, for the evil spirits, though they should remove ten thousand miles, yet are they in the same quality and source, never able to find out or discover where the kingdom of heaven is, though it be really through and through with the dark kingdom; but in another opposite quality, which separates and makes them eternal strangers to each other. A similitude hereof we have in the faculties of human life, considered with respect to the endowments of the soul in the just, and in the wicked; for to be good; pure, and holy, is really present as a quality in potentia with the depraved soul, although at that instant the soul be cloathed with abominations, so that the eye which should behold God, or goodness, is put out. Yet, if the soul would but come out of itself, and enter into another source, or principle, it might come to see the kingdom of heaven within itself, according to the Scripture and Moses, "the word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mouth."

True it is, that the devils, or fallen angles, cannot all alike manifest themselves in this astral world; because the nature of some of them approaches nearer to the external quality than others; so that, although properly the very innermost and outermost darkness be their proximate abode, yet they frequently flourish, live, move, and germinate, in the airy region. But, according to their fiery nature, it is very difficult for them to appear in this outward world, because there is a whole principle or gulph betwixt them, namely, they are shut up in another quality or existence, so that they can with greater difficulty find out the being of this world, or come with full presence into it, than we can remove into the kingdom of heaven or hell with our intellectual man. For, if it were otherwise, and the devils had power to appear unto mortals as they lift, how many towns, cities, &c. would be destroyed, and burnt to the ground! how many infants would be pluckt away in their innocence, and unoffending creatures be destroyed by their malicious power? Indeed [1088] few or none would escape with their lives, or possessions, or sound minds; whereas now all these enjoyments are free amongst mankind; which proves, that it is extremely hard for infernal spirits to appear in the third principle of this world; and as difficult as for a man to live under water, or fishes on the shore. Yet we must grant, that, when the imaginations and earnest desires of the wicked have stirred up the centre of hell within themselves, then the devil hath access to this world in their desires, and continues here to vex and torment them, so long as the strength of those desires remain, which was the first attractive cause.

The cause of the paucity of appearances of evil spirits in these days, is the fulness of time, and the brightness of Christianity, dispelling the mists of heresy and idolatry, as the Sun doth the fogs, which vanish on its appearance; not by any violence or compulsion, but from a cause implanted in the nature of things and their opposites. Even so the kingdom of light, as it overspreads the soul in power and dominion, closes up the centre of darkness, and scatters the influences of the devil before it, who becomes as it were entirely passive as to the works and will of man. In the time of the law, when the wrath and jealousy of the Father had the dominion in the kingdom of nature, infernal spirits had more easy access to mankind than they now have; for, before the incarnation of Christ, the anger of God was unappeased, and had more dominion over the soul of man, which was then at greater distance from the divine goodness; consequently the devils could with more facility spring up in the element of wrath, and manifest themselves in this outward principle; because the very idea and basis of hell is founded on the wrath of God, which is the only channel by which the devil is conveyed into this world. So, when the miracles of Christ began to manifest themselves in the world, the multiplicity of diabolical appearances, and possessed with the devil, began insensibly to decay and vanish. It is true, that the greatest instances known of the temptations and power of Satan, were exercised in that space of time betwixt the incarnation and crucifixion of our Saviour; yet it is as certain, that the devil knew he had but a short time longer to uphold his kingdom here, and therefore he employed all his strength and forces to torment those captive and miserable souls to whom Christ came to preach deliverance. But, after the partition-wall was broken down, and the vail of Moses, and the wrath of God, were removed, there was a sensible and visible decay of Satan's power in the world; so that, though it be possible, even in these days, by a renunciation of the salvation of Christ, and by becoming a disciple of the devil, to hold correspondence with, or to be wholly possessed by, him; yet these things happen so rarely, and [1089] require so depraved a state of mind and conduct, that, whenever they are pretended so to be, there is great room to doubt the truth of such assertions, though apparently well authenticated.

But, notwithstanding that the coming of Christ hath thus curtailed the power of the devil over all Christian countries, yet such nations as never embraced the Christian faith, but pursue the ancient superstition and idolatry, are still deluded and bewitched by him, because, the centre of truth and light never having been awakened in them, the power of Satan easily prevails to seduce them to worship things visible, instead of the true God: for, where most darkness and superstition is found, whether in religion or personal understanding, there his power is always most predominant. Thus it is now with the miserable inhabitants of the greatest part of Asia, and the uncultivated and ferocious parts of Africa and America; yet we have hopes that the goodness of Providence, in his own fit and appointed season, will, through some favourable channel, communicate the light of the gospel to those miserable beings, whereby the shocking idea of feeding on human flesh, of devoting one another to destruction and slavery, and of pursuing the insinuations and works of the devil, may be totally abolished, and every part of the habitable globe be united in the acknowledgment of one God, of one Saviour, and of one liberal, candid, and impartial, Christian persuasion.

As to the different shapes and forms of the devils, it is suggested by Scripture, and admitted by all writers upon the subject, that they were answerable in monstrosity and hideousness to the superior rank they held in heaven, and to the enormity of the offence which was the cause of their fall. Thus in Revelation, Lucifer, as the Leader and prime apostate, is termed the great dragon, and king of the devils. And hence it is conceived, that those who belonged to the supreme hierarchies in heaven, and were the foremost to rebel, were, immediately on their expulsion from the realms of bliss, transformed from angels of splendour and glory, to devils in the shape of dragons, crocodiles, serpents, tygers, and the like; so that the most perverse and potent among the devils possess the most ugly and frightful of the beastial shapes, but a thousand times more terrific and frightful than can possibly be conceived from the most ferocious of those animals. In this consideration, however, there is a material distinction to be made between the apostate angels and the damned souls, which have deserted God in this world, and become inhabitants of the infernal regions in the other. For the most part, these unhappy creatures retain the human shape, but with aspects dismal and melancholy, and expressive of the unspeakable torments they are doomed to suffer; for [1090] in themselves they rest not, neither are they capable of the shortness or duration of time, nor of the alternate courses of day and night. The sins and wickedness they committed in this life is the source of their continual torment, which gnaw and corrodes them, rising and boiling up continually in their minds, without rest or intermission. All the refrigeration they have, is by intercourse with the devils, when the height of wickedness stirs them up to blasphemies against God, and towering up above heaven and omnipotence in their adulterated and deluded imaginations, which, figuratively speaking, serves as sport and pastime amongst one another, but of short and certain duration. Not that this is of the smallest advantage, or the least mitigation of their torments; for pain discontinued returns the greater; neither would vexation be vexation, if it had no respite nor forbearance that the contrary might be also manifest, nam contraria juxta se posita majus elucescunt. Yet is their torment exceedingly different; so that the suffering of one in respect to that of another is but a mere dream or phantasy. -- I mean, amongst the damned souls, and not the devils; for the pain and torment of the devils is greater than the greatest of the lost souls by many million degrees, according to the course of nature and reason; for that which falls highest suffers most, and optima corrupta fiunt pessima.

But wonderful and manifest are the torments which lost souls endure, according to the various lusts and licentiousness they indulged in whilst they lived upon earth, or died in without expiation or repentance. The cruel murderers, who died in the boiling source of blood and envy, suffer the greatest torment, because they are continually murdering in their imaginations, and seeking, like dreaming men, to effect what the want of the correspondent organ will not permit them to do. For, according to scripture; and the wisest authors upon this subject, the principal torment and misery of damned souls proceeds from their continually wishing and willing; whence they generate ideas and representations, founded in impossibility, which is the source of their continual aggravation, disappointment, and misery. By the same reasoning, those who dies in lust and gluttony, lasciviousness and inebriety, are overwhelmed with correspondent torments, though much inferior to the first. They are continually imagining their former pleasures in the magia as in a dream, which, when they awake, torments them cruelly; as with us, when we awake from a frightful dream, and find it: is only a dream, our pleasure is more susceptible -- whereas, with them, the case is reversed; for, as their time is spent in eternal torment, so their dreams of bliss, when they awake, or become more sensible to their misery, but aggravates their misfortunes and gives fresh poignancy to the torments they [1091] endure. Such souls in whom the boiling source of anger and revenge hath had a dwelling or receptacle here, if they depart this life in their sins, do likewise endure a most dreadful kind of torment, which arises continually as a biting worm and hungry fire, to double and accumulate an excess of despair upon them. Those also, who reigned in pride and ostentation upon earth, treading under foot the meek and humble in heart, are tortured with the utmost reverse of their desires, which are ever uppermost in their infatuated imaginations. They are ever seeking to pull the Almighty from his throne, and towering up in the pride of their hearts, hoping to gain the kingdom of heaven to insult and boast in. But the quality of the beatific source is utterly occult and estranged from them, so that they can never find, taste, hear, nor see, it, though it be wrapt round and round with their own peculiar source and principle. This adds eternally to their misery, and rises upon their senses with horrible pangs and bitter gnawings, like the irksome and vexatious pains and achs of man's body, only a thousand times more acute and insupportable. The nature also of their habitation is such, that their punishment is exceedingly aggravated that way; because the extremity of the four elements is there converted into a whole principle of wrath and torment. The excess of cold and heat, drought and moisture, are alternately raging amongst them by intercourse; nor is there any light or lustre within their courts, but that which is emitted from their fiery eyes, or flaming nostrils, as a deadly glance or glimmering, which serves only to render the momentary glance of their miserable habitation ten times more disgusting and intolerable. And, as every kind of being feeds upon something proper to its own nature or element, whether it be plant, animal, or metallic production, so the devils are neither destitute of meat nor drink, according to their own kingdom and quality, having fruits springing up and growing before them, of hellish, sour, and poisonous, natures, which are real and palpable to them, and not imaginary or typical, though to us magical and invisible. Neither is this at all to be wondered at, if we consider the nature of man's soul in media natura; for, if it feed not upon the internal and substantial Word, which is the very head of life itself, it must and will of necessity ruminate on something else, viz. the fruits of iniquity; which it takes in and swallows up, even as an ox drinks the water; so that to the soul the sin becomes palpable, glutting, and satiating, from which it never can be freed, but by works of expiation and repentance. Also, in the astral source, when called up by magical spells and incantations, or otherwise, they are not destitute of food, but receive the influences of the air and water into their limbus, which they convert into food, according to their own poisonous quality; as of sweet and wholesome herbs the filthy toads and other venomous reptiles form their poison, converting them into a nature [1092] like their own. And so likewise these infernal spirits, considered in respect of the four elements, have a tone or language peculiar to themselves which they exercise and speak amongst another, as mortals do; but they have utterly lost the dignity of their sounds according to the eternal nature, and are totally corrupted in their pronunciation or dialect, since they fell from their first celestial glory; so that their articulation is harsh, doleful, fierce, and terrible, like the fruits they feed upon and place they dwell in. This deprivation is very apparent in the kingdom of this world, in the divided languages of every region, according to the constellation under which they are situated; the true and magical language of nature; notwithstanding the industrious lexicographers, still remaining hidden from the knowledge of every country in the habitable world.

Thus far I have endeavored to illustrate the causes, natures, and punishments, of infernal spirits; which, notwithstanding, is a subject so intricate and copious in itself, by reason of the variety of their qualities in the source of darkness, wherein they live, move, eat, breathe, and inhabit, having qualities, actions, and passions, innumerable, and which are to mankind almost utterly unknown and incomprehensible. So that to attempt an ample demonstration of the matter would require deeper speculation than the subject deserves, or that I am master of; particularly as the inhabitants of that gloomy kingdom are never in one regular stay, continuance, or property, but from one hour to another are continually floating and changing; like the swiftness of the winds, or the gliding along of running waters, which pass away as a thought, and are no more remembered. So it is with the devils and damned spirits in that lachrymable state of darkness, where their existence is a continual anguish and torment, shifting from the pangs of one sorrow to the bitterness of another, unto all eternity!

Now according to the spirit of Christian Revelation, there hath been always opposed to the machinations of the devil and his imps upon earth, who "go about like roaring lions seeking whom they may devour," a certain description of good and holy spirits, whose province it is to watch over the affairs of men, and to guard them from the invisible assaults of the devil, exclusive of the ministration of God's holy angels, which hath been manifested in a thousand different instances in Scripture; but whose appearances and manifestations to the eyes of mortal man, never has been, nor can be, permitted, but on the most important dispensations of divine Providence. The received opinion however is, as to the former doctrine, that there is, according to the disposition of the mind or soul, a good or evil Genius, that accompanies invisibly every [1093] person born into the world. Their office is principally that of forewarning the persons they attend of any imminent impending danger, sometimes by inward instinct, or by outward appearances; and sometimes by dreams in the night. These Genii change their quality and office as the person or party change their's; if from good we degenerate to evil, then by degrees the good Genius is estranged from us, and an evil Demon naturally succeeds, according to that sympathy of things, wherein each draws after it that which is its like. There have been likewise defined, by the learned Doctors and Rabbi's who have written on this intricate subject, seven good angels, who watch over and superintend the general affairs of mankind, and who are ever ready to forward, by intellectual association, mental instigation, or strong nocturnal visionary manifestation, the general prosperity and success of all men's affairs, who are governed by the laws of integrity and religion, and who are, by some one or other of these means, allured or prompted to such particular conduct or determination, as shall tend ultimately to their honour and preferment, to the good of society, and to the glory of God and true religion, which is the grand office of these seven good spirits to promote. And opposed to these are seven evil Spirits or Demons proper to the infernal world, whose office is to infuse evil into those men's minds who are naturally so addicted, and who never fail to join in association, though invisibly, with depraved persons of every description, whose passions they influence, and whose desires they lead to the commission of all the abominations of this world. The names of the seven good angels or spirits are, 1. Jubanladace, distinguished in the dominion of thrones as the appointed guardian of all public and national enterprises, where the good of society and the honour of God are unitedly concerned. He is delineated in all the brightness of a celestial messenger, bearing a flaming sword, girded about the loins, with an helmet on his head; and this is the magical character, by which he is distinguished, and which is worn by many as a lamin round the neck, for a preservative against putrid infection and sudden death.

The second is Pah-li-Pah, one of the celestial powers, whose peculiar office it is to guard and forewarn such as are virgins and uncontaminated youth against all the evils of debauchery and prostitution; and to elevate the mind to a love of virtue, honour, and revealed religion. He personifies the character of an illustrious angel, of a bright but most complacent countenance; and is known by the following magical symbol, [1094] which is worn about the neck of virgins as a protection from all the assaults of evil demons, and is said to be infallible against the powers of seduction.

The third is Nal-gah, devoted to the protection of those who are assaulted by evil spirits or witches, and whose minds are sunk in fearful and melancholy apprehensions of the assaults of the devil, and the power of death. His proper office is to fortify the mind, and to lead the senses to a contemplation of the attributes of God, and the joys of heaven, the reward of all good works. His appearance is represented as perfectly celestial, having a crown of gold upon his head, with a shield and spear in his hands, for the protection of those over whom he presides. The following is his magical character, which is worn round the neck as a preservation against witchcraft and suicide.

The fourth is Maynom, one of the Powers who hath the ability of subservient administration and protection; that is, at one and the same time to be present with many. His presence must be sought by humility and prayer. -- The fifth good Genius is Gaonim, an angel of celestial brightness, who hath the peculiar ability of rendering his pupil invisible to any evil spirits whatsoever, as often as attacked by them. -- The sixth is Halanu, the guardian and promoter of all good and great ideas, by whom Bezaliah and Aholiab were divinely inspired for the structure of the tabernacle. -- The seventh is Ramah-umi, the genius of geometrical proportion, and the power of numbers; the secrets and extent of which are not yet half known, even to the most favoured of those whose capacities are enlightened by his superior aid.

Now the office of the seven evil dæmons or spirits is to counteract and destroy the effect of the good; for, as the power and capacity of the good proceeds from the omnipotence of God in the quality of heaven, so is the force of the evil Genii, in the infernal quality, made correspondent thereto, from a principle of contraries; for, it is to be noted, that these seven evil angels, before their fall, enjoyed the same places and degrees of glory that now belong to the seven good angels or Genii; so that, as [1095] their office is to instruct and allure mankind to the pursuit of every thing that is good, great, virtuous, and honorable, it is the business of the others, to tempt and seduce the mind to a pursuit of whatever is vile, vicious, and abominable, and that may be instrumental in extending the kingdom of darkness and the power of the devil. The names of these seven evil spirits or Genii stand upon record as follow; 1. Panalcarp, in the likeness of a crocodile with two heads. 2. Baratron, appearing like a magician in a solemn priestly habit. 3. Sondennah, in the caparison and similitude of an Indian huntsman. 4. Greizmodal, in the fawning shape of a large spaniel dog. 5. Ballisargon, in the similitude of a covetous miser, lusting after gold; he is the grand enticer to thieving and robbery, and usually brings his followers to an ignominious and destructive end. 6. Morborgran, who, under various likenesses of a friendly serving man, induces the worst examples of hypocrisy and deceit. -- This dæmon, it is said, was the constant attendant of Judas Iscariot. The 7th is Barman, ready to enter into league with any conjuror, witch, or wizzard; but who most commonly possesses the soul of whomsoever he is in league with. These good and evil spirits, it seems, are the most easy to be invoked or called up, agreeable to the desires and situation of the magician's mind and inclination, because they are most near and familiar to the actions and pursuits of men, and officially attendant upon them.

Different from every species of all the foregoing orders of spirits, are the ghosts and apparitions of deceased persons, which have been known for many years to survive and continue; particularly where the deceased person hath departed this life in discontent, melancholy, or unquiet mind; for in these cases they have been often known to return again, and without a desire of causing terror and alarm to houses and families, seek only for an opportunity of disburthening themselves, that at length they may come into their desired rest. Such persons as are secretly murdered, or that secretly murder themselves, are most apt to appear again, wandering near the place where the catastrophe happened, till the radical moisture of the body be totally consumed. After which, according to the opinion of Paracelsus, and many other learned writers; they can appear no more, but are resolved into their first being or astrum, after a certain term of years, when the humidum radicale becomes exsiccate and dried up, according to the vigour or force of that first attraction, which was the only cause of their returning. And hence was derived the custom of urns and funeral piles amongst the Romans, who used to reduce the corpses of their deceased friends into ashes, lest their ghosts should return and wander; which it was supposed they could not do when the body was burnt, and all moisture totally exterminated and consumed thereby.

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The manner and seasons wherein apparitions or ghosts appear are as various as they are uncertain. Sometimes, before the person to whom they properly belong departs this life, they will by external visible presentation of themselves, forewarn him of the time or day wherein death shall approach him. Sometimes the apparition of a person will appear to its beloved friend, husband, wife, or relation, at many thousand miles distance, to acquaint them of its departure from this life, whilst otherwise the party would be totally ignorant of the event. And it has often been known, that when no one individual of the kindred or family of the deceased person has been visited or disturbed by it, or even made sensible of its appearing, yet to some of its most intimate or beloved acquaintance it discovers itself, and importunes them to perform some ceremony or promise, that it may be admitted into rest. At other times it discovers some treasure, which was hidden by the deceased party; or else some murder which it had committed. But the most frequent cause of their returning, is when the party himself hath been privately murdered; for such is the poisonous malice and rancorous spirit of murderers, that innocent blood, thus inhumanly spilt, crieth up to heaven, and the departed spirit cannot rest till the murder be made manifest to the world, after which discovery it is received into rest. This is the reason why, for many years together, ghosts continue to be seen in one particular place, ever watching for fit opportunity to discover or make known the cause of its appearing; but which is often attended with great difficulty and delay, as well on account of the natural timidity of human beings, as for want of the proper organs of corporeal voice and touch in the spirit, which being no part of their quality or essence, is procured with great difficulty, and at best but inarticulate, doleful, and in broken accents. That this is true, the usual manner of their appearance in a great measure proves; for all that they are able to effect, if they have been murdered, is to appear near the place where the body lies, and to seem as if they sunk down or vanished in the same; or else to appear in the form of a murdered corpse, with mangled body, and bleeding wounds, dishevelled hair, and convulsive countenance; but it is rarely known that such apparitions have plainly spoken, or uttered, by words, either the time and place of their murder, or the cause, manner, or person's name; unless the perpetration of the deed be marked with circumstances uncommonly horrid and execrable, in which cases, I am told, the remembrance of the same doth so much more powerfully operate upon the faculties of the apparition, as to enable it to frame the similitude of a voice, so as to discover the fact, and give some leading clue to detect and punish the wicked perpetrator.

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But, to give a reason why apparitions are so seldom seen, and why those which do appear cannot without man's assistance accomplish their design, it may easily be conceived, that all spirits, or spiritual substances, of what denomination soever, have their life, breath, and vital motion, in another source, very different from the elements of this external world; and consequently, that their manifestation and continuance in this source, whenever they appear, must be both painful and irksome; as it would be for a man to continue with his head under water, or for the inhabitant of the watery element to be placed upon dry land. But it is only the apparitions of persons thus suddenly taken off in their sins, or of such as die in confirmed and habitual wickedness, that, in the natural course of things, are subject to return into the terrestrial source, and manifest themselves to human eyes. For if those who die in perfect peace, with minds divested by true repentence of every turbulent and sinful desire, enter at once into their desired rest, without the possibility of returning to this sublunary world again, but in the capacity of angels of light, to execute the divine missions of the Deity.

In the writings of Plato, there are many strange and singular representations of the apparitions or departed souls of men, with accounts of their torments and purgations, the cause of their returning; what their nature and employment are, their substance and property, food and nourishment; from all which that great philosopher and historian was induced to believe, that, when the spirits of good and exemplary men returned, it was to persons of a like habit and disposition with themselves, warning them in their sleep of certain dangers or malevolent designs forming against them; or else conveying heavenly doctrines, or ingenious inventions to their mind, for the honour of religion or the good of society. And in like manner, if the ghost of a wicked and execrable character returned, it was to those of a profligate and abandoned course of life, whom it instigates, asleep or awake, to the invention and exercise of notorious villanies, to blasphemies against God, and to sedition, rapine, and murder, amongst men. The disciples of Pythagoras established an opinion not very different from this. They held that there was a continual traduction and transmigration of souls from one state to another, till they became deified at last; and that they frequently appeared to persons of the same bent of mind and inclination, to instruct and forewarn them. It was also the opinion of many great and wise philosophers, that the Oracles of old proceeded from such spirits as had been the ghosts or departed souls of wise and excellent men; as the oracle of Apollo, the oracle of Pallas, or Minerva, and the like. And, upon the whole, the variety of examples, throughout the writings of wise and learned men, in [1098] all ages of the world, in all countries, and in the sacred as well as the profane history, of the various appearances of ghosts and apparitions of departed men, as well as of spirits of other kinds and properties, afford the strongest inducement to our belief of their existence and agency in this sublunary world, than we should, in this more learned and enlightened age, be otherwise so willing to admit as an article of our belief. But, seeing these things are absolutely so, we will now give some particulars of the mode and manner in which magicians and other professors of the Black Art obtain an intercourse with them; from which it will appear, that the Science of Astrology is an art founded in philosophy and mathematical demonstration, and totally unconnected with any agency, but what proceeds from second causes under God and Nature; whereas the other is a wicked confederation with evil spirits, which ought to be discouraged and suppressed by the utmost exertions of the iron arm of the law.

To the honour of the present century, we have had but few instances of persons openly and publicly entering into compact with spirits, or of professing to resolve questions in futurity by means of their agency; but, prior to that æra, it was no uncommon thing; and those, who had an opportunity of blending classical learning and scientific speculation with it, were esteemed the most elevated characters of their day, and were frequently honoured with the protection and confidence of princes and other men of rank and fortune. I shall here mention a few of those characters who were esteemed the most considerable magicians of their time.

Appollonius Tayaneus, in the time of the Emperor Domitian, from the wonderful and miraculous things he did through the agency of spirits, added to so great an appearance of sanctity and simplicity, with which his exterior was endowed by nature, occasioned all ranks of people to regard him with a mixture of reverential awe and respect. Even the Christians, who lived within the circle of his fame, thought him something more than human, and looked up to him with confidence and esteem. From a variety of circumstances, and accounts in different authors, it appears that this singular character had not only the faculty of knowing what was transacting at many hundred miles distance, but had the means also of being conveyed almost instantaneously from one place to another, where he was seen, known, and conversed with many of his acquaintance. It is also recorded of him, that, at the instant the Emperor Domitian was assassinated at Rome, he spoke of it in a public assembly at Ephesus, and declared the mode and manner of his death; which, upon enquiry, was found to happen at the precise moment of time he spoke of it, and in the exact manner he had described.

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Doctor Dee was another very extraordinary character of the same class, and a native of this island. He was not only a famous magician, but a great author, having written upwards of forty-eight different volumes, the first of which was published in 1594 [Dee's first book was actually Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558). See A Letter. -JHP]. A full account of his conversation and intercourse with spirits is now extant, written with his own hand, and esteemed a very curious and singular performance. His company and acquaintance was much sought by the Emperor Charles V. and by Ferdinand his brother; and, during his travels over the continent, he had not only every respect and attention paid him, but his company was courted by all the learned and religious people wherever he went. He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age in which he lived, and had collected a library of upwards of 4,000 volumes of curious and valuable writings, mostly upon physical, theological, and occult, subjects, which he had the misfortune to see burnt by the fury of a mob, who assailed his house, and conspired against his life, under an idea that by magical spells and incantations he had altered the natural course of the weather, and brought on storms, hurricanes, tempests, and, continual rain, in order to ruin the harvest, and destroy the fruits of the earth. Yet he bore the torrent and fury of this infatuated, multitude with the greatest composure, saying, "They would see their error soon enough to treat him with greater kindness hereafter than their persecution was now cruel." And so it happened; for, having by means of his confederacy with spirits foretold and detected a fatal conspiracy against his country, he was then as much honoured and caressed as he had before been stigmatized and abused by the hasty multitude. He wrote the mathematical preface to Euclid's Elements, and has left tables of the harmony and extent of numbers infinitely beyond the capacity of the present times, though so much more learned and refined.

Edward Kelly was also a famous magician, and the companion and associate of Dr. Dee, in most of his magical operations and exploits; having been brought in unison with him (as the Doctor himself declares, in the preface to his work upon the ministration of spirits) by mediation of the angel Uriel. But Dr. Dee was undoubtedly deceived in his opinion, that the spirits which ministered to him were executing the divine will, and were the messengers and servants of the Deity. Throughout his writings on the subject, he evidently considers them in this light, which is still more indisputably confirmed by the piety and devotion he invariably observed at all times when these spirits had intercourse with him. And further, when he found his coadjutor Kelly was degenerating into the lowest and worst species of the magic art, for the purposes of fraud and avaricious gain, he broke off all manner of connexion with him, and [1100] would never after be seen in his company. But it is believed, that the doctor, a little before his death, became sensible that he had been imposed upon by these invisible agents, and that all their pretences of acting under the auspices of the angel Uriel, and for the honour and glory of God, was but mere hypocrisy, and the delusions of the devil. Kelly, being thus rejected and discountenanced by the doctor, betook himself to the meanest and most vile practices of the magic art; in all which pursuits, money and the works of the devil appear to have been his chief aim. Many wicked and abominable transactions are recorded of him, which were performed by witchcraft, and the mediation of infernal spirits ; but nothing more curious, or more apropos to the present subject, than what is mentioned by Weaver, in his Funeral Monuments. He there records, that Edward Kelly the magician, with one Paul Waring, who acted in capacity of companion and associate in all his conjurations, went together to the Church-yard of Walton Ledale, in the country of Lancaster, where they had information of a person being interred, who was supposed to have hidden or buried a considerable sum of money, and to have dies without disclosing to any person where it was deposited. They entered the church-yard exactly at twelve o'clock at night; and, having had the grave pointed out to them the preceding day, they exorcised the spirit of the deceased by magical spells and incantations, till it appeared before them, and not only satisfied their wicked desires and enquiries, but delivered several strange predictions concerning persons in that neighbourhood, which were literally and exactly fulfilled. It was vulgarly reported of Kelly, that he outlived the time of his compact with the devil, and was seized at midnight by some infernal spirits, who carried him off in the sight of his own wife and children, at the instant he was meditating a mischievous scheme against the minister of his parish, with whom he was greatly at enmity.

The character of Mahomet is too well known throughout all the world, as the institutor of the Turkish Alcoran, to need much comment from me in this place. It is sufficient if I only remark, that all his wonderful miracles were wrought by the aid and confederacy of familiar spirits, which he called the ministration of angels from heaven, from whence he pretended to have been sent, to perform the commands of the Deity, and to correct and reform the manners and religion of mankind. He had the peculiar address to establish this idea amongst his contemporaries, and to lay the foundation of the present faith at Constantinople, and throughout the vast extent of the Turkish territory.

Roger Bacon, was another very famous associate with familiar spirits, and performed many astonishing exploits through their means. He was born [1101] at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, where he studied philosophy, alchemy, and astrology; and wrote several learned and ingenious books, the manuscripts of which are now preserved as valuable curiosities in the British Museum. I attempted to make some interesting extracts from them, for the further amusement and information of my readers in this part of my work; but I was prevented from going on with my plan, under an idea that the information it would convey might be productive of mischievous consequences to society, by pulling too much in the power of evil-minded and vindictive men.

Paracelsus was a great cabalist, physician, astrologer, and magician, and appears to have been intimately acquainted with all the secret and occult properties of nature. He was the first we know of who ever treated upon animal magnetism; and his performances in that line were such as to astonish the world, and to draw upon him the united gratulations of the diseased and infirm. His method, notwithstanding it is so clearly laid down by himself, and demonstrated by a variety of pleasing examples in his works, has lain dormant till the present time; and now it begins again, under the successful endeavours of a few persevering individuals, to convince mankind that the secret and occult properties of nature are not yet half known or understood; nor their advantages received with that thankfulness and regard, which ought incessantly to be poured forth to the great Author of our being, for the blessings that may so easily be derived from them. This was the opinion and nearly the words of Paracelsus himself, who hath been recorded by all our biographers as a learned, judicious, and ingenious, philosopher. Yet his having been so much addicted to magical rites and ceremonies, and having had familiarity with spirits and devils, and performed so many wonderful conjurations through their means, caused him to have been ever supposed to have done by the agency of spirits what was really the true and genuine effects of nature only.

As to the particular forms, manner, method, rites, ceremonies, consecrations, time, place, and ability, requisite to call up and enter into compact or familiarity with spirits, it is neither safe nor prudent, nor consistent with the well-being of society in general, that I should dwell so extensively upon it, or give such explanations, as to put a weapon into the hands of the blood-thirsty or revengeful, to despite their enemies or neighbours, or to enable those, who are prone to such dealings from idle curiosity, completely to put in execution this species of league with the devil or his subordinate agents; which is as strictly forbidden by the word of God as by the laws of the land. Let it suffice, therefore, that I only [1102] give such an outline of it, as may enable the inquisitive reader sufficiently to judge of its merits, without enabling the viciously-inclined to adopt its practice.

Magicians and conjurors, who have written upon and followed the Black Art, contend, that it is possible to raise up and hold an intercourse with spirits, and make them subservient to their commands, without any absolute compact or bargain with the devil, either for body, soul, or works; though they are ready to admit, that such a snare is eventually intended for them, by their officiousness upon every occasion, and they are as willing to believe that it has induced many of its practitioners to form such a league. Many instances indeed have been adduced in proof of this, where, at the expiration of a certain term, the devoted wretch has been carried off in the height of his sins and wickedness, by some of the infernal messengers. Such is recorded to have been the case with several in this island; such also was the case with Lewis Gaufridi, a French priest, who, to be revenged of some of his superiors for not promoting him to the extent of his ambition, compacted with the devil for fourteen years power, to commit whatever detestable works he pleased, without detection or discovery. So likewise, a certain execrable character, who a few centuries back over-ran this country, was at length publicly taken off in fire -and flame, before the eyes of a vast multitude, having covenanted for body, soul, and works. It is to be noted, that, where a compact is formed, the devil, or familiar spirit, is ever at hand, and ready to obey the magician's will, without ceremony or troub1e; but, where no such league or compact exists, and the magician is desirous of bringing up or constraining some particular spirit or ghost to appear before him, there are many rites and ceremonies to be performed. In the first place they are to fix upon a spot proper for such a purpose; which must be either in a subterraneous vault, hung round with black, and lighted by a magical torch; or else in the centre of some thick wood or desert, or upon some extensive unfrequented plain, where several roads meet; or amidst the ruins of ancient castles, abbies, monasteries, &c. or amongst the rocks on the sea-shore; in some private detached church-yard, or any other solemn melancholy place, between the hours of twelve and one in the night, either when the moon shines very bright, or else when the elements are disturbed with storms of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain; for, in these places, times, and seasons, it is contended, that spirits can with less difficulty manifest themselves to mortal eyes, and continue visible with the least pain, in this elemental external world.

When the proper time and place is fixed on, a magic circle-is to be formed, within which, the master and his associate, (for in all these [1103] cases there must be two persons) are carefully to retire. The dimensions of the circle is as follows: a piece of ground is usually chosen nine feet square, at the full extent of which parallel lines are drawn one within another, having sundry crosses and triangles described between them close to which is formed the first or outer circle; then, about half a foot within the same, a second circle is described; and within that another square correspondent to the first, the centre of which is the seat or spot where the master and associate are to be placed. The vacancies formed by the various lines and angles of the figure, are filled up with all the holy names of God, having crosses and triangles described betwixt them, agreeable to a sketch I have given in the annexed plate, where likewise I have projected the form of magic seals, pentacles, &c. &c. just to give the reader an idea of what is meant, whenever we have occasion to speak of them in the following discourse. The reasons assigned by magicians, and others for the institution and use of circles, is, that of much ground being blessed and consecrated by such holy words and ceremonies as they make use of in forming it, hath a secret force to expel all evil spirits from the bounds thereof; and, being sprinkled with pure sanctified water, the ground is purified from all uncleanness; besides, the holy names of God being written over every part of it, its force becomes so powerful, that no evil spirit hath ability to break through it, or to get at the magician or his companion, by reason of the antipathy in nature they bear to these sacred names. And the reason given for the triangles is, that if the spirit be not easily brought to speak the truth, they may by the Exorcist be conjured to enter the same, where, by virtue of the names of the Essence and Divinity of God, they can speak nothing but what is true and right. The circle therefore, according to this account of it, is the principal fort and shield of the magician, from which he is not, at the peril of his life, to depart, till he has completely dismissed the spirit, particularly if he be of a fiery or infernal nature. Instances are recorded of many who perished by this means; particularly Chiancungi, the famous Egyptian fortune-teller, who in the last century was so famous in England. He undertook for a wager, to raise up the spirit Bokim, and, having described the circle, he seated his sister Napala by him as his associate. After frequently repeating the forms of exorcism, and calling upon the spirit to appear, and nothing as yet answering his demand, they grew impatient of the business, and quitted the circle, but it cost them their lives; for they were instantaneously seized and crushed to death, by that internal spirit, who happened not to be sufficiently constrained till that moment, to manifest himself to human eyes. -- The usual form of consecrating the circle is as follows:

[1104]

I, who am the servant of the Highest, do, by the virtue of his Holy Name Immanuel, sanctify unto myself the circumference of nine feet round about me, + + + from the east, Glaurah; from the west, Garron; from the north, Cabon; from the south, Berith; which ground I take for my proper defence from all malignant spirits, that they may have no power over my soul or body, nor come beyond these limitations, but answer truly, being summoned, without daring to transgress their bounds. Worrh. worrah. harcot. Gambalon. + + +.

The proper attire or pontificalibus of a magician, is an ephod made of fine white linen, over that a priestly robe of black bombazine, reaching to the ground, with the two seals of the earth, drawn correctly upon virgin parchment, and affixed to the breath of his outer vestment. Round his waste is tied a broad consecrated girdle, with the names Ya, Ya, + Aie, Aaie, + Elibra + Elohim + Sadai + Pah Adonai + tuo robore + Cinctus sum +. Upon his shoes must be written Tetragrammaton, with crosses round about; upon his head a high-crown cap of sable silk; and in his hands an holy Bible, printed or written in pure Hebrew. When all these things are prepared, the circle drawn, the ground consecrated, and the exorcist securely placed within the circle, he proceeds to call up or conjure the spirit by his proper name, under a form somewhat similar to the following:

I exorcise and conjure thee, thou spirit of (here naming the spirit), by the holy and wonderful names of the Almighty Jehovah, Athanato + Aionos + Dominus sempiternus + Aletheios + Sadai + Jehovah, Kedesh, El gabor + Deus fortissimus + Anapheraton, Amorule, Ameron +++ Panthon + Craton + Muridon + Jah, Jehovah, Elohim pentasseron + + trinus et unus + + + I exorcise and conjure, I invocate and command, thee, thou aforesaid spirit, by the power of angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, by the mighty Prince Coronzon, by the blood of Abel, by the righteousness of Seth, and the prayers of Noah, by the voices of thunder and dreadful day of judgment; by all these powerful and royal words abovesaid, that, without delay or malicious intent, thou do come before me here at the circumference of this consecrated circle to answer my proposals and desires, without any manner of terrible form, either of thyself or attendants; but only obediently, fairly, and with good intent, to present thyself before me, this circle being my defense, through his power who is Almighty, and hath sanctified the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

After these forms of conjuration, and just before appearances are expected, the infernal spirits make strange and frightful noises, howlings, tremblings, flashes, and most dreadful shrieks and yells, as forerunners of [1105] their presently becoming visible. Their first appearance is generally in the form of fierce and terrible lions or tygers, vomiting forth fire, and roaring hideously about the circle; all which time the Exorcist must not suffer any tremor or dismay; for, in that case, they will gain the ascendancy, and the consequences may touch his life. On the contrary, he must summon up a share of resolution, and continue repeating all the forms of constriction and confinement, until they are drawn nearer to the influence of the triangle, when their forms will change to appearances less ferocious and frightful, and become more submissive and tractable. When the forms of conjuration have in this manner been sufficiently repeated, the spirits forsake their beastial shapes, and endow the human form, appearing like naked men of gentle countenance and behaviour. Yet is the magician to be warily on his guard that they deceive him not by such mild gestures; for they are exceedingly fraudulent and deceitful in their dealings with those who constrain them to appear without compact; having nothing in view but to suborn his mind, or accomplish his destruction. But with such as they have entered into agreement with they are frequent and officious; yet they more or less require certain oblations, which are frequently made to them, such as fumigations, odours, offerings or sacrifices of blood, fire, wine, ointments, incense, fruits, excrements, herbs, gums, minerals, and other ingredients; by which, from a magical cause, they have more influence and authority over the degenerated souls of men, and can insinuate into their inmost source and affection, piercing even through their bones and marrow, till they have so habituated them to their service, that it becomes their daily and sole delight to accomplish every villainy and abomination which the malicious and subtle instigations of Satan might purpose to lead them. So that the Exorcist must be greatly upon his guard, and when he has compleated the exorcism, and made such enquiries as he wished to obtain from the spirit, he must carefully discharge him by some form or ceremony like the following:

Because thou hast diligently answered my demands, and been ready to come at my first call, I do here licence thee to depart unto thy proper place, without injury or danger to man or beast; depart, I say, and be ever ready at my call, being duly exorcised and conjured by sacred rites of magic; I charge thee to withdraw with quiet and peace; and peace be continued betwixt me and thee, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

After this ceremony is finished, the spirit will begin to depart, resuming again the shrieks and noises, with flashes of fire, sulphur, and smoke, which the magician is to endure with patience, until it is entirely gone off, [1106] and no signs whatever of such a procedure left. Then he may venture to withdraw from the circle, repeating the Lord's Prayer, after which he may take up the various utensils, and, having destroyed all traces of the circle, may return in safety to his proper home.

But if, instead of infernal or familiar spirits, the ghost or apparition of a departed person is to be exorcised, the process is materially different. The person being fixed on, whose apparition is to be brought up, the magician, with his assistant, must repair to the church-yard or tomb where the deceased was buried, exactly at midnight; as the ceremony can only be performed in the night, between the hours of twelve and one. The grave is first to be opened, or an aperture made, by which access may be had to the naked body. The magician having described the circle, and holding a magic wand in his right hand, while his companion or assistant beareth a consecrated torch, he turns himself to all the four winds, and, touching the dead body three times with the magical wand, repeats as follows:

By the virtue of the holy resurrection, and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of N. deceased, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress:

Then let him say,

Berald, Beroald, Balbin gab gabor agaba; arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.

After which forms and ceremonies, the ghost or apparition will become visible, and will answer to any questions put to it by the Exorcist.

But if it be desired to put interrogatories to the spirit of any corpse that hath hanged, drowned, or otherwise made away with itself, the conjuration must be performed while the body hangs, or on the spot where it is first found after the suicide hath been committed, and before it is touched or removed by the coroner's jury. The ceremony is as follows: the Exorcist binds upon the top of his wand a bundle of St. John's wort, or milliès perforatum, with the head of an owl; and, having repaired to the spot where the corpse lies, at twelve o'clock at night, he draws the circle, and solemnly repeats the following words:

By the mysteries of the deep, by the flames of Banal, by the power of the east, and the silence of the night, by the holy rites of Hecate, I conjure and exorcise thee, thou distressed spirit, to present thyself here, and reveal unto me the cause of thy calamity, why thou didst offer violence to thy own liege life, where thou art now in being, and where thou wilt hereafter be. He then, gently smiting [1107] the carcase nine times with the rod, he says, I conjure thee, thou spirit of this N. deceased, to answer my demands that I am to propound unto thee, as thou ever hopest for the rest of the holy ones, and ease of all thy misery; by the blood of Jesu which he shed for thy soul, I conjure and bind thee to utter unto me what I shall ask thee.

Then, cutting down the carcase from the tree, they lay his head towards the east; and, in the space that this following conjuration is repeating, they set a chaffing-dish of fire at his right hand, into which, they pour a little wine, some mastic, and gum-aromatic, and lastly, a viol full of the sweetest oil, having also a pair of bellows, and some unkindled charcoal to make the fire burn bright at the instant of the carcase's rising. The conjuration is thus:

I conjure thee, thou spirit of N. that thou do immediately, enter into thy ancient body again, and answer to my demands, by the virtue of the holy resurrection, and by the posture of the body of the Saviour of the world, I charge thee, I conjure thee, I command thee on pain of the torments and wandering, of thrice seven years, which I, by the force of sacred magic rites, have power to inflict upon thee; by thy sighs and groans, I conjure thee to utter thy voice; so help thee God and the prayers of the holy church. Amen.

Which ceremony being thrice repeated, while the fire is burning with mastic and gum-aromatic, the body will begin to rise, and at last will stand upright before the Exorcist, answering with a faint and hollow voice, the questions propounded unto it: why it destroyed itself, where its dwelling is, what its food and life is, how long it will be 'ere it enter into rest, and by what means the magician may assist it to come to rest: also, of the treasures of this world, where they are hid: moreover, it can answer very punctually of the places where ghosts reside, and how to communicate with them; teaching the nature of astral spirits and hellish beings, so far as its capacity reacheth. All which when the ghost hath fully answered, the magician ought, out of commiseration and reverence to the deceased, to use what means can possibly be used for the procuring rest unto the spirit. To which effect he must dig a grave, and filling the same half full of quick lime, and a little salt and common sulphur, put the carase naked into it; which experiment, next to the burning of the body into ashes, is of great force to quiet and end the disturbance of the astral spirit.

But in this, and in all cases where the ghosts or apparitions of deceased persons are raised up and consulted, great caution is to be observed by the [1108] magician to keep close within the circle; for, if the magician, by the constellation and position of the stars at his nativity, be in the predicament of those who follow the Black Art for iniquitous purposes, and are so distinguished by the positions of their radical figure of birth, it is very dangerous for such men to conjure any spirits without describing the circle after the form already given, and wearing up on their breast, or holding in their hand, the Pentacle of Solomon. For the ghosts of men deceased can easily effect sudden death to the magician born under such a conformation of the planets, even whilst in the act of being exorcised; and, it is yet more remarkable, that the genethliacal figures of all persons who are naturally addicted to the pursuit of magical incantations and familiarity with spirits, do almost without exception portend sudden death, or infamous termination of their existence.

Such are the rites, ceremonies, and modes, by which Exorcists and Magicians obtain familiarity with spirits, and carry on a visible and palpable correspondence with the devil. But, besides. these means of working wonders, they have others of an invisible or occult property, as charms, spells, periapts, and the like, which operate both on the body and mind, by the agency of some secret power, which the patient can neither feel nor comprehend. They are of various names, forms, and qualities3 according to the use for which they are intended: first, Amulets, which are moulded and engraved in the form of money or coin, under certain forms of consecration; and are hung about the neck in certain planetary hours, for the purpose of provoking to love and familiarity with some certain person desired. Secondly, Spells or Charms, consisting of various forms of words, and magical characters, written on virgin parchment, either with human blood, or ink of a particular quality, and consecrated under certain magical forms and ceremonies, to be worn as periapts to cure diseases, to drive away evil spirits, to preserve from pestilence and infection, to make the party valiant and intrepid, and for a thousand other purposes. Thirdly, Corselets, which are the ancient Danish charm, being a kind of necklaces composed of thunder-stones, upon which are engraven certain magical characters, which resist all noxious influences, and all danger from thunder and lightning. Pentacles are a fourth sort of appendix, which conjurors and magicians use, being made with five corners, corresponding to the five senses of man, with their virtue and operation inscribed upon the five corners respectively. They are composed of fine linen doubled up, and done with cerecloth between. This figure the magician holds in his hand, lifting it up from the skirt of his garment to which it is annexed, whenever spirits that are raised become stubborn and rebellious, refusing to conform to the rites [1109] and requisitions of exorcism, and offering menacing looks and actions to the magician; but, when these Pentacles are held out to the spirits, with the words Glauron, Amor, Amorula, Beor, Beorka, Beroald, Anepheraton, inscribed upon them, they become exceedingly tortured and amazed, and are more mild and tractable. There is likewise another sort of charm called Telesms, which is used by magicians when they perform any conjuration or exorcism by moon-light in the mountains or valleys; upon which occasions they usually bury them towards the north, east, west, and south, within a hundred yards of the place where the circle is described; for these Telesms have the occult power of preventing any living creature coming near them until the incantation be performed, except the spirit itself whose presence they ardently desire, and are preparing to summon before them.

But, to make fiery and infernal spirits more familiar, magicians have classed them into seven distinct orders, answerable to the nature and qualities of the seven planets; under which they respectively make offerings to them of aromatic fumigations, previous to invoking or calling them up; whereby they conceive the information or assistance required from them will be more easily and expeditiously obtained. Thus the fumigation for spirits under Saturn, are made of frankincense-tree, pepper-wort roots, storax, and galbanum; by these the spirits Marbas, Corban, Stilkon, Idas, &c and all of the first order in the astringency, are appeased and provoked, when the fumes are put upon a Tripod in the hour of Saturn according to the planetary division. For Spirits under Jupiter, they take lignum aloes, ashtree-keys, benjamin, storax, peacocks-feathers, and lapis lazuli, mixing the same with the blood of a stork, a swallow, or a hart; the brains being also added: the fumes are kindled in Jupiter's hour, and in a place appropriate to his nature. They make fumigations unto such spirits of the order of powers as are under Mars, in the planetary division, with aromatic gum, bdellium, euphorbium, load-stone, hellebore white and black, and an addition or sulphur to make them into an amalgama, with man's blood, and the blood of a black cat; which mixtures are said to be so exceeding magical, that, without any other addition, they say, this fumigation is able of itself to make spirits under Mars appear before the Exorcist. To the spirits under Sol, being of the order of thrones, they likewise suffumigate saffron, musk, laurel, cinnamon, ambergrise, cloves, myrrh, and frankincense, musk, and the balsamic tree mixed up together with the brains of an eagle, and the blood of a white cock, being made up like pills, or little balls, and put upon the Tripod. The fumigations appropriate to spirits under Venus, are roses, coral, lignum aloes, and spermaceti, made up with sparrows brains, and blood [1110] of pigeons. To those under Mercury, they fumigate frankincense, mastic, cinquefoil, incorporated with the brains of a fox and the blood of a magpye. To spirits under Luna, fumigations are offered of frogs dried, white poppy-seed, bulls eyes, camphire, and frankincense, incorporated with goose's blood and fluxus muliebris. These are the divisions of spirits under the seven planets, with their fumigations; neither can it be denied, but that, in many ceremonies of this kind, there is great inherent virtue, according to the doctrine of sympathy and antipathy, whereby every thing is drawn by its like in the idea, whether by words or actions, according to, the saying, In verbis, herbis, & lapidibus, latet virtus; so that the ceremonies and charms, with other circumstances used by magicians, are doubtless prevalent to the accomplishment of that work which they undertake; to wit, the calling up and exorcising of infernal spirits by conjurations.

And as by natural reason every magical charm or receipt had its first institution; in like manner have magicians disposed the matter and manner together with the times of their utensils and instruments, according to the principles of nature: as the hour wherein they compose their garments, must either be in the hour of Luna, or else of Saturn in the Moon's increase. Their garments they compose of white linen, black cloth, black cat-skins, wolves, bears, or swine's, skins. The linen, because of its abstracted quality for magic, delights not to have any utensils that are put to common uses. The skins of the aforesaid animals are by reason of the Saturnine and magical qualities in the particles of these beasts: their sowing thread is of silk, cat's gut, man's nerves, asses hair, thongs of skins from men, cats, bats, owls, and moles, all which are enjoined from the like magical cause. Their needles are made of hedge-hog prickles; or bones of any of the above-mentioned animals; their writing-pens are of owls or ravens, their ink of man's blood: their ointment is man's fat, blood, usnea, hog's grease, or oil of whales. Their characters are ancient Hebrew or Samaritan: their speech is Hebrew or Latin. Their paper must be of the membranes of infants, which they call virgin parchment, or of the skins of cats or kids. They compose their fires of sweet wood, oil, or rosin: and their candles of the fat or marrow of men or children: their vessels are earthern, their candlesticks with three feet, of dead men's bones: their swords are steel, without guards, the points being reversed. These are their materials, which they particularly choose from the magical qualities whereof they are composed. Neither are the peculiar shapes without a natural cause. Their caps are oval, or like pyramids with lappets on each side, and fur within; their gowns reach to the ground, being furred with white fox-skins, under which they have a linen garment reaching [1111] to their knee. Their girdles are three inches broad, and have, according to its use, many caballistical names, with crosses, trines, and circles, inscribed thereon. Their knives are dagger-fashion: and the circles by which they defend themselves are commonly nine feet in breadth, though the eastern magicians allow but seven; for both of which a natural cause is pretended, in the force and sympathy of numbers.

Such spells or charms as are compounded of some edible matter, with magical characters engraven upon them, are successfully given for agues, head-achs, epilepsy, fits of the mother, and the like; and it is remarkable that they operate with most effect on those patients who are ignorant of the charm, or its properties. There are also particular magical characters attributed to the planets, whereof Telesm, Periapts, Amulets, and Philtres, are composed by buryings under ground, writings, bindings, engravings, allegations, &c. which done in certain astrological hours are to conquer enemies, cure diseases, remove obstructions, provoke love, and preserve from evil both the body and the soul, which they contend are effected by the mediums of this kind, assisted by the force of imagination. But as for philtres, potions, love-cups, and the like, they unquestionably proceed from a natural cause, and ought not to be classed with the occult properties of charms. There are many natural, compositions of herbs and minerals, which have a surprising effect in themselves, without the least assistance from superstitious impressions, or the assistance of supernatural agency. For, in the commixture of bodies of a similar nature, there is a two-fold power and virtue; first, when the celestial properties are duly disposed in any natural substance, then under one form divers influences of superior powers are combined; and secondly, when from artificial mixtures and compositions of natural things, combined amongst themselves in a due and harmonical proportion, they agree with the quality and force of the heavens, under certain correspondent constellations. This proceeds from the occult affinity of natural things amongst themselves, by the force and sympathy of which many astonishing effects are produced.

In the writings of Paracelsus we find many surprising examples of the power of sympathy and antipathy, by means of images, telesms, and amulets, compounded of nothing more than natural ingredients. And he particular1y describes an infallible method, by the image of any bird or beast, to destroy it, or to effect its death, though at a distance. So likewise, by the hair, fat, blood, excrements, or excrescences, of any animal, the diseases of that animal might be cured, and its life preserved or destroyed. This is seen in the armary unguent, and sympathetical powder; and [1112] there are multiplied instances and histories, both at home and abroad, of those who have been burnt, hanged, or otherwise punished, for the use of waxen images, which they compose in divers postures, under certain constellations, whereby the persons they are made to represent have been severely tormented, or macerated to death. For, according to the torment or punishment the magician, witch, or wizzard, may intend to inflict upon the object of their resentment, so they dispose the hour of the constellation, the quality of the compound, and the posture or semblance of the image; for, if they intend to consume and pine away the health and life of any person they are offended with, they mould his image in wax, of such an ominous form and aspect as may conduce to the extent of their design, making several magical characters upon the sides of the head, describing the characters of the planetary hour upon the breast of the image; the name of the persecuted person on its forehead; and the intended effect to be wrought upon him on its back. If they mean to produce violent pains and tortures in the flesh or sinews, they stick pins or thorns in divers places of the arms, legs, or breast, of the image. If to cast them into violent fevers and consumptions, they spend a certain hour every day to warm and turn the image before a doleful and lingering fire, composed of divers exotic gums and magical ingredients of sweet odours, and roots of particular shrubs, efficient and conducive to their purpose; and, when the whole operation has been performed, and the image is completed, it is astonishing to human comprehension what surprising effects they are capable of producing upon the body they are intended to represent; and the reader can only attain a competent idea of it, but by reading the accounts of the trials and confessions of many witches and wizzards [wizards], who suffered the law, in the last and commencement of the present century, for transactions of this kind; an incredible number of which are not only recorded in the notes and memorandums of the judges, but attested by a great variety of noblemen, gentlemen, clergy, physicians, apothecaries, and others, who have been eye-witness of these diabolical proceedings, and for which reason I shall on no account mention the most perfect and effectual part of the composition and preparation of these magical images, lest the evil-minded and malicious part of my readers should attempt to work abominable species of revenge upon the persons or property of their unsuspecting neighbours.

Thousands of other strange and uncouth inventions might be here described, according to the exact form in which tradition hath left them; but for the reason above assigned, the reader must be content with the general outline only. And, as the Europeans have the ability of effecting such astonishing things by the medium of images, telesms, periapts, &c. [1113] so the Tartars have a faculty of producing similar effects by bottles, wolves-skins, rods, basins, letters, or missives, unto certain familiar spirits, who are the agents in their magic rites. As to the old and favourite trick of witches in the last century, that of tying of the point, we have reason to hope it has long since died away; for, it is a charm which produces so strong an impediment to conjugal embraces, as totally to restrain the act of consummation betwixt married people; and the tying of this knot or ligament, under certain magical ceremonies or incantations, was so notorious, both in practice and effect, throughout England, France, Spain, Italy, and the eastern countries, that laws were enacted by the legislature in each of those kingdoms expressly to prohibit the performance of it, on pain of death. The form and manner of it is in part mentioned in the statutes, though by no means fit to be openly described here. The art of Transplantation is also reckoned amongst charms and sygils; and indeed, one part of it, viz. the transferring of diseases, is really magical, and was much in practice amongst witches and wizzards; and, I am confidently informed, is now frequently done in the more remote and unpolished parts of this island. The method is, by giving certain baits or preparations to any domestic animal, they remove fevers, agues, coughs, consumptions asthmas, &c. from any person, applying to them, for that purpose; or, they can transplant or remove them from one person to another, by burying certain images in their ground, or against their houses, with certain ominous inscriptions and Hebrew words; yet, though these things are supposed to be done by magic, yet the effects are derived more from the sympathies and antipathies in nature than from magical characters and conjurations; for many persons, without knowing any thing of the cause, how or why it is effected, more than the external form of words or touch, which is most simple, can remove diseases, take off warts and other excrescences, and perform many surprising cures at a distance from the patient, and even without seeing or knowing him; so, by a similar property in the sympathy and antipathy of nature, certain leaves, roots, or juices, rubbed upon warts, or carnuous substances, or upon the hands, breast, legs, or other diseased part of the body, and buried under ground, remove or cure the same; which experiments take effect according to the mediums, and their consumption and putrefaction in the mother earth, of which the human source is principally compounded. Nor is it to be wondered that natural things, being fitted to the times and constellations, and compounded of correspondent or sympathetic ingredients, should produce such effects without supernatural aid, or the agency of spirits. This is perfectly exemplified in that extraordinary preparation, called a magical candle, which, being lighted, foretels the death of the party of whose blood it was prepared. It is compounded after the following [1114] manner: they take a good: quantity of the venal blood luke-warm as it came out of the vein, which, being chemically prepared with spirits of wine and other ingredients, is at last made up into a candle, which, being once kindled, never goes out till the death of the party whose blood it is composed of; for, when he is sick, or in danger, it burns dim and troubled; and, when he is dead, it is quite extinguished; of which composition a learned philosopher hath written an entire tract, viz. De Biolychnio, or, the Lamp of Life.

In the simple operations of nature many wonderful things are wrought, which, upon a superficial view appear impossible, or else to be the work of the devil. These certainly ought to be considered in a far different light from magical performances, and should be classed among the surprising phænomenæ of nature. Thus lamps or torches made of serpents skins, and compounded of the fat and spirit of vipers, when lighted in a dark room, will, bring the similitude of snakes or serpents writhing and twisting upon the walls. So oil compounded of grapes, being put into a lamp, and lighted, will make the room appear to be full of grapes, though in reality it is nothing more than the idea or similitude. -- The same thing is to be done with all the plants and flowers throughout the vegetable system, by means of a chemical analysis, whereby a simple spirit is produced, which will represent the herb or flower from which it is extracted, in full bloom. And, as the process is easy, simple, pleasing, and curious, I will here state it in such a manner as might enable any person to put it in practice at pleasure.

Take any whole herb, or flower, with its root, make it very clean, and bruise it in a stone mortar quite small; then put it into a glass vessel hermetically sealed; but be sure the vessel be two parts in three empty: then place it for putrefaction in a gentle heat in balneo, not more than blood warm, for six months, by which it will be all resolved into water. Take this water, and pour it into a glass retort, and place a receiver thereunto, the joints of which must be well closed; distil it in a sand heat until there comes forth a water and an oil; and in the upper part of the vessel will hang a volatile salt. Separate the oil from the water, and keep it by itself, but with the water purify the volatile salt by dissolving, filtering, and coagulating. When the salt is thus purified, imbibe with it the said oil, until it is well combined. Then digest them well together for a month in a vessel hermetically sealed; and by this means will be obtained a most subtil essence, which, being held over a gentle heat of a candle, the spirit will fly up into the glass where it is confined, and represent the perfect idea or similitude of that vegetable whereof it [1115] is the essence: and in this manner will that thin substance, which is like impalpable ashes or salt, send forth from the bottom of the glass the manifest form of whatever herb it is the menstruum, in perfect vegetation, growing by little and little, and putting on so fully the form of stalks, leaves, and flowers, in full and perfect appearance, that anyone would believe the same to be natural and corporeal: though at the same time it is nothing more than the spiritual idea endued with a spiritual essence. This shadowed figure as soon as the vessel is taken from the heat or candle returns to its caput mortuum, or ashes again, and vanishes away like an apparition, becoming a chaos or confused matter. For more on the medicinal virtues of decoction of salt, or essence of herbs, flowers, roots, of seeds, see my new edition of Culpepper's Complete Herbal, just published, with notes, additions, and illustrations, in quarto, with upwards of 400 elegant engravings of British herbs, plants, and flowers, coloured to nature.

To make a vegetable more quickly yield its spirit, take of what vegetable you please, whether it be the feed, flowers, roots, fruit, or leaves, cut or bruise them small, put them into warm water, put upon them yeast or barm, and cover them up warm, and let them work three days, in the same manner as beer; then distil them, and they will yield their spirit very easily. Or else take of what herbs, flowers, seeds, &c. you please; fill the head of a still therewith, then cover the mouth with coarse canvas, and set on the still, having first put into it a proportionable quantity of sack or low wine; then give it fire, and it will quickly yield its spirit; but observe, that, if the colour of the vegetable is wanted, you must take some of its dried flowers, and fill the nose of the still therewith, and you will have the exact colour of the herb.

To elucidate this process with better effect, I have subjoined a plate of the elaboratory, where a person is in the act of producing these flowery apparitions, in which fig. 1. represents a stone pestle and mortar, wherein the herbs, &c. are to be bruised before they are placed for putrefaction. Fig. 2, 2. are glass vessels hermetically sealed, containing the bruised herbs for putrefaction. Fig. 3. an empty glass retort. Fig. 4. a retort filled with the essence of an herb, and put into a sand heat for distillation. Fig. 5. a glass receiver joined to the retort, to receive the oil and spirit. Fig. 6. a stool on which rests the receiver. Fig. 7. the furnance made with different conveniences either for sand heat, or balnea. Fig. 8. the furnace holes wherein the fire is placed. Fig. 9. a table whereon are placed the glass vessels hermetically sealed. Fig. 10. a vessel containing the representation or similitude of a pink in full bloom.

[1116]
Fig. 11. the representation of a sprig of rosemary. Fig. 12. the representation of a sprig of baum. Fig. 13. a candlestick with a candle lighted for the purpose of heating the spirit. Fig. 14. a chemist in the act of holding the glass vessel over the lighted candle, whereby fig. 15. represents the idea of a rose in full bloom.

Now this effect, though very surprising, will not appear so much a subject of our astonishment, if we do but consider the wonderful power of sympathy, which exists throughout the whole system of nature, where everything is excited to beget or love its like, and is drawn after it, as the loadstone draws iron; the male after the female; the evil after the evil; the good after the good; which is also seen in wicked men and their pursuits, and in birds and beasts of prey; where the lamb delights not with the lion, nor the sheep in the society of the wolf; neither doth men, whose minds are totally depraved and estranged from God, care to adopt the opposite qualities, which are virtuous, innocent, and just. Without contemplating these principles, we should think it incredible that the grunting or squeaking of a little pig, or the sight of a simple sheep, should terrify a mighty elephant! and yet by that means the Romans put to flight Pyrrhus and all his host. One would hardly suppose that the crowing of a cock, or the sight of his comb, would abash a puissant lion; but experience has proved the truth of it to all the world. Who would imagine that a poisonous serpent could not live under the shade of an ash-tree; or that some men, neither deficient in courage, strength, or constitution, should not be able to endure the sight of a cat? and yet these things are seen and known to be so, by frequent observation and experience. The friendly intercourse betwixt a fox and a serpent is almost incredible; and how fond and loving the lizard is to man we read in every treatise on natural history; which is not far, if any thing, behind the fidelity of a spaniel, and many other species of dogs, whose sagacity and attention to their master is celebrated in an infinite variety of well-founded though incredible stories. The amity betwixt a castrel and a pigeon is remarked by many authors; particularly how furiously the castrel will defend a pigeon from the sparrow-hawk, and other inimical birds. In the vegetable system, the operation and virtue of herbs is at once a subject of admiration and gratitude, and which it were almost endless to repeat*.

* For the wonderful virtues and properties of herbs and plants, with their alimentary and medicinal qualities; and how to prevent or cure all diseases incident to the human body, at the least expense, and at the greatest certainty, see also my new edition of Culpeper's British Herbal, and Domestic Physician.

There is among them such natural accord and [1117] discord, that some will prosper more luxuriantly in another's company; while some, again, will droop and die away, being planted near each other. The lily and the rose rejoice by each other's side; whilst the flag and the fern abhor one another, and will not live together. The cucumber loveth water, but hateth oil; and fruits will neither ripen nor grow in aspects that are inimical to them. In stones likewise, in minerals, and in earth or mould, the same sympathies and antipathies are preserved. Animated nature, in every clime, in every corner of the globe, is also pregnant with similar qualities; and that in a most wonderful and admirable degree. Thus we find that one particular bone taken out of a carp's head will stop an hemorrhage of blood, when no other part or thing in the same creature hath any similar effect. The bone also in a hare's foot instantly mitigates the most excruciating tortures of the cramp; yet no other bone nor part of that animal can do the like. I might also recite infinite properties with which it has pleased God to endue the form and body of man, which are no less worthy of admiration, and fit for this place, had we but limits to recount them. Indeed I do not know a much more remarkable thing, (were it as rare as it is now shamefully prevalent,) or that would more puzzle our senses, than the effects of intoxication, by which we see a man so totally overthrown, that not a single part or member of his body can perform its function or office, and his understanding, memory, and judgment, so arrested or depraved, that in every thing, except the shape, he becomes a very beast! But we find, from observation, that however important, however wonderful, how inexplicable or miraculous, soever any thing may be; yet if it is common, or familiar to our senses, the wonder ceases, and our enquiries end. And hence it is, that we look not with half the admiration upon the sun, moon, and stars, that we do upon the mechanism of a globe, which does but counterfeit their order, and is a mere bauble, the work of men's hands! whence I might almost be justified in remarking, that, if Christ himself had continued long in the habit of working miracles, and had left that power permanent and hereditary in the church, they would have long since grown into contempt, and not have been regarded as events worthy of our attention.

From what has been premised, we may readily conclude that there are two distinct species of magic; one whereof, being inherent in the occult properties of nature, is called natural magic; and the other, being obnoxious and contrary to nature, is termed infernal magic, because it is accomplished by infernal agency or compact with the devil. Each of these we will consider separately, with the good and evil consequences likely; to result from them.

[1118]
Under the veil of natural magic, it hath pleased the Almighty to conceal many valuable and excellent gifts, which common people either think miraculous, or next to impossible. And yet in truth, natural magic is nothing more than the workmanship of nature, made manifest by art; for, in tillage, as nature produceth corn and herbs, so art, being nature's handmaid, prepareth and helpeth it forward; in which times and seasons are materially to be considered; for annus, non arvus, producit aristas. And, though these things, while they lie hid in nature, do many of them seem impossible and miraculous, yet, when they are known, and the simplicity revealed, our difficulty of apprehension ceases, and the wonder is at an end; for that only is wonderful to the beholder whereof he can conceive no cause nor reason, according to the saying of Ephesius, miraculum solvitur unde videtur esse miraculum; yet we often see persons take great pains, and put themselves to vast expence, to discover these impalpable tracks of nature, from whence pecuniary advantages seldom result; so that a man must not learn philosophy to grow rich; but must get riches to learn philosophy. There is unquestionably much praise due, and great industry required, for obtaining a competent knowledge of natural magic; for to sluggards, niggards, and narrow-minded men, the secrets of nature are never opened, though the study of them is certainly conducive to the glory of God, and to the good of society, by more visibly manifesting the omnipotency of his works, and by skilfully applying them to mans use and benefit. Many philosophers of the first eminence, as Plato, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, &c. travelled through every region of the known world for the accomplishment of this kind of knowledge; and, at their return, they publicly preached and taught it. But above all, we learn from sacred and profane history, that Solomon was the greatest proficient in this art of any either before or since his time; as he himself hath declared in Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom, where he saith,

"God hath given me the true science of things, so as to know how the world was made, and the power of the elements, the beginning, and the end, and the midst of times, the change of seasons, the courses of the year, and the situation of the stars, the nature of human beings, and the quality of beasts, the power of winds, and the imaginations of the mind; the diversities of plants, the virtues of roots, and all things whatsoever, whether secret or known, manifest or invisible."

And hence it was that the magi, or followers of natural magic, were accounted wise, and the study honourable; because it consists in nothing more than the most profound and perfect part of natural philosophy, which defines the nature, causes, and effects, of things.

[1119]
How far such inventions as are called charms, amulets, periapts, and the like, have any foundation in natural magic, may be worth our enquiry; because, if cures are to be effected through their medium, and that without any thing derogatory to the attributes of the Deity, or the principles of religion, I see no reason why they should be rejected with that inexorable contempt which levels the works of God with the folly and weakness of men. Not that I would encourage superstition, or become an advocate for a ferrago of absurdities; but, when the simplicity of natural things, and their effects, are rejected merely to encourage professional artifice and emolument, it is prudent for us to distinguish between the extremes of bigoted superstition and total unbelief.

It was the opinion of many eminent physicians, of the first ability and learning, that such kind of charms or periapts as consisted of certain odoriferous herbs, balsamic roots, mineral concretions, and metallic substances, might have, and most probably possessed, by means of their strong medicinal properties, the virtue of curing or removing such complaints as external applications might effect. and which are often used with success, though without the least surprise or admiration; because the one appears in a great measure to be the consequence of manual operation, which is perceptible and visible to the senses, whilst the other acts by an innate or occult power, which the eye cannot see, nor the mind so readily comprehend; yet, in both cases, perhaps, the effect is produced by a similar cause; and consequently all such remedies, let them be applied under what form or stile they may, are worthy of our regard, and ought to excite in us not only a veneration for the simple practice of the ancients in their medical experiments, but a due sense of gratitude to the wise Author of our being, who enables us, by such easy means, to remove the infirmities incident to mankind. Many reputable authors, particularly A. Ferrarius, Alexander Trallianus, Ætius, Octavianus, Marcellus, Philodotus, Archigines, Philostratus, Pliny, and Dioscorides, contend that not only such physical alligations, appensions, periapts, amulets, charms, &c. which, from their materials appear to imbibe and to diffuse the medical properties above described, ought in certain obstinate and equivocal disorders to be applied, but those likewise which from their external form and composition have no such inherent virtues to recommend them; for harm they can do none, and good they might do, either by accident or through the force of imagination. And it is asserted, with very great truth, that through the medium of hope and fear, sufficiently impressed upon the mind or imagination, whether by charms, or any other Homerical contrivance or device, the most wonderful and instantaneous cures are sometimes wrought. They are called [1120] Homerical devices, or Homerica medicatio, because Homer was the first who discovered the blood to be suppressed, or its motion accelerated, by the force of imagination; and, that diseases were to be removed or terminated thereby. Of the truth of this we have the strongest and most infallible evidence in the hiccough, which is instantaneously cured by any sudden effect of fear or surprise; so likewise agues and many other maladies are removed; and to the same cause we might attribute the only certain cure known for the bite of a mad dog, which is the effect of fear and stagnation wrought upon the mass of blood by emerging the body in the sea. Nor are the instances few, where persons lying bed-ridden, and unable to move either hand or foot, have, through the sudden fright of fire, or the house falling in upon them, forgot their infirmity, and run away with as much activity as though no such malady had existed. Seeing, therefore, that such virtues lie hid in the occult properties of nature, united with the sense or imagination of man, where one is the agent, and the other the patient; where the one is active, and the other passive, without any compact with spirits, or dealings with the devil; we surely ought to receive them into our practice, and to adopt them as often as occasion seriously requires, although professional emolument and pecuniary advantage might in some instances be narrowed by it.

But, though I might be an advocate for such charms or occult remedies as are in themselves perfectly innocent and simple, I by no means wish to be understood, that I either approve or recommend any thing bordering upon such inventions as are obviously founded in magical confederacy, and act by the medium of aerial or infernal spirits. To that mind, which has but slightly contemplated the works of nature, it must be abundantly evident, that the great and good God, which sustains and governs the universe, hath in the works of creation mercifully afforded us a natural remedy for all our infirmities; and it is repugnant to common sense, and incompatible with religion and morality, nay, it would imply a deficiency either in the goodness or power of the Deity, were we for a moment to admit the necessity of charms, amulets, or any other inventive cures or benefits to men, resulting from a compact with spirits, in which all the powers and performances of witchcraft had their beginning; and therefore we may without the smallest hesitation, conclude that whatever hath its foundation in such confederacy, let the external object or pretence be what it may, it is not only contrary to nature, but highly offensive to the Deity, and nearly allied to the shocking sin of idolatry, by applying the works of God to the power of the devil. For this reason, it is impossible to be too cautious how the use of such description of charms or lamins are adopted [1121] where (instead of natural medicaments) magical characters, incantations, and nocturnal ceremonies, constitute the component parts. A very wise and learned author, who has written largely upon this subject, asserts, that in those very charms and signatures compacts themselves are virtually contained, which evil spirits at first subtilly devised or invented to blind men's eyes, that thereby they might lead them less scrupulously into the snares of the devil. And hence we have good ground to believe, that none are able absolutely, and bona fide, to call up any spirits, without some such compact first formed; and, that whosoever has so far ventured in the art of magic or conjuration, hath, though to himself, perhaps, unknown, compacted with and worshipped the devil, under some such form of mystical words and characters, wherewith infernal charms and amulets are composed; neither is it to be thought a matter of surprise, that such a compact should unwittingly be made through the medium of those mystical characters, which, with the devil's aid, have in themselves a power to enchant, infect, allure, preserve, or destroy. And, to shew in striking colours the danger of being drawn away by such allurements, I shall instance the extraordinary case of a very harmless and well-meaning young man, which was published to the world at the commencement of the present century, by the Bishop of Gloucester, in the following well-authenticated letter to that prelate.

AUTHENTIC COPY of a LETTER sent to the Bishop of Gloucester, by the Reverend Mr. Arthur Bedford, Minister of Temple Church, in Bristol.

MY LORD, Bristol, August 2d, 1703.

Being informed by Mr. Shute of your Lordship's desire that I should communicate to you what I had known concerning a certain person who was acquainted with spirits to his own destruction, I have made bold to give you the trouble of this letter, hoping my desire to gratify your lordship in every particular may be an apology for the length thereof. I had formerly given an account to the late Bishop of Hereford, in which there are probably some things contained, which I do not now remember, which, if your lordship could procure from his lady, (who now lives near Gloucester,) would be more, authentic.

About thirteen years ago, whilst I was a curate to Dr. Read, rector of St. Nicholas in this city, I began to be acquainted with one Thomas Perks, a man about twenty years of age, who lived with his father at Mongatsfield, a gunsmith; and contracted an intimacy with him, he being not only a very good-natured man, but extremely skilled in mathematical studies, which were his constant delight, viz. arithmetic, geometry, [1122] gauging, surveying, astronomy, and algebra; he had a notion of the perpetual motion much like that wheel in Archimedes's Mathematical Magic, in which he had made some improvements, and which he has held was demonstrable from mathematical principles, though I could never believe it. I have seen an iron wheel, to which he intended to add several things of his own invention, in order to finish the same; but, thinking it of no use, and being otherwise unfortunately engaged, it was never perfected. He gave himself so much to astronomy, that he could not only calculate the motions of the planets, but an eclipse also, and demonstrate any problem in spherical trigonometry from mathematical principles, in which he discovered a clear force of reason. When one Mr. Bayley, minister of St. James's in this city, endeavoured to set up a mathematical school, I advised him to this Thomas Perks, for an acquaintance, in whom, as he told me, he found a greater proficiency in those studies than he expected or could have imagined. After this he applied himself to astrology, and would sometimes calculate nativities and resolve horary questions. When, by providence of God, I was settled in Temple parish, and not having seen him for some time, he came to me, and, we being in private, he asked my opinion very seriously concerning the lawfulness of conversing with spirits; and, after I had given my thoughts in the negative, and confirmed them with the best reason I could, he told me, he had considered all these arguments, and believed they only related to conjurations, but there was an innocent society with them which a man might use, if he made no compacts with them, did no harm by their means, and were not curious in prying into hidden things, and that he himself had discoursed with them, and heard them sing to his great satisfaction; and gave an offer to me and Mr. Bayley at another time, that, if we would go with him one night to Kingswood, we should see them and hear them both talk and sing, and talk with them whenever we had a mind, and we should return very safe; but neither of us had the courage to venture. I told him the subtility of the devil to delude mankind, and to transform himself into an angel of light; but he would not believe it was the devil. I had severa1 conferences with him upon this subject, but could never convince him; in all which I could never observe the least disorder of mind, his discourse being very rational, and I proposed (to try him) a question in astronomy relating projection of the spheres, which he projected and resolved, and did afterwards demonstrate from the mathematics, so as to demonstrate at the same time that his brain was free from the least tincture of madness and distraction. -- Having this opportunity of asking him several particulars, concerning the methods he used, and the discourses he had with them, he told me had a book whose directions he followed, and accordingly, [1123] in the dead time of the night, he went out to a cross way, with a lanthorn and candle consecrated for this purpose with several incantations. He had also consecrated chalk, consisting of several mixtures, with which he made a circle at what distance he thought fit, within which no spirit had power to enter. After this he invoked the spirit by several forms of words, (some of which he told me were taken out of the holy Scriptures, and therefore he thought them lawful, without considering how they might be wrested to his destruction;) accordingly the spirits appeared to him which he called for, in the shape of little maidens, about a foot and a half high, and played about a circle. At first he was somewhat affrighted, but, after some small acquaintance, this antipathy in nature wore off, and he became pleased with their company. He told me they spoke with a very shrill voice, like an ancient woman: he asked them if there was a heaven or hell; they said there was. He asked them what place heaven was, which they described as a place of great glory and happiness; and he asked them what hell was, and they bade him ask no questions of that nature, for it was a dreadful thing to relate, and the devils believe and tremble. He farther asked them what method or order they had among themselves; they told him they were divided into three orders; that they had a chief whose residence was in the air; that he had several counsellors which were placed by him in form of a globe, and he in the centre, which was the chiefest order; another order was employed in going to and from thence to the earth, to carry intelligence from those lower spirits; and their own order was on the earth, according to the directions they should receive from those in the air.

This description was very surprising, but, being contrary to the account we have in scripture of the hierarchy of the blessed angels, made me conclude they were devils, but I could not convince him of it. He told me he had bade them sing, and they went to some distance behind a bush, from whence he could hear a perfect concert of such exquisite music as he never before heard; and in the upper part he heard something very harsh and shrill like a reed, but as it was managed, did give a particular grace to the rest.

About a quarter of a year after he came again to me, and wished he had taken my advice, for he thought he had done that which would cost him his life, and which he did heartily repent of; and indeed his eyes and countenance shewed a great alteration. I asked him what he had done; He told me that, being bewitched to his acquaintance, he resolved to proceed farther in this art, and to have some familiar spirit at his command, according to the directions of his book, which were as follows:--

[1124]
He was to have a book made of virgin parchment consecrated with several incantations, likewise a particular ink-horn, ink, &c. for his purpose; with these he was to go out as usual to a cross way, and call up a spirit, and ask him his name, which he was to put in the first page of his book, and this was to be his familiar. Thus he was to do by as many as he pleased, writing their names in distinct pages, only one in a leaf, and then, whenever he took the book and opened it, the spirit whose name appeared should appear also; and putting this in practice, the familiar he had was called Malchi, (be my king,) a word in Hebrew of an unknown signification. After this they appeared faster than he desired, and in most dismal shapes, like serpents, lions, bears, &c. hissing at him, and attempting to throw spears and balls of fire, which did very much affright him, and the more when he found it not in his power to stay them, insomuch that his hair (as he told me) stood upright, and he expected every moment to be torn in pieces; this happened in December about midnight, when he continued there in a sweat till break of day, and then they left him, and from that time he was never well as long as he lived. In his sickness he came frequently to Bristol, to consult with Mr. Jacob, an apothecary in Broad-street, concerning a cure, but I know not whether he told him the origin of his sickness or not; he also came to me at the same time, and owned every matter of fact, until the last, and insisted that, when he did any thing of this nature, he was deluded in his conscience to think it lawful, but he was since convinced to the contrary. He declared he made no compacts with any of those spirits, and never did any harm by their means, nor ever pryed into the future fortune of himself or others, and expressed a hearty repentance and detestation of his sins; so that, though those methods cost him his life in this world, yet I have great reason to believe him happy in the other. I am not certain that he gave this account to any other person but myself, though he communicated something of it to Mr. Bayley, minister of St. James's, in this city; perhaps your Lordship may be further informed by his relations and neighbours of Mangotsfield, which lies in Gloucestershire, not above a mile out of the road to Bath.

I have frequently told this story, but never mentioned his name before, and therefore, if your Lordship hath any design of printing such accounts as these, I desire it may be with such tenderness to his memory as he deserved, and so as may not be the least prejudice to his relations, who have the deserved character of honest and sober people. I am

Your Lordships dutiful
Son and servant,
ARTHUR BEDFORD.

[1125]
This poor deluded young wan, it is very apparent, had no evil design, but entered into this infernal association for no other motive than to gratify an idle curiosity; the consequence of which was, that he underwent the most undescribable terror and fright, which at first deprived him of his health, and eventually of his life. I have no doubt but the circumstance of disbelieving the existence of spirits, (which I apprehend is more or less the case with most people), was the first, if not the only, inducement that urged him to make the experiment. There are many instances of a similar kind, equally well founded, and as fatal in their consequences, which might be here adduced, to shew the dreadful effects of being led away by a presumptuous or hardened mind, to disbelieve the word of God revealed in a thousand passages of scripture, where this infernal intercourse is seriously forbidden; but I sincerely hope, and have reason to believe, that this example will operate as a sufficient bar against all similar enquiries, where it is once read, and the melancholy consequences duly considered. Wherefore let me entreat all my readers to stifle every inordinate desire, which might unguardedly prompt them to solicit an intercourse with such dangerous company; nor to attempt the conjuration of spirits of any description or order; no, not even out of joke or bravado, or for fun or frolic; for the devils are continually going about "seeking whom they may devour;" they are ever on the watch, and ready at hand to catch at every thought that might be turned to their purpose; and, when they have once so far succeeded as to occupy the smallest place in the mind, I fear it will prove no easy talk to dispossess them.

Let it ever be remembered, that the first assaults of wicked spirits are usually made upon our sensual desires, whereby they insinuate themselves into our very appetites, enticing our inclinations, and depraving the moral faculties of the mind; until they become, as it were, incorporated with our nature, leading us insensibly from folly to vice, until a depravity of heart, and an obstinate will, betrays us into a corporal as well as spiritual compact with the devil. These considerations, seconded by an anxious wish to rescue the astral science from the imputation of magical and diabolical connexion, and which, I trust, I have fully and effectually accomplished, were the grand inducements that led me to explore the spiritual and infernal kingdoms, and to expose the iniquity, as well as to explain the theory, of familiarity or compact with them. And in doing this, I have scrupulously avoided giving the essential forms and particular consecrations adapted to mystical performances, lest the unwary speculator might carry his experiments too far, and, as in the example before us, unwittingly seek his own destruction. Yet I have, as far as [1126] safety or conveniency would permit, explained the speculative part; reserving only those especial forms and incantations, which, being not only very facil, but of wonderful occult power, would be dangerous to disclose; and at best could only serve to strengthen the hands of the malicious and evil-minded, or to extend more widely the infernal empire; against which we ought to put on "the whole armour of God; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers; for which cause we should resolutely withstand the assaults of the devil, our loins being girt about with verity, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness." Nor let us vainly seek to know the mysteries of the other world, farther than it hath pleased God to reveal them to us by his divine word; for infiniti ad finitum nulla est proportio; necque loci potest circumscribi -- of that which is finite, to that which is infinite, there is no proportion; neither can that which is immeasurable be contained within the limits of space, or be defined by human comprehension!

INTRODUCTION TO VOODOO IN HAITI
19:05:27 - Jun 24 2006
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Bob Corbett March 1988
(Important Note)

First and foremost Voodoo is a religion. It is the dominant religion of Haiti. Many of the practices and descriptions of Voodoo belief may sound to us like rank superstition, but then, imagine the beliefs of Christianity to people who know nothing about it. Tell them about the trinity or the resurrection, or the presence of Jesus in the eucharist. Any of these practices which very intelligent Christians believe in the fullest would seem no less superstitious to someone unfamiliar with Christianity.

Thus I urge you to recognize that Voodoo is Haiti's religion, it is taken very seriously not merely by unlettered peasants, but many intelligent and learned members of the Haitian society believe as sincerely in Voodoo as do German theology professors in their Christianity. In no way do I expect you to believe in Voodoo; no more than I would expect you to convert to Islam if I taught a course on that religion. But, please do recognize that it is every bit as real a religion as the major religions of the world.

1. The most basic concepts of Voodoo.
1. There is one God, Bondye. This God is very similar to the God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. There is only one God.
2. There are three important categories of other spiritual beings:
1. lwa. These are the various spirits of family members; the spirits of the major forces of the universe--good, evil, reproduction, health, all aspects of daily life.
1. lwa interact with the people of earth.
2. They "mount" people now and again during religious ceremonies and they give messages, and even cause various good and bad things to happen to people.
2. The twins. A curious and rather mysterious set of forces of contradictories: good and evil, happy and sad etc. If honored now and again in religious services they will tend to help you have the better side of life.
3. The dead. Mainly the souls of one's own family members who have died but have not yet been "reclaimed" by the family. Ignored family dead are dangerous. Honored and cared for family dead are helpful.
3. The central and key aspect of Voodoo is healing people from illness. Such healing activities probably constitute 60% of all Voodoo activity. Healers heal with herbs, faith healing (with the help of lwa and other spirits) and, today, even with western medicine!
4. The priesthood of Voodoo contains both men (houngan) and women (mambo). Their functions are:
1. healing.
2. perform religious ceremonies to call or pacify the spirits.
3. to hold initiations for new priests(tesses) (kanzo service and taking the ason).
4. Telling the future and reading dreams.
5. casting spells and creating protections.
6. creating potions for various purposes. (From love spells to death spells.)

For any of these they may receive fees. But, they may not too. This differs from one houngan and mambo to another. (Note his is similar to fees paid to rabbis, mullahs, priests and ministers.)
5. Another central feature of Voodoo is the "service," the religious rites of the religion.
1. These are usually held outside, under a rough roof and around the "poto mitan," the center pole. A houngan or mambo almost always directs these.
2. Drums are used extensively to provide music and dancing is absolutely essential to the whole service.
3. Services are fully participatory. Not only the houngan and mambo participate but nearly everyone present.
1. A master of ceremonies (La Place) is often present.
2. A hounganikon directs the music and motion.
3. Hounsi (women only) are serving ladies, usually dressed in white.
4. Those in attendance are nearly all participants and most can be "mounted" by lwa.
4. In most services the lwa "mount" people. That is, they come and take over a person's body for a time. When the lwa come the person is gone. (It's not clear where the person goes.) The body is the body of the person, but it is really the lwa. If a male lwa mounts a female person, he is referred to as "he," not she, during the mounting.
5. Nearly every Voodoo service has animal sacrifice. By killing the animal one releases life. The lwa are exhausted by the taxing task of running the universe. Thus they can receive this life sacrificed to them and are re-juvenated. They are usually quite happy about this.
6. There are two primary sorts of Voodoo.
1. Rada. This is a family spirit Voodoo and the Voodoo of the relatively peaceful and happy lwa.
2. Petro. (In some areas called Congo.) This is a black magic Voodoo and the Voodoo of angry, mean and nasty lwa. Dangerous things happen in Petro including death curses, the making of zombi and wild sexual orgies SPECIAL NOTE By virtually all scholarly estimates one can find, Rada accounts for about 95% of Voodoo, if not more. Thus the spectacular tales of black magic, while very real, are extremely limited. Petro is not the typical Voodoo, but it does exist.
7. The analysis of humans. Humans have two spirits and a body.
1. ti-bon-ange (little good angel). This is similar to the conscience in the Western understanding of people.
2. gros-bon-ange (big good angel). This is similar to the soul in Western theories of person, except the soul is much more separate from the person than is a western soul. For example, when the person goes before God for judgment it is the gros-bon-ange which presents "the person" to God and makes the person's case.
6. Key terms in Voodoo
1. hounfo--the parish or region of a houngan or mambo's influence.
2. govi--a small earthen bottle into which the gros-bon-ange of dead ancestors can "rescued." After a person dies the gros-bon-ange goes to the underwater place. A year and a day after he or she goes their the relatives can recall the gros-bon-ange. Unfortunately this is a very expensive service, requiring a significant animal sacrifice, often an ox. Thus it is often considerable time before the service can be done. If too much time passes the ancestor may get a bit restless and cause trouble-- illness etc.
3. serviteurs--serious practitioners of Voodoo.
4. ason--the magic rattle of the houngan or mambo.
5. lave tet--(washing of the head) an initiation ceremony held for serviteurs after they have been mounted for the first time.
6. kanzo--the initiation ceremonies for those moving into a very serious level of Voodoo practice.
7. taking of the ason--the final initiation into being a houngan or mambo. NOTE: Both kanzo and the taking of the ason are very secret services. However, in Alfred Metraux's book (VOODOO IN HAITI), through observation and talking with people who were not too careful about the secrecy of kanzo, he has pieced together a detailed account of the ceremony.
8. verve--ceremonial drawings done in flour, of the various lwa.
9. peristyle--the Voodoo temple. A tiny tiny place.
10. poto mitan--the center pole in a Voodoo peristyle. It represents the center of the universe and all dancing revolves around the poto mitan.
11. Les Invisibles--all spirits.
12. Les Mysteries--
1. the lwa themselves.
2. sacred knowledge. Also called "konesans."
13. The crossroads. A central image in Voodoo. This is the place where the two worlds (earth and spirit world) meet. Virtually all Voodoo acts, even healing, begin with the acknowledgment of the crossroads.
7. Some of the central lwa in the Voodoo pantheon.
1. Legba. An old man who is the gatekeeper between the two worlds, world of earth and the world of the Invisibles. He is the origin of life. The sun is one of his symbols, but he is also the source of regeneration and uses the symbol of the phallus.
2. Kalfu (crossroads) is the Petro counterpart to Legba. He is the spirit of the night, the origins of darkness. The moon is his symbol. He can be placated, but is a dangerous lwa.
3. Papa Ghede. lwa of death and resurrection. A total clown. Very erotic and comic. He is the lord of eroticism.
4. Dumballah. The father figure. He is the good snake. The source of peace and tranquillity. The egg is offered to him when he comes to mount a person. He is much loved and sought after. His wife Aida-wedo attends him.
5. Agwe. The sovereign of the seas. Especially honored, as one might well expect, by people who live near the sea.
6. Ogoun. The warrior. Today, too, the force of politics. Violent.
7. Erzulie. The earth mother. Spirit of the goddess of love. The muse of beauty. (Strongly identified with the Virgin Mary.) Her appearance (when she mounts someone) is one of cleansing, dressing, delicate foods daintily eaten. She can read the future in dreams. A much loved lwa.
8. The FATALISM of Voodoo.

Voodoo is much criticized by foreigners in Haiti. Sometimes it is simply because they profess a competing religion and don't want the people to stay with Voodoo. At other times they charge that it is devil worship. This claim is sheer nonsense when speaking of Rada Voodoo, the numerically primary form. It is less clear how to describe Petro. There are no "devils" in Voodoo, but Petro cultivates the evil or at least angry spirits.

However, many of the non-religious aspects of Voodoo which people often criticize really seem to me to be more the result of Voodoo's overwhelming fatalism. The view is that to an astonishing degree the lwa determine out lives. The Haitian serviteur has little use for anything like the Western idea of free will and personal responsibility. Rather, whatever has happened it is the lwa who have caused it.

If one would like to change anything in one's life, from a current illness to the fundaments of the social system, one must ask the lwa. One does not ACT on one's own. This would be counter-productive since it is the lwa who decide these things anyway.

Further, the lwa are not very changeable. Things are the way they are because the lwa have decided it. This fatalism contributes significantly to the peasants' unwillingness to struggle for liberation.

However, one can must the hard question: Is it Voodoo that has caused Haitian fatalism, or is it the history of the African/Haitian experience that has created Voodoo's fatalism?
9. Voodoo's relationship to Christianity.
1. The Catholic experience.
1. Under the French slaves were forbidden from practicing Voodoo. Nonetheless Voodoo survived. The colonists did allow occasional dances on the weekends. These dances were actually Voodoo services!
2. After the liberation of 1804 all white people were kicked out of Haiti and many were killed. This included Roman Catholic priests. Thus in 1804 the Vatican broke with Haiti and did not establish relations with her again until 1860.
3. During this 56 year period houngans and mambos built up the public religion of Haiti, Voodoo, in a weird amalgamation of African spirit religion and Catholicism. Virtually all lwa became associated with Catholic saints (Dumballah the snake lwa is St. Patrick; Erzulie, the earth mother is the Virgin Mary). The most important consequence of this is that Haitians see nothing odd at all with practicing Voodoo and Catholicism side by side and are often very devout about each of them.

I can't explain this, I only describe it.
4. From time to time from 1860 until the late 1940s the Catholic Church waged campaigns against Voodoo. They never came to anything.
5. In 1941-42 some elements of the Catholic Church waged an all out physical, holy war against Voodoo. They burned peristyle, Voodoo shrines, beat (some say even killed) houngans and mambo, demanded their ostracism from society and shot things up. But, they lost. Voodoo went under-ground to some extent, but it grew in popularity, in large measure because of the oppression.
6. By the early 1950s the Catholic hierarchy halted this war, got rid of these priest warriors and made their peace with Voodoo. Voodoo drums and melodies were incorporated into Catholic church services. The Catholics took the position, if you can't defeat them, co-opt them. Relative peace has held between the Catholics and serviteurs ever since.
2. The Protestants.
1. Until the 1970s Haiti was nearly 100% Catholic.
2. In the 1970s evangelical Protestantism came to Haiti. After Reagan came to power evangelization mushroomed.
3. Evangelical Protestants are bitter enemies of Voodoo and denounce it all the time as devil worship. Many of these people claim that Haiti's misery is because she is being punished by God for the sins of her Voodoo serviteurs.
4. Protestantism has come to Haiti as a serious business. Evangelical Protestants groups own 7 of Haiti's 11 radio stations and have made significant gains in conversions.
5. Today most observers believe that at least 15% of the Christians in Haiti are Protestant evangelicals.

VOODOO IS NOT EVIL
DEMYSTIFYING THE ERRONEOUS BELIEFS ABOUT VOODOO

Copyright © 1997-2005, Samantha Kaye, Matthew Corfield, & The Voodoo Boutique ®

VARIOUS CONCEPTS
This letter is written to enlighten the reader about misconceptions concerning Voodoo. Voodoo itself is NOT evil, nor has Voodoo anything evil in it. The practice of Voodoo has the very best of interest for all who are involved within it.

WHAT VOODOO REALLY IS
The word "Voodoo" actually means "Spirit." Here in the U.S.A. the word Voodoo also is used to describe the act of communication with the Spirits. Someone who practices Voodoo communicates with Spirits. In this article we will use the word Voodoo to mean the religious practice of communicating with Spirits, along with the magickal practices for trying to better our situations in life.

THE RELIGION - TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Religion is expressed through The Voodoo Boutique®'s presentation of spirituality in Samantha's Original™ products. By using these one seriously learns of the spiritual life, the hereafter, life after death, and so forth. "Religion" becomes, in a sense, an accidental sideline, a by-product, even for the atheist in the carefully crafted art and science of Rev. Kaye's Creole Voodoo™. It matters not what one's religion may be, one may still experience and learn through Rev. Kaye's products. We do not proselytize, we have no need to. Those who wish to discover the spiritual life will fall right into it. Those who do not want to change their religion don't have to. Those who desire only to better their conditions will have a good chance of doing so. It is all here, for all to take. It is up to each person to take of it what they will.

METAPHYSICS
There are a lot of commonly-bandied metaphysical "laws," "principles," phrases, terms, and words that shouldn't exist, for the concepts presented by such are neither valid, nor actual. These things have been created by persons and groups who, due to lack of actual experience, discussed various "metaphysical manifestations" and made up unfounded reasons for those (some quite questionable) events. And, according to the time-honored rule, "if you expound about something long enough, people will eventually accept it as fact," that has happened. Ah, well, enough about our barristers and politicians...

SELFISH PEOPLE
The fact of the matter is that there are selfish people with evil intent in any field of endeavor. Those people with bad intentions are everywhere. For example, consider any salesperson who will lie to you to make the sale. Look at the history of televangelism, the priesthood, financial institutions, corporations, various businesses and business practices, let alone just individual people. Usually their antics have to do with money, but sometimes it has to do with what they might imagine as popularity or "fame" (which may also be ultimately connected to financial gain). Almost everything boils down to money in one form or another, cash, riches, property, or ownership of things. The exceptions are things done to satisfy various sexual proclivities and things done for love (for some people, even what they call "love" can be reduced down to ownership).

THE SEARCH FOR SPIRITUALITY
Many people with spiritual leanings, especially in the U.S.A., will rush into trying to learn everything they can without first taking care of their material needs. Doing so may very likely hamper a person's spiritual progress. They wind up lost in a hodge-podge of partial things that aren't really tied together and with a lot of loose strings dangling. Many become discouraged and give up, and refuse to from then on "believe" in spiritual things. Others, confused, settle for what pieces they have and are never fully satisfied. A few give up yet pretend to believe (sometimes even fooling themselves) in some portions of spirituality and become fringe "fortune tellers" and "psychics," while others become just plain old hucksters, hoaxers, charlatans and cheats. Many of those in the categories last mentioned can easily verbalize standardly-accepted "metaphysical" phrases and terms as if they really knew what they were talking about.

THE FIRST CONCERN
It is our intention to try to help each person become at ease with him/herself and with his/her surroundings. We wish to assist people who wish to reduce their anxiety, their desperation, despair, hopelessness, sense of loss, sorrow, fears, loneliness, and stress. We desire that everyone live a life of abundance and happiness. Once someone is content and at ease with his/her conditions, then that person is able to focus on their spiritual development to their fullest extent. With Rev. Samantha Kaye's Creole Voodoo™ Spell Kits, not only is the person learning how to control the situations surrounding him/her, but one is also developing spiritually. Rev. Kaye's intent is to help her clients learn to be able to reach a point where they may be happy physically, mentally, and emotionally.

IT'S THE PERSON, NOT THE POWER ITSELF
Voodoo is activity, energy, a blind force just like electricity, which can be used by any person for good OR bad (or just not used at all), depending upon the person's desire. A vehicle can be used to kill or maim, by accident or by direct intent (Bad), but it can also be used to transport people and things (Good), or it can just sit in a garage and do nothing (Neutral). It is entirely up to the driver. And so it is with people who practice spellwork. Most desire to use it while attempting to improve their situation, to get what they want.

MOVIES & TV
Sensationalism by movies and television has been used for ticket sales and commercial product sales. Lurid stories have been written putting Voodoo in the worst light, in order to sell books. In either case neither the writers of books or movies know very much about Voodoo, and use it's reputation to their advantage. And how did Voodoo get that reputation? By authors of books and movies, what else? But note, that it was NOT the Voodoo, but the practitioners who were bad. They were using it for their own selfish purposes, rather than for the good of humanity.

CRIMINALS
Any criminal can and will misuse anything to get what s/he wants. Habitual criminals have either been unconsciously trained or have learned to think in antisocial ways. They have no realization that there are alternative procedures which are fair to everyone. Robbers and burglars just HAVE to do things the way they do, for that is all they know, that is all they are able to consider. It is extremely doubtful that anyone uses Voodoo to just directly and intentionally harm another person. If so, there must certainly be a motive, just as any criminal has a motive for doing what he or she does--and there are criminals in every facet of life. Realize that almost every criminal has no desire to use magick, for that kind of person gets his or her kick out of performing the physical act itself. Anyway, we really don't want criminals to learn and misuse a sacred thing.

RELIGIONS
Of course Christianity and its companions has done its best to make Voodoo the "bad guy," for it is a great religious competitor to Christianity. Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) does the same thing with witchcraft and any other religion. And the Christian clergy does not want to lose one sheep in its flock--that would be one less person making "religious" donations to support the freeloading clergy. (More about this later.)

COMPETITION
Other people selling non-Voodoo spells and castings have a vested financial interest in presenting Voodoo as evil, for they are hoping to scare potential clients away from their competition and into their hands. Such persons have no knowledge of what Voodoo is or what its practitioners do, and they use the negative images that the movies and television have created to their best advantage. "Come to me, I practice white magic. Voodoo is evil," they say. But the question is, how can one be sure that THEY are so "good," if they will lie to get their clients.

In any religious or magickal field there will be practitioners with questionable morals who will attempt to extract great amounts of money from those who come to them for help. They play upon the weakness and desperation of those in need. But this is true in any field, any business, and politics, including our government. Look at the advertisements on television, especially the "infomercials." Believe that everywhere you look there is someone or some corporation trying to get at your money. They will tell you what you want to hear with no qualms or guilt about their lies.

WHAT VOODOO DOES
First of all, Voodoo is a religion. In its various versions (in a sense similar to the various Protestant churches) it may be spelled Vodou, Vudu, Vodun, Vodoun, Vaudou, and so on by different writers. As a religion it works to better the lives of its practitioners while they are alive on earth. Rather than make promises about a future life in the "hereafter," Voodoo desires to assist its members here and now. Its practitioners, like us, are able to better focus on our religious lives if the material worries and stresses are taken care of first. Voodoo does not speculate and philosophize, but instead it DOES, it performs, it is experiential. Voodoo does not contemplate, it actuates.

MAGICK
Within the context of Voodoo, there are certain magickal practices that may be used by or for those practitioners who need it, to help improve their conditions in life. This is the same as in any other religion, from the praying to saints for assistance, to calling on the name of Jesus for a healing, or calling upon one's "maker" or the Lord (Adonai, Allah, Krishna, the Buddha, etc.) for help or relief.

LIVING PROOF
Voodoo does not have a "written dogma," for it does not need one. Proof of its authenticity is in its rituals, and certain rituals transmit its continuity from generation to generation. Information is passed secretly from one family member to another, so that outsiders cannot interfere with the direct transmission of membership. Voodoo is not a stale, dead religion contained in books. It is here and now, active and alive. Voodoo's participants are constantly involved in it, for the very act of life, itself, is proof of its own existence and staying power. Everything we do, everything we think is a spiritual act for us. All that is, is part of the World of the Voodoo. Everyone who practices real Voodoo KNOWS there is life after death--we do not need to be convinced. We know we can have spiritual help at any time--we do not have to be convinced. We are constantly given proof of the spiritual life--we do not need to read about it or discuss it. We do not speculate, WE KNOW these things.

BLACK & WHITE MAGICK
There is no such thing as black magick (or white magick, for that matter). There are only people who do bad things. Voodoo practices, just like anything else, can be misused by people who wish to do so. There is no car that is evil in and of itself, there are only bad drivers. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." And so on... Only greedy, selfish people pervert the usage of things such as witchcraft or Voodoo, or any religious act, in an attempt to harm others for their own benefit. No particular thing or act is necessarily either good or bad. It is only people who do good or bad things--it is the acts of people that we might call good or bad. Some people do mostly good things, and we label them as good. Some people do a lot of things that hurt others, and we generally call them bad people.

RELATIVITY
Good and bad are relative. What seems good for one person might well be called bad for another. Mary moved up in position, while Alfred, who was in the running, didn't. Alfred might well be angry at Mary and consider her as detrimental to his welfare. Thus Alfred considers Mary to be "bad." Two women after the same man, one gets him--the other girl considers the winner as evil and mean. John romances Sally away from her neglectful husband Bill by being nicer to her than Bill. Who was the good guy? John who treated her nicely, or Bill who mostly ignored her. Sally is not property to be owned by Bill, even though they were married. Good and bad are relative points of view from each person's individual position in any situation.

DON'T LISTEN TO BAD THINGS
Only ill intentioned people have to do with things that may be harmful to you. They do things in their own interest without consideration for others. But this is true the entire world over--it is a fact of life. Many times it is only their words, things they say to or about you that are harmful. If you accept those words as true you will create your own negativity about yourself, in essence you will have hexed yourself. Heed not the words used to invalidate you as a person.

GONE BUT STILL HERE
Here we use the word Voodoo to represent the practice of communing with God, the spirits, saints, angels, or whatever else you wish to call them. We call them Lois (Lwa, Loa), Voodoo (Hoodoo, Vodou), Mysteries, or Invisibles. We also commune with our deceased ancestors, our departed relatives and our dead family members. Collectively we refer to them as The Dead. Individually we use whatever names were used for them when they were here. They are living personalities, and have not ceased to exist. This is what Voodoo is, in all its religious and spiritual variations. It's no different than any other religion, including Christianity.

MAGICK, REVISITED
Every religion, if it's worth its oats, will have practices for bettering the condition of its members. For Catholicism, it is praying for the Saints' intercession. For Protestants its seeking Jesus for assistance. These are magickal procedures, the seeking of assistance from immaterial or spiritual beings. Voodoo does the same.

SPIRITS
Before you ask, here is your answer: Is Jesus dead? Yes. Is he a spirit? Yes. So you worship spirits and a dead person.
Do you believe in Angels? Yes. So you believe in spirits.
Do you believe in God? Yes. Have you seen God? No. So you believe in things you haven't seen.
"God is seen in the trees, and the mountains, in the wonders of his works," you say. So you are a Pantheist?
And how do you know your "god" made those things? Did you see this take place? Where's your proof? "It's in the bible," you say. Do you believe in the Koran? How about the Upanishads? What makes you think the bible is the end-all of knowledge? Because someone told you so? So you believe things other people tell you without any knowledge whether what they tell you is true.
And if a lot of people believe something in which there is no proof, do you buckle under social pressure and agree with them, even though deep in your heart you know they may be wrong?

SPIRITUALITY
Have you been searching for something that can give you proof of the reality of a spiritual life?
Do you know why you are here, why you exist at all?
Do you wonder just what might be your mission on earth?
Do you think you may have lived before?
Do just wonder what life is all about?
Do you wonder what the soul is?
Do you wonder why some people have it better than others?
The answer to these things and much, much more is available to those of us who practice Voodoo.
We don't have to seek out "authorities" for knowledge and information.
We don't have to read books discussing the possibilities of things.
We don't have to read books filled with authors' "opinions" and misinformation.
We don't have to "have faith" that certain things might be true.
We don't have to speculate or "philosophize." We have exact and direct knowledge, for we have actual experiences--experiences that cannot be denied, that cannot be explained away by "disbelievers." We don't have to believe. We KNOW.
Any person can also be one of those who knows, who has knowledge of the real existence. This knowledge may be obtained through usage of Rev. Samantha Kaye's various products.

MATERIALITY
And there's more: Through the use of Rev. Samantha Kaye's products, one can learn to make one's life just a little bit better, a little easier. One can reduce the stresses, bring better things into one's life. One can have hope. One does not have to feel like one is swaying to the breezes of "fickle" fate. One does not have to buckle under the pressure of ill fortune. It really IS possible to change one's position in life, to lift one's self out of the pit of despair and step into the rays of contentment, peace, relief and enjoyment.

SAMANTHA'S ORIGINAL ™ PRODUCTS
None of Rev. Samantha Kaye's products have, nor has Voodoo, anything to do with bad luck, black magic, devil worship, misfortune, injury, loss or death, reversal of fortune, bad returns, evil coming back to you, evil spirits, hauntings, bad things happening to you or whatever.

Instead, Rev. Kaye's products have been designed to assist people in trouble and bring the things the spell-worker wants within her or his sphere of awareness. Rev. Samantha Kaye's products are made with spiritual protection automatically built in, so that no bad things result from the use of her products. During the period of time that a person is a client of Rev. Kaye's, that person is spiritually protected. Of course, nothing can protect people from doing things to defeat themselves, thinking foolish things, or from working against themselves.Many people are their own self-fulfilling prophecies of doom. It is up to you to look forward into the future with a positive attitude, striving for the things you desire.

When a spell is not made well enough to account for unusual circumstances, it may not work very well. It may "backfire," or have strange results. Rev. Kaye's spells were carefully and lovingly designed to have no chance of backfiring. But any spell caster could interfere with the spell's operations and weaken the results that might be obtained from its usage.

GOOD VERSUS EVIL/ BAD
1. Good and evil exist in the eye of the Christian, and members of some other religions. Anything that is not FOR that particular religion is evil in their eyes.

2. Good and bad exist in the eye of the recipient of any action. Such person sees things as they relate to her/him -- an action is considered good if it benefits the person, evil if it prevents the person (in his/her mind) from getting what they want. The totality of the universe has no such concept as good or evil--there are just activities which occur naturally (laws of physics).

3. All activities performed by a human being are for the benefit of that being either now or in the near future.

4. How another person may perceive an activity of yours is for that person to deal with, for it is only their personal outlook that assigns "good" or "bad" to it.

BLACK MAGICK & WHITE MAGICK
No one need to fear black magick, for there is no such thing as black magick. But there is such a thing as selfish people. Emotions such as jealousy, envy, lust, desire and greed are not bad things, and to take and/or keep from other people is not bad. Whenever there is a competition, there will be a winner and a loser. "Bad" is only a consideration in the loser's consciousness, their perception of their loss or inability to acquire that which they wanted. In most cases they blame other people for their inadequacies, rather than face the truth about themselves. The other person is "wrong," they will say. Some people, unable to account for their condition, will say that "black magick" was used. But it can only be the purpose that is "black" or "white." It is only the act by another person that one may consider, not the means they use to obtain their goal.

Not too many people, if any, work with what might they might call "evil" spirits--it's just too scary. Mostly, that type of person will just talk about it--and if they talk about it, then you KNOW they don't do it. It's just empty bragging or an attempt to frighten you. Besides, there is no such thing as a truly evil spirit--that idea only exits in the minds of self-aggrandizing people who wish to make themselves important in the eyes of others without doing anything other than bragging.

OUR VOODOOS, THE SPIRITS OF THE HOUSE OF REV. SAMANTHA KAYE
Our spirits (Lois-nous, or notre Lois) are available to clients of Rev. Samantha Kaye. They come to love and to care for us and for her clients. They are there to comfort and console her clients in times of sorrow. They are there to be with her clients, to assist them with their Spellwork. They are there to let her clients know that they are not alone. The inner physical mechanics of this, among many other secrets, is a profound mystery and may not be revealed due to serious spiritual oaths. This is information that may be found in no books, no writings anywhere. It is passed on only through certain occult family ritualistic practices. These are not metaphysical concepts, abstractions, but rather direct mechanical means (specific equipment and operations). Here we pass a moment of silence in reverie of the mysteries that have been carefully passed to us. Ainsi soit-il.

BENEFITS
While our Voodoo (or Lois) are powerful beings, they are also guided by Universal Forces (God, Allah, Buddha - whatever you believe the Supreme Being/Force to be) and do things according to Universal Law. This actually makes Voodoo a safer type of magick to use than other types of spell work that give results not caring about the consequences. In other words, you will not get what is not good for you. From Voodoo spell work you only receive those things that are not harmful to you. Its result is always toward the highest good, keeping the individual spell worker in mind. CLEAR YOUR MIND
Nothing is ever a bad thing. Everything is a new opportunity, a change for the better or a new experience. There is no such thing as evil or bad. There is only an alteration so that you may discover new things. People resist the need to change for they feel comfortable with what they are familiar with. Sometimes divine providence will force us to change or circumstance, for were we to remain in one state for too long we would enter a state of stagnation. From that state there is only one thing left, decay and destruction. We need to change, to keep moving forward into the future with great hope and gleaming eyes.

REVENGE
Do you believe that vengeance is evil? If so, why do you believe that? Because someone told you so? Is it right to "turn the other cheek" and get hurt again? Is it not right to want to get justice, retribution, fairness, equality? Justice is what revenge is. It is bringing an accounting to the person who did you harm, and to (if possible) return the things that might have been taken from you, be they mental, emotional, or physical. Is it not right to want to better your conditions in life, rather than suffer the wrongs of others? Is it better to feel helpless, weak and needy, injured, or to feel empowered, strong, and healthy by returning a fair amount of suffering upon those who did you wrong?

After all, the object is to win the game, not to be the continual loser--it isn't how you play the game, but whether you win or lose that counts. Let's face it, how you feel emotionally affects not only your thinking, but your physical health. To be brought to suffer the pain of loss or harm is not a happy experience. But to overpower the person who harmed you is extremely exhilarating.

Remember, though, that most people desire to restore themself and those about them to the original state before harm was done, but in almost every case that is quite impossible and a new beginning, a fresh state of affairs, must be sought. Do not lose sight of this concept.

FAIRNESS & BAD PEOPLE
There are certain people who, rather than honestly work to achieve a goal, would tear another person down in the eyes of others in order to make themselves better. Those actions such a person performs are not fair. Such a person may be considered to have performed an evil act. The key question regarding various acts performed by people is, "Was that fair to all concerned?" If it was not, then the act may be not be considered as good.

Anyone will be fair to other people until the prejudices of small-minded people are impressed upon them, or until they become desperate. If anyone desperately needs something but has not the means to acquire it, then they will be moved to perform acts that impose upon another's way of life. This is a fact. The best people can be driven to acts of no good. Each of us is born with the best intentions in mind, and it is only when others impose their disturbed ways upon us that we might act improperly.

SENSELESS "EVIL"
There is no such thing as evil coming from an unknown source. There is no such thing as a vague sort of abstract disembodied evil like that made up for the television or movies. There is no such thing as an inanimate object that thinks for itself and does strange things.

There are pranksters who care more for the shock value of their prank than for the property of others. Some people call such acts as destroying the property of others as "senseless evil." But after all, that kind of act is only vengeful foolishness.

The idea of absolute Good and absolute Evil is an abstract concept developed and utilized by people who like to talk or write about things (writers and orators). It is their way of making themselves important (at least to themselves), drawing a crowd, selling books. It is relatively easy to bring up concepts of no relevance or import and make people think they have substance or meaning by bringing them up for discussion. Such useless concepts IN FORM do not exist and have no meaning when related to real life.

RELIGION
Next: The only "evil" that exists is that made up by the clergy of the cults of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and others who impress it like a smothering cloud upon their flock of sheep, to suppress them and extract donations from them, with the vague promise of "redemption" or "the rapture." Basically this boils down to fraud and blackmail. They deal in fear. This is one face of religion.

There is no such thing as "good" except as a distant and quite physically unattainable reward held before the imagination of those who are told to have faith and must believe in order to imagine that some day they may achieve it. Label that as "redemption" or "the rapture," or whatever. This boils down to fraud and bribery. They deal with blind hope. So here we have the other face of religion.

As we see, the general purpose of religious clergy is to extract donations or tithes from the naive and gullible "for the church," "for the children" (who get only a small portion of the donations, if any) or some other inane reason. It is far better to donate canned food because it is less likely that this will be misspent. Religion, a two-faced Janus wearing the theatrical masks of gaiety and torment, is wielded with a terrifying sword and a soft cloak before its believers.

The clergy wants you to believe that only "The Clergy" can save you from the demons of hell and only The Clergy can lead you to the treasures of heaven, of course. Support The Clergy who lives off your fears and hopes and RISKS NOTHING to save you from NO evil nor have to deliver on their wild promises. All the while they are working social controls upon the masses to make them weak and emotionally dependent upon them, The Clergy. When one dies, whether they like it or not they are going to "heaven," the other world.

This good and evil reward and punishment system is the keynote of brainwashing. Without this concept, brainwashing would not exist.

LIKE OR DISLIKE
Everything is relative, according to how the recipient or issuer of an activity may perceive it according to whether they desire to attract or repel that activity, based upon their present perception, due to past experience, of what pleasure and pain may be to him or her.

THE FINAL WORD
Good or evil is man's doing. What a person does is determined by that person according to whether they deem a thing is good for them or is not good for them. What someone may think is good for him/her may well be considered harmful to another. Whether a person desires to harm or take something away from another is due to the ideas they take on to account for the manner in which they were raised or the conditions they are living in.

REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL CONDITION
Regarding your future: Seek not the advice of others, but rather heed only counsel within yourself, for therein lie the true answers.

TO SUM IT ALL UP
1. Voodoo is a religion.
2. Voodoo works for the betterment of its practitioners' states in life. It seeks to help people.
3. You need not follow the religion to use its magickal practices to help yourself.
4. There is no absolute good nor any absolute evil.
5. No thing in and of itself is good or bad.
6. People do things (perform actions) which others may consider to be good or bad.
7. No act may be considered as definitely either good or bad.
8. There is merit in every action no matter how heinous it may seem.
9. There is no black or white, only shades of gray.
10. Good and bad are relative and determined by the person who perceives or receives an action.
11. There are people who do things without consideration for others in every field of endeavor.
12. Those of us who practice the magickal aspects of Voodoo do it for the good of our clients, relatives and friends.
13. Rev. Samantha Kaye wants everyone to learn of the benefits of the Voodoo.

AYAHUASKA: vine of the dead Amazon culture
15:25:38 - Jun 23 2006
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THE CEREMONY

The ceremony of Ayahuaska begins with drinking the sacred potion, made from the vine of Ayahuaska and the leaves of Chakruna. This is followed by opening a magic circle of protection, a sacred space to call forth divine deities and to deny entrance to negative vibrations. By chanting the celestial icaros, the shaman calls upon his inner basic humanity and brings it to the surface. Icaros are full of profoundly beautiful human feelings, and only once humility takes over after the hours of intense cleansing, the borders of divine humanity can be felt and then illuminated further through mindfulness. Those divine feelings are gateways to the human soul, that fill, with conscious energy, the eternal and mesmerizing image forms of the universal structure, that is located in collective sub-consciousness of the human species. Essential Humanity is a flower that grows in all creation, and can be opened only through cleansing the accumulated mental garbage and reaching the inner authenticity. The ceremony ends with closing the magic circle of the healing space with a special icaro, and mindfully recapitulating all that has been discovered during the last flight through infinity.
Ayahuaska is a very ancient, celestial medicine, which is aimed at healing the body, restoring equilibrium in one's life, and enlightening the Spirit. Ayahuaska cleanses not only accumulated toxins from the organism, but also impurities in the mind, creating a strong surrounding aura of well being around the participant, that could last for months after the ceremony.
Ayahuaska helps to realize the events in one's life through direct feeling of the life energy and the cause of it's exhaustion in daily life, where different fears and repressed emotions manifest into different pains and problems of body, mind and spirit. Ayahuaska removes these energetic blocks through it's purgatory effects, as well as though opening an active communication channel with one's dreaming body. (an energetic imprint of being, where a record of personal history interferes with the harmonious flow of universal energy). Through an active dialogue between the consciousness (ego) and the dreaming body (totality of being), which is easily accessible via Ayahuaska, it is possible to reach a deeper layer of self-acceptance, and encounter a more profound sincerity, bringing yourself closer to the here and now, the most intense time and place in the universe.
Cleansing is as important during the Ayahuaska ceremony, as learning to listen to that tiny voice of intuition. The final goal of this sacred ceremony is to be fully free, authentic and open to the Universe and Oneself, content and harmonious in the moment.

OTHER DIMENSIONS

After the process of cleansing, when well being and concentration flow harmoniously in one's life, begins time for visiting other dimensions and experiencing the divine altered states of mind. While in the first stages of Ayahuaska journeys it is possible to experience glimpses of the unfathomable majestic universe, in the post-cleansing stages of Ayahuaska, it is possible to experience the inconceivable dimensions, considering that a more stable feeling of connection with the universe with higher concentration of the mind is accomplished. These feats are attainable only with a deep respect for the Ayahuaska spirit, humility, and a stable grounding, with openness and acceptance to the universe and one's place in it, all of which are major aspects of an ancient spiritual discipline. Without this sincere and serious practice it would be impossible to discover the depth of the nature within us and the nature surrounding us.

ICAROS

An Icaro is a sacred song of power, inspired by the divine genies/deities of Ayahuaska. Every sound and intonation of an Icaro is utilized in the most humanly efficient manner, gluing the body to the spirit. In order to get to this level of natural completeness in the voice, breath control, similar to Pranayama, has to be learned. Ayahuaska is a great guide towards consciously realizing all bodily functions. The Icaro can manifest it's true magical nature only when clear and unattached will power can become active with no trace of personal effort, yet totally intimate, with universal compassion.
Icaros are ancient sacred healing songs, similar to the mantras in the Orient. Through Sacred Icaros a Shaman guides the passengers on the flight of Ayahuaska. Through Icaros the shaman heals the body, mind and spirit. It depends greatly on the concentration and wisdom of the shaman, how he uses the Icaros, or what he uses them for, as well as what kind of Icaros he is using. Most shamans memorize and use only a few Icaros, without connecting them one to another. and sing them without any real feelings, which are very important in this tradition.
The Amazon shamanic tradition contains a vast amount of Icaros set to different spirit frequencies, with a systematic order of different functions, such as healing the energy centers or activating the potential of abstract ethereal centers, like the center of will and the center of intent; also contacting inorganic beings or plant spirits, such as Sirens, Chiri Sanango and Ajo Sacha for healing and insight. This tradition of Icaros is another doorway to the magnificent world of the spirit.

VIROTE

A Virote (a magical dart) is a powerful instrument used in the spiritual discipline of Ayahuaska. Even though it is famous for it's use in brujeria (black magic), that is not a true and healing purpose of the virote. The way it functions is when a healer sees a problem in the participant's energy field, (and provided that this is a knowledgeable healer, who knows this problem with personal experience, along with a way to resolve it), the healer lets a person know about the problem and what aspect of discipline is need to heal it. It is done NOT to sound knowledgeable, but out of the force of universal compassion, that makes one want to help the other from the heart. Even though, in most cases, people stuck in different characters or routines do not hear the healer's advise, the magic construction of virote is such, that through the impeccability of the healer, some amount of sober and compassionate energy enters the patient's dreaming body. This way, a participant, through bodily experience of true knowledge, can receive early enhanced signs of dangers from certain routines and the inspiration towards liberation of the spirit. Although this is a complicated description, virote happens quite naturally and spontaneously, through the impeccability in a spiritual discipline.

LONG DISTANCE HEALING

The principle of healing begins with a pure intent and emanates from the basic inner humanity of the healer. That is why long distance healing is one of the primary avenues between the healer and the patient, no matter how far away from each other the two are located, even if it is another country, or even dimension.
It certainly takes a bit more personal power and concentration to apply such healing; it is much easier for the shaman to heal a person who is physically present at the ceremony. But, with the right concentration and certain sacred Icaros, the genies of Ayahuaska penetrate the spirit of the patient and cleanse the energetic tensions. Although not as powerful as actually drinking the sacred potion, it is a very effective way to help anybody on the planet and especially bring well being to our loved ones.

Tobacco Healing (Mapacho Sopla)

Tobacco is a very ancient medicine and is considered a powerful ally in the Amazonian culture of shamanism. It has been mentioned in the Amazonian legends that Tobacco was one of the sacred plants delivered with Ayahuaska by the celestial entities to the ancient ancestors.
The shaman, when healing, delivers a powerful blow of intensity using the mouthful of mapacho smoke, penetrating the energy body of the patient, and cleansing obscure and harmful psychic energies. It is considered a potent and effective technique to revitalize & rehabilitate the spirit, especially when there is a need to remove the negative influences of unwanted energies. Tobacco is vital plant to exorcise "bad" spirits, and is greatly respected by the Amazonian healers.

Shamans of the amazon
Shamanic culture is very widespread in the Amazon. So it is not surprising that most of the Shamans in the Amazon today are either very inexperienced, with false knowledge (even though they may have dozens of years of drinking Ayahuaska), or so called 'brujos', the black magic practitioners, who manipulate patients, and most importantly are not working from the heart, but feed their own ego.
After years of research and Ayahuaska ceremonies with many various shamans all across the Amazon, we have come across several Shamans, who are the last descendents from a very ancient Divine lineage of curranderos (healers). Those shamans work through the heart in a more objective way, utilizing a multidimensional system based on the energy centers, similar to the Hindu chakra system, but perhaps closer to nature and more intuitive and spontaneous in it's expression. These healers are sincere within their knowledge, and are able to bring a feeling of the ancient times full of sorcery, mystical power objects, invoked spirits & beautiful phantasmagoric creatures, all being the manifestations of their healing intent.
We have learned a great deal from these humble people, and are more then happy to introduce them to participants from any path of liberation, who are interested in encountering an extraordinary and profound approach to the path of the Spirit, full of creative potential of Mother Nature, feeling of the human soul, and the magnificent, immense universe of awe and wonder, with the help of the Mother of all plants, Ayahuaska.

A FEW WORDS OF CAUTION
Through studying the tradition of Ayahuaska culture, it is possible to learn the principles of intuitive healing, as well as enlarge one's own description of the world with a lot of knowledge not essential to the evolution of the spirit. Today's culture of Ayahuaska does not have an objective of complete liberation or a total trust in the universal wisdom, that manifests itself in all aspects of life. Therefore, when studying with the shamans, the representatives of this culture, there is a danger for the people with a western mentality, who have little responsibility for their actions, to lose sobriety in this mystical, superstitious, intriguing world of the sacred Ayahuaska. The culture of Ayahuaska today is but a far away echo of the ancient times of wisdom. The sacred science of the shamans has lost the celestial impeccability, yet still strongly retains the primordial feeling of Mother Nature, which is essential for spiritual healing. The shaman's overall description of the world is very much externalized and is full of the shaman wars (something very popular throughout the Amazon), bad spirits (tunchis), monsters inside people's bodies and many other not so majestically compassionate aspects of the culture. This habit of externalizing inner conflicts into the forms of outside influence is where the whole culture of Today's Shamanism has stepped away from the Universal Wisdom.
While many shamans are working in the name of Jesus Christ, a role model for the ultimate healer, there is no real strive towards Christ's full state of cognition. A strong determination and impeccability of actions is strongly missing in the overall shamanic culture and is a reason for emotional and instinctual tensions in many shamans, especially when approaching old age.
Rich content of information regarding liberation of consciousness available in the Orient, allows us, at SpiritPath, to see through the chaotic wonderland of the sacred plant culture and to integrate all the different facets available in different world cultures today, aiming them towards the discovery of the true inner nature - The Universal Soul.

Boddhisatva levels of connection to the Universe through
the Ayahuaska Spiritual Discipline Ancient steps of progress through the celestial medicine school of Ayahuaska

1. MicroUniverse - Cleansing
The first stage of transformation completely parallels all other spiritual disciplinary traditions of the world. In this stage, one cultivates the ability to feel the present moment in a fragile and humane way, cultivating compassion & acceptance towards personal emotional conflicts, crisis, confusions, fears, repressed memories and feelings. By learning how to be in the intensity of the here & now, with universal compassion, one takes the first step in the art of Universal Healing. This step requires strong determination on the part of the participant, because during this period of strong cleansing, most of the experiences might be very enlightening, but not very pleasant. Unmotivated people usually quit the discipline at this point. Staying with the discipline will bring a stronger connection with inner luminosity and harmonious healing attitude to one's life. The first step of Ayahuaska universal art of healing can be described as putting the consciousness in the unconsciousness - a point of order in the middle of the sea of chaos. That is why the first stage usually includes series of chaotic, intense, healing and sometimes beautiful experiences.

2. MacroUniverse - Coming to the outside
The second stage continues through the cleansing process, resolving some of the effects of the first stage, and cultivating the ability to maintain a clear minded concentration in the midst of process. Through the feeling of innermost basic humanity, the disciple can upkeep the feeling of inner harmony and balance, while fully participating in the outer world. This step can be equaled to the beginning of the realization of Mahamudra in the Tibetan Buddhism - when the student starts going beyond the personal world of self reflection, or the small wheel of consciousness (Nihayana, the first attention) and discovers the big wheel of Universal Compassion (Mahayana, the second attention).

3. Preparing to summersault into the inconceivable - an attention cultivation stage
The third stage includes the first two, and goes further to consciously, with a lucid concentration, fill oneself with the celestial life force of the Icaros (sacred songs), through an active communication with the divine deities of Ayahuaska at the level of the Dreaming Body. At this point of development, such action spreads into all details of one's life, making way for a more impersonal and direct connection with the Universe, along with opening the divination link channels to the higher self.

4. Stabilizing in the archtype of completion.
The fourth stage covers the previous ones and opens a wider reality, where one is able to stably maintain the natural flow of divine energy with a lucid mind, and encounter the Universe in a more energetically active way. Here one awakens the ability to clearly recognize the whole spectrum of subtle flows in the Universe. This includes seeing the energetic blocks in the bodies of others and their manifestation on the physical plane. This stages also includes the ability to heal energetically.

5. A stage of Universal Power
The fifth stage concludes the Master Healer apprenticeship and unites all the previously learned essences with the body in a clear and stable flow of the Universal Oneness. This is the stage when one is fully connected to the divine flow and becomes it, transforming raw matter into ethereal energy. At this stage of encountering & embodying Spirit's Power, one undergoes a serious test of one's path & intentions.

6. Time of Final Contribution
The sixth stage is a stage of wisdom. Having covered all the previous stages and gathered the necessary experience, the Master Healer can transfer the knowledge to his patients & disciples.

7. Final Journey - Beginning of the path
The Seven Stage is of the Ultimate Journey, what the Castaneda described as the Fire From Within. The Master Shaman at this point gives away all the powers he has accumulated in this life time. Then, when the moment is right, the shaman calls out the divine deities from other dimensions and allows the divine energy to catapult him into infinity. This is the beginning of perceiving the unperceivable.

METAPHYSICS:MULTIPLE MEANINGS
19:11:57 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 20

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ACADEMIC METAPHYSICS

The term metaphysics originally referred to the writings of Aristotle that came after his writings on physics, in the arrangement made by Andronicus of Rhodes about three centuries after Aristotle's death.

Traditionally, metaphysics refers to the branch of philosophy that attempts to understand the fundamental nature of all reality, whether visible or invisible. It seeks a description so basic, so essentially simple, so all-inclusive that it applies to everything, whether divine or human or anything else. It attempts to tell what anything must be like in order to be at all.

To call one a metaphysician in this traditional, philosophical sense indicates nothing more than his or her interest in attempting to discover what underlies everything. Old materialists, who said that there is nothing but matter in motion, and current naturalists, who say that everything is made of lifeless, non-experiencing energy, are just as much to be classified as metaphysicians as are idealists, who maintain that there is nothing but ideas, or mind, or spirit.

Perhaps the best definition of materialism is that of Charles Hartshorne (Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, p. 17): "the denial that the most pervasive processes of nature involve any such psychical functions as sensing, feeling, remembering, desiring, or thinking." Idealists assert what materialists here deny. Dualists say that mind and matter are equally real, while neutral monists claim that there is a neutral reality that can appear as either mind or matter. Philosophers generally are content to divide reality into two halves, mind and matter (extended and unextended reality) and do not emphasize such distinctions within the mind half as spirit and soul.

POPULAR METAPHYSICS

A commonly employed, secondary, popular, usage of metaphysics includes a wide range of controversial phenomena believed by many people to exist beyond the physical.

Popular metaphysics relates to two traditionally contrasted, if not completely separable, areas, (1) mysticism, referring to experiences of unity with the ultimate, commonly interpreted as the God who is love, and (2) occultism, referring to the extension of knowing (extrasensory perception, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, retrocognition, and mediumship) and doing (psychokinesis) beyond the usually recognized fields of human activity. The academic study of the occult (literally hidden) has been known as psychical research and, more recently, parapsychology. Both New Age and New Thought emphasize mysticism and its practical, pragmatic application in daily living, but New Thought discourages involvement in occultism.

The terms metaphysics and metaphysical in a popular sense have been used in connection with New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, and Spiritualism, as in J. Stillson Judah, The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (The Westminster Press, 1967), as well the New Age movement, and in the name of the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion (see below). Some of the varying understandings of metaphysics held by some founders of New Thought and Christian Science are given in the opening pages of Contrasting Strains of Metaphysical Idealism Contributing to New Thought.

PURE AND APPLIED METAPHYSICS

Cutting across the division of the academic and the popular, there is another way of dividing metaphysics: theoretical and applied. This distinction is like the division between science and technology; one describes; the other applies the description to practical problems, putting knowledge to work. Gathering knowledge (or alleged knowledge, critics of metaphysics would say) in metaphysics traditionally is by rational thought; in a more popular understanding, knowledge gathering may be either mystical or occult; in either case the pure (?) knowledge is to be distinguished from the practical application of it.

Revelations Of The Dead Sea Scrolls
16:50:34 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 22

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Note - The origin, authenticity and accuracy of
> > these quotes in both
> > translation and transliteration are unknown. - ed
> >
> > The following, as deciphered from caves 1, 3, 4 and
> > 7, are deemed
> > sensitive and remain unavailable for public
> > inspection by those who seek
> > to control the Truth for their own devices.
> >
> > These texts remain the property and jurisdiction, of
> > the elite, who
> > secreted them away to the four (4) major religious
> > organizations and
> > other various agencies as they were found beginning
> > in 1947. Those being
> > the Jordanian controlled Rockefeller Museum in
> > Eastern Jerusalem, the
> > Department of Antiquity in Israel, the American
> > School of Oriental
> > Research, the Rockefeller Foundation and Israeli
> > Biblici of Archeology.
> > Other scrolls and remnants remain in the strict
> > possession of the
> > Vatican and Royal Museum at Leningrad under extreme
> > security measures.
> >
> > The educated scholars, and those involved with
> > deciphering the scrolls
> > proclaimed the texts, "contained no valid
> > information that would shed
> > any additional light whatsoever on the advancement
> > of Christianity in
> > Jerusalem." Their claims, to this day, denounce the
> > possibility of any
> > intrinsic value, historically or otherwise being
> > placed on the scrolls.
> > And that is exactly what can be obtained from the
> > Internet or through
> > the Library of Congress. Parchments and fragments
> > that are handpicked,
> > and safe, being of no significant, intrinsic value.
> >
> > In reality the scrolls reveal secrets regarding the
> > literature of the
> > Messianic movement in Palestine, secrets concerning
> > The Great Flood
> > account, spiritual visions and revelations, exciting
> > experiences
> > including personal accounts of those who knew and
> > practiced the truth,
> > revelations regarding space, contact and
> > communication with those of
> > other worlds and unique experiences with Angelic
> > beings. Additional
> > scrolls shed light on, "The unlawful execution of a
> > certain Messianic
> > leader in Jerusalem," which continues to cause much
> > contention and
> > controversy to this day.
> >
> > These revelations remain too hot for the religious
> > hierarchy and other
> > authorities to handle and the reason behind the
> > immense and deliberate
> > cloak of secrecy. Why? Because such information
> > was/is, "too powerful or
> > complicated for the common man to understand,
> > interpret or appreciate."
> > It is no coincidence that these truths have become
> > available, accessible
> > by anyone without limitation or censorship. They are
> > the Words of the
> > Almighty Creator as well as in the personage of our
> > Lord and Master
> > Jesus Christ.
> >
> > From Cave #7 Scroll #1 (Section One)
> >
> > "I have spoken to My Prophets because I did promise
> > that I would not
> > perform anything, nor would I prophesy anything new
> > unless I so informed
> > My Prophets. Their words are not confined to any
> > time frame that can be
> > calculated by man, because I do work in mysterious
> > ways to bless My
> > people. As My people, those who have been called by
> > My Name, commune
> > with Me through prayer and meditation; they shall be
> > the recipients of
> > vast blessings that the world cannot contain. Yet My
> > own words [I] have
> > spoken for the benefit of My Children because they
> > have elected to do My
> > perfect will at all times."
> >
> > Section Two
> >
> > "You have already heard these words in the past,
> > however, I recite them
> > again to you that you may remember and benefit from
> > them. I do not speak
> > words that they may fall upon deaf ears, but I speak
> > words that will be
> > heard with your Spiritual Ear and [you] will retain
> > those words which
> > are designated to build you up in the Most Holy
> > Faith never to depart
> > from that Faith."
> >
> > "Yes, your trials will be many. But My word is
> > sufficient to sustain you
> > in all of your ways, providing your ways are My
> > Ways. This, again, you
> > have already read in My Word, but, I feel that you
> > need a reminder
> > because many of you are still weighed in the
> > balances and are still
> > found wanting."
> >
> > Section Three
> >
> > "The time will come when man's human intelligence
> > will cease and [man]
> > will look to himself in order to solve the problems
> > of the day. This
> > time will come when mankind will excel in
> > intelligence just as the Words
> > of My Prophet Daniel warned." "His knowledge shall
> > increase and [he]
> > will seek to rule not only this Earth but also the
> > Moon and other
> > heavenly bodies which I have also created. When that
> > day comes, many of
> > you will look upon their works with great dismay.
> > You will see how far
> > they have departed from My Word and from My Love."
> >
> > "Think it not strange that these things must come to
> > pass, because, as
> > they come to pass, it will be for a sign; a sign of
> > My soon return. When
> > man begins to forsake his first true love and
> > departs from that love, in
> > order to love another, time will grow very difficult
> > then. But those
> > times and seasons will continue and cause those who
> > are called upon by
> > My Name to exceedingly prosper and succeed as your
> > soul prospers and
> > succeeds. This I have spoken to you with the Words
> > of My Own Mouth and
> > it shall come to pass because it is true."
> >
> > 2. Additional Elements of Divine Intervention
> > Revealed (Cave 7)
> >
> > During the last days of civilization you shall
> > witness many supernatural
> > interchanges between spiritual people and the Divine
> > Mind of Almighty
> > God. There will arise a clear and distinct chain of
> > command, viewed by
> > all who live on and in the planet Earth. These two
> > main classes of
> > people are comprised of those who posses God's Power
> > and those who do
> > not:
> >
> > 1. "My children, in whom I have entrusted My Spirit,
> > will reap fortunes
> > and riches from the totally unexpected sources.
> > This, because the lack
> > of such wealth has prevented you from fulfilling and
> > performing your
> > ministry to the fullest. I, the Lord, shall speak to
> > those of My other
> > children throughout this orb, and they, in direct
> > obedience to Me, will
> > communicate with you, because of your faithfulness
> > to My calling upon
> > your life."
> >
> > 2. "Your eyes will be filled with tears. But, they
> > will not be with the
> > essence of bitterness or sorrow, rather with great
> > joy and expectation
> > that you never experienced before. Your earthly
> > plans will be altered in
> > order for you to fulfill your own true destiny on
> > this orb."
> >
> > 3. "You will leap with joy, with shouts of praise
> > and glory to My name."

The majestic standing stones of Callanish
16:33:41 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 24

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STONE circles are evocative places and the stones at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis must be one of the most haunting. Not only is
there the imposing physical presence of the stones and their spectacular landscape setting, there is also the atmosphere of mystery.

Callanish (or Calanais) is one of the larger stone settings of Britain. The stones tower to a height of nearly four metres and the main monument covers an area of some 5,000 square metres. The circle itself is relatively modest and comprises 13 upright stones with a
huge megalith at the centre marking a later burial cairn. Callanish is set apart, however, by two things: The stone settings that run
away from the circle in the form of a cross and the presence of at least six other stone circles in the vicinity.

The main monument at Callanish dates back to around 3,000 BC. Lewis at the time was populated by Stone Age farmers who lived in small villages dotted around these Outer Hebridean islands. At Callanish they quarried monoliths from local gneiss stone and erected them carefully in a circle. The stability of the monument was clearly important and low mounds of earth and stones were added to the base
of each upright because of the problems of digging sufficiently deep
sockets. The central stone was set in place at this time and it is
likely that the three rows running away to south, east and west were
added soon after, together with the avenue which today comprises 20
stones and runs to the north.

One legend concerning the stones claims they were erected by giants -
who were subsequently turned to stone by St Kieran.

The central cairn was built at a later date, though it seems that by
1,000 BC the use of the monument had changed and the land was once
more under cultivation. Not long after this the onset of wetter
conditions encouraged the formation of peat in the vicinity of the
stones and the site became buried until only the tops of the stones
were visible. Only in the last two centuries have the stones once
more been revealed in full.

The construction of a monument like Callanish was a skilled and time-
consuming job. Five thousand years later it stands as a credit to
its builders. It has been the subject of much study to unravel its
mysteries, but though we have some strong hints we can never be sure
what was in the minds of the prehistoric people of Lewis.

Nevertheless, it does not take much to realise that these were sites
of some importance. We can step beyond the stones - majestic as they
are - and imagine the colour, sounds and smells that must have
filled the sites when they were alive.

Stone circles like Callanish seem to have been used for ceremony and
ritual over many centuries. We do not know whether this involved the
whole community or part of it. It may have involved separate people
at different times of the year, or various stages in life. There is
general agreement that many of these sites have astronomical
associations and Callanish is no exception. It seems to be linked to
the rising of the moon in the south when, at a major standstill, it
barely enters the sky, seeming to roll along the horizon to set
among the stones. This would be a magical sight that took place
every 18.6 years. It required skill to incorporate it into the
circle, but the prehistoric population is likely to have been much
more familiar with the night sky than we are. Not only did they lack
the distraction of electric light to dim the moon and stars, but
they also lacked modern technology and thus had to rely more upon
observation to tell the passing of the year and the coming of
advantageous weather. For Stone Age farmers these elements were of
great importance.

Callanish today is in the care of Historic Scotland. The monument is
free to the public to view year-round.

Callanish has attracted a respectable plethora of archaeologists
from General Augustus Pitt-Rivers, the UK's first inspector of
ancient monuments and father of British archaeology who in 1885 was
concerned with the welfare of the site, to his contemporary at
Historic Scotland, Patrick Ashmore, who carried out excavations in
the early 1980s.

Most recently, in 2002 and 2003, Callanish has been part of the
Great Stone Circles project, led by Colin Richards from Manchester
University. Richards has looked not just at the central site but
also at the smaller circles. He is interested in the derivation of
the stones and the results of his work are interesting. It seems
that each circle comprises stone from a separate, restricted
location. This has led Richards to suggest that the circles were
built by individual communities who exploited their local stones.
Whether they were working together or in competition remains
unclear, but the result was to provide an impressive monumental
landscape.

Another body with a strong field interest in Callanish comes from
archaeologists at Edinburgh University, who have been studying the
landscape on Lewis for more than 20 years. Much of their work has
been associated with the development of visitor facilities at
Callanish, from their own Callanish Archaeological Research Centre
at Callanish Farm to the Callanish Visitor Centre which now forms
the interpretive centre for the site.

Yet despite the strong academic interest in the stone circles it is
their very mystery that continues to attract visitors. Long a
popular focus for groups around the summer solstice, it is hoped the
remoteness may ensure that the historic landmark retains its magical
atmosphere for many centuries to come.

Caroline Wickham-Jones is an archaeologist who lives and works in
Orkney.

http://heritage.scotsman.com/places.cfm?id=992006

Druids and moon worship in the sacred landscape of Callanish
16:32:17 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 25

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DIANE MACLEAN

IT HAD been unseasonably hot all day and the great standing stones
at Callanish shimmered in the setting sun. These Neolithic giants
stood out among the throng of people. The Isle of Lewis might be the
end of the road, yet a crowd of nearly 200 had trekked to this
ancient site in the Outer Hebrides to bear witness to a most unusual
spectacle and sate their spiritual need.

They stood out against the bleached greens and greys of the Lewis
countryside. Flame-haired druids beating drums, dowsers with brass
rods reflecting the sunlight, pagans, moon worshippers, hippies,
shamans and witches were all there, facing west into their sacred
landscape awaiting the goddess.

The crowd are encouraged to give thanks to the earth.
It is probable that Callanish (or Calanais) – which comprises two
other stone circles in addition to the main site - was built some
5,000 years ago as a lunar calendar. The path of the moon, unlike
the reliably annual tracks of the sun, only returns to the same
point once every 18.6 years. Callanish plots this slow progress,
building to a crescendo in the 19th year at the lunar standstill -
when the path of the moon is so low that it seems to walk along the
horizon before setting within the stone circle.

Callanish's mystery to the expectant crowd is not merely in the
stones, but in their setting within a sacred landscape. To the south-
west of the stones is a low, undulating hill known to the local
people in Gaelic as Cailleach na Mointeach - the old woman of the
moors, or Sleeping Beauty as she is more affectionately known. The
contours look irresistibly like a reclining woman. At the lunar
standstill the moon rises from behind this hill, tip-toes across her
supine body and sets four hours later behind the Clisham, another
sacred hill.

This moonwalk will happen throughout the summer once a month until
September, and will draw hundreds for a number of reasons. Some
people come to worship the full moon, others to witness the goddess
walking the earth. All come in expectation of a spiritual experience
and to feel the energy of the planet.

Grenville Prowse from Cornwall dowses for ley lines amongst the
stones.
Margaret Curtis has been studying and uncovering stone circles in
Lewis for 30 years and is clear that the purpose of Callanish was to
witness this sacred moment.

"It was a ritualistic place. The circles were located so you could
view the moon through it and watch the moon rise through mother
earth within the confines of the circles."

It is this symbolic rising and setting of the moon - representing
birth, death and rebirth - that the pagans and druids also believe.
They have come to share in the earth's energy and give praise to the
full moon on her journey along the Sleeping Beauty.

"We're archaeology nuts and pagans," explains Constance Moore, from
Cornwall. "Pagans believe in the goddess – the goddess is the earth
and everything in it. And it looks like prehistoric people believed
in the goddess and that's why places like this were put up."

Moore and her partner came equipped with dowsing rods. They quickly
traced a strong ley line running between the three sites at
Callanish. They think that the stones were placed here because of
this energy, but also believe that performing rituals here
strengthens the earth's energy.

The small village of Callanish is overrun with campers and tents as
the population is swollen by the visiting pilgrims.
The goddess, though, was keeping a very low profile. Saturday night,
when the moon was almost full, proved a disappointment as the cloud
cover was too thick for any moonbeams to break through. Despite
intense drumming and long, low drones on the diggeridoo to lift the
clouds, the moon remained hidden.

By half past eight the next night Callanish was humming with even
more people. Lynne Sinclair-Wood had come all the way from Australia
to hold an Aboriginal flag against the stones as the sun went down.

"This is a piece of traditional batik, which has symbolism about
planet life and women's stories," says Sinclair-Wood. "I held the
flag up until the sun set, so the energy of the old cycles could be
released."

Even as she carried out her ritual in Lewis, back home her
Aboriginal sisters were conducting similar ceremonies too. They
believe that the two places are connected and that at times like
this they need to be conjoined. Sinclair-Wood has been coming to
Lewis for 27 years and learned her lore from a local woman, who
shared with her the knowledge of the stones.

Don't miss next week's lunar standstill photo gallery, showing the
spectacular phenomenon in all its glory.
"She taught the old religions and belief," says Sinclair-Wood. "It
is all to do with the regeneration of the land, the land is re-
energised at the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one and
everyone who witnesses it is too."

As the evening crept forward and the sun sank slowly in the north,
people hugged the stones and performed rituals. As the moon
threatened another non-appearance the atmosphere changed. From
around the stones sporadic drum beats began. Ululations split the
air as a collective prayer for the clouds to lift flowed out from
the crowd.

At midnight, when hope was almost lost, a shimmering light was seen
in the west. Gently, teasingly from behind the body of the Sleeping
Beauty, the moon began her slow ascent. It was a huge, fat, sleepy,
creamy circle, full and enormous - it transported everyone to a time
when others would have watched this same event here five millennia
ago.

An ancient cry rose from among the stones and joyous shouts echoed
around. But then, strangest and most extraordinary of all there came
the sound of singing. Psalms – Gaelic Free Church hymns – flooded
the air as God-fearing villagers inched forward into the circle.
They had come to remind the "unchurched" that what should be
worshiped was the Creator, not the creation.

Slowly, the drums and pipes and whistles changed their beat to
compliment the singers. The spiritual did come to Callanish, but
perhaps not in the way that the far-travelled searchers had
envisaged.

http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=875562006

Shamanism in Gaelic Culture (or What Do We Call Our People?)
16:31:16 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 26

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by Iain Mac an tSaoir

http://www.clannada.org/culture_shamanism.php

Western culture is very apt to create fads. Fads hit every conceivable area of our culture, from food to clothes to spirituality and religion. Several years ago, one fad was Native
American spirituality. It became conventional to refer to Native American spiritualities and religions as 'shamanism'. A few years
ago, it became the trend to see the spiritualities and religions of the various Celtic cultures as being 'shamanic'. Once again we see
pop theology taking a toll on a culturally-based spiritual belief and practice. The horrendous price that is paid for this is the potential loss of the cultures on the one hand, and the incomplete knowledge of the cultures on the other. Let's take a look at what shamanism is, what jobs possess(ed) shamanic elements, and what those jobs were called in Gaelic culture.

'Shaman' is a word whose origin is with the Tungus people of Siberia. Interestingly enough, the Tungus people themselves have no
word for 'shamanism', and the word 'shaman' itself is both a noun and a verb in that language. It was the reknowned theologian Mircea Eliade who defined 'shamanism' as a technique of ecstasy. He wrote, "The pre-eminently shamanic technique is the passage from one cosmic region to another - from earth to the sky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knows the mystery of the breakthrough in plane. This communication among the cosmic zones is made possible by the very structure of the universe."(1)

He based his definition on five set elements observable in the practices of the spiritual leaders of the Tungus people. Anthropologists, religious historians and other academians carried on the use of the term, using Eliades definition, to designate these practices as they were found in other tribal cultures. Shamanism is not a religion or group of religions, it is a set and defined group of practices.(2)

Based on Eliades definition, 'shamanism' is held by academians to be an ancient magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the
master of an ecstatic state of being. In addition, the shaman will possess some particular magical specialty. The most common of these
specialties is healing, but others exist. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state. This altered state of awareness allows the spirit of the
shaman to 'leave' the body, and ascend to the heavens, or descend into the underworld. They do this while maintaining control over their own consciousness. Typically, those who meet the definition of a shaman maintain spirit helpers with whom they communicate, at times utilizing these helpers to effect their work.

Amongst the things found in the beliefs of those designated
practitioners, in whose repetoire are found 'shamanic' elements,
there is a type of mythos, about which Eliade states, "These myths
refer to a time when communication between heaven and earth was
possible; in consequence of a certain event or a ritual fault, the
communication was broken off, but heroes and medicine men are
nevertheless able to reestablish it."(3)

It will be noticed that I stated that the person was designated to
become a 'shaman'. Such a designation is usually determined by some
traumatic experience. It is held by those cultures in
which 'shamanic' practices occur, that the practitioners are chosen
by some higher power(s) to be servants of their people in this
capacity, and that the choice is shown by the aforementioned
traumatic experience. It wasn't just anyone who decided to be a
shaman who became one. By definition, the path to serving in this
way was marked by five episodes in a course of initiation. Eliade
defines these when he writes, "...The important moments of a
shamanic initiation are these five; first, torture and violent
dismemberment of the body; second, scraping away of the flesh until
the body is reduced to a skeleton; third, substitution of the
viscera and revealing of the blood; fourth, a period spent in Hell,
during which the future shaman is taught by the souls of dead
shamans and by 'demons'; fifth, an ascent to Heaven to obtain
consecration from the God of Heaven"(4). No bookstore shamans here.

Now unfortunately, in this day and age, every sort of holistic
approach to spirituality is termed "shamanistic". Such also holds
true for every method of interacting with the unseen that has any
perceived antiquity attached to it. This is true even if the
perceived antiquity isn't factual, with the 'ancient' method
actually being only a matter of days or weeks old.

The truth of the matter is that the very term 'shamanism' has come
under fire because of its misuse. Much to the chagrin of Native
American peoples, their religion is constantly referred to
as 'shamanism'. This has allowed their spirituality to become a
commodity that is literally sold. The result of this has been a
literal Declaration of War, by the Lakota peoples, against those who
exploit their spirituality (5). In the realms of academia the term
has become one that is shied away from. It's not that the term, as
clinical nomenclature, is inherently wrong. It is, however, a matter
that the strict definition of the word, as established by Eliade,
has degenerated into yet another Jungian, archetypal nighmare (pun
intended). Hence, the cultural milieu in which these few, well-
defined, elements are found is completely disregarded. The focus is
placed on the very few practices alone, without regard for the
beliefs, values, customs and other things of the culture in which
those few practices are found.

At this point, I would direct the reader back to a very important
statement. I stated that, in addition to being a master of altered
states of awareness, the shaman possesses some particular magical
specialty; that the most common of these specialties is healing, but
that others exist. Now I can begin to address the Gaelic culture in
relation to these practices.

Throughout the history of Gaelic culture, there have been those who
utilize practices that may have been, or are, similar to those
defined by Eliade. For the most part, these practices are of the
nature of the magical specialty Eliade wrote about; there are very
few instances where ecstatic states are referred to (though some do
exist). However, these people were NOT and ARE NOT shamans. Let's
look at some examples:

Let us first start with the 'draoi' (druid in the vernacular). This
is a grouping of people who appear to have had representation in
each of the Celtic cultures. According to the Classical writers, the
draoi were philosophers, doctors, recitors of law and a great many
other things. The females in this group were called 'bandraoi'.
Their status was a product of their educations, and their position
in the culture has been defined by Peter Berresford Ellis as simply
being the intelligentsia (6). This has been echoed by Ward
Rutherford, who has referred to the druids as teachers (7), a
statement that is hand in hand with Ellis' assessment of the druids
as holding 'professorships'. Even Fergus Kelly recognized the many
roles they played when he stated that they were, "priest, prophet,
astrologer and teacher of the sons of nobles."(8) The draoi were
then, arguably, people who possessed specialties in knowledge or
ability. The workers of these skills each had their own job
description, a title for what they did.

One example is the physician, which was called 'midach.' The
practices of the physician were highly regulated by law, and an
entire Old Irish law text concerning physicians and their
responsibilities, called _Bretha Déin Chécht_ or "Judgments of Dían
Cécht", still exists (9). Physicians were supposed to be skilled in
examinations, healing incantations and prayers, surgery and
pharmacopoeia, as well as other methods of healing. In addition, the
midach carried their healing herbs and instruments in a bag called
a 'lés.' They also utilized a more holistic approach to healing and
had their patients meditate, called 'dercad', to achieve a state of
peace, called 'sitcháin'. A great many of the old techniques persist
even into this era, including sweat baths (10). Though the 'midach'
may have utilized prayers, incantations, herbs, meditation and sweat
baths, they were not shamans; what they did does not fit the
definition of a shaman.(There is also no known mythology as would be
consistent with 'shamanism'.). Their approach was consistent with
the culture and they are called 'midach.'

Another example is the blacksmith, or 'Goba'. Imagine the awe in
which was held the person who could mold rock into all manner of
necessary implements (11). They would certainly be seen as having
control of fire and land, even each of the Three Spheres that were
held sacred by those of Celtic cultures (12). Theirs would be
serious magic, indeed. Their special status in society is shown by
their being part of the Nemed class, along with other highly skilled
and trained people (13). Because of this, they, like others of the
intellectual class, were exempt from the military service,
clientship, and other things that were incumbent on members of the
society (14). Yet all these things aside, the blacksmith wasn't a
shaman. He was a Goba, and like all other skilled craftspeople, he
possessed much more knowledge than the few things assigned by Eliade
to a 'shaman'.

The last example I will give here - though all of the skills could
be established similarly - is that of the brehon, which in the
Gaelic culture was called 'brithem'. These are people who recited
the law, and whose words, because they carried the law, held much
power and sway. To go against the law was to lose face, something no
one could stand to do in such an honor-bound society as our
ancestors had. Even the High King had to hear the law recited before
he could act (15).

There will no doubt be those who point out that the peoples of
Celtic cultures utilized set and defined magical practices, in order
to support their contention that there were Celtic shamans. The most
widely known label for such a set of practices concerns what is
vulgarly known as 'Crane Magic". This set of practices date back to
the era of the draoi. The practicioners of this form of magic are
called 'Córrguinech' (not shamans). What we know of these practices
comes from the lore. According to Lady Gregory's "Gods and Fighting
Men", the Crane Bag was owned by Manannan mac Lir (who is
intrinsically connected with cranes). It was fabricated from the
skin of a crane (specifically the skin of Aoife after she was
transformed into a crane). This bag contained treasures which were
only visible at high tide (the bag was full at high tide and empty
at low tide). These treasures include: Manannan's house, shirt, and
knife; Goibniu's belt and smith's hook; the King of Alba's shears;
the King of Lochlann's helmet; the belt of fish-skin; the bones of
Asal's pig (The same pig which Lugh commanded the Sons of Tuirenn to
retrieve in payment for their having killed his father).(16) The
Crane Bag was an object that, according to mythology, belonged to
the Gods; as previously stated it belonged to Manannan, but passed
to Cumal before coming into the possession of Fionn. What is
interesting is that some people read the lore to say that Lugh was a
master 'Córrguinech'. If this was the case then we can perhaps see
some of the methodology involved at the Second Battle of Mag Tuired
(Moy Tura). Here, when Lugh went against the Fomoriian king, he
quite significantly assumed a one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed
posture, and began hopping around on the one leg while reciting an
incantation. Through this ritual he took on properties of
OtherWorldliness, gaining the power of that realm.(17) While dancing
and chanting - things popularly ascribed to 'shamanism' - are
plainly evident, these acts have significance only within the
understanding of the cultural milieu. Neither Lugh nor any
other 'Córrguinech' was a shaman, even if there were some elements
of what he did that may also be utilized by the Tungus peoples.

With the coming of Christianity, the religious function of
officiating the public sacrifices diminished and eventually became
extinct. The draoi themselves did not disappear though; they evolved
and adapted to their new environments. The various methodologies and
purposes that formerly belonged to them became embodied in the ranks
of a new phenomenon, the Filidh (18). A fili (FEE-la) is a poet,
though they weren't just any ordinary poet. Filidh went through up
to 20 years of training in formal schools. This set them apart from
the bards who possessed a much lessor education and,therefore,
status. A female fili was called 'banfhilíd (19). There are law
tracts which state plainly that the Fili was higher in rank than the
bard. One example of such a tract reads, "Bard dano; fer gin dliged
foglama acht inntlicht fadesin". That tract is saying that a bard is
a person without proper learning, but who possesses intellect.
Nonetheless, the poetry of the Fili is often referred to as 'Bardic'
poetry, even though some great differences exist which separate the
two classes.

All those things which were within the tradition of poetic
composition were the purview of the Fili; these were usually sacred
in nature and were always very formal. The bards, on the other hand,
were the originators of epithets and such. Whereas a Fili inspired
emotions, bards simply invoked emotions already presnt. The
traditional sacred meters and other facets of the language were
things to which the Fili were tightly bound. It was the strict bonds
on individual experimentation that allowed for creation of metrical
skill.(20)

The Filidh had the right to bless, curse and cast other spells,
called 'firt filed'. Like the draoi before them, the Fili could
safely travel across territorial boundaries. Also like the draoi,
they were often found expounding on the law, being engaged in other
skills, as well as giving protection from the lawless and granting
safety to others who traveled across territorial boundaries (21).

One of the most potent tools at their disposal was the satire. This
is a piece of verse composed to inflict harm on the lawless. It is
properly called the 'Glam Diccim', and it was said to be able to
cause a great many things to happen to its recipient, such as
breaking out in rashes and other blemishes. It was effected by the
poets going to a sacred tree and reciting the verse while repeatedly
bowing away from the tree; involved was a definite magico-religious
formulae involving the unseen world (The God/s.)(22). The purpose of
the 'Glam Diccim' was to bring people back within the law, and as
something very bound by law, it was itself legal. There were,
however, also illegal satirists called 'cáinte.' These laid the
curse of satires called 'rindile' on others without the authority of
law; they were, in fact, illegal satires.

While bringing to attention the different groups of poets, it needs
to be stated that there was another group of note. These were
the "Geilt". These particular poets were those who once had been
warriors, but who had become so affected by the carnage of war, that
they took up the life of a hermit. Avoiding contact with other
humans, they lived alone in the forest and were vegetarians. The
poetic talent which they held in common with the Filidh, dealt
almost exclusively with nature, and to them are ascribed feats of
great physical prowess.(23)

Another area where the Filidh preserved some measure of the
activities of the druids was in the area of ritual designed to find
other states of awarness. There were three such rituals: Imbas
Forosnai, Tenm Laida and Dichetal do chennaib. Each of these three
are stylized rituals using techniques that would certainly fit
Eliades definition of 'shamanism', including dance, chants,
deprivations, and even the consuming of special foods. The
term 'imbas' has become as debased in its usage as has the
term 'shamanism'; it is actually poetic inspiration gained through
ritually entered ecstatic states of altered awareness.(24)

In the Tain we are told that Scathach took on the Imbas Fornosai to
look into the future and give predictions for CuChullain (25). As we
know, that is a specific ritual, one which predates the demise of
the draoi and the institution of the Filidh. Yet we definitely see
that the rites of Imbas Forosnai, Tenm Laida and Dichetal do
chennaib were also used for prophecy. Those whose jobs were
specifically as seers were called fháith (26), women were
called 'banfhlaith' (27). Because of their use of techniques known
to have been the perview of the Filidh, the fháith were probably
themselves Filidh whose 'magical' specialty was prophecy. A whole
branch of practitioners who served as oracles are thought to have at
one time been called 'Gruagach' [Scottish Gaelic], though the term
eventually degenerated to simply denote a female brownie (28). Seers
did not ever go away, they are still around to this day in the rural
areas. Today, the seer is called 'frìtheir', and their divinatory
work is called 'frìth'. (29)

Above I mentioned the physicians, or the 'midach.' The patron god of
the 'midach' was Déin Chécht, who was a surgeon. He had two
children, Miach, his son, and Airmid, his daughter. The story goes
that when Nuadh lost his arm at the first Battle of Maig Tuired, it
was Miach who eventually restored to Nuada a real arm. Miach had
surpassed his father in the skills of healing. Déin Chécht was
jealous that his son surpassed him, and killed him. From where
Miach's body was buried there grew 365 herbs, each of which would
heal an illness. One day Déin Chécht found Airmid collecting these
herbs, so that she might use them to heal. Déin Chécht, in anger,
scattered the herbs so that no one might know what each herb was
used to heal.(30) This might seem the end of the matter, but in
other lore, Déin Chécht works with his daughter in guarding the
spring of health that restored the health of Tuath De Danann
warriors who fought at the Second Battle of Maig Tuired (31). Some
read into the tales surrounding these three personages, that there
were two schools of healing arts in the old culture. One being that
of the surgeon, and the other being the skills of the herbal healer.
Traditionally, it would seem that women were most closely associated
with herbal healing and midwifery.

These herbal healers would be the traditional wise women. The
functions of these women were actually many, and there wasn't just
one job description involved. There were several specialties
involved in this branch, and the ones noted here are still found in
the old countries. Starting with birth, there was the midwife who
was called a banghluin (32).

The traditional wise women were involved in other practices that
were probably part of their overall duties. There were also
practitioners of spells and and other things including the evil eye.
One type of spell was called "deibh buidseachd", a 'framing spell'
enacted by weaving colors in a specific way. These practicioners
also used effigies called "corp creadha" (clay body) and other
things to bring disease upon their victim. The Evil Eye itself was
called 'droch shuil'.(33)

The effects of the Evil Eye were called 'cronachadh'. The cure for
the evil eye was called 'beannachadh', blessing (34). Those who
purposely caused such harm are those who come to mind when the
word 'witch' is used. One word used to denote a witch
is 'cailleach', with the term denoting one who causes hardships.
While the individual person has a great many tools at their disposal
for avoiding the eye, sometimes an outsider had to be brought in.
This was when all other charms were ineffective. This was the wise
woman, who used their knowledge to heal. This outsider had about
them what was called "Eolas", which is a hidden knowledge of
formulary magic used to combat the equally formulary ill magic (35).
The person with the Eolas would often use the same tools and charms
as 'cailleach' had used, but with distinct meterical verse different
from that used by the 'cailleach'. Eolas was also used to cure
ailments and disease, and is often found associated with the heads
at the sacred wells, and the attendants of those wells (36).

Amongst the known rites, were 'water rites', 'fire rites' which are
called Beannachadh na Cuairte [Blessing of the Circle] and others.
In particular 'Beannachadh na Cuairte' was used for curing a sick or
dwindling child, as well as to cure the Evil Eye (37), which is the
tie-in that establishes the wise women as healers.

At the end of life the 'anumcara' [soul friend] was called. This
person helped in the transition from life to death, often
administering pain relieving herbs to give comfort. At the cessation
of life they would recite specific incantations to help the spirit
go on into the next world. They perhaps at one time administered the
final bathing of the body prior to burial. (38)

While these practitioners utilized forms of magic that some will no
doubt label as primitive, and while their healing techniques are no
doubt holistic, there is no evidence to allow for them to be
presented as shamans. Neither did they practice shamanism. The
banghluin, anumcara and others in this section are still working
their skills in the old countries.

I have hoped to accomplish three things in this article. The first
is to show that 'shamanism' is not a religion, but rather a
technical term used to denote a well-defined set of practices and
mythology. Furthermore, it is my hope that I have shown that these
practices are but components found within a greater cultural milieu.
Without the context of the culture those practices themselves have
no purpose, no understanding, no focus. Lastly, I hope that I have
shown that we of Gaelic culture do not have to rely on such a vague
and misleading title as 'shaman'. To the contrary, each skill and
art has a name that holds an understanding, power and full body of
knowledge that is its own. These jobs were/are fully empowered by
the understandings of their culture. These are what we call those
who have done special things in our culture. We have no shamans, and
our religion is not 'shamanism'. Special Thanks To: Sarah
NicGhilliela/idir

----------------------------------------------------------
-----------

Sources:

1. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade,

2. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Elliade

3. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Elliade,

4. Rites and Symbols of Initiation, Mircea Eliade,

5. Declaration of War Against Exploiters Of Lakota Spirituality

6. The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis

7. Celtic Lore, Ward Rutherford

8. Guide to Early Irish Law, Fergus Kelly

9. Bretha Déin Chécht (Judgments of Dían Cécht), Ériu 12 (1938) 1-
77, Binchy

10. Irish Country Cures, Patrick Logan

11. Traditional Skills In Gaelic Culture, Iain Mac an tSaoir

12. Triune Thought In Gaelic Culture, Iain Mac an tSaoir

13. Cattle Lords & Clansmen 2nd Ed, by Nerys Patterson

14. Cattle Lords & Clansmen 2nd Ed, by Nerys Patterson

15. Celtic Realm, Dillon and Chadwick, Early Medieval Ireland,
Dáibhí O Cróinín

16. Gods and Fighting Men, Lady Gregory's

17. Death, War and Sacrifice, Bruce Lincoln

18. A Short History of Ireland, Martin Wallace

19. The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis

20. Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Century,Gerard Murphy
Samhain, Robin Skelton

21. Uaraicept na n'Eces, Georger Calder, Uraicept na Riar: The
Poetic Grades In Early Irish Law, Liam Breatnach

22. The Druids, Ellis

23. "Geilt", Scottish Gaelic Studies #5, Nora Chadwick

24. "Imbas Forosnai", Scottish Gaelic Studies #4, Nora Chadwick

25. The Tain, Kinsella

26. Dictionary of the Irish Language Based on Old and Middle Irish
Materials, E.G. Quin, Royal Irish Academy

27. The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis

28. The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis

29. Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael

30. A Dictionary of Irish Mythology, Peter Berresford Ellis,
Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend, Amanda, Green Myth, Legend and
Romance, Dr. Daithi O hOgan

31. A Dictionary of Irish Mythology, Peter Berresford Ellis

32. Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Folklore of the
Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; "Birth Customs", Clannada na
Gadelica, Tara Nic Scotach bean MacAnTsaoir

33. The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; The Hand Of
Destiny - Folklore and Superstition For Everyday Life, C.J.S.
Thompson; The Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Evil Eye,
Protections & Wards v. 4.5, Iain Mac an tSaoir

34. The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; The Hand Of
Destiny - Folklore and Superstition For Everyday Life, C.J.S.
Thompson; The Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Evil Eye,
Protections & Wards v. 4.5, Iain Mac an tSaoir

35. The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; The Hand Of
Destiny - Folklore and Superstition For Everyday Life, C.J.S.
Thompson; The Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Evil Eye,
Protections & Wards v. 4.5, Iain Mac an tSaoir

36. The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; The Hand Of
Destiny - Folklore and Superstition For Everyday Life, C.J.S.
Thompson; The Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Evil Eye,
Protections & Wards v. 4.5, Iain Mac an tSaoir

37. The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, Anne Ross; The Hand Of
Destiny - Folklore and Superstition For Everyday Life, C.J.S.
Thompson; The Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael; The Evil Eye,
Protections & Wards v. 4.5, Iain Mac an tSaoir

38. Sequence of traditional Events Surrounding Death v.2.0, Cinaet
Scothach and Iain Mac an tSaoir

by Iain MacAnTsaoir

New Russian DNA Discoveries
16:24:51 - Jun 21 2006
Times Read: 27

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

Human DNA is a "biological Internet" superior in many aspects to theartificial one. The latesNew Russian DNA Discoveries

Human DNA is a "biological Internet" superior in many aspects to theartificial one. The latest Russian scientific research directly or
indirectly explains auras, affirmations, remote healing, and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine
in which DNA can be activated by words and frequencies without splicing genes.

Only 10% of our DNA is used for building proteins. It is this subset of DNA that interests Western researchers. The other 90% is termed
"junk." A team of Russian researchers, however, convinced nature knew what it was doing, joined linguists and geneticists in an exploration
of this "junk" DNA. Their findings and conclusions are revolutionary.

According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and in communication. Russian linguists found that the genetic code, especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as
human languages. To prove this they compared the rules of syntax, semantics and the basic structures of grammar between human language
and DNA. They found that the alkaline sequences of our DNA follow a regular "grammar" and have "usage" rules just like languages. This suggests human languages did not appear randomly but reflect our
genetic structure.

Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Peter Gariaev and his colleagues also explored DNA's electromagnetic behavior. Gariaev
concluded, "Living chromosomes function just like holographic
computers using the DNA's own laser radiation." Gariaev and his team
managed, for example, to modulate certain frequencies onto a laser
beam and with it influence DNA frequency and thus genetics.

One revolutionary implication of Gariaev's research is that, to
modulate DNA frequencies, one can simply use human language. Living
DNA (i.e., DNA in living tissue, not in vitro) responds to
language-modulated laser beams and radio waves, provided the proper
frequencies are used. This scientifically explains affirmations,
prayer, hypnosis, etc. While Western researchers cut and splice
genes,
Gariaev and his team invented devices for influencing cellular
metabolism through modulated radio and light waves, keyed to human
language frequencies, thus noninvasively repairing genetic defects.
Using this method, Gariaev's team proved that chromosomes damaged by
X-rays, for instance, can be repaired.

In this manner healing was achieved without any of the side effects
encountered when manipulating single genes. And this was accomplished
by simply applying vibration and language (or sound and intention) to
DNA. This experiment points to the immense power of "wave-genetics,"
an area which, contrary to current molecular biology dogma, has a
greater influence on the formation of organisms than purely
biochemical processes.

Spiritual teachers have known for eons that our genetic code can by
"potentiated" by language--thus the healing effects of prayer,
hypnosis, mantras, etc. Thanks to Gariaev's research, this phenomenon
has now been scientifically explained. The higher developed the
individual healer's consciousness, the less need there is for any
mechanical device. Garaiev himself suggets one can achieve similar
results unassisted by machines.

But the implications of Gariaev's research do not stop here. The
Russian team also found DNA can cause disturbance patterns in the
space matrix, producing small magnetized wormholes of a subquantum
nature. These DNA-activated wormholes, equivalent to Einstein-Rosen
bridges in the vicinity of black holes, are connections between
different areas in the universe through which information can be
transmitted outside the space-time continuum. DNA attracts these bits
of information and delivers them to our consciousness.

In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully utilized for
millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect colonies is
an
example. When a queen ant is separated from her colony, building
continues according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all
work
in the colony stops. Apparently, the queen sends the "building plans"
even from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She
can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In humans
hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains
access to information outside one's empirical knowledge base. Such
hypercommunication is then experienced as "inspiration"
or "intuition."

When hypercommunication occurs, one can observe distinct phenomena in
DNA. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light.
On their monitor screen a characteristic wave pattern formed. When
they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern remained. Many control
experiments showed that the pattern still emanated from the removed
sample, whose energy field apparently remained intact. This effect is
now called the "DNA phantom effect." Apparently, energy from outside
space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the
DNA is removed.

In Vernetzte Intelligenz Fosar and Bludorf examine sources indicative
that in earlier times humanity was, like animals, strongly connected
to group consciousness. To evolve and experience individuality,
humans
forgot hypercommunication almost completely. Now that we are fairly
stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new form of
group consciousness: one in which we attain access to all information
via our DNA. (It is worth noting the striking similarity between this
conclusion and biologist Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance
theory.)

Just as with the Internet, our DNA can feed its own data into the
network, call up data from the network and establish contact with
other participants in the network. Remote (i.e., distance) healing is
thus easily explained as a "networked" genetic phenomenon.
t Russian scientific research directly or
indirectly explains auras, affirmations, remote healing, and much
more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine
in which DNA can be activated by words and frequencies without
splicing genes.

Only 10% of our DNA is used for building proteins. It is this subset
of DNA that interests Western researchers. The other 90% is termed
"junk." A team of Russian researchers, however, convinced nature knew
what it was doing, joined linguists and geneticists in an exploration
of this "junk" DNA. Their findings and conclusions are revolutionary.

According to them, our DNA is not only responsible for the
construction of our body but also serves as data storage and in
communication. Russian linguists found that the genetic code,
especially in the apparently useless 90%, follows the same rules as
human languages. To prove this they compared the rules of syntax,
semantics and the basic structures of grammar between human language
and DNA. They found that the alkaline sequences of our DNA follow a
regular "grammar" and have "usage" rules just like languages. This
suggests human languages did not appear randomly but reflect our
genetic structure.

Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Peter Gariaev and his
colleagues also explored DNA's electromagnetic behavior. Gariaev
concluded, "Living chromosomes function just like holographic
computers using the DNA's own laser radiation." Gariaev and his team
managed, for example, to modulate certain frequencies onto a laser
beam and with it influence DNA frequency and thus genetics.

One revolutionary implication of Gariaev's research is that, to
modulate DNA frequencies, one can simply use human language. Living
DNA (i.e., DNA in living tissue, not in vitro) responds to
language-modulated laser beams and radio waves, provided the proper
frequencies are used. This scientifically explains affirmations,
prayer, hypnosis, etc. While Western researchers cut and splice
genes,
Gariaev and his team invented devices for influencing cellular
metabolism through modulated radio and light waves, keyed to human
language frequencies, thus noninvasively repairing genetic defects.
Using this method, Gariaev's team proved that chromosomes damaged by
X-rays, for instance, can be repaired.

In this manner healing was achieved without any of the side effects
encountered when manipulating single genes. And this was accomplished
by simply applying vibration and language (or sound and intention) to
DNA. This experiment points to the immense power of "wave-genetics,"
an area which, contrary to current molecular biology dogma, has a
greater influence on the formation of organisms than purely
biochemical processes.

Spiritual teachers have known for eons that our genetic code can by
"potentiated" by language--thus the healing effects of prayer,
hypnosis, mantras, etc. Thanks to Gariaev's research, this phenomenon
has now been scientifically explained. The higher developed the
individual healer's consciousness, the less need there is for any
mechanical device. Garaiev himself suggets one can achieve similar
results unassisted by machines.

But the implications of Gariaev's research do not stop here. The
Russian team also found DNA can cause disturbance patterns in the
space matrix, producing small magnetized wormholes of a subquantum
nature. These DNA-activated wormholes, equivalent to Einstein-Rosen
bridges in the vicinity of black holes, are connections between
different areas in the universe through which information can be
transmitted outside the space-time continuum. DNA attracts these bits
of information and delivers them to our consciousness.

In nature, hypercommunication has been successfully utilized for
millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect colonies is
an
example. When a queen ant is separated from her colony, building
continues according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all
work
in the colony stops. Apparently, the queen sends the "building plans"
even from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She
can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In humans
hypercommunication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains
access to information outside one's empirical knowledge base. Such
hypercommunication is then experienced as "inspiration"
or "intuition."

When hypercommunication occurs, one can observe distinct phenomena in
DNA. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light.
On their monitor screen a characteristic wave pattern formed. When
they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern remained. Many control
experiments showed that the pattern still emanated from the removed
sample, whose energy field apparently remained intact. This effect is
now called the "DNA phantom effect." Apparently, energy from outside
space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the
DNA is removed.

In Vernetzte Intelligenz Fosar and Bludorf examine sources indicative
that in earlier times humanity was, like animals, strongly connected
to group consciousness. To evolve and experience individuality,
humans forgot hypercommunication almost completely. Now that we are
fairly stable in our individual consciousness, we can create a new
form of group consciousness: one in which we attain access to all
information via our DNA. (It is worth noting the striking similarity
between this conclusion and biologist Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic
Resonance theory.)

Just as with the Internet, our DNA can feed its own data into the
network, call up data from the network and establish contact with
other participants in the network. Remote (i.e., distance) healing is
thus easily explained as a "networked" genetic phenomenon.

Between the lines
04:58:03 - Jun 19 2006
Times Read: 30

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

SPent an evening at my drawing table, looking at a fresh start. Though the lines began to manifest a form, still I wanted on waiting for the image to come in clear. Spent a lifetime on the edge of the abyss looking down into the eyes of those long passed. Took the leap and dove to plunge in to the icy waters of oblivian. When one opens thier eyes to find they are ankle deep, clawing at the air and they sought was a reflection of all that made them now. We look to far for the answers we seek, when we hold them deep within. You can run a million miles , but you always take yourself along for the ride.
As the picture wove its web of waking dreams I did fortell. Of places lost and violent cost. The fell upon the cystal shards, melding away with fate. Drizzled down in lore of lost, behind masks of hidden eyes. When the picture was complete and complete it well did I. Stood staring at the face of tommarrow and left it to dry.

Vikram and The Vampire Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance
00:17:34 - Jun 19 2006
Times Read: 33

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

Contents

Preface
Preface to the First (1870) Edition
Introduction

THE VAMPIRE'S FIRST STORY.
In which a Man deceives a Woman

THE VAMPIRE'S SECOND STORY.
Of the Relative Villany of Men and Woman

THE VAMPIRE'S THIRD STORY.
Of a High-minded Family

THE VAMPIRE'S FOURTH STORY.
Of a Woman who told the Truth

THE VAMPIRE'S FIFTH STORY.
Of the Thief who Laughed and Wept

THE VAMPIRE'S SIXTH STORY.
In which Three Men dispute about a Woman

THE VAMPIRE'S SEVENTH STORY.
Showng the exceeding Folly of many wise Fools

THE VAMPIRE'S EIGHTH STORY.
Of the Use and Misuse of Magic Pills

THE VAMPIRE'S NINTH STORY.
Showing that a Man's Wife belongs not to his body but to his
Head

THE VAMPIRE'S TENTH STORY.
Of the Marvellous Delicacy of Three Queens

THE VAMPIRE'S ELEVENTH STORY.
Which puzzles Raja Vikram

Conclusion

PREFACE

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history
of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and
animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend
composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the
Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius,
Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of
facetious fictitious literature.

The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King
Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or
Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a
tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the
Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on
this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain
much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It
also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow
themselves to be buried alive, and to appear dead for weeks or
months, and then to return to life again; a curious state of
mesmeric catalepsy, into which they work themselves by
concentrating the mind and abstaining from food - a specimen of
which I have given a practical illustration in the Life of Sir Richard
Burton.

The following translation is rendered peculiarly; valuable and
interesting by Sir Richard Burton's intimate knowledge of the
language. To all who understand the ways of the East, it is as
witty, and as full of what is popularly called "chaff" as it is
possible to be. There is not a dull page in it, and it will especially
please those who delight in the weird and supernatural, the
grotesque, and the wild life.

My husband only gives eleven of the best tales, as it was thought
the translation would prove more interesting in its abbreviated
form.

ISABEL BURTON.

August 18th, 1893.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST (1870) EDITION.

"THE genius of Eastern nations," says an established and
respectable authority, "was, from the earliest times, much turned
towards invention and the love of fiction. The Indians, the
Persians, and the Arabians, were all famous for their fables.
Amongst the ancient Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian
tales, but they have now perished, and, from every account we hear
of them, appear to have been loose and indelicate." Similarly, the
classical dictionaries define "Milesiae fabulae" to be "licentious
themes," "stories of an amatory or mirthful nature," or "ludicrous
and indecent plays." M. Deriege seems indeed to confound them
with the "Moeurs du Temps" illustrated with artistic gouaches,
when he says, "une de ces fables milesiennes, rehaussees de
peintures, que la corruption romaine recherchait alors avec une
folle ardeur."

My friend, Mr. Richard Charnock, F.A.S.L., more correctly
defines Milesian fables to have been originally " certain tales or
novels, composed by Aristides of Miletus "; gay in matter and
graceful in manner. "They were translated into Latin by the
historian Sisenna, the friend of Atticus, and they had a great
success at Rome. Plutarch, in his life of Crassus, tells us that after
the defeat of Carhes (Carrhae?) some Milesiacs were found in the
baggage of the Roman prisoners. The Greek text; and the Latin
translation have long been lost. The only surviving fable is the tale
of Cupid and Psyche,[FN#1] which Apuleius calls 'Milesius
sermo,' and it makes us deeply regret the disappearance of the
others." Besides this there are the remains of Apollodorus and
Conon, and a few traces to be found in Pausanias, Athenaeus, and
the scholiasts.

I do not, therefore, agree with Blair, with the dictionaries, or with
M. Deriege. Miletus, the great maritime city of Asiatic Ionia, was
of old the meeting-place of the East and the West. Here the
Phoenician trader from the Baltic would meet the Hindu
wandering to Intra, from Extra, Gangem; and the Hyperborean
would step on shore side by side with the Nubian and the Aethiop.
Here was produced and published for the use of the then civilized
world, the genuine Oriental apologue, myth and tale combined,
which, by amusing narrative and romantic adventure, insinuates a
lesson in morals or in humanity, of which we often in our days
must fail to perceive the drift. The book of Apuleius, before
quoted, is subject to as many discoveries of recondite meaning as
is Rabelais. As regards the licentiousness of the Milesian fables,
this sign of semi-civilization is still inherent in most Eastern books
of the description which we call "light literature," and the ancestral
tale-teller never collects a larger purse of coppers than when he
relates the worst of his "aurei." But this looseness, resulting from
the separation of the sexes, is accidental, not necessary. The
following collection will show that it can be dispensed with, and
that there is such a thing as camparative purity in Hindu literature.
The author, indeed, almost always takes the trouble to marry his
hero and his heroine, and if he cannot find a priest, he generally
adopts an exceedingly left-hand and Caledonian but legal rite
called "gandharbavivaha.[FN#2]"

The work of Apuleius, as ample internal evidence shows, is
borrowed from the East. The groundwork of the tale is the
metamorphosis of Lucius of Corinth into an ass, and the strange
accidents which precede his recovering the human form.

Another old Hindu story-book relates, in the popular fairy-book
style, the wondrous adventures of the hero and demigod, the great
Gandharba-Sena. That son of Indra, who was also the father of
Vikramajit, the subject of this and another collection, offended the
ruler of the firmament by his fondness for a certain nymph, and
was doomed to wander over earth under the form of a donkey.
Through the interposition of the gods, however, he was permitted
to become a man during the hours of darkness, thus comparing
with the English legend -

Amundeville is lord by day,
But the monk is lord by night.

Whilst labouring under this curse, Gandharba-Sena persuaded the
King of Dhara to give him a daughter in marriage, but it
unfortunately so happened that at the wedding hour he was unable
to show himself in any but asinine shape. After bathing, however,
he proceeded to the assembly, and, hearing songs and music, he
resolved to give them a specimen of his voice.

The guests were filled with sorrow that so beautiful a virgin should
be married to a donkey. They were afraid to express their feelings
to the king, but they could not refrain from smiling, covering their
mouths with their garments. At length some one interrupted the
general silence and said:

"O king, is this the son of Indra? You have found a fine
bridegroom; you are indeed happy; don't delay the marriage; delay
is improper in doing good; we never saw so glorious a wedding! It
is true that we once heard of a camel being married to a jenny-ass;
when the ass, looking up to the camel, said, 'Bless me, what a
bridegroom!' and the camel, hearing the voice of the ass,
exclaimed, 'Bless me, what a musical voice!' In that wedding,
however, the bride and the bridegroom were equal; but in this
marriage, that such a bride should have such a bridegroom is truly
wonderful."

Other Brahmans then present said:

"O king, at the marriage hour, in sign of joy the sacred shell is
blown, but thou hast no need of that" (alluding to the donkey's
braying).

The women all cried out:

"O my mother![FN#3] what is this? at the time of marriage to have
an ass! What a miserable thing! What! will he give that angelic girl
in wedlock to a donkey?"

At length Gandharba-Sena, addressing the king in Sanskrit, urged
him to perform his promise. He reminded his future father-in-law
that there is no act more meritorious than speaking truth; that the
mortal frame is a mere dress, and that wise men never estimate the
value of a person by his clothes. He added that he was in that
shape from the curse of his sire, and that during the night he had
the body of a man. Of his being the son of Indra there could be no
doubt.

Hearing the donkey thus speak Sanskrit, for it was never known
that an ass could discourse in that classical tongue, the minds of
the people were changed, and they confessed that, although he had
an asinine form he was unquestionably the son of Indra. The king,
therefore, gave him his daughter in marriage.[FN#4] The
metamorphosis brings with it many misfortunes and strange
occurrences, and it lasts till Fate in the author's hand restores the
hero to his former shape and honours.

Gandharba-Sena is a quasi-historical personage, who lived in the
century preceding the Christian era. The story had, therefore,
ample time to reach the ears of the learned African Apuleius, who
was born A.D. 130.

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital[FN#5] - a
Vampire or evil spirit which animates dead bodies - is an old and
thoroughly Hindu repertory. It is the rude beginning of that
fictitious history which ripened to the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments, and which, fostered by the genius of Boccaccio,
produced the romance of the chivalrous days, and its last
development, the novel - that prose-epic of modern Europe.

Composed in Sanskrit, "the language of the gods," alias the Latin
of India, it has been translated into all the Prakrit or vernacular and
modern dialects of the great peninsula. The reason why it has not
found favour with the Moslems is doubtless the highly polytheistic
spirit which pervades it; moreover, the Faithful had already a
specimen of that style of composition. This was the Hitopadesa, or
Advice of a Friend, which, as a line in its introduction informs us,
was borrowed from an older book, the Panchatantra, or Five
Chapters. It is a collection of apologues recited by a learned
Brahman, Vishnu Sharma by name, for the edification of his
pupils, the sons of an Indian Raja. They have been adapted to or
translated into a number of languages, notably into Pehlvi and
Persian, Syriac and Turkish, Greek and Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.
And as the Fables of Pilpay,[FN#6] are generally known, by name
at least, to European litterateurs. . Voltaire remarks,[FN#7]
"Quand on fait reflexion que presque toute la terre a ete infatuee de
pareils comes, et qu'ils ont fait l'education du genre humain, on
trouve les fables de Pilpay, Lokman, d'Esope bien raisonnables."
These tales, detached, but strung together by artificial means -
pearls with a thread drawn through them - are manifest precursors
of the Decamerone, or Ten Days. A modern Italian critic describes
the now classical fiction as a collection of one hundred of those
novels which Boccaccio is believed to have read out at the court of
Queen Joanna of Naples, and which later in life were by him
assorted together by a most simple and ingenious contrivance. But
the great Florentine invented neither his stories nor his " plot," if
we may so call it. He wrote in the middle of the fourteenth century
(1344-8) when the West had borrowed many things from the East,
rhymes[FN#8] and romance, lutes and drums, alchemy and
knight-errantry. Many of the "Novelle" are, as Orientalists well
know, to this day sung and recited almost textually by the
wandering tale-tellers, bards, and rhapsodists of Persia and Central
Asia.

The great kshatriya,(soldier) king Vikramaditya,[FN#9] or
Vikramarka, meaning the "Sun of Heroism," plays in India the part
of King Arthur, and of Harun al-Rashid further West. He is a
semi-historical personage. The son of Gandharba-Sena the donkey
and the daughter of the King of Dhara, he was promised by his
father the strength of a thousand male elephants. When his sire
died, his grandfather, the deity Indra, resolved that the babe should
not be born, upon which his mother stabbed herself. But the tragic
event duly happening during the ninth month, Vikram came into
the world by himself, and was carried to Indra, who pitied and
adopted him, and gave him a good education.

The circumstances of his accession to the throne, as will presently
appear, are differently told. Once, however, made King of Malaya,
the modern Malwa, a province of Western Upper India, he so
distinguished himself that the Hindu fabulists, with their usual
brave kind of speaking, have made him "bring the whole earth
under the shadow of one umbrella,"

The last ruler of the race of Mayura, which reigned 318 years, was
Raja-pal. He reigned 25 years, but giving himself up to
effeminacy, his country was invaded by Shakaditya, a king from
the highlands of Kumaon. Vikramaditya, in the fourteenth year of
his reign, pretended to espouse the cause of Raja-pal, attacked and
destroyed Shakaditya, and ascended the throne of Delhi. His
capital was Avanti, or Ujjayani, the modern Ujjain. It was 13 kos
(26 miles) long by 18 miles wide, an area of 468 square miles, but
a trifle in Indian History. He obtained the title of Shakari, "foe of
the Shakas," the Sacae or Scythians, by his victories over that
redoubtable race. In the Kali Yug, or Iron Age, he stands highest
amongst the Hindu kings as the patron of learning. Nine persons
under his patronage, popularly known as the "Nine Gems of
Science," hold in India the honourable position of the Seven Wise
Men of Greece.

These learned persons wrote works in the eighteen original dialects
from which, say the Hindus, all the languages of the earth have
been derived.[FN#10] Dhanwantari enlightened the world upon the
subjects of medicine and of incantations. Kshapanaka treated the
primary elements. Amara-Singha compiled a Sanskrit dictionary
and a philosophical treatise. Shankubetalabhatta composed
comments, and Ghatakarpara a poetical work of no great merit.
The books of Mihira are not mentioned. Varaha produced two
works on astrology and one on arithmetic. And Bararuchi
introduced certain improvements in grammar, commented upon
the incantations, and wrote a poem in praise of King Madhava.

But the most celebrated of all the patronized ones was Kalidasa.
His two dramas, Sakuntala,[FN#11] and Vikram and
Urvasi,[FN#12] have descended to our day; besides which he
produced a poem on the seasons, a work on astronomy, a poetical
history of the gods, and many other books.[FN#13]

Vikramaditya established the Sambat era, dating from A.C. 56.
After a long, happy, and glorious reign, he lost his life in a war
with Shalivahana, King of Pratisthana. That monarch also left
behind him an era called the " Shaka," beginning with A.D. 78. It
is employed, even now, by the Hindus in recording their births,
marriages, and similar occasions.

King Vikramaditya was succeeded by his infant son
Vikrama-Sena, and father and son reigned over a period of 93
years. At last the latter was supplanted by a devotee named
Samudra-pala, who entered into his body by miraculous means.
The usurper reigned 24 years and 2 months, and the throne of
Delhi continued in the hands of his sixteen successors, who
reigned 641 years and 3 months. Vikrama-pala,, the last, was slain
in battle by Tilaka-chandra, King of Vaharannah[FN#14].

It is not pretended that the words of these Hindu tales are
preserved to the letter. The question about the metamorphosis of
cats into tigers, for instance, proceeded from a Gem of Learning in
a university much nearer home than Gaur. Similarly the learned
and still living Mgr. Gaume (Traite du Saint-Esprit, p.. 81) joins
Camerarius in the belief that serpents bite women rather than men.
And he quotes (p.. 192) Cornelius a Lapide, who informs us that
the leopard is the produce of a lioness with a hyena or a bard..

The merit of the old stories lies in their suggestiveness and in their
general applicability. I have ventured to remedy the conciseness of
their language, and to clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood.

To My Uncle,

ROBERT BAGSHAW, OF DOVERCOURT,

These Tales,
That Will Remind Him Of A Land Which
He Knows So Well,
Are Affectionately Inscribed.

VIKRAM AND THE VAMPIRE.

INTRODUCTION

The sage Bhavabhuti -- Eastern teller of these tales -- after making
his initiatory and propitiatory conge to Ganesha, Lord of Incepts,
informs the reader that this book is a string of fine pearls to be
hung round the neck of human intelligence; a fragrant flower to be
borne on the turband of mental wisdom; a jewel of pure gold,
which becomes the brow of all supreme minds; and a handful of
powdered rubies, whose tonic effects will appear palpably upon
the mental digestion of every patient. Finally, that by aid of the
lessons inculcated in the following pages, man will pass happily
through this world into the state of absorption, where fables will be
no longer required.

He then teaches us how Vikramaditya the Brave became King of
Ujjayani.

Some nineteen centuries ago, the renowned city of Ujjayani
witnessed the birth of a prince to whom was given the gigantic
name Vikramaditya. Even the Sanskrit-speaking people, who are
not usually pressed for time, shortened it to "Vikram", and a little
further West it would infallibly have been docked down to "Vik".

Vikram was the second son of an old king Gandharba-Sena,
concerning whom little favourable has reached posterity, except
that he became an ass, married four queens, and had by them six
sons, each of whom was more learned and powerful than the other.
It so happened that in course of time the father died. Thereupon his
eldest heir, who was known as Shank, succeeded to the carpet of
Rajaship, and was instantly murdered by Vikram, his "scorpion",
the hero of the following pages.[FN#15]

By this act of vigour and manly decision, which all younger-
brother princes should devoutly imitate, Vikram having obtained
the title of Bir, or the Brave, made himself Raja. He began to rule
well, and the gods so favoured him that day by day his dominions
increased. At length he became lord of all India, and having firmly
established his government, he instituted an era--an uncommon
feat for a mere monarch, especially when hereditary.

The steps,[FN#16] says the historian, which he took to arrive at
that pinnacle of grandeur, were these:

The old King calling his two grandsons Bhartari-hari and
Vikramaditya, gave them good counsel respecting their future
learning. They were told to master everything, a certain way not to
succeed in anything. They were diligently to learn grammar, the
Scriptures, and all the religious sciences. They were to become
familiar with military tactics, international law, and music, the
riding of horses and elephants-- especially the latter--the driving of
chariots, and the use of the broadsword, the bow, and the mogdars
or Indian clubs. They were ordered to be skilful in all kinds of
games, in leaping and running, in besieging forts, in forming and
breaking bodies of troops; they were to endeavour to excel in
every princely quality, to be cunning in ascertaining the power of
an enemy, how to make war, to perform journeys, to sit in the
presence of the nobles, to separate the different sides of a question,
to form alliances, to distinguish between the innocent and the
guilty, to assign proper punishments to the wicked, to exercise
authority with perfect justice, and to be liberal. The boys were then
sent to school, and were placed under the care of excellent
teachers, where they became truly famous. Whilst under pupilage,
the eldest was allowed all the power necessary to obtain a
knowledge of royal affairs, and he was not invested with the regal
office till in these preparatory steps he had given full satisfaction
to his subjects, who expressed high approval of his conduct.

The two brothers often conversed on the duties of kings, when the
great Vikramaditya gave the great Bhartari-hari the following
valuable advice[FN#17]:

"As Indra, during the four rainy months, fills the earth with water,
so a king should replenish his treasury with money. As Surya the
sun, in warming the earth eight months, does not scorch it, so a
king, in drawing revenues from his people, ought not to oppress
them. As Vayu, the wind, surrounds and fills everything, so the
king by his officers and spies should become acquainted with the
affairs and circumstances of his whole people. As Yama judges
men without partiality or prejudice, and punishes the guilty, so
should a king chastise, without favour, all offenders. As Varuna,
the regent of water, binds with his pasha or divine noose his
enemies, so let a king bind every malefactor safely in prison. As
Chandra,[FN#18] the moon, by his cheering light gives pleasure to
all, thus should a king, by gifts and generosity, make his people
happy. And as Prithwi, the earth, sustains all alike, so should a
king feel an equal affection and forbearance towards every one."

Become a monarch, Vikram meditated deeply upon what is said of
monarchs:--"A king is fire and air; he is both sun and moon; he is
the god of criminal justice; he is the genius of wealth; he is the
regent of water; he is the lord of the firmament; he is a powerful
divinity who appears in human shape." He reflected with some
satisfaction that the scriptures had made him absolute, had left the
lives and properties of all his subjects to his arbitrary will, had
pronounced him to be an incarnate deity, and had threatened to
punish with death even ideas derogatory to his honour.

He punctually observed all the ordinances laid down by the author
of the Niti, or institutes of government. His night and day were
divided into sixteen pahars or portions, each one hour and a half,
and they were disposed of as follows:--

Before dawn Vikram was awakened by a servant appointed to this
special duty. He swallowed-- a thing allowed only to a khshatriya
or warrior-- Mithridatic every morning on the saliva[FN#19], and
he made the cooks taste every dish before he ate of it. As soon as
he had risen, the pages in waiting repeated his splendid qualities,
and as he left his sleeping-room in full dress, several Brahmans
rehearsed the praises of the gods. Presently he bathed, worshipped
his guardian deity, again heard hymns, drank a little water, and
saw alms distributed to the poor. He ended this watch by auditing
his accounts.

Next entering his court, he placed himself amidst the assembly. He
was always armed when he received strangers, and he caused even
women to be searched for concealed weapons. He was surrounded
by so many spies and so artful, that of a thousand, no two ever told
the same tale. At the levee, on his right sat his relations, the
Brahmans, and men of distinguished birth. The other castes were
on the left, and close to him stood the ministers and those whom he
delighted to consult. Afar in front gathered the bards chanting the
praises of the gods and of the king; also the charioteers,
elephanteers, horsemen, and soldiers of valour. Amongst the
learned men in those assemblies there were ever some who were
well instructed in all the scriptures, and others who had studied in
one particular school of philosophy, and were acquainted only with
the works on divine wisdom, or with those on justice, civil and
criminal, on the arts, mineralogy or the practice of physic; also
persons cunning in all kinds of customs; riding-masters, dancing-
masters, teachers of good behaviour, examiners, tasters, mimics,
mountebanks, and others, who all attended the court and awaited
the king's commands. He here pronounced judgment in suits of
appeal. His poets wrote about him:

The lord of lone splendour an instant suspends
His course at mid~noon, ere he westward descends;
And brief are the moments our young monarch knows,
Devoted to pleasure or paid to repose!

Before the second sandhya,[FN#20] or noon, about the beginning
of the third watch, he recited the names of the gods, bathed, and
broke his fast in his private room; then rising from food, he was
amused by singers and dancing girls. The labours of the day now
became lighter. After eating he retired, repeating the name of his
guardian deity, visited the temples, saluted the gods conversed
with the priests, and proceeded to receive and to distribute
presents. Fifthly, he discussed political questions with his
ministers and councillors.

On the announcement of the herald that it was the sixth watch--
about 2 or 3 P.M.--Vikram allowed himself to follow his own
inclinations, to regulate his family, and to transact business of a
private and personal nature.

After gaining strength by rest, he proceeded to review his troops,
examining the men, saluting the officers, and holding military
councils. At sunset he bathed a third time and performed the five
sacraments of listening to a prelection of the Veda; making
oblations to the manes; sacrificing to Fire in honour of the deities;
giving rice to dumb creatures; and receiving guests with due
ceremonies. He spent the evening amidst a select company of wise,
learned, and pious men, conversing on different subjects, and
reviewing the business of the day.

The night was distributed with equal care. During the first portion
Vikram received the reports which his spies and envoys, dressed in
every disguise, brought to him about his enemies. Against the
latter he ceased not to use the five arts, namely--dividing the
kingdom, bribes, mischief-making, negotiations, and brute-force--
especially preferring the first two and the last. His forethought and
prudence taught him to regard all his nearest neighbours and their
allies as hostile. The powers beyond those natural enemies he
considered friendly because they were the foes of his foes. And all
the remoter nations he looked upon as neutrals, in a transitional or
provisional state as it were, till they became either his neighbours'
neighbours, or his own neighbours, that is to say, his friends or his
foes.

This important duty finished he supped, and at the end of the third
watch he retired to sleep, which was not allowed to last beyond
three hours. In the sixth watch he arose and purified himself. The
seventh was devoted to holding private consultations with his
ministers, and to furnishing the officers of government with
requisite instructions. The eighth or last watch was spent with the
Purohita or priest, and with Brahmans, hailing the dawn with its
appropriate rites; he then bathed, made the customary offerings,
and prayed in some unfrequented place near pure water.

And throughout these occupations he bore in mind the duty of
kings, namely--to pursue every object till it be accomplished; to
succour all dependents, and hospitably to receive guests, however
numerous. He was generous to his subjects respecting taxes, and
kind of speech; yet he was inexorable as death in the punishment
of offenses. He rarely hunted, and he visited his pleasure gardens
only on stated days. He acted in his own dominions with justice;
he chastised foreign foes with rigour; he behaved generously to
Brahmans, and he avoided favouritism amongst his friends. In war
he never slew a suppliant, a spectator, a person asleep or
undressed, or anyone that showed fear. Whatever country he
conquered, offerings were presented to its gods, and effects and
money were given to the reverends. But what benefited him most
was his attention to the creature comforts of the nine Gems of
Science: those eminent men ate and drank themselves into fits of
enthusiasm, and ended by immortalizing their patron's name.

Become Vikram the Great he established his court at a delightful
and beautiful location rich in the best of water. The country was
difficult of access, and artificially made incapable of supporting a
host of invaders, but four great roads met near the city. The capital
was surrounded with durable ramparts, having gates of defence,
and near it was a mountain fortress, under the especial charge of a
great captain.

The metropolis was well garrisoned and provisioned, and it
surrounded the royal palace, a noble building without as well as
within. Grandeur seemed embodied there, and Prosperity had made
it her own. The nearer ground, viewed from the terraces and
pleasure pavilions, was a lovely mingling of rock and mountain,
plain and valley, field and fallow, crystal lake and glittering
stream. The banks of the winding Lavana were fringed with meads
whose herbage, pearly with morning dew, afforded choicest
grazing for the sacred cow, and were dotted with perfumed clumps
of Bo-trees, tamarinds, and holy figs: in one place Vikram planted
100,000 in a single orchard and gave them to his spiritual advisers.
The river valley separated the stream from a belt of forest growth
which extended to a hill range, dark with impervious jungle, and
cleared here and there for the cultivator's village. Behind it, rose
another sub-range, wooded with a lower bush and already blue
with air, whilst in the background towered range upon range, here
rising abruptly into points and peaks, there ramp-shaped or wall-
formed, with sheer descents, and all of light azure hue adorned
with glories of silver and gold.

After reigning for some years, Vikram the Brave found himself at
the age of thirty, a staid and sober middle-aged man, He had
several sons--daughters are naught in India--by his several wives,
and he had some paternal affection for nearly all--except of course,
for his eldest son, a youth who seemed to conduct himself as
though he had a claim to the succession. In fact, the king seemed
to have taken up his abode for life at Ujjayani, when suddenly he
bethought himself, "I must visit those countries of whose names I
am ever hearing." The fact is, he had determined to spy out in
disguise the lands of all his foes, and to find the best means of
bringing against them his formidable army.

* * * * * *

We now learn how Bhartari Raja becomes Regent of Ujjayani.

Having thus resolved, Vikram the Brave gave the government into
the charge of a younger brother, Bhartari Raja, and in the garb of a
religious mendicant, accompanied by Dharma Dhwaj, his second
son, a youth bordering on the age of puberty, he began to travel
from city to city, and from forest to forest.

The Regent was of a settled melancholic turn of mind, having lost
in early youth a very peculiar wife. One day, whilst out hunting, he
happened to pass a funeral pyre, upon which a Brahman's widow
had just become Sati (a holy woman) with the greatest fortitude.
On his return home he related the adventure to Sita Rani, his
spouse, and she at once made reply that virtuous women die with
their husbands, killed by the fire of grief, not by the flames of the
pile. To prove her truth the prince, after an affectionate farewell,
rode forth to the chase, and presently sent back the suite with his
robes torn and stained, to report his accidental death. Sita perished
upon the spot, and the widower remained inconsolable--for a time.

He led the dullest of lives, and took to himself sundry spouses, all
equally distinguished for birth, beauty, and modesty. Like his
brother, he performed all the proper devoirs of a Raja, rising
before the day to finish his ablutions, to worship the gods, and to
do due obeisance to the Brahmans. He then ascended the throne, to
judge his people according to the Shastra, carefully keeping in
subjection lust, anger, avarice, folly, drunkenness, and pride;
preserving himself from being seduced by the love of gaming and
of the chase; restraining his desire for dancing, singing, and
playing on musical instruments, and refraining from sleep during
daytime, from wine, from molesting men of worth, from dice, from
putting human beings to death by artful means, from useless
travelling, and from holding any one guilty without the
commission of a crime. His levees were in a hall decently
splendid, and he was distinguished only by an umbrella of
peacock's feathers; he received all complainants, petitioners, and
presenters of offenses with kind looks and soft words. He united to
himself the seven or eight wise councillors, and the sober and
virtuous secretary that formed the high cabinet of his royal brother,
and they met in some secret lonely spot, as a mountain, a terrace, a
bower or a forest, whence women, parrots, and other talkative
birds were carefully excluded.

And at the end of this useful and somewhat laborious day, he
retired to his private apartments, and, after listening to spiritual
songs and to soft music, he fell asleep. Sometimes he would
summon his brother's "Nine Gems of Science," and give ear to
their learned discourses. But it was observed that the viceroy
reserved this exercise for nights when he was troubled with
insomnia--the words of wisdom being to him an infallible remedy
for that disorder.

Thus passed onwards his youth, doing nothing that it could desire,
forbidden all pleasures because they were unprincely, and working
in the palace harder than in the pauper's hut. Having, however,
fortunately for himself, few predilections and no imagination, he
began to pride himself upon being a philosopher. Much business
from an early age had dulled his wits, which were never of the
most brilliant; and in the steadily increasing torpidity of his spirit,
he traced the germs of that quietude which forms the highest
happiness of man in this storm of matter called the world. He
therefore allowed himself but one friend of his soul. He retained, I
have said, his brother's seven or eight ministers; he was constant in
attendance upon the Brahman priests who officiated at the palace,
and who kept the impious from touching sacred property; and he
was courteous to the commander-in-chief who directed his
warriors, to the officers of justice who inflicted punishment upon
offenders, and to the lords of towns, varying in number from one
to a thousand. But he placed an intimate of his own in the high
position of confidential councillor, the ambassador to regulate war
and peace.

Mahi-pala was a person of noble birth, endowed with shining
abilities, popular, dexterous in business, acquainted with foreign
parts, famed for eloquence and intrepidity, and as Menu the
Lawgiver advises, remarkably handsome.

Bhartari Raja, as I have said, became a quietist and a philosopher.
But Kama,[FN#21] the bright god who exerts his sway over the
three worlds, heaven and earth and grewsome Hades,[FN#22] had
marked out the prince once more as the victim of his blossom-
tipped shafts and his flowery bow. How, indeed, could he hope to
escape the doom which has fallen equally upon Brahma the
Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and dreadful Shiva the Three-eyed
Destroyer[FN#23]?

By reason of her exceeding beauty, her face was a full moon
shining in the clearest sky; her hair was the purple cloud of autumn
when, gravid with rain, it hangs low over earth; and her
complexion mocked the pale waxen hue of the large-flowered
jasmine. Her eyes were those of the timid antelope; her lips were
as red as those of the pomegranate's bud, and when they opened,
from them distilled a fountain of ambrosia. Her neck was like a
pigeon's; her hand the pink lining of the conch-shell; her waist a
leopard's; her feet the softest lotuses. In a word, a model of grace
and loveliness was Dangalah Rani, Raja Bhartari's last and
youngest wife.

The warrior laid down his arms before her; the politician spoke out
every secret in her presence. The religious prince would have
slaughtered a cow--that sole unforgivable sin--to save one of her
eyelashes: the absolute king would not drink a cup of water
without her permission; the staid philosopher, the sober quietist, to
win from her the shadow of a smile, would have danced before her
like a singing-girl. So desperately enamoured became Bhartari
Raja.

It is written, however, that love, alas! breeds not love; and so it
happened to the Regent. The warmth of his affection, instead of
animating his wife, annoyed her; his protestations wearied her; his
vows gave her the headache; and his caresses were a colic that
made her blood run cold. Of course, the prince perceived nothing,
being lost in wonder and admiration of the beauty's coyness and
coquetry. And as women must give away their hearts, whether
asked or not, so the lovely Dangalah Rani lost no time in lavishing
all the passion of her idle soul upon Mahi-pala, the handsome
ambassador of peace and war. By this means the three were happy
and were contented; their felicity, however, being built on a rotten
foundation, could not long endure. It soon ended in the following
extraordinary way.

In the city of Ujjayani,[FN#24] within sight of the palace, dwelt a
Brahman and his wife, who, being old and poor, and having
nothing else to do, had applied themselves to the practice of
austere devotion.[FN#25] They fasted and refrained from drink,
they stood on their heads and held their arms for weeks in the air;
they prayed till their knees were like pads; they disciplined
themselves with scourges of wire; and they walked about unclad in
the cold season, and in summer they sat within a circle of flaming
wood, till they became the envy and admiration of all the plebeian
gods that inhabit the lower heavens. In fine, as a reward for their
exceeding piety, the venerable pair received at the hands of a
celestial messenger an apple of the tree Kalpavriksha-- a fruit
which has the virtue of conferring eternal life upon him that tastes
it.

Scarcely had the god disappeared, when the Brahman, opening his
toothless mouth, prepared to eat the fruit of immortality. Then his
wife addressed him in these words, shedding copious tears the
while:

"To die, O man, is a passing pain; to be poor is an interminable
anguish. Surely our present lot is the penalty of some great crime
committed by us in a past state of being.[FN#26] Callest thou this
state life? Better we die at once, and so escape the woes of the
world!"

Hearing these words, the Brahman sat undecided, with open jaws
and eyes fixed upon the apple. Presently he found tongue: "I have
accepted the fruit, and have brought it here; but having heard thy
speech, my intellect hath wasted away; now I will do whatever
thou pointest out."

The wife resumed her discourse, which had been interrupted by a
more than usually copious flow of tears. "Moreover, O husband,
we are old, and what are the enjoyments of the stricken in years?
Truly quoth the poet--

Die loved in youth, not hated in age.

If that fruit could have restored thy dimmed eyes, and deaf ears,
and blunted taste, and warmth of love, I had not spoken to thee
thus."

After which the Brahman threw away the apple, to the great joy of
his wife, who felt a natural indignation at the prospect of seeing
her goodman become immortal, whilst she still remained subject to
the laws of death; but she concealed this motive in the depths of
her thought, enlarging, as women are apt to do, upon everything
but the truth. And she spoke with such success, that the priest was
about to toss in his rage the heavenly fruit into the fire,
reproaching the gods as if by sending it they had done him an
injury. Then the wife snatched it out of his hand, and telling him it
was too precious to be wasted, bade him arise and gird his loins
and wend him to the Regent's palace, and offer him the fruit--as
King Vikram was absent--with a right reverend brahmanical
benediction. She concluded with impressing upon her unworldly
husband the necessity of requiring a large sum of money as a
return for his inestimable gift. "By this means, "she said, "thou
mayst promote thy present and future welfare.[FN#27]"

Then the Brahman went forth, and standing in the presence of the
Raja, told him all things touching the fruit, concluding with "O,
mighty prince! vouchsafe to accept this tribute, and bestow wealth
upon me. I shall be happy in your living long!"

Bhartari Raja led the supplicant into an inner strongroom, where
stood heaps of the finest gold-dust, and bade him carry away all
that he could; this the priest did, not forgetting to fill even his
eloquent and toothless mouth with the precious metal. Having
dismissed the devotee groaning under the burden, the Regent
entered the apartments of his wives, and having summoned the
beautiful Queen Dangalah Rani, gave her the fruit, and said, "Eat
this, light of my eyes! This fruit--joy of my heart!--will make thee
everlastingly young and beautiful."

The pretty queen, placing both hands upon her husband's bosom,
kissed his eyes and lips, and sweetly smiling on his face--for great
is the guile of women--whispered, "Eat it thyself, dear one, or at
least share it with me; for what is life and what is youth without
the presence of those we love?" But the Raja, whose heart was
melted by these unusual words, put her away tenderly, and, having
explained that the fruit would serve for only one person, departed.

Whereupon the pretty queen, sweetly smiling as before, slipped the
precious present into her pocket. When the Regent was transacting
business in the hall of audience she sent for the ambassador who
regulated war and peace, and presented him with the apple in a
manner at least as tender as that with which it had been offered to
her.

Then the ambassador, after slipping the fruit into his pocket also,
retired from the presence of the pretty queen, and meeting Lakha,
one of the maids of honour, explained to her its wonderful power,
and gave it to her as a token of his love. But the maid of honour,
being an ambitious girl, determined that the fruit was a fit present
to set before the Regent in the absence of the King. Bhartari Raja
accepted it, bestowed on her great wealth, and dismissed her with
many thanks.

He then took up the apple and looked at it with eyes brimful of
tears, for he knew the whole extent of his misfortune. His heart
ached, he felt a loathing for the world, and he said with sighs and
groans[FN#28]:

"Of what value are these delusions of wealth and affection, whose
sweetness endures for a moment and becomes eternal bitterness?
Love is like the drunkard's cup: delicious is the first drink, palling
are the draughts that succeed it, and most distasteful are the dregs.
What is life but a restless vision of imaginary pleasures and of real
pains, from which the only waking is the terrible day of death? The
affection of this world is of no use, since, in consequence of it, we
fall at last into hell. For which reason it is best to practice the
austerities of religion, that the Deity may bestow upon us hereafter
that happiness which he refuses to us here!"

Thus did Bhartari Raja determine to abandon the world. But before
setting out for the forest, he could not refrain from seeing the
queen once more, so hot was the flame which Kama had kindled in
his heart. He therefore went to the apartments of his women, and
having caused Dangalah Rani to be summoned, he asked her what
had become of the fruit which he had given to her. She answered
that, according to his command, she had eaten it. Upon which the
Regent showed her the apple, and she beholding it stood aghast,
unable to make any reply. The Raja gave careful orders for her
beheading; he then went out, and having had the fruit washed, ate
it. He quitted the throne to be a jogi, or religious mendicant, and
without communicating with any one departed into the jungle.
There he became such a devotee that death had no power over him,
and he is wandering still. But some say that he was duly absorbed
into the essence of the Deity.

* * * * * *

We are next told how the valiant Vikram returned to his own
country.

Thus Vikram's throne remained empty. When the news reached
King Indra, Regent of the Lower Firmament and Protector of
Earthly Monarchs, he sent Prithwi Pala, a fierce giant,[FN#29] to
defend the city of Ujjayani till such time as its lawful master might
reappear, and the guardian used to keep watch and ward night and
day over his trust.

In less than a year the valorous Raja Vikram became thoroughly
tired of wandering about the woods half dressed: now suffering
from famine, then exposed to the attacks of wild beasts, and at all
times very ill at ease. He reflected also that he was not doing his
duty to his wives and children; that the heir-apparent would
probably make the worst use of the parental absence; and finally,
that his subjects, deprived of his fatherly care, had been left in the
hands of a man who, for ought he could say, was not worthy of the
high trust. He had also spied out all the weak points of friend and
foe. Whilst these and other equally weighty considerations were
hanging about the Raja's mind, he heard a rumour of the state of
things spread abroad; that Bhartari, the regent, having abdicated
his throne, had gone away into the forest. Then quoth Vikram to
his son,"We have ended our wayfarings, now let us turn our steps
homewards!"

The gong was striking the mysterious hour of midnight as the king
and the young prince approached the principal gate. And they were
pushing through it when a monstrous figure rose up before them
and called out with a fearful voice, "Who are ye, and where are ye
going ? Stand and deliver your names!"

"I am Raja Vikram," rejoined the king, half choked with rage, "and
I am come to mine own city. Who art thou that darest to stop or
stay me?"

"That question is easily answered," cried Prithwi Pala the giant, in
his roaring voice; "the gods have sent me to protect Ujjayani. If
thou be really Raja Vikram, prove thyself a man: first fight with
me, and then return to thine own."

The warrior king cried "Sadhu!" wanting nothing better. He girt his
girdle tight round his loins, summoned his opponent into the empty
space beyond the gate, told him to stand on guard, and presently
began to devise some means of closing with or running in upon
him. The giant's fists were large as watermelons, and his knotted
arms whistled through the air like falling trees, threatening fatal
blows. Besides which the Raja's head scarcely reached the giant's
stomach, and the latter, each time he struck out, whooped so
abominably loud, that no human nerves could remain unshaken.

At last Vikram's good luck prevailed. The giant's left foot slipped,
and the hero, seizing his antagonist's other leg, began to trip him
up. At the same moment the young prince, hastening to his parent's
assistance, jumped viciously upon the enemy's naked toes. By their
united exertions they brought him to the ground, when the son sat
down upon his stomach, making himself as weighty as he well
could, whilst the father, climbing up to the monster's throat, placed
himself astride upon it, and pressing both thumbs upon his eyes,
threatened to blind him if he would not yield.

Then the giant, modifying the bellow of his voice, cried out--

"O Raja, thou hast overthrown me, and I grant thee thy life."

"Surely thou art mad, monster," replied the king, in jeering tone,
half laughing, half angry. "To whom grantest thou life? If I desire
it I can kill thee; how, then, cost thou talk about granting me my
life?"

"Vikram of Ujjayani," said the giant, "be not too proud! I will save
thee from a nearly impending death. Only hearken to the tale
which I have to tell thee, and use thy judgment, and act upon it. So
shalt thou rule the world free from care, and live without danger,
and die happily."

"Proceed," quoth the Raja, after a moment's thought, dismounting
from the giant's throat, and beginning to listen with all his ears.

The giant raised himself from the ground, and when in a sitting
posture, began in solemn tones to speak as follows:

"In short, the history of the matter is, that three men were born in
this same city of Ujjayani, in the same lunar mansion, in the same
division of the great circle described upon the ecliptic, and in the
same period of time. You, the first, were born in the house of a
king. The second was an oilman's son, who was slain by the third,
a jogi, or anchorite, who kills all he can, wafting the sweet scent of
human sacrifice to the nostrils of Durga, goddess of destruction.
Moreover, the holy man, after compassing the death of the
oilman's son, has suspended him head downwards from a mimosa
tree in a cemetery. He is now anxiously plotting thy destruction.
He hath murdered his own child-- "

"And how came an anchorite to have a child?" asked Raja Vikram,
incredulously.

"That is what I am about to tell thee," replied the giant. "In the
good days of thy generous father, Gandharba-Sena, as the court
was taking its pleasure in the forest, they saw a devotee, or rather a
devotee's head, protruding from a hole in the ground. The white
ants had surrounded his body with a case of earth, and had made
their home upon his skin. All kinds of insects and small animals
crawled up and down the face, yet not a muscle moved. Wasps had
hung their nests to its temples, and scorpions wandered in and out
of the matted and clotted hair; yet the hermit felt them not. He
spoke to no one; he received no gifts; and had it not been for the
opening of his nostrils, as he continually inhaled the pungent
smoke of a thorn fire, man would have deemed him dead. Such
were his religious austerities.

"Thy father marvelled much at the sight, and rode home in
profound thought. That evening, as he sat in the hall of audience,
he could speak of nothing but the devotee; and his curiosity soon
rose to such a pitch, that he proclaimed about the city a reward of
one hundred gold pieces to any one that could bring to court this
anchorite of his own free will.

"Shortly afterwards, Vasantasena, a singing and dancing girl more
celebrated for wit and beauty than for sagesse or discretion,
appeared before thy sire, and offered for the petty inducement of a
gold bangle to bring the anchorite into the palace, carrying a baby
on his shoulder.

"The king hearing her speak was astonished, gave her a betel leaf
in token that he held her to her promise, and permitted her to
depart, which she did with a laugh of triumph.

"Vasantasena went directly to the jungle, where she found the
pious man faint with thirst, shriveled with hunger, and half dead
with heat and cold. She cautiously put out the fire. Then, having
prepared a confection, she approached from behind and rubbed
upon his lips a little of the sweetmeat, which he licked up with
great relish. Thereupon she made more and gave it to him. After
two days of this generous diet he gained some strength, and on the
third, as he felt a finger upon his mouth, he opened his eyes and
said, "Why hast thou come here?"

"The girl, who had her story in readiness, replied: "I am the
daughter of a deity, and have practiced religious observances in the
heavenly regions. I have now come into this forest!" And the
devotee, who began to think how much more pleasant is such
society than solitude, asked her where her hut was, and requested
to be led there.

"Then Vasantasena, having unearthed the holy man and compelled
him to purify himself, led him to the abode which she had caused
to be built for herself in the wood. She explained its luxuries by the
nature of her vow, which bound her to indulge in costly apparel, in
food with six flavours, and in every kind of indulgence.[FN#30] In
course of time the hermit learned to follow her example; he gave
up inhaling smoke, and he began to eat and drink as a daily
occupation.

"At length Kama began to trouble him. Briefly the saint and
saintess were made man and wife, by the simple form of
matrimony called the Gandharba-vivaha,[FN#31] and about ten
months afterwards a son was born to them. Thus the anchorite
came to have a child.

"Remained Vasantasena's last feat. Some months passed: then she
said to the devotee her husband, 'Oh saint! let us now, having
finished our devotions, perform a pilgrimage to some sacred place,
that all the sins of our bodies may be washed away, after which we
will die and depart into everlasting happiness.' Cajoled by these
speeches, the hermit mounted his child upon his shoulder and
followed her where she went--directly into Raja Gandharba-Sena's
palace.

"When the king and the ministers and the officers and the courtiers
saw Vasantasena, and her spouse carrying the baby, they
recognized her from afar. The Raja exclaimed, 'Lo! this is the very
singing girl who went forth to bring back the devotee. 'And all
replied: 'O great monarch! thou speakest truly; this is the very
same woman. And be pleased to observe that whatever things she,
having asked leave to undertake, went forth to do, all these she
hath done!' Then gathering around her they asked her all manner of
questions, as if the whole matter had been the lightest and the most
laughable thing in the world.

"But the anchorite, having heard the speeches of the king and his
courtiers, thought to himself, 'They have done this for the purpose
of taking away the fruits of my penance.' Cursing them all with
terrible curses, and taking up his child, he left the hall. Thence he
went to the forest, slaughtered the innocent, and began to practice
austerities with a view to revenge that hour, and having slain his
child, he will attempt thy life. His prayers have been heard. In the
first place they deprived thee of thy father. Secondly, they cast
enmity between thee and thy brother, thus dooming him to an
untimely end. Thirdly, they are now working thy ruin. The
anchorite's design is to offer up a king and a king's son to his
patroness Durga, and by virtue of such devotional act he will
obtain the sovereignty of the whole world!

"But I have promised, O Vikram, to save thee, if such be the will
of Fortune, from impending destruction. Therefore hearken well
unto my words. Distrust them that dwell amongst the dead, and
remember that it is lawful and right to strike off his head that
would slay thee. So shalt thou rule the universal earth, and leave
behind thee an immortal name!"

Suddenly Prithwi Pala, the giant, ceased speaking, and
disappeared. Vikram and his son then passed through the city
gates, feeling their limbs to be certain that no bones were broken,
and thinking over the scene that had occurred.

* * * * * *

We now are informed how the valiant King Vikram met with the
Vampire.

It was the spring season when the Raja returned, and the Holi
festival[FN#32] caused dancing and singing in every house.
Ujjayani was extraordinarily happy and joyful at the return of her
ruler, who joined in her gladness with all his kingly heart. The
faces and dresses of the public were red and yellow with gulal and
abir,--perfumed powders,[FN#33]--which were sprinkled upon one
another in token of merriment. Musicians deafened the citizens'
ears, dancing girls performed till ready to faint with fatigue, the
manufacturers of comfits made their fortunes, and the Nine Gems
of Science celebrated the auspicious day with the most long-
winded odes. The royal hero, decked in regal attire, and attended
by many thousands of state palanquins glittering with their various
ornaments, and escorted by a suite of a hundred kingly personages,
with their martial array of the four hosts, of cavalry, elephants,
chariots, and infantry, and accompanied by Amazon girls, lovely
as the suite of the gods, himself a personification of majesty,
bearing the white parasol of dominion, with a golden staff and
tassels, began once more to reign.

After the first pleasures of return, the king applied himself
unremittingly to good government and to eradicating the abuses
which had crept into the administration during the period of his
wanderings.

Mindful of the wise saying, "if the Rajadid not punish the guilty,
the stronger would roast the weaker like a fish on the spit," he
began the work of reform with an iron hand. He confiscated the
property of a councillor who had the reputation of taking bribes; he
branded the forehead of a sudra or servile man whose breath smelt
of ardent spirits, and a goldsmith having been detected in fraud he
ordered him to be cut in shreds with razors as the law in its mercy
directs. In the case of a notorious evil-speaker he opened the back
of his head and had his tongue drawn through the wound. A few
murderers he burned alive on iron beds, praying the while that
Vishnu might have mercy upon their souls. His spies were ordered,
as the shastra called "The Prince" advises, to mix with robbers and
thieves with a view of leading them into situations where they
might most easily be entrapped, and once or twice when the
fellows were too wary, he seized them and their relations and
impaled them all, thereby conclusively proving, without any
mistake, that he was king of earth.

With the sex feminine he was equally severe. A woman convicted
of having poisoned an elderly husband in order to marry a younger
man was thrown to the dogs, which speedily devoured her. He
punished simple infidelity by cutting off the offender's nose--an
admirable practice, which is not only a severe penalty to the
culprit, but also a standing warning to others, and an efficient
preventative to any recurrence of the fault. Faithlessness combined
with bad example or brazen-facedness was further treated by being
led in solemn procession through the bazar mounted on a
diminutive and crop-eared donkey, with the face turned towards
the crupper. After a few such examples the women of Ujjayani
became almost modest; it is the fault of man when they are not
tolerably well behaved in one point at least.

Every day as Vikram sat upon the judgment-seat, trying causes and
punishing offenses, he narrowly observed the speech, the gestures,
and the countenances of the various criminals and litigants and
their witnesses. Ever suspecting women, as I have said, and
holding them to be the root of all evil, he never failed when some
sin or crime more horrible than usual came before him, to ask the
accused, "Who is she?" and the suddenness of the question often
elicited the truth by accident. For there can be nothing thoroughly
and entirely bad unless a woman is at the bottom of it; and,
knowing this, Raja Vikram made certain notable hits under the
most improbable circumstances, which had almost given him a
reputation for omniscience. But this is easily explained: a man
intent upon squaring the circle will see squares in circles wherever
he looks, and sometimes he will find them.

In disputed cases of money claims, the king adhered strictly to
established practice, and consulted persons learned in the law. He
seldom decided a cause on his own judgment, and he showed great
temper and patience in bearing with rough language from irritated
plaintiffs and defendants, from the infirm, and from old men
beyond eighty. That humble petitioners might not be baulked in
having access to the "fountain of justice," he caused an iron box to
be suspended by a chain from the windows of his sleeping
apartment. Every morning he ordered the box to be opened before
him, and listened to all the placets at full length. Even in this
simple process he displayed abundant cautiousness. For, having
forgotten what little of the humanities he had mastered in his
youth, he would hand the paper to a secretary whose business it
was to read it out before him; after which operation the man of
letters was sent into an inner room, and the petition was placed in
the hands of a second scribe. Once it so happened by the bungling
of the deceitful kayasths(clerks) that an important difference was
found to occur in the same sheet. So upon strict inquiry one
secretary lost his ears and the other his right hand. After this
petitions were rarely if ever falsified.

The Raja Vikram also lost no time in attacking the cities and towns
and villages of his enemies, but the people rose to a man against
him, and hewing his army to pieces with their weapons,
vanquished him. This took place so often that he despaired of
bringing all the earth under the shadow of his umbrella.

At length on one occasion when near a village he listened to a
conversation of the inhabitants. A woman having baked some
cakes was giving them to her child, who leaving the edges would
eat only the middle. On his asking for another cake, she cried,
"This boy's way is like Vikram's in his attempt to conquer the
world!" On his inquiring "Mother, why, what am I doing; and what
has Vikram done?" " Thou, my boy," she replied, "throwing away
the outside of the cake eatest the middle only. Vikram also in his
ambition, without subduing the frontiers before attacking the
towns, invades the heart of the country and lays it waste. On that
account, both the townspeople and others rising, close upon him
from the frontiers to the centre, and destroy his army. That is his
folly."

Vikram took notice of the woman's words. He strengthened his
army and resumed his attack on the provinces and cities, beginning
with the frontiers, reducing the outer towns and stationing troops
in the intervals. Thus he proceeded regularly with his invasions.
After a respite, adopting the same system and marshalling huge
armies, he reduced in regular course each kingdom and province
till he became monarch of the whole world.

It so happened that one day as Vikram the Brave sat upon the
judgment-seat, a young merchant, by name Mal Deo, who had
lately arrived at Ujjayani with loaded camels and elephants, and
with the reputation of immense wealth, entered the palace court.
Having been received with extreme condescension, he gave into
the king's hand a fruit which he had brought in his own, and then
spreading a prayer carpet on the floor he sat down. Presently, after
a quarter of an hour, he arose and went away. When he had gone
the king reflected in his mind: "Under this disguise, perhaps, is the
very man of whom the giant spoke." Suspecting this, he did not eat
the fruit, but calling the master of the household he gave the
present to him, ordering him to keep it in a very careful manner.
The young merchant, however, continued every day to court the
honour of an interview, each time presenting a similar gift.

By chance one morning Raja Vikram went, attended by his
ministers, to see his stables. At this time the young merchant also
arrived there, and in the usual manner placed a fruit in the royal
hand. As the king was thoughtfully tossing it in the air, it
accidentally fell from his fingers to the ground. Then the monkey,
who was tethered amongst the horses to draw calamities from their
heads,[FN#34] snatched it up and tore it to pieces. Whereupon a
ruby of such size and water came forth that the king and his
ministers, beholding its brilliancy, gave vent to expressions of
wonder.

Quoth Vikram to the young merchant severely--for his suspicions
were now thoroughly roused--"Why hast thou given to us all this
wealth?"

"O great king," replied Mal Deo, demurely, "it is written in the
scriptures (shastra) 'Of Ceremony' that 'we must not go empty-
handed into the presence of the following persons, namely, Rajas,
spiritual teachers, judges, young maidens, and old women whose
daughters we would marry.' But why, O Vikram, cost thou speak
of one ruby only, since in each of the fruits which I have laid at thy
feet there is a similar jewel?" Having heard this speech, the king
said to the master of his household, "Bring all the fruits which I
have entrusted to thee." The treasurer, on receiving the royal
command, immediately brought them, and having split them, there
was found in each one a ruby, one and all equally perfect in size
and water. Raja Vibram beholding such treasures was excessively
pleased. Having sent for a lapidary, he ordered him to examine the
rubies, saying, "We cannot take anything with us out of this world.
Virtue is a noble quality to possess here below--so tell justly what
is the value of each of these gems.[FN#35]"

To so moral a speech the lapidary replied, " Maha-Raja[FN#36]!
thou hast said truly; whoever possesses virtue, possesses
everything; virtue indeed accompanies us always, and is of
advantage in both worlds. Hear, O great king! each gem is perfect
in colour, quality and beauty. If I were to say that the value of each
was ten million millions of suvarnas (gold pieces), even then thou
couldst not understand its real worth. In fact, each ruby would buy
one of the seven regions into which the earth is divided."

The king on hearing this was delighted, although his suspicions
were not satisfied; and, having bestowed a robe of honour upon the
lapidary, dismissed him. Thereon, taking the young merchant's
hand, he led him into the palace, seated him upon his own carpet in
presence of the court, and began to say, "My entire kingdom is not
worth one of these rubies: tell me how it is that thou who buyest
and sellest hast given me such and so many pearls?"

Mal Deo replied: "O great king, the speaking of matters like the
following in public is not right; these things--prayers, spells, drugs,
good qualities, household affairs, the eating of forbidden food, and
the evil we may have heard of our neighbour--should not be
discussed in full assembly. Privately I will disclose to thee my
wishes. This is the way of the world; when an affair comes to six
ears, it does not remain secret; if a matter is confided to four ears it
may escape further hearing; and if to two ears even Brahma the
Creator does not know it; how then can any rumour of it come to
man?"

Having heard this speech, Raja Vikram took Mal Deo aside, and
began to ask him, saying, "O generous man! you have given me so
many rubies, and even for a single day you have not eaten food
with me; I am exceedingly ashamed, tell me what you desire."

"Raja," said the young merchant, "I am not Mal Deo, but Shanta-
Shil,[FN#37] a devotee. I am about to perform spells, incantations
and magical rites on the banks of the river Godavari, in a large
smashana, a cemetery where bodies are burned. By this means the
Eight Powers of Nature will all become mine. This thing I ask of
you as alms, that you and the young prince Dharma Dhwaj will
pass one night with me, doing my bidding. By you remaining near
me my incantations will be successful."

The valiant Vikram nearly started from his seat at the word
cemetery, but, like a ruler of men, he restrained his face from
expressing his feelings, and he presently replied, "Good, we will
come, tell us on what day!"

"You are to come to me," said the devotee, "armed, but without
followers, on the Monday evening the 14th of the dark half of the
month Bhadra.[FN#38]" The Raja said: "Do you go your ways, we
will certainly come." In this manner, having received a promise
from the king, and having taken leave, the devotee returned to his
house: thence he repaired to the temple, and having made
preparations, and taken all the necessary things, he went back into
the cemetery and sat down to his ceremonies.

The valiant Vikram, on the other hand, retired into an inner
apartment, to consult his own judgment about an adventure with
which, for fear of ridicule, he was unwilling to acquaint even the
most trustworthy of his ministers.

In due time came the evening moon's day, the 14th of the dark half
of the month Bhadra. As the short twilight fell gloomily on earth,
the warrior king accompanied by his son, with turband-ends tied
under their chins, and with trusty blades tucked under their arms
ready for foes, human, bestial, or devilish, slipped out unseen
through the palace wicket, and took the road leading to the
cemetery on the river bank.

Dark and drear was the night. Urged by the furious blast of the
lingering winter-rains, masses of bistre-coloured cloud, like the
forms of unwieldy beasts, rolled heavily over the firmament plain.
Whenever the crescent of the young moon, rising from an horizon
sable as the sad Tamala's hue,[FN#39] glanced upon the wayfarers,
it was no brighter than the fine tip of an elephant's tusk protruding
from the muddy wave. A heavy storm was impending; big drops

fell in showers from the forest trees as they groaned under the
blast, and beneath the gloomy avenue the clayey ground gleamed
ghastly white. As the Raja and his son advanced, a faint ray of
light, like the line of pure gold streaking the dark surface of the
touchstone, caught their eyes, and directed their footsteps towards
the cemetery.

When Vikram came upon the open space on the riverbank where
corpses were burned, he hesitated for a moment to tread its impure
ground. But seeing his son undismayed, he advanced boldly,
trampling upon remnants of bones, and only covering his mouth
with his turband-end.

Presently, at the further extremity of the smashana, or burning
ground, appeared a group. By the lurid flames that flared and
flickered round the half-extinguished funeral pyres, with remnants
of their dreadful loads, Raja Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj could
note the several features of the ill-omened spot. There was an outer
circle of hideous bestial forms; tigers were roaring, and elephants
were trumpeting; wolves, whose foul hairy coats blazed with
sparks of bluish phosphoric light, were devouring the remnants of
human bodies; foxes, jackals, and hyenas were disputing over their
prey; whilst bears were chewing the livers of children. The space
within was peopled by a multitude of fiends. There were the subtle
bodies of men that had escaped their grosser frames prowling
about the charnel ground, where their corpses had been reduced to
ashes, or hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which they
were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of
those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs;
and skeletons, whose mouldy bones were held together by bits of
blackened sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim.
Malignant witches with shriveled skins, horrid eyes and distorted
forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; whilst spectres and
goblins now stood motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as
if in fits, leaped, danced, and tumbled before their evocator. The
air was filled with shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning
of the storm-wind, with the hooting of the owl, with the jackal's
long wild cry, and with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river,
from whose banks the earth-slip thundered in its fall.

In the midst of all, close to the fire which lit up his evil
countenance, sat Shanta-Shil, the jogi, with the banner that denoted
his calling and his magic staff planted in the ground behind him.
He was clad in the ochre-coloured loin-wrap of his class; from his
head streamed long tangled locks of hair like horsehair; his black
body was striped with lines of chalk, and a girdle of thighbones
encircled his waist. His face was smeared with ashes from a
funeral pyre, and his eyes, fixed as those of a statue, gleamed from
this mask with an infernal light of hate. His cheeks were shaven,
and he had not forgotten to draw the horizontal sectarian mark. But
this was of blood; and Vikram, as he drew near saw that he was
playing upon a human skull with two shank bones, making music
for the horrid revelry.

Now Raja Vibram, as has been shown by his encounter with
Indra's watchman, was a bold prince, and he was cautious as he
was brave. The sight of a human being in the midst of these terrors
raised his mettle; he determined to prove himself a hero, and
feeling that the critical moment was now come, he hoped to rid
himself and his house forever of the family curse that hovered over
them.

For a moment he thought of the giant's words, "And remember that
it is lawful and right to strike off his head that would slay thee." A
stroke with his good sword might at once and effectually put an
end to the danger. But then he remembered that he had passed his
royal word to do the devotee's bidding that night. Besides, he felt
assured that the hour for action had not yet sounded.

These reflections having passed through his mind with the rapid
course of a star that has lost its honours,[FN#40] Vikram
courteously saluted Shanta-Shil. The jogi briefly replied, "Come
sit down, both of ye." The father and son took their places, by no
means surprised or frightened by the devil dances before and
around them. Presently the valiant Raja reminded the devotee that
he was come to perform his promise, and lastly asked, "What
commands are there for us?"

The jogi replied, "O king, since you have come, just perform one
piece of business. About two kos[FN#41] hence, in a southerly
direction, there is another place where dead bodies are burned; and
in that place is a mimosa tree, on which a body is hanging. Bring it
to me immediately."

Raja Vikram took his son's hand, unwilling to leave him in such
company; and, catching up a fire-brand, went rapidly away in the
proper direction. He was now certain that Shanta-Shil was the
anchorite who, enraged by his father, had resolved his destruction;
and his uppermost thought was a firm resolve "to breakfast upon
his enemy, ere his enemy could dine upon him." He muttered this
old saying as he went, whilst the tom-toming of the anchorite upon
the skull resounded in his ears, and the devil-crowd, which had
held its peace during his meeting with Shanta-Shil, broke out again
in an infernal din of whoops and screams, yells and laughter.

The darkness of the night was frightful, the gloom deepened till it
was hardly possible to walk. The clouds opened their fountains,
raining so that you would say they could never rain again.
Lightning blazed forth with more than the light of day, and the roar
of the thunder caused the earth to shake. Baleful gleams tipped the
black cones of the trees and fitfully scampered like fireflies over
the waste. Unclean goblins dogged the travellers and threw
themselves upon the ground in their path and obstructed them in a
thousand different ways. Huge snakes, whose mouths distilled
blood and black venom, kept clinging around their legs in the
roughest part of the road, till they were persuaded to loose their
hold either by the sword or by reciting a spell. In fact, there were
so many horrors and such a tumult and noise that even a brave man
would have faltered, yet the king kept on his way.

At length having passed over, somehow or other, a very difficult
road, the Raja arrived at the smashana, or burning place pointed
out by the jogi. Suddenly he sighted the tree where from root to top
every branch and leaf was in a blaze of crimson flame. And when
he, still dauntless, advanced towards it, a clamour continued to be
raised, and voices kept crying, "Kill them! kill them! seize them!
seize them! take care that they do not get away! let them scorch
themselves to cinders! let them suffer the pains of Patala.[FN#42]"

Far from being terrified by this state of things the valiant Raja
increased in boldness, seeing a prospect of an end to his adventure.
Approaching the tree he felt that the fire did not burn him, and so
he sat there for a while to observe the body, which hung, head
downwards, from a branch a little above him.

Its eyes, which were wide open, were of a greenish-brown, and
never twinkled; its hair also was brown,[FN#43] and brown was its
face--three several shades which, notwithstanding, approached one
another in an unpleasant way, as in an over-dried cocoa-nut. Its
body was thin and ribbed like a skeleton or a bamboo framework,
and as it held on to a bough, like a flying fox,[FN#44] by the toe-
tips, its drawn muscles stood out as if they were ropes of coin.
Blood it appeared to have none, or there would have been a
decided determination of that curious juice to the head; and as the
Raja handled its skin it felt icy cold and clammy as might a snake.
The only sign of life was the whisking of a ragged little tail much
resembling a goat's.

Judging from these signs the brave king at once determined the
creature to be a Baital--a Vampire. For a short time he was puzzled
to reconcile the appearance with the words of the giant, who
informed him that the anchorite had hung the oilman's son to a
tree. But soon he explained to himself the difficulty, remembering
the exceeding cunning of jogis and other reverend men, and
determining that his enemy, the better to deceive him, had
doubtless altered the shape and form of the young oilman's body.

With this idea, Vikram was pleased, saying, "My trouble has been
productive of fruit." Remained the task of carrying the Vampire to
Shanta-Shil the devotee. Having taken his sword, the Raja
fearlessly climbed the tree, and ordering his son to stand away
from below, clutched the Vampire's hair with one hand, and with
the other struck such a blow of the sword, that the bough was cut
and the thing fell heavily upon the ground. Immediately on falling
it gnashed its teeth and began to utter a loud wailing cry like the
screams of an infant in pain. Vikram having heard the sound of its
lamentations, was pleased, and began to say to himself, "This devil
must be alive." Then nimbly sliding down the trunk, he made a
captive of the body, and asked " Who art thou?"

Scarcely, however, had the words passed the royal lips, when the
Vampire slipped through the fingers like a worm, and uttering a
loud shout of laughter, rose in the air with its legs uppermost, and
as before suspended itself by its toes to another bough. And there it
swung to and fro, moved by the violence of its cachinnation.

"Decidedly this is the young oilman!" exclaimed the Raja, after he
had stood for a minute or two with mouth open, gazing upwards
and wondering what he should do next. Presently he directed
Dharma Dhwaj not to lose an instant in laying hands upon the
thing when it next might touch the ground, and then he again
swarmed up the tree. Having reached his former position, he once
more seized the Baital's hair, and with all the force of his arms--for
he was beginning to feel really angry--he tore it from its hold and
dashed it to the ground, saying, "O wretch, tell me who thou art?"

Then, as before, the Raja slid deftly down the trunk, and hurried to
the aid of his son, who in obedience to orders, had fixed his grasp
upon the Vampire's neck. Then, too, as before, the Vampire,
laughing aloud, slipped through their fingers and returned to its
dangling-place.

To fail twice was too much for Raja Vikram's temper, which was
right kingly and somewhat hot. This time he bade his son strike the
Baital's head with his sword. Then, more like a wounded bear of
Himalaya than a prince who had established an era, he hurried up
the tree, and directed a furious blow with his sabre at the
Vampire's lean and calfless legs. The violence of the stroke made
its toes loose their hold of the bough, and when it touched the
ground, Dharma Dhwaj's blade fell heavily upon its matted brown
hair. But the blows appeared to have lighted on iron-wood--to
judge at least from the behaviour of the Baital, who no sooner
heard the question, "O wretch, who art thou?" than it returned in
loud glee and merriment to its old position.

Five mortal times did Raja Vikram repeat this profitless labour.
But so far from losing heart, he quite entered into the spirit of the
adventure. Indeed he would have continued climbing up that tree
and taking that corpse under his arm--he found his sword useless--
and bringing it down, and asking it who it was, and seeing it slip
through his fingers, six times sixty times, or till the end of the
fourth and present age,[FN#45] had such extreme resolution been
required.

However, it was not necessary. On the seventh time of falling, the
Baital, instead of eluding its capturer's grasp, allowed itself to be
seized, merely remarking that "even the gods cannot resist a
thoroughly obstinate man."[FN#46] And seeing that the stranger,
for the better protection of his prize, had stripped off his waistcloth
and was making it into a bag, the Vampire thought proper to seek
the most favourable conditions for himself, and asked his
conqueror who he was, and what he was about to do?

"Vile wretch," replied the breathless hero, "know me to be Vikram
the Great, Raja of Ujjayani, and I bear thee to a man who is
amusing himself by drumming to devils on a skull."

"Remember the old saying, mighty Vikram!" said the Baital, with
a sneer, "that many a tongue has cut many a throat. I have yielded
to thy resolution and I am about to accompany thee, bound to thy
back like a beggar's wallet. But hearken to my words, ere we set
out upon the way. I am of a loquacious disposition, and it is well
nigh an hour's walk between this tree and the place where thy
friend sits, favouring his friends with the peculiar music which
they love. Therefore, I shall try to distract my thoughts, which
otherwise might not be of the most pleasing nature, by means of
sprightly tales and profitable reflections. Sages and men of sense
spend their days in the delights of light and heavy literature,
whereas dolts and fools waste time in sleep and idleness. And I
purpose to ask thee a number of questions, concerning which we
will, if it seems fit to thee, make this covenant:

"Whenever thou answerest me, either compelled by Fate or
entrapped by my cunning into so doing, or thereby gratifying thy
vanity and conceit, I leave thee and return to my favourite place
and position in the siras-tree, but when thou shalt remain silent,
confused, and at a loss to reply, either through humility or thereby
confessing thine ignorance, and impotence, and want of
comprehension, then will I allow thee, of mine own free will, to
place me before thine employer. Perhaps I should not say so; it
may sound like bribing thee, but--take my counsel, and mortify thy
pride, and assumption, and arrogance, and haughtiness, as soon as
possible. So shalt thou derive from me a benefit which none but
myself can bestow."

Raja Vikram hearing these rough words, so strange to his royal
ear, winced; then he rejoiced that his heir apparent was not near;
then he looked round at his son Dharma Dhwaj, to see if he was
impertinent enough to be amused by the Baital. But the first glance
showed him the young prince busily employed in pinching and
screwing the monster's legs, so as to make it fit better into the
cloth. Vikram then seized the ends of the waistcloth, twisted them
into a convenient form for handling, stooped, raised the bundle
with a jerk, tossed it over his shoulder, and bidding his son not to
lag behind, set off at a round pace towards the western end of the
cemetery.

The shower had ceased, and, as they gained ground, the weather
greatly improved.

The Vampire asked a few indifferent questions about the wind and
the rain and the mud. When he received no answer, he began to
feel uncomfortable, and he broke out with these words: "O King
Vikram, listen to the true story which I am about to tell thee."

THE VAMPIRE'S FIRST STORY.

In which a man deceives a woman.

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut,
to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning, the young man, accompanied by the son of his
father's pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far
into the jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a
beautiful "tank [FN#47]" of a prodigious size. It was surrounded
by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of
cut-stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with
turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The
substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair,
and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose thick shade
the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the birds
sang sweetly; the grey squirrels [FN#48] chirruped joyously as
they coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the
pendent llianas the longtailed monkeys were swinging sportively.
The bountiful hand of Sravana [FN#49] had spread the earthen
rampart with a carpet of the softest grass and many-hued wild
flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees and myriads of
bright winged insects; and flocks of water fowl, wild geese
Brahmini ducks, bitterns, herons, and cranes, male and female,
were feeding on the narrow strip of brilliant green that belted the
long deep pool, amongst the broad-leaved lotuses with the lovely
blossoms, splashing through the pellucid waves, and basking
happily in the genial sun.

The prince and his friend wondered when they saw the beautiful
tank in the midst of a wild forest, and made many vain conjectures
about it. They dismounted, tethered their horses, and threw their
weapons upon the ground; then, having washed their hands and
faces, they entered a shrine dedicated to Mahadeva, and there
began to worship the presiding deity.

Whilst they were making their offerings, a bevy of maidens,
accompanied by a crowd of female slaves, descended the opposite
flight of steps. They stood there for a time, talking and laughing
and looking about them to see if any alligators infested the waters.
When convinced that the tank was safe, they disrobed themselves
in order to bathe. It was truly a splendid spectacle

"Concerning which the less said the better," interrupted
RajaVikram in an offended tone.[FN#50]

--but did not last long. The Raja's daughter -- for the principal
maiden was a princess -- soon left her companions, who were
scooping up water with their palms and dashing it over one
another's heads, and proceeded to perform the rites of purification,
meditation, and worship. Then she began strolling with a friend
under the shade of a small mango grove.

The prince also left his companion sitting in prayer, and walked
forth into the forest. Suddenly the eyes of the Raja's son and the
Raja's daughter met. She started back with a little scream. He was
fascinated by her beauty, and began to say to himself, " O thou vile
Karma,[FN#51] why worriest thou me?"

Hearing this, the maiden smiled encouragement, but the poor
youth, between palpitation of the heart and hesitation about what
to say, was so confused that his tongue crave to his teeth. She
raised her eyebrows a little. There is nothing which women despise
in a man more than modesty, [FN#52] for mo-des-ty --

A violent shaking of the bag which hung behind Vikram's royal
back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior
king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to
preserve more decorum in his observations.

Still the prince stood before her with downcast eyes and suffused
cheeks: even the spur of contempt failed to arouse his energies.
Then the maiden called to her friend, who was picking jasmine
flowers so as not to witness the scene, and angrily asked why that
strange man was allowed to stand and stare at her? The friend, in
hot wrath, threatened to call the slave, and throw Vajramukut into
the pond unless he instantly went away with his impudence. But as
the prince was rooted to the spot, and really had not heard a word
of what had been said to him, the two women were obliged to
make the first move.

As they almost reached the tank, the beautiful maiden turned her
head to see what the poor modest youth was doing.

Vajramukut was formed in every way to catch a woman's eye. The
Raja's daughter therefore half forgave him his offence of mod ----.
Again she sweetly smiled, disclosing two rows of little opals. Then
descending to the water's edge, she stooped down and plucked a
lotus This she worshipped; next she placed it in her hair, then she
put it in her ear, then she bit it with her teeth, then she trod upon it
with her foot, then she raised it up again, and lastly she stuck it in
her bosom. After which she mounted her conveyance and went
home to her friends; whilst the prince, having become thoroughly
desponding and drowned in grief at separation from her, returned
to the minister's son.

"Females!" ejaculated the minister's son, speaking to himself in a
careless tone, when, his prayer finished, he left the temple, and sat
down upon the tank steps to enjoy the breeze. He presently drew a
roll of paper from under his waist-belt, and in a short time was
engrossed with his study. The women seeing this conduct, exerted
themselves in every possible way of wile to attract his attention
and to distract his soul. They succeeded only so far as to make him
roll his head with a smile, and to remember that such is always the
custom of man's bane; after which he turned over a fresh page of
manuscript. And although he presently began to wonder what had
become of the prince his master, he did not look up even once
from his study.

He was a philosopher, that young man. But after all, Raja Vikram,
what is mortal philosophy? Nothing but another name for
indifference! Who was ever philosophical about a thing truly loved
or really hated? -- no one! Philosophy, says Shankharacharya, is
either a gift of nature or the reward of study. But I, the Baital, the
devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold
desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has
survived his desires? A young philosopher? - a cold-blooded
youth! An elderly philosopher? --a leuco-phlegmatic old man!
Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your
Rajaship's Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such wise
fools.

Then the prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, " O
friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from
Indra's heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent
kings, or the child of an earthly Raja, I cannot say."

"Describe her," said the statesman in embryo.

"Her face," quoth the prince, "was that of the full moon, her hair
like a swarm of bees hanging from the blossoms of the acacia, the
corners of her eyes touched her ears, her lips were sweet with lunar
ambrosia, her waist was that of a lion, and her walk the walk of a
king goose. [FN#53] As a garment, she was white; as a season, the
spring; as a flower, the jasmine; as a speaker, the kokila bird; as a
perfume, musk; as a beauty, Kamadeva; and as a being, Love. And
if she does not come into my possession I will not live; this I have
certainly determined upon."

The young minister, who had heard his prince say the same thing
more than once before, did not attach great importance to these
awful words. He merely remarked that, unless they mounted at
once, night would surprise them in the forest. Then the two young
men returned to their horses, untethered them, drew on their
bridles, saddled them, and catching up their weapons, rode slowly
towards the Raja's palace. During the three hours of return hardly a
word passed between the pair. Vajramukut not only avoided
speaking; he never once replied till addressed thrice in the loudest
voice.

The young minister put no more questions, "for," quoth he to
himself, "when the prince wants my counsel, he will apply for it."
In this point he had borrowed wisdom from his father, who held in
peculiar horror the giving of unasked- for advice. So, when he saw
that conversation was irksome to his master, he held his peace and
meditated upon what he called his "day-thought." It was his
practice to choose every morning some tough food for reflection,
and to chew the cud of it in his mind at times when, without such
employment, his wits would have gone wool-gathering. You may
imagine, Raja Vikram, that with a few years of this head work, the
minister's son became a very crafty young person.

After the second day the Prince Vajramukut, being restless from
grief at separation, fretted himself into a fever. Having given up
writing, reading, drinking, sleeping, the affairs entrusted to him by
his father, and everything else, he sat down, as he said, to die. He
used constantly to paint the portrait of the beautiful lotus gatherer,
and to lie gazing upon it with tearful eyes; then he would start up
and tear it to pieces and beat his forehead, and begin another
picture of a yet more beautiful face.

At last, as the pradhan's son had foreseen, he was summoned by
the young Raja, whom he found upon his bed, looking yellow and
complaining bitterly of headache. Frequent discussions upon the
subject of the tender passion had passed between the two youths,
and one of them had ever spoken of it so very disrespectfully that
the other felt ashamed to introduce it. But when his friend, with a
view to provoke communicativeness, advised a course of boiled
and bitter herbs and great attention to diet, quoting the hemistich
attributed to the learned physician Charndatta

A fever starve, but feed a cold,

the unhappy Vajramukut's fortitude abandoned him; he burst into
tears, and exclaimed," Whosoever enters upon the path of love
cannot survive it; and if (by chance) he should live, what is life to
him but a prolongation of his misery?"

"Yea," replied the minister's son, "the sage hath said --

The road of love is that which hath no beginning nor end;
Take thou heed of thyself, man I ere thou place foot upon it.

And the wise, knowing that there are three things whose effect
upon himself no man can foretell --namely, desire of woman, the
dice-box, and the drinking of ardent spirits - find total abstinence
from them the best of rules. Yet, after all, if there is no cow, we
must milk the bull."

The advice was, of course, excellent, but the hapless lover could
not help thinking that on this occasion it came a little too late.
However, after a pause he returned to the subject and said, "I have
ventured to tread that dangerous way, be its end pain or pleasure,
happiness or destruction." He then hung down his head and sighed
from the bottom of his heart.

"She is the person who appeared to us at the tank?" asked the
pradhan's son, moved to compassion by the state of his master.

The prince assented.

"O great king," resumed the minister's son, "at the time of going
away had she said anything to you? or had you said anything to
her?"

"Nothing!" replied the other laconically, when he found his friend
beginning to take an interest in the affair.

"Then," said the minister's son, "it will be exceedingly difficult to
get possession of her."

"Then," repeated the Raja's son, "I am doomed to death; to an early
and melancholy death!"

"Humph!" ejaculated the young statesman rather impatiently, "did
she make any sign, or give any hint? Let me know all that
happened: half confidences are worse than none."

Upon which the prince related everything that took place by the
side of the tank, bewailing the false shame which had made him
dumb, and concluding with her pantomime.

The pradhan's son took thought for a while. He thereupon seized
the opportunity of representing to his master all the evil effects of
bashfulness when women are concerned, and advised him, as he
would be a happy lover, to brazen his countenance for the next
interview.

Which the young Raja faithfully promised to do.

"And, now," said the other, "be comforted, O my master! I know
her name and her dwelling-place. When she suddenly plucked the
lotus flower and worshipped it, she thanked the gods for having
blessed her with a sight of your beauty."

Vajramukut smiled, the first time for the last month.

"When she applied it to her ear, it was as if she would have
explained to thee, 'I am a daughter of the Carnatic: [FN#54] and
when she bit it with her teeth, she meant to say that 'My father is
Raja Dantawat, [FN#55]' who, by-the-bye, has been, is, and ever
will be, a mortal foe to thy father."

Vajramukut shuddered.

"When she put it under her foot it meant, 'My name is Padmavati.
[FN#56]'"

Vajramukut uttered a cry of joy.

"And when she placed it in her bosom, 'You are truly dwelling in
my heart' was meant to be understood."

At these words the young Raja started up full of new life, and after
praising with enthusiasm the wondrous sagacity of his dear friend,
begged him by some contrivance to obtain the permission of his
parents, and to conduct him to her city. The minister's son easily
got leave for Vajramukut to travel, under pretext that his body
required change of water, and his mind change of scene. They both
dressed and armed themselves for the journey, and having taken
some jewels, mounted their horses and followed the road in that
direction in which the princess had gone.

Arrived after some days at the capital of the Carnatic, the
minister's son having disguised his master and himself in the garb
of travelling traders, alighted and pitched his little tent upon a clear
bit of ground in one of the suburbs. He then proceeded to inquire
for a wise woman, wanting, he said, to have his fortune told. When
the prince asked him what this meant, he replied that elderly dames
who professionally predict the future are never above [ministering
to the present, and therefore that, in such circumstances, they are
the properest persons to be consulted.

"Is this a treatise upon the subject of immorality, devil?"
demanded the King Vikram ferociously. The Baital declared that it
was not, but that he must tell his story.

The person addressed pointed to an old woman who, seated before
the door of her hut, was spinning at her wheel. Then the young
men went up to her with polite salutations and said, "Mother, we
are travelling traders, and our stock is coming after us; we have
come on in advance for the purpose of finding a place to live in. If
you will give us a house, we will remain there and pay you
highly."

The old woman, who was a physiognomist as well as a
fortune-teller, looked at the faces of the young men and liked
them, because their brows were wide, and their mouths denoted
generosity. Having listened to their words, she took pity upon them
and said kindly, "This hovel is yours, my masters, remain here as
long as you please." Then she led them into an inner room, again
welcomed them, lamented the poorness of her abode, and begged
them to lie down and rest themselves.

After some interval of time the old woman came to them once
more, and sitting down began to gossip. The minister's son upon
this asked her, "How is it with thy family, thy relatives, and
connections; and what are thy means of subsistence?" She replied,
``My son is a favourite servant in the household of our great king
Dantawat, and your slave is the wet-nurse of the Princess
Padmavati, his eldest child. From the coming on of old age," she
added, "I dwell in this house, but the king provides for my eating
and drinking. I go once a day to see the girl, who is a miracle of
beauty and goodness, wit and accomplishments, and returning
thence, I bear my own griefs at home. [FN#57]''

In a few days the young Vajramukut had, by his liberality, soft
speech, and good looks, made such progress in nurse Lakshmi's
affections that, by the advice of his companion, he ventured to
broach the subject ever nearest his heart. He begged his hostess,
when she went on the morrow to visit the charming Padmavati,
that she would be kind enough to slip a bit of paper into the
princess's hand.

"Son," she replied, delighted with the proposal -- and what old
woman would not be? --"there is no need for putting off so urgent
an affair till the morrow. Get your paper ready, and I will
immediately give it."

Trembling with pleasure, the prince ran to find his friend, who was
seated in the garden reading, as usual, and told him what the old
nurse had engaged to do. He then began to debate about how he
should write his letter, to cull sentences and to weigh phrases;
whether "light of my eyes" was not too trite, and "blood of my
liver" rather too forcible. At this the minister's son smiled, and
bade the prince not trouble his head with composition. He then
drew his inkstand from his waist shawl, nibbed a reed pen, and
choosing a piece of pink and flowered paper, he wrote upon it a
few lines. He then folded it, gummed it, sketched a lotus flower
upon the outside, and handing it to the young prince, told him to
give it to their hostess, and that all would be well.

The old woman took her staff in her hand and hobbled straight to
the palace. Arrived there, she found the Raja's daughter sitting
alone in her apartment. The maiden, seeing her nurse, immediately
arose, and making a respectful bow, led her to a seat and began the
most affectionate inquiries. After giving her blessing and sitting
for some time and chatting about indifferent matters, the nurse
said, " O daughter! in infancy I reared and nourished thee, now the
Bhagwan (Deity) has rewarded me by giving thee stature, beauty,
health, and goodness. My heart only longs to see the happiness of
thy womanhood, [FN#58] after which I shall depart in peace. I
implore thee read this paper, given to me by the handsomest and
the properest young man that my eyes have ever seen."

The princess, glancing at the lotus on the outside of the note,
slowly unfolded it and perused its contents, which were as follows:

1.

She was to me the pearl that clings
To sands all hid from mortal
sight,
Yet fit for diadems of kings,
The pure and lovely light.

2.

She was to me the gleam of sun
That breaks the gloom of wintry
day;
One moment shone my soul upon,
Then passed --how soon! - away.

3.

She was to me the dreams of bliss
That float the dying eyes before,
For one short hour shed happiness,
And fly to bless no more.

4.

O light, again upon me shine;
O pearl, again delight my eyes;
O dreams of bliss, again be mine! --
No! earth may not be Paradise.

I must not forget to remark, parenthetically, that the minister's son,
in order to make these lines generally useful, had provided them
with a last stanza in triplicate. "For lovers," he said sagely," are
either in the optative mood, the desperative, or the exultative."
This time he had used the optative. For the desperative he would
substitute:

4.

The joys of life lie dead, lie dead,
The light of day is quenched in
gloom
The spark of hope my heart hath fled
--
What now witholds me from the
tomb?

And this was the termination exultative, as he called it:

4.

O joy I the pearl is mine again,
Once more the day is bright and
clear,
And now 'tis real, then 'twas vain,
My dream of bliss - O heaven is
here!

The Princess Padmavati having perused this doggrel with a
contemptuous look, tore off the first word of the last line, and said
to the nurse, angrily, "Get thee gone, O mother of Yama, [FN#59]
O unfortunate creature, and take back this answer" --giving her the
scrap of paper -- "to the fool who writes such bad verses. I wonder
where he studied the humanities. Begone, and never do such an
action again!"

The old nurse, distressed at being so treated, rose up and returned
home. Vajramukut was too agitated to await her arrival, so he went
to meet her on the way. Imagine his disappointment when she gave
him the fatal word and repeated to him exactly what happened, not
forgetting to describe a single look! He felt tempted to plunge his
sword into his bosom; but Fortune interfered, and sent him to
consult his confidant.

"Be not so hasty and desperate, my prince," said the pradhan's son,
seeing his wild grief; "you have not understood her meaning. Later
in life you will be aware of the fact that, in nine cases out of ten, a
woman's 'no' is a distinct 'yes.' This morning's work has been good;
the maiden asked where you learnt the humanities, which being
interpreted signifies 'Who are you?"'

On the next day the prince disclosed his rank to old Lakshmi, who
naturally declared that she had always known it. The trust they
reposed in her made her ready to address Padmavati once more on
the forbidden subject. So she again went to the palace, and having
lovingly greeted her nursling, said to her, "The Raja's son, whose
heart thou didst fascinate on the brim of the tank, on the fifth day
of the moon, in the light half of the month Yeth, has come to my
house, and sends this message to thee: "Perform what you
promised; we have now come"; and I also tell thee that this prince
is worthy of thee: just as thou art beautiful, so is he endowed with
all good qualities of mind and body."

When Padmavati heard this speech she showed great anger, and,
rubbing sandal on her beautiful hands, she slapped the old
woman's cheeks, and cried, "Wretch, Daina (witch)! get out of my
house; did I not forbid thee to talk such folly in my presence?"

The lover and the nurse were equally distressed at having taken the
advice of the young minister, till he explained what the crafty
damsel meant. "When she smeared the sandal on her ten fingers,"
he explained, "and struck the old woman on the face, she signified
that when the remaining ten moonlight nights shall have passed
away she will meet you in the dark." At the same time he warned
his master that to all appearances the lady Padmavati was far too
clever to make a comfortable wife. The minister's son especially
hated talented intellectual, and strong-minded women; he had been
heard to describe the torments of Naglok [FN#60] as the
compulsory companionship of a polemical divine and a learned
authoress, well stricken in years and of forbidding aspect, as such
persons mostly are. Amongst womankind he admired --
theoretically, as became a philosopher --the small, plump,
laughing, chattering, unintellectual, and material-minded. And
therefore --excuse the digression, Raja Vikram --he married an old
maid, tall, thin, yellow, strictly proper, cold-mannered, a
conversationist, and who prided herself upon spirituality. But more
wonderful still, after he did marry her, he actually loved her --what
an incomprehensible being is man in these matters!

To return, however. The pradhan's son, who detected certain
symptoms of strong-mindedness in the Princess Padmavati,
advised his lord to be wise whilst wisdom availed him. This sage
counsel was, as might be guessed, most ungraciously rejected by
him for whose benefit it was intended. Then the sensible young
statesman rated himself soundly for having broken his father's rule
touching advice, and atoned for it by blindly forwarding the views
of his master.

After the ten nights of moonlight had passed, the old nurse was
again sent to the palace with the usual message. This time
Padmavati put saffron on three of her fingers, and again left their
marks on the nurse's cheek. The minister's son explained that this
was to crave delay for three days, and that on the fourth the lover
would have access to her.

When the time had passed the old woman again went and inquired
after her health and well-being. The princess was as usual very
wroth, and having personally taken her nurse to the western gate,
she called her "Mother of the elephant's trunk, [FN#61]'' and drove
her out with threats of the bastinado if she ever came back. This
was reported to the young statesman, who, after a few minutes'
consideration, said, "The explanation of this matter is, that she has
invited you to-morrow, at nighttime, to meet her at this very gate.

"When brown shadows fell upon the face of earth, and here and
there a star spangled the pale heavens, the minister's son called
Vajramukut, who had been engaged in adorning himself at least
half that day. He had carefully shaved his cheeks and chin; his
mustachio was trimmed and curled; he had arched his eyebrows by
plucking out with tweezers the fine hairs around them; he had
trained his curly musk-coloured love-locks to hang gracefully
down his face; he had drawn broad lines of antimony along his
eyelids, a most brilliant sectarian mark was affixed to his forehead,
the colour of his lips had been heightened by chewing betel-nut --

"One would imagine that you are talking of a silly girl, not of a
prince, fiend!" interrupted Vikram, who did not wish his son to
hear what he called these fopperies and frivolities.

-- and whitened his neck by having it shaved (continued the Baital,
speaking quickly, as if determined not to be interrupted), and
reddened the tips of his ears by squeezing them, and made his teeth
shine by rubbing copper powder into the roots, and set off the
delicacy of his fingers by staining the tips with henna. He had not
been less careful with his dress: he wore a well-arranged turband,
which had taken him at least two hours to bind, and a rich suit of
brown stuff chosen for the adventure he was about to attempt, and
he hung about his person a number of various weapons, so as to
appear a hero -- which young damsels admire.

Vajramukut asked his friend how he looked, and smiled happily
when the other replied "Admirable!" His happiness was so great
that he feared it might not last, and he asked the minister's son how
best to conduct himself?

"As a conqueror, my prince!" answered that astute young man, "if
it so be that you would be one. When you wish to win a woman,
always impose upon her. Tell her that you are her master, and she
will forthwith believe herself to be your servant. Inform her that
she loves you, and forthwith she will adore you. Show her that you
care nothing for her, and she will think of nothing but you. Prove
to her by your demeanour that you consider her a slave, and she
will become your pariah. But above all things --excuse me if I
repeat myself too often --beware of the fatal virtue which men call
modesty and women sheepishness. Recollect the trouble it has
given us, and the danger which we have incurred: all this might
have been managed at a tank within fifteen miles of your royal
father's palace. And allow me to say that you may still thank your
stars: in love a lost opportunity is seldom if ever recovered. The
time to woo a woman is the moment you meet her, before she has
had time to think; allow her the use of reflection and she may
escape the net. And after avoiding the rock of Modesty, fall not, I
conjure you, into the gulf of Security. I fear the lady Padmavati,
she is too clever and too prudent. When damsels of her age draw
the sword of Love, they throw away the scabbard of Precaution.
But you yawn --I weary you --it is time for us to move."

Two watches of the night had passed, and there was profound
stillness on earth. The young men then walked quietly through the
shadows, till they reached the western gate of the palace, and
found the wicket ajar. The minister's son peeped in and saw the
porter dozing, stately as a Brahman deep in the Vedas, and behind
him stood a veiled woman seemingly waiting for somebody. He
then returned on tiptoe to the place where he had left his master,
and with a parting caution against modesty and security, bade him
fearlessly glide through the wicket. Then having stayed a short
time at the gate listening with anxious ear, he went back to the old
woman's house.

Vajramukut penetrating to the staircase, felt his hand grasped by
the veiled figure, who motioning him to tread lightly, led him
quickly forwards. They passed under several arches, through dim
passages and dark doorways, till at last running up a flight of stone
steps they reached the apartments of the princess.

Vajramukut was nearly fainting as the flood of splendour broke
upon him. Recovering himself he gazed around the rooms, and
presently a tumult of delight invaded his soul, and his body bristled
with joy. [FN#62] The scene was that of fairyland. Golden censers
exhaled the most costly perfumes, and gemmed vases bore the
most beautiful flowers; silver lamps containing fragrant oil
illuminated doors whose panels were wonderfully decorated, and
walls adorned with pictures in which such figures were formed that
on seeing them the beholder was enchanted. On one side of the
room stood a bed of flowers and a couch covered with brocade of
gold, and strewed with freshly-culled jasmine flowers. On the
other side, arranged in proper order, were attar holders,
betel-boxes, rose-water bottles, trays, and silver cases with four
partitions for essences compounded of rose leaves, sugar, and
spices, prepared sandal wood, saffron, and pods of musk. Scattered
about a stuccoed floor white as crystal, were coloured caddies of
exquisite confections, and in others sweetmeats of various
kinds.[FN#63] Female attendants clothed in dresses of various
colours were standing each according to her rank, with hands
respectfully joined. Some were reading plays and beautiful poems,
others danced and others performed with glittering fingers and
flashing arms on various instruments --the ivory lute, the ebony
pipe and the silver kettledrum. In short, all the means and
appliances of pleasure and enjoyment were there; and any
description of the appearance of the apartments, which were the
wonder of the age, is impossible.

Then another veiled figure, the beautiful Princess Padmavati, came
up and disclosed herself, and dazzled the eyes of her delighted
Vajramukut. She led him into an alcove, made him sit down,
rubbed sandal powder upon his body, hung a garland of jasmine
flowers round his neck, sprinkled rose-water over his dress, and
began to wave over his head a fan of peacock feathers with a
golden handle.

Said the prince, who despite all efforts could not entirely shake off
his unhappy habit of being modest, "Those very delicate hands of
yours are not fit to ply the pankha.[FN#64] Why do you take so
much trouble? I am cool and refreshed by the sight of you. Do give
the fan to me and sit down."

"Nay, great king!" replied Padmavati, with the most fascinating of
smiles, "you have taken so much trouble for my sake in coming
here, it is right that I perform service for you."

Upon which her favourite slave, taking the pankha from the hand
of the princess, exclaimed, "This is my duty. I will perform the
service; do you two enjoy yourselves!"

The lovers then began to chew betel, which, by the bye, they
disposed of in little agate boxes which they drew from their
pockets, and they were soon engaged in the tenderest conversation.

Here the Baital paused for a while, probably to take breath. Then
he resumed his tale as follows:

In the meantime, it became dawn; the princess concealed him; and
when night returned they again engaged in the same innocent
pleasures. Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can,
the youth's felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply
enamoured, barely a score of years old, and he had been strictly
brought up by serious parents. He therefore resigned himself
entirely to the siren for whom he willingly forgot the world, and he
wondered at his good fortune, which had thrown in his way a
conquest richer than all the mines of Meru.[FN#65] He could not
sufficiently admire his Padmavati's grace, beauty, bright wit, and
numberless accomplishments. Every morning, for vanity's sake, he
learned from her a little useless knowledge in verse as well as
prose, for instance, the saying of the poet --

Enjoy the present hour, 'tis shine; be this, O man, thy law;
Who e'er resew the yester? Who the morrow e'er foresaw?

And this highly philosophical axiom --

Eat, drink, and love --the rest's not worth a fillip.

"By means of which he hoped, Raja Vikram!" said the demon, not
heeding his royal carrier's "ughs" and "poohs," "to become in
course of time almost as clever as his mistress."

Padmavati, being, as you have seen, a maiden of superior mind,
was naturally more smitten by her lover's dulness than by any
other of his qualities; she adored it, it was such a contrast to
herself.[FN#66] At first she did what many clever women do --she
invested him with the brightness of her own imagination. Still
water, she pondered, runs deep; certainly under this disguise must
lurk a brilliant fancy, a penetrating but a mature and ready
judgment --are they not written by nature's hand on that broad high
brow? With such lovely mustachios can he be aught but generous,
noble-minded, magnanimous? Can such eyes belong to any but a
hero? And she fed the delusion. She would smile upon him with
intense fondness, when, after wasting hours over a few lines of
poetry, he would misplace all the adjectives and barbarously
entreat the metre. She laughed with gratification, when, excited by
the bright sayings that fell from her lips, the youth put forth some
platitude, dim as the lamp in the expiring fire-fly. When he slipped
in grammar she saw malice under it, when he retailed a borrowed
jest she called it a good one, and when he used --as princes
sometimes will --bad language, she discovered in it a charming
simplicity.

At first she suspected that the stratagems which had won her heart
were the results of a deep-laid plot proceeding from her lover. But
clever women are apt to be rarely sharp-sighted in every matter
which concerns themselves. She frequently determined that a third
was in the secret. She therefore made no allusion to it. Before long
the enamoured Vajramukut had told her everything, beginning
with the diatribe against love pronounced by the minister's son,
and ending with the solemn warning that she, the pretty princess,
would some day or other play her husband a foul trick.

"If I do not revenge myself upon him," thought the beautiful
Padmavati, smiling like an angel as she listened to the youth's
confidence, "may I become a gardener's ass in the next birth!"

Having thus registered a vow, she broke silence, and praised to the
skies the young pradhan's wisdom and sagacity; professed herself
ready from gratitude to become his slave, and only hoped that one
day or other she might meet that true friend by whose skill her soul
had been gratified in its dearest desire. "Only," she concluded, "I
am convinced that now my Vajramukut knows every corner of his
little Padmavati's heart, he will never expect her to do anything but
love, admire, adore and kiss him!'' Then suiting the action to the
word, she convinced him that the young minister had for once been
too crabbed and cynic in his philosophy.

But after the lapse of a month Vajramukut, who had eaten and
drunk and slept a great deal too much, and who had not once
hunted, became bilious in body and in mind melancholic. His face
turned yellow, and so did the whites of his eyes; he yawned, as
liver patients generally do, complained occasionally of sick
headaches, and lost his appetite: he became restless and anxious,
and once when alone at night he thus thought aloud: "I have given
up country, throne, home, and everything else, but the friend by
means of whom this happiness was obtained I have not seen for the
long length of thirty days. What will he say to himself, and how
can I know what has happened to him?"

In this state of things he was sitting, and in the meantime the
beautiful princess arrived. She saw through the matter, and lost not
a moment in entering upon it. She began by expressing her
astonishment at her lover's fickleness and fondness for change, and
when he was ready to wax wroth, and quoted the words of the
sage, "A barren wife may be superseded by another in the eighth
year; she whose children all die, in the tenth; she who brings forth
only daughters, in the eleventh; she who scolds, without delay,"
thinking that she alluded to his love, she smoothed his temper by
explaining that she referred to his forgetting his friend. "How is it
possible, O my soul," she asked with the softest of voices, that
thou canst happiness here whilst thy heart is wandering there?
Why didst thou conceal this from me, O astute one? Was it for fear
of distressing me? Think better of thy wife than to suppose that she
would ever separate thee from one to whom we both owe so much!

"After this Padmavati advised, nay ordered, her lover to go forth
that night, and not to return till his mind was quite at ease, and she
begged him to take a few sweetmeats and other trifles as a little
token of her admiration and regard for the clever young man of
whom she had heard so much.

Vajramukut embraced her with a transport of gratitude, which so
inflamed her anger, that fearing lest the cloak of concealment
might fall from her countenance, she went away hurriedly to find
the greatest delicacies which her comfit boxes contained. Presently
she returned, carrying a bag of sweetmeats of every kind for her
lover, and as he rose up to depart, she put into his hand a little
parcel of sugar-plums especially intended for the friend; they were
made up with her own delicate fingers, and they would please, she
flattered herself, even his discriminating palate.

The young prince, after enduring a number of farewell embraces
and hopings for a speedy return, and last words ever beginning
again, passed safely through the palace gate, and with a relieved
aspect walked briskly to the house of the old nurse. Although it
was midnight his friend was still sitting on his mat.

The two young men fell upon one another's bosoms and embraced
affectionately. They then began to talk of matters nearest their
hearts. The Raja's son wondered at seeing the jaded and haggard
looks of his companion, who did not disguise that they were
caused by his anxiety as to what might have happened to his friend
at the hand of so talented and so superior a princess. Upon which
Vajramukut, who now thought Padmavati an angel, and his late
abode a heaven, remarked with formality -- and two blunders to
one quotation --that abilities properly directed win for a man the
happiness of both worlds.

The pradhan's son rolled his head.

"Again on your hobby-horse, nagging at talent whenever you find
it in others! " cried the young prince with a pun, which would have
delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed,
anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his
joke; "jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the
very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are,
would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and
the little pleasant surprise that she has prepared for you. There!
take and eat; they are made by her own dear hands!" cried the
young Raja, producing the sweetmeats. "As she herself taught me
to say -

Thank God I am a man,
Not a philosopher!"

"The kind messages she sent me! The pleasant surprise she has
prepared for me!" repeated the minister's son in a hard, dry tone.
"My lord will be pleased to tell me how she heard of my name?"

"I was sitting one night," replied the prince, "in anxious thought
about you, when at that moment the princess coming in and seeing
my condition, asked, 'Why are you thus sad? Explain the cause to
me.' I then gave her an account of your cleverness, and when she
heard it she gave me permission to go and see you, and sent these
sweetmeats for you: eat them and I shall be pleased."

"Great king!" rejoined the young statesman, "one thing vouchsafe
to hear from me. You have not done well in that you have told my
name. You should never let a woman think that your left hand
knows the secret which she confided to your right, much less that
you have shared it to a third person. Secondly, you did evil in
allowing her to see the affection with which you honour your
unworthy servant --a woman ever hates her lover's or husband's
friend."

"What could I do?" rejoined the young Raja, in a querulous tone of
voice. "When I love a woman I like to tell her everything --to have
no secrets from her --to consider her another self ----"

"Which habit," interrupted the pradhan's son, "you will lose when
you are a little older, when you recognize the fact that love is
nothing but a bout, a game of skill between two individuals of
opposite sexes: the one seeking to gain as much, and the other
striving to lose as little as possible; and that the sharper of the
twain thus met on the chessboard must, in the long run, win. And
reticence is but a habit. Practise it for a year, and you will find it
harder to betray than to conceal your thoughts. It hath its joy also.
Is there no pleasure, think you, when suppressing an outbreak of
tender but fatal confidence in saying to yourself, 'O, if she only
knew this?' 'O, if she did but suspect that?' Returning, however, to
the sugar-plums, my life to a pariah's that they are poisoned!"

"Impossible!" exclaimed the prince, horror-struck at the thought;
"what you say, surely no one ever could do. If a mortal fears not
his fellow-mortal, at least he dreads the Deity."

"I never yet knew," rejoined the other, "what a woman in love does
fear. However, prince, the trial is easy. Come here, Muti!" cried he
to the old woman's dog, "and off with thee to that three-headed
kinsman of shine, that attends upon his amiable-looking
master.[FN#67]"

Having said this, he threw one of the sweetmeats to the dog; the
animal ate it, and presently writhing and falling down, died.

"The wretch! O the wretch!" cried Vajramukut, transported with
wonder and anger. " And I loved her! But now it is all over. I dare
not associate with such a calamity!"

"What has happened, my lord, has happened!" quoth the minister's
son calmly. "I was prepared for something of this kind from so
talented a princess. None commit such mistakes, such blunders,
such follies as your clever women; they cannot even turn out a
crime decently executed. O give me dulness with one idea, one
aim, one desire. O thrice blessed dulness that combines with
happiness, power."

This time Vajramukut did not defend talent.

"And your slave did his best to warn you against perfidy. But now
my heart is at rest. I have tried her strength. She has attempted and
failed; the defeat will prevent her attempting again --just yet. But
let me ask you to put to yourself one question. Can you be happy
without her?"

"Brother!" replied the prince, after a pause, "I cannot"; and he
blushed as he made the avowal.

"Well," replied the other, "better confess then conceal that fact; we
must now meet her on the battle-field, and beat her at her own
weapons --cunning. I do not willingly begin treachery with
women, because, in the first place, I don't like it; and secondly, I
know that they will certainly commence practicing it upon me,
after which I hold myself justified in deceiving them. And
probably this will be a good wife; remember that she intended to
poison me, not you. During the last month my fear has been lest
my prince had run into the tiger's brake. Tell me, my lord, when
does the princess expect you to return to her?"

"She bade me," said the young Raja, "not to return till my mind
was quite at ease upon the subject of m talented friend."

"This means that she expects you back to-morrow night, as you
cannot enter the palace before. And now I will retire to my cot, as
it is there that I am wont to ponder over my plans. Before dawn my
thought shall mature one which must place the beautiful Padmavati
in your power."

"A word before parting," exclaimed the prince "you know my
father has already chosen a spouse for me; what will he say if I
bring home a second? "

"In my humble opinion," said the minister's son rising to retire,
"woman is a monogamous, man a polygamous, creature, a fact
scarcely established in physio- logical theory, but very observable
in every-day practice For what said the poet? --
Divorce, friend! Re-wed thee! The spring draweth
near,[FN#68]
And a wife's but an almanac --good for the year.

If your royal father say anything to you, refer him to what he
himself does."

Reassured by these words, Vajramukut bade his friend a cordial
good-night and sought his cot, where he slept soundly, despite the
emotions of the last few hours. The next day passed somewhat
slowly. In the evening, when accompanying his master to the
palace, the minister's son gave him the following directions.

"Our object, dear my lord, is how to obtain possession of the
princess. Take, then, this trident, and hide it carefully when you
see her show the greatest love and affection. Conceal what has
happened, and when she, wondering at your calmness, asks about
me, tell her that last night I was weary and out of health, that
illness prevented my eating her sweetmeats, but that I shall eat
them for supper to-night. When she goes to sleep, then, taking off
her jewels and striking her left leg with the trident, instantly come
away to me. But should she lie awake, rub upon your thumb a little
of this --do not fear, it is only a powder of grubs fed on verdigris --
and apply it to her nostrils. It would make an elephant senseless, so
be careful how you approach it to your own face."

Vajramukut embraced his friend, and passed safely through the
palace gate. He found Padmavati awaiting him; she fell upon his
bosom and looked into his eyes, and deceived herself, as clever
women will do. Overpowered by her joy and satisfaction, she now
felt certain that her lover was hers eternally, and that her treachery
had not been discovered; so the beautiful princess fell into a deep
sleep.

Then Vajramukut lost no time in doing as the minister's son had
advised, and slipped out of the room, carrying off Padmavati's
jewels and ornaments. His counsellor having inspected them, took
up a sack and made signs to his master to follow him. Leaving the
horses and baggage at the nurse's house, they walked to a
burning-place outside the city. The minister's son there buried his
dress, together with that of the prince, and drew from the sack the
costume of a religious ascetic: he assumed this himself, and gave
to his companion that of a disciple. Then quoth the guru (spiritual
preceptor) to his chela (pupil), "Go, youth, to the bazar, and sell
these jewels, remembering to let half the jewellers in the place see
the things, and if any one lay hold of thee, bring him to me."

Upon which, as day had dawned, Vajramukut carried the princess's
ornaments to the market, and entering the nearest goldsmith's shop,
offered to sell them, and asked what they were worth. As your
majesty well knows, gardeners, tailors, and goldsmiths are
proverbially dishonest, and this man was no exception to the rule.
He looked at the pupil's face and wondered, because he had
brought articles whose value he did not appear to know. A thought
struck him that he might make a bargain which would fill his
coffers, so he offered about a thousandth part of the price. This the
pupil rejected, because he wished the affair to go further. Then the
goldsmith, seeing him about to depart, sprang up and stood in the
door way, threatening to call the officers of justice if the young
man refused to give up the valuables which he said had lately been
stolen from his shop. As the pupil only laughed at this, the
goldsmith thought seriously of executing his threat, hesitating only
because he knew that the officers of justice would gain more than
he could by that proceeding. As he was still in doubt a shadow
darkened his shop, and in entered the chief jeweller of the city. The
moment the ornaments were shown to him he recognized them,
and said, "These jewels belong to Raja Dantawat's daughter; I
know them well, as I set them only a few months ago!" Then he
turned to the disciple, who still held the valuables in his hand, and
cried, "Tell me truly whence you received them?"

While they were thus talking, a crowd of ten or twenty persons had
collected, and at length the report reached the superintendent of the
archers. He sent a soldier to bring before him the pupil, the
goldsmith, and the chief jeweller, together with the ornaments.
And when all were in the hall of justice, he looked at the jewels
and said to the young man, "Tell me truly, whence have you
obtained these?"

"My spiritual preceptor," said Vajramukut, pretending great fear,
"who is now worshipping in the cemetery outside the town, gave
me these white stones, with an order to sell them. How know I
whence he obtained them? Dismiss me, my lord, for I am an
innocent man."

"Let the ascetic be sent for," commanded the kotwal.[FN#69]
Then, having taken both of them, along with the jewels, into the
presence of King Dantawat, he related the whole circumstances.

"Master," said the king on hearing the statement, "whence have
you obtained these jewels?"

The spiritual preceptor, before deigning an answer, pulled from
under his arm the hide of a black antelope, which he spread out
and smoothed deliberately before using it as an asan.[FN#70] He
then began to finger a rosary of beads each as large as an egg, and
after spending nearly an hour in mutterings and in rollings of the
head, he looked fixedly at the Raja, and repined:

"By Shiva! great king, they are mine own. On the fourteenth of the
dark half of the moon at night, I had gone into a place where dead
bodies are burned, for the purpose of accomplishing a witch's
incantation. After long and toilsome labour she appeared, but her
demeanour was so unruly that I was forced to chastise her. I struck
her with this, my trident, on the left leg, if memory serves me. As
she continued to be refractory, in order to punish her I took off all
her jewels and clothes, and told her to go where she pleased. Even
this had little effect upon her --never have I looked upon so
perverse a witch. In this way the jewels came into my possession."

Raja Dantawat was stunned by these words. He begged the ascetic
not to leave the palace for a while, and forthwith walked into the
private apartments of the women. Happening first to meet the
queen dowager, he said to her, "Go, without losing a minute, O my
mother, and look at Padmavati's left leg, and see if there is a mark
or not, and what sort of a mark!" Presently she returned, and
coming to the king said, "Son, I find thy daughter lying upon her
bed, and complaining that she has met with an accident; and
indeed Padmavati must be in great pain. I found that some sharp
instrument with three points had wounded her. The girl says that a
nail hurt her, but I never yet heard of a nail making three holes.
However, we must all hasten, or there will be erysipelas,
tumefaction, gangrene, mortification, amputation, and perhaps
death in the house," concluded the old queen, hurrying away in the
pleasing anticipation of these ghastly consequences.

For a moment King Dantawat's heart was ready to break. But he
was accustomed to master his feelings; he speedily applied the
reins of reflection to the wild steed of passion. He thought to
himself, "the affairs of one's household, the intentions of one's
heart, and whatever one's losses may be, should not be disclosed to
any one. Since Padmavati is a witch, she is no longer my daughter.
I will verily go forth and consult the spiritual preceptor."

With these words the king went outside, where the guru was still
sitting upon his black hide, making marks with his trident on the
floor. Having requested that the pupil might be sent away, and
having cleared the room, he said to the jogi, "O holy man! what
punishment for the heinous crime of witchcraft is awarded to a
woman in the Dharma- Shastra [FN#71]?"

"Greet king!" replied the devotee, "in the Dharma Shastra it is thus
written: 'If a Brahman, a cow, a woman, a child, or any other
person whatsoever who may be dependent on us, should be guilty
of a perfidious act, their punishment is that they be banished the
country.' However much they may deserve death, we must not spill
their blood, as Lakshmi[FN#72] flies in horror from the deed."

Hearing these words the Raja dismissed the guru with many thanks
and large presents. He waited till nightfall and then ordered a band
of trusty men to seize Padmavati without alarming the household,
and to carry her into a distant jungle full of fiends, tigers, and
bears, and there to abandon her.

In the meantime, the ascetic and his pupil hurrying to the cemetery
resumed their proper dresses; they then went to the old nurse's
house, rewarded her hospitality till she wept bitterly, girt on their
weapons, and mounting their horses, followed the party which
issued from the gate of King Dantawat's palace. And it may easily
be believed that they found little difficulty in persuading the poor
girl to exchange her chance in the wild jungle for the prospect of
becoming Vajramukut's wife --lawfully wedded at Benares. She
did not even ask if she was to have a rival in the house, --a
question which women, you know, never neglect to put under
usual circumstances. After some days the two pilgrims of one love
arrived at the house of their fathers, and to all, both great and
small, excess in joy came.

"Now, Raja Vikram!" said the Baital, "you have not spoken much;
doubtless you are engrossed by the interest of a story wherein a
man beats a woman at her own weapon --deceit. But I warn you
that you will assuredly fall into Narak (the infernal regions) if you
do not make up your mind upon and explain this matter. Who was
the most to blame amongst these four? the lover[FN#73] the
lover's friend, the girl, or the father?"

"For my part I think Padmavati was the worst, she being at the
bottom of all their troubles," cried Dharma Dhwaj. The king said
something about young people and the two senses of seeing and
hearing, but his son's sentiment was so sympathetic that he at once
pardoned the interruption. At length, determined to do justice
despite himself, Vikram said, "Raja Dantawat is the person most at
fault."

"In what way was he at fault? " asked the Baital curiously.

King Vikram gave him this reply: "The Prince Vajramukut being
tempted of the love-god was insane, and therefore not responsible
for his actions. The minister's son performed his master's business
obediently, without considering causes or asking questions --a very
excellent quality in a dependent who is merely required to do as he
is bid. With respect to the young woman, I have only to say that
she was a young woman, and thereby of necessity a possible
murderess. But the Raja, a prince, a man of a certain age and
experience, a father of eight! He ought never to have been
deceived by so shallow a trick, nor should he, without reflection,
have banished his daughter from the country."

"Gramercy to you!" cried the Vampire, bursting into a discordant
shout of laughter, "I now return to my tree. By my tail! I never yet
heard a Raja so readily condemn a Raja." With these words he
slipped out of the cloth, leaving it to hang empty over the great
king's shoulder.

Vikram stood for a moment, fixed to the spot with blank dismay.
Presently, recovering himself, he retraced his steps, followed by
his son, ascended the sires-tree, tore down the Baital, packed him
up as before, and again set out upon his way.

Soon afterwards a voice sounded behind the warrior king's back,
and began to tell another true story.

THE VAMPIRE'S SECOND STORY.

Of the Relative Villany of Men and Women.

In the great city of Bhogavati dwelt, once upon a time, a young
prince, concerning whom I may say that he strikingly resembled
this amiable son of your majesty.

Raja Vikram was silent, nor did he acknowledge the Baital's
indirect compliment. He hated flattery, but he liked, when
flattered, to be flattered in his own person; a feature in their royal
patron's character which the Nine Gems of Science had turned to
their own account.

Now the young prince Raja Ram (continued the tale teller) had an
old father, concerning whom I may say that he was exceedingly
unlike your Rajaship, both as a man and as a parent. He was fond
of hunting, dicing, sleeping by day, drinking at night, and eating
perpetual tonics, while he delighted in the idleness of watching
nautch girls, and the vanity of falling in love. But he was adored
by his children because he took the trouble to win their hearts. He
did not lay it down as a law of heaven that his offspring would
assuredly go to Patala if they neglected the duty of bestowing upon
him without cause all their affections, as your moral, virtuous, and
highly respectable fathers are only too apt ----. Aie! Aie!

These sounds issued from the Vampire's lips as the warrior king,
speechless with wrath, passed his hand behind his back, and
viciously twisted up a piece of the speaker's skin. This caused the
Vampire to cry aloud, more however, it would appear, in derision
than in real suffering, for he presently proceeded with the same
subject.

Fathers, great king, may be divided into three kinds; and be it said
aside, that mothers are the same. Firstly, we have the parent of
many ideas, amusing, pleasant, of course poor, and the idol of his
children. Secondly, there is the parent with one idea and a half.
This sort of man would, in your place, say to himself, "That demon
fellow speaks a manner of truth. I am not above learning from him,
despite his position in life. I will carry out his theory, just to see
how far it goes"; and so saying, he wends his way home, and treats
his young ones with prodigious kindness for a time, but it is not
lasting. Thirdly, there is the real one-idea'd type of parent-yourself,
O warrior king Vikram, an admirable example. You learn in youth
what you are taught: for instance, the blessed precept that the green
stick is of the trees of Paradise; and in age you practice what you
have learned. You cannot teach yourselves anything before your
beards sprout, and when they grow stiff you cannot be taught by
others. If any one attempt to change your opinions you cry,

What is new is not true,
What is true is not new.

and you rudely pull his hand from the subject. Yet have you your
uses like other things of earth. In life you are good working camels
for the mill-track, and when you die your ashes are not worse
compost than those of the wise.

Your Rajaship will observe (continued the Vampire, as Vikram
began to show symptoms of ungovernable anger) that I have been
concise in treating this digression. Had I not been so, it would have
led me far indeed from my tale. Now to return.

When the old king became air mixed with air, the young king,
though he found hardly ten pieces of silver in the paternal treasury
and legacies for thousands of golden ounces, yet mourned his loss
with the deepest grief. He easily explained to himself the reckless
emptiness of the royal coffers as a proof of his dear kind parent's
goodness, because he loved him.

But the old man had left behind him, as he could not carry it off
with him, a treasure more valuable than gold and silver: one
Churaman, a parrot, who knew the world, and who besides
discoursed in the most correct Sanscrit. By sage counsel and wise
guidance this admirable bird soon repaired his young master's
shattered fortunes.

One day the prince said, "Parrot, thou knowest everything: tell me
where there is a mate fit for me. The shastras inform us, respecting
the choice of a wife, 'She who is not descended from his paternal
or maternal ancestors within the sixth degree is eligible by a high
caste man for nuptials. In taking a wife let him studiously avoid
the following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in
kine, goats, sheep, gold, or grain: the family which has omitted
prescribed acts of devotion; that which has produced no male
children; that in which the Veda (scripture) has not been read; that
which has thick hair on the body; and that in which members have
been subject to hereditary disease. Let a person choose for his wife
a girl whose person has no defect; who has an agreeable name;
who walks gracefully, like a young elephant; whose hair and teeth
are moderate in quantity and in size; and whose body is of
exquisite softness.'"

"Great king," responded the parrot Churaman, "there is in the
country of Magadh a Raja, Magadheshwar by name, and he has a
daughter called Chandravati. You will marry her; she is very
learned, and, what is better far, very fait. She is of yellow colour,
with a nose like the flower of the sesamum; her legs are taper, like
the plantain-tree; her eyes are large, like the principal leaf of the
lotus; her eye-brows stretch towards her ears; her lips are red, like
the young leaves of the mango-tree; her face is like the full moon;
her voice is like the sound of the cuckoo; her arms reach to her
knees; her throat is like the pigeon's; her flanks are thin, like those
of the lion; her hair hangs in curls only down to her waist; her teeth
are like the seeds of the pomegranate; and her gait is that of the
drunken elephant or the goose."

On hearing the parrot's speech, the king sent for an astrologer, and
asked him, "Whom shall I marry?" The wise man, having
consulted his art, replied, "Chandravati is the name of the maiden,
and your marriage with her will certainly take place." Thereupon
the young Raja, though he had never seen his future queen, became
incontinently enamoured of her. He summoned a Brahman, and
sent him to King Magadheshwar, saying, "If you arrange
satisfactorily this affair of our marriage we will reward you
amply"-a promise which lent wings to the priest.

Now it so happened that this talented and beautiful princess had a
jay,[FN#74] whose name was Madan-manjari or Love-garland.
She also possessed encyclopaedic knowledge after her degree, and,
like the parrot, she spoke excellent Sanscrit.

Be it briefly said, O warrior king-for you think that I am talking
fables--that in the days of old, men had the art of making birds
discourse in human language. The invention is attributed to a great
philosopher, who split their tongues, and after many generations
produced a selected race born with those members split. He altered
the shapes of their skulls by fixing ligatures behind the occiput,
which caused the sinciput to protrude, their eyes to become
prominent, and their brains to master the art of expressing thoughts
in words.

But this wonderful discovery, like those of great philosophers
generally, had in it a terrible practical flaw The birds beginning to
speak, spoke wisely and so well, they told the truth so persistently,
they rebuked their brethren of the featherless skins so openly, they
flattered them so little and they counselled them so much, that
mankind presently grew tired of hearing them discourse. Thus the
art gradually fell into desuetude, and now it is numbered with the
things that were.

One day the charming Princess Chandravati was sitting in
confidential conversation with her jay. The dialogue was not
remarkable, for maidens in all ages seldom consult their
confidantes or speculate upon the secrets of futurity, or ask to have
dreams interpreted, except upon one subject. At last the princess
said, for perhaps the hundredth time that month, "Where, O jay, is
there a husband worthy of me?"

"Princess," replied Madan-manjari, "I am happy at length to be
able as willing to satisfy your just curiosity. For just it is, though
the delicacy of our sex --"

"Now, no preaching!" said the maiden; "or thou shalt have salt
instead of sugar for supper."

Jays, your Rajaship, are fond of sugar. So the confidante retained a
quantity of good advice which she was about to produce, and
replied,

"I now see clearly the ways of Fortune. Raja Ram, king of
Bhogavati, is to be thy husband. He shall be happy in thee and thou
in him, for he is young and handsome, rich and generous,
good-tempered, not too clever, and without a chance of being an
invalid."

Thereupon the princess, although she had never seen her future
husband, at once began to love him. In fact, though neither had set
eyes upon the other, both were mutually in love.

"How can that be, sire?" asked the young Dharma Dhwaj of his
father. " I always thought that --"

The great Vikram interrupted his son, and bade him not to ask silly
questions. Thus he expected to neutralize the evil effects of the
Baital's doctrine touching the amiability of parents unlike himself.

Now, as both these young people (resumed the Baital) were of
princely family and well to do in the world, the course of their love
was unusually smooth. When the Brahman sent by Raja Ram had
reached Magadh, and had delivered his King's homage to the Raja
Magadheshwar, the latter received him with distinction, and agreed
to his proposal. The beautiful princess's father sent for a Brahman
of his own, and charging him with nuptial gifts and the customary
presents, sent him back to Bhogavati in company with the other
envoy, and gave him this order, "Greet Raja Ram, on my behalf,
and after placing the tilak or mark upon his forehead, return here
with all speed. When you come back I will get all things ready for
the marriage."

Raja Ram, on receiving the deputation, was greatly pleased, and
after generously rewarding the Brahmans and making all the
necessary preparations, he set out in state for the land of Magadha,
to claim his betrothed.

In due season the ceremony took place with feasting and bands of
music, fireworks and illuminations, rehearsals of scripture, songs,
entertainments, processions, and abundant noise. And hardly had
the turmeric disappeared from the beautiful hands and feet of the
bride, when the bridegroom took an affectionate leave of his new
parents - he had not lived long in the house - and receiving the
dowry and the bridal gifts, set out for his own country.

Chandravati was dejected by leaving her mother, and therefore she
was allowed to carry with her the jay, Madanmanian. She soon
told her husband the wonderful way in which she had first heard
his name, and he related to her the advantage which he had derived
from confabulation with Churaman, his parrot.

"Then why do we not put these precious creatures into one cage,
after marrying them according to the rites of the angelic marriage
(Gandharva-lagana)?" said the charming queen. Like most brides,
she was highly pleased to find an opportunity of making a match.

"Ay! why not, love ? Surely they cannot live happy in what the
world calls single blessedness," replied the young king. As
bridegrooms sometimes are for a short time, he was very warm
upon the subject of matrimony.

Thereupon, without consulting the parties chiefly concerned in
their scheme, the master and mistress, after being comfortably
settled at the end of their journey, caused a large cage to be
brought, and put into it both their favourites.

Upon which Churaman the parrot leaned his head on one side and
directed a peculiar look at the jay. But Madan- manjari raised her
beak high in the air, puffed through it once or twice, and turned
away her face in extreme disdain.

"Perhaps," quoth the parrot, at length breaking silence, "you will
tell me that you have no desire to be married?"

"Probably," replied the jay.

"And why?" asked the male bird.

"Because I don't choose," replied the female.

"Truly a feminine form of resolution this," ejaculated the parrot. "I
will borrow my master's words and call it a woman's reason, that is
to say, no reason at all. Have you any objection to be more
explicit?"

"None whatever," retorted the jay, provoked by the rude innuendo
into telling more plainly than politely exactly what she thought;
"none whatever, sir parrot. You he-things are all of you sinful,
treacherous, deceitful, selfish, devoid of conscience, and
accustomed to sacrifice us, the weaker sex, to your smallest desire
or convenience."

"Of a truth, fair lady," quoth the young Raja Ram to his bride, "this
pet of thine is sufficiently impudent."

"Let her words be as wind in thine ear, master," interrupted the
parrot. "And pray, Mistress Jay, what are you she-things but
treacherous, false, ignorant, and avaricious beings, whose only
wish in this world is to prevent life being as pleasant as it might
be?"

"Verily, my love," said the beautiful Chandravati to her
bridegroom, "this thy bird has a habit of expressing his opinions in
a very free and easy way."

"I can prove what I assert," whispered the jay in the ear of the
princess.

"We can confound their feminine minds by an anecdote,"
whispered the parrot in the ear of the prince.

Briefly, King Vikram, it was settled between the twain that each
should establish the truth of what it had advanced by an illustration
in the form of a story.

Chandravati claimed, and soon obtained, precedence for the jay.
Then the wonderful bird, Madan-manjari, began to speak as
follows:-

I have often told thee, O queen, that before coming to thy feet, my
mistress was Ratnawati, the daughter of a rich trader, the dearest,
the sweetest, the ---

Here the jay burst into tears, and the mistress was sympathetically
affected. Presently the speaker resumed---

However, I anticipate. In the city of Ilapur there was a wealthy
merchant, who was without offspring; on this account he was
continually fasting and going on pilgrimage, and when at home he
was ever engaged in reading the Puranas and in giving alms to the
Brahmans.

At length, by favour of the Deity, a son was born to this merchant,
who celebrated his birth with great pomp and rejoicing, and gave
large gifts to Brahmans and to bards, and distributed largely to the
hungry, the thirsty, and the poor. When the boy was five years old
he had him taught to read, and when older he was sent to a guru,
who had formerly himself been a student, and who was celebrated
as teacher and lecturer.

In the course of time the merchant's son grew up. Praise be to
Brahma! what a wonderful youth it was, with a face like a
monkey's, legs like a stork's, and a back like a camel's. You know
the old proverb:--

Expect thirty-two villanies from the limping, and eighty
from the one-eyed man,
But when the hunchback comes, say "Lord defend us!"

Instead of going to study, he went to gamble with other
ne'er-do-weels, to whom he talked loosely, and whom he taught to
be bad-hearted as himself. He made love to every woman, and
despite his ugliness, he was not unsuccessful. For they are equally
fortunate who are very handsome or very ugly, in so far as they are
both remarkable and remarked. But the latter bear away the palm.
Beautiful men begin well with women, who do all they can to
attract them, love them as the apples of their eyes, discover them to
be fools, hold them to be their equals, deceive them, and speedily
despise them. It is otherwise with the ugly man, who, in
consequence of his homeliness, must work his wits and take pains
with himself, and become as pleasing as he is capable of being, till
women forget his ape's face, bird's legs, and bunchy back.

The hunchback, moreover, became a Tantri, so as to complete his
villanies. He was duly initiated by an apostate Brahman, made a
declaration that he renounced all the ceremonies of his old
religion, and was delivered from their yoke, and proceeded to
perform in token of joy an abominable rite. In company with eight
men and eight women-a Brahman female, a dancing girl, a
weaver's daughter, a woman of ill fame, a washerwoman, a
barber's wife, a milkmaid, and the daughter of a land-owner-
choosing the darkest time of night and the most secret part of the
house, he drank with them, was sprinkled and anointed, and went
through many ignoble ceremonies, such as sitting nude upon a
dead body. The teacher informed him that he was not to indulge
shame, or aversion to anything, nor to prefer one thing to another,
nor to regard caste, ceremonial cleanness or uncleanness, but
freely to enjoy all the pleasures of sense-that is, of course, wine
and us, since we are the representatives of the wife of Cupid, and
wine prevents the senses from going astray. And whereas holy
men, holding that the subjugation or annihilation of the passions is
essential to final beatitude, accomplish this object by bodily
austerities, and by avoiding temptation, he proceeded to blunt the
edge of the passions with excessive indulgence. And he jeered at
the pious, reminding them that their ascetics are safe only in
forests, and while keeping a perpetual fast; but that he could
subdue his passions in the very presence of what they most
desired.

Presently this excellent youth's father died, leaving him immense
wealth. He blunted his passions so piously and so vigorously, that
in very few years his fortune was dissipated. Then he turned
towards his neighbour's goods and prospered for a time, till being
discovered robbing, he narrowly escaped the stake. At length he
exclaimed, "Let the gods perish! the rascals send me nothing but ill
luck!" and so saying he arose and fled from his own country.

Chance led that villain hunchback to the city of Chandrapur,
where, hearing the name of my master Hemgupt, he recollected
that one of his father's wealthiest correspondents was so called.
Thereupon, with his usual audacity, he presented himself at the
house, walked in, and although he was clothed in tatters,
introduced himself, told his father's name and circumstances, and
wept bitterly.

The good man was much astonished, and not less grieved, to see
the son of his old friend in such woful plight. He rose up, however,
embraced the youth, and asked the reason of his coming.

"I freighted a vessel," said the false hunchback, "for the purpose of
trading to a certain land. Having gone there, I disposed of my
merchandise, and, taking another cargo, I was on my voyage
home. Suddenly a great storm arose, and the vessel was wrecked,
and I escaped on a plank, and after a time arrived here. But I am
ashamed, since I have lost all my wealth, and I cannot show my
face in this plight in my own city. My excellent father would have
consoled me with his pity. But now that I have carried him and my
mother to Ganges,[FN#75] every one will turn against me; they
will rejoice in my misfortunes, they will accuse me of folly and
recklessness - alas! alas! I am truly miserable."

My dear master was deceived by the cunning of the wretch. He
offered him hospitality, which was readily enough accepted, and
he entertained him for some time as a guest. Then, having reason
to be satisfied with his conduct, Hemgupt admitted him to his
secrets, and finally made him a partner in his business. Briefly, the
villain played his cards so well, that at last the merchant said to
himself:

"I have had for years an anxiety and a calamity in my house. My
neighbours whisper things to my disadvantage, and those who are
bolder speak out with astonishment amongst themselves, saying,
'At seven or eight, people marry their daughters, and this indeed is
the appointment of the law: that period is long since gone; she is
now thirteen or fourteen years old, and she is very tall and lusty,
resembling a married woman of thirty. How can her father eat his
rice with comfort and sleep with satisfaction, whilst such a
disreputable thing exists in his house? At present he is exposed to
shame, and his deceased friends are suffering through his retaining
a girl from marriage beyond the period which nature has
prescribed.' And now, while I am sitting quietly at home, the
Bhagwan (Deity) removes all my uneasiness: by his favour such an
opportunity occurs. It is not right to delay. It is best that I shall
give my daughter in marriage to him. Whatever can be done to-day
is best; who knows what may happen to-morrow?

"Thus thinking, the old man went to his wife and said to her,
"Birth, marriage, and death are all under the direction of the gods;
can anyone say when they will be ours? We want for our daughter
a young man who is of good birth, rich and handsome, clever and
honourable. But we do not find him. If the bridegroom be faulty,
thou sayest, all will go wrong. I cannot put a string round the neck
of our daughter and throw her into the ditch. If, however, thou
think well of the merchant's son, now my partner, we will celebrate
Ratnawati's marriage with him."

The wife, who had been won over by the hunchback's hypocrisy,
was also pleased, and replied, "My lord! when the Deity so plainly
indicates his wish, we should do it; since, though we have sat
quietly at home, the desire of our hearts is accomplished. It is best
that no delay be made: and, having quickly summoned the family
priest, and having fixed upon a propitious planetary conjunction,
that the marriage be celebrated."

Then they called their daughter -- ah, me! what a beautiful being
she was, and worthy the love of a Gandharva (demigod). Her long
hair, purple with the light of youth, was glossy as the
bramra's[FN#76] wing; her brow was pure and clear as the agate;
the ocean-coral looked pale beside her lips, and her teeth were as
two chaplets of pearls. Everything in her was formed to be loved.
Who could look into her eyes without wishing to do it again? Who
could hear her voice without hoping that such music would sound
once more? And she was good as she was fair. Her father adored
her; her mother, though a middle-aged woman, was not envious or
jealous of her; her relatives doted on her, and her friends could
find no fault with her. I should never end were I to tell her precious
qualities. Alas, alas ! my poor Ratnawati!

So saying, the jay wept abundant tears; then she resumed:

When her parents informed my mistress of their resolution, she
replied, "Sadhu-it is well!" She was not like most young women,
who hate nothing so much as a man whom their seniors order them
to love. She bowed her head and promised obedience, although, as
she afterwards told her mother, she could hardly look at her
intended, on account of his prodigious ugliness. But presently the
hunchback's wit surmounted her disgust. She was grateful to him
for his attention to her father and mother; she esteemed him for his
moral and religious conduct; she pitied him for his misfortunes,
and she finished with forgetting his face, legs, and back in her
admiration of what she supposed to be his mind.

She had vowed before marriage faithfully to perform all the duties
of a wife, however distasteful to her they might be; but after the
nuptials, which were not long deferred, she was not surprised to
find that she loved her husband. Not only did she omit to think of
his features and figure; I verily believe that she loved him the more
for his repulsiveness. Ugly, very ugly men prevail over women for
two reasons. Firstly, we begin with repugnance, which in the
course of nature turns to affection; and we all like the most that
which, when unaccustomed to it, we most disliked. Hence the poet
says, with as much truth as is in the male:

Never despair, O man! when woman's spite
Detests thy name and sickens at thy sight:
Sometime her heart shall learn to love thee more
For the wild hatred which it felt before, &c.

Secondly, the very ugly man appears, deceitfully enough, to think
little of his appearance, and he will give himself the trouble to
pursue a heart because he knows that the heart will not follow after
him. Moreover, we women (said the jay) are by nature pitiful, and
this our enemies term a "strange perversity." A widow is generally
disconsolate if she loses a little, wizen-faced, shrunken shanked,
ugly, spiteful, distempered thing that scolded her and quarrelled
with her, and beat her and made her hours bitter; whereas she will
follow her husband to Ganges with exemplary fortitude if he was
brave, handsome, generous ---

"Either hold your tongue or go on with your story," cried the
warrior king, in whose mind these remarks awakened disagreeable
family reflections.

"Hi! hi! hi!" laughed the demon; "I will obey your majesty, and
make Madan-manjari, the misanthropical jay, proceed."

Yes, she loved the hunchback; and how wonderful is our love!
quoth the jay. A light from heaven which rains happiness on this
dull, dark earth! A spell falling upon the spirit, which reminds us
of a higher existence! A memory of bliss! A present delight! An
earnest of future felicity! It makes hideousness beautiful and
stupidity clever, old age young and wickedness good, moroseness
amiable, and low-mindedness magnanimous, perversity pretty and
vulgarity piquant. Truly it is sovereign alchemy and excellent flux
for blending contradictions is our love, exclaimed the jay.

And so saying, she cast a triumphant look at the parrot, who only
remarked that he could have desired a little more originality in her
remarks.

For some months (resumed Madan-manjari), the bride and the
bridegroom lived happily together in Hemgupt's house. But it is
said:

Never yet did the tiger become a lamb;

and the hunchback felt that the edge of his passions again wanted
blunting. He reflected, "Wisdom is exemption from attachment,
and affection for children, wife, and home." Then he thus
addressed my poor young mistress:

"I have been now in thy country some years, and I have heard no
tidings of my own family, hence my mind is sad, I have told thee
everything about myself; thou must now ask thy mother leave for
me to go to my own city, and, if thou wishest, thou mayest go with
me."

Ratnawati lost no time in saying to her mother, "My husband
wishes to visit his own country; will you so arrange that he may
not be pained about this matter?"

The mother went to her husband, and said, "Your son-in-law
desires leave to go to his own country."

Hemgupt replied, " Very well; we will grant him leave. One has no
power over another man's son. We will do what he wishes."

The parents then called their daughter, and asked her to tell them
her real desire-whether she would go to her father-in-law's house,
or would remain in her mother's home. She was abashed at this
question, and could not answer; but she went back to her husband,
and said, "As my father and mother have declared that you should
do as you like, do not leave me behind."

Presently the merchant summoned his son-in-law, and having
bestowed great wealth upon him, allowed him to depart. He also
bade his daughter farewell, after giving her a palanquin and a
female slave. And the parents took leave of them with wailing and
bitter tears; their hearts were like to break. And so was mine.

For some days the hunchback travelled quietly along with his wife,
in deep thought. He could not take her to his city, where she would
find out his evil life, and the fraud which he had passed upon her
father. Besides which, although he wanted her money, he by no
means wanted her company for life. After turning on many
projects in his evil-begotten mind, he hit upon the following:

He dismissed the palanquin-bearers when halting at a little shed in
the thick jungle through which they were travelling, and said to his
wife, "This is a place of danger; give me thy jewels, and I will hide
them in my waist-shawl. When thou reachest the city thou canst
wear them again." She then gave up to him all her ornaments,
which were of great value. Thereupon he inveigled the slave girl
into the depths of the forest, where he murdered her, and left her
body to be devoured by wild beasts. Lastly, returning to my poor
mistress, he induced her to leave the hut with him, and pushed her
by force into a dry well, after which exploit he set out alone with
his ill-gotten wealth, walking towards his own city.

In the meantime, a wayfaring man, who was passing through that
jungle, hearing the sound of weeping, stood still, and began to say
to himself, "How came to my ears the voice of a mortal's grief in
this wild wood?" then followed the direction of the noise, which
led him a pit, and peeping over the side, he saw a woman crying at
the bottom. The traveller at once loosened his gird cloth, knotted it
to his turband, and letting down the line pulled out the poor bride.
He asked her who she was and how she came to fall into that well.
She replied, "I am the daughter of Hemgupt, the wealthiest
merchant in the city of Chandrapur; and I was journeying wit my
husband to his own country, when robbers set upon us and
surrounded us. They slew my slave girl, the threw me into a well,
and having bound my husband they took him away, together with
my jewels. I have no tidings of him, nor he of me." And so saying,
she burst into tears and lamentations.

The wayfaring man believed her tale, and conducted her to her
home, where she gave the same account of the accident which had
befallen her, ending with, "beyond this, I know not if they have
killed my husband, or have let him go." The father thus soothed
her grief "Daughter! have no anxiety; thy husband is alive, and by
the will of the Deity he will come to thee in a few days. Thieves
take men's money, not their lives." Then the parents presented her
with ornaments more precious than those which she had lost; and
summoning their relations and friends, they comforted her to the
best of their power.

And so did I. The wicked hunchback had, meanwhile, returned to
his own city, where he was excellently well received, because he
brought much wealth with him. His old associates flocked around
him rejoicing; and he fell into the same courses which had
beggared him before. Gambling and debauchery soon blunted his
passions, and emptied his purse. Again his boon companions,
finding him without a broken cowrie, drove him from their doors,
he stole and was flogged for theft; and lastly, half famished, he
fled the city. Then he said to himself, "I must go to my
father-in-law, and make the excuse that a grandson has been born
to him, and that I have come to offer him congratulations on the
event."

Imagine, however, his fears and astonishment, when, as he entered
the house, his wife stood before him. At first he thought it was a
ghost, and turned to run away, but she went out to him and said,
"Husband, be not troubled ! I have told my father that thieves came
upon us, and killed the slave girl and robbed me and threw me into
a well, and bound thee and carried thee off. Tell the same story,
and put away all anxious feelings. Come up and change thy
tattered garments-alas! some misfortune hath befallen thee. But
console thyself; all is now well, since thou art returned to me, and
fear not, for the house is shine, and I am thy slave."

The wretch, with all his hardness of heart, could scarcely refrain
from tears. He followed his wife to her room, where she washed
his feet, caused him to bathe, dressed him in new clothes, and
placed food before him. When her parents returned, she presented
him to their embrace, saying in a glad way, "Rejoice with me, O
my father and mother! the robbers have at length allowed him to
come back to us." Of course the parents were deceived, they are
mostly a purblind race; and Hemgupt, showing great favour to his
worthless son-in-law, exclaimed, "Remain with us, my son, and be
happy!"

For two or three months the hunchback lived quietly with his wife,
treating her kindly and even affectionately. But this did not last
long. He made acquaintance with a band of thieves, and arranged
his plans with them.

After a time, his wife one night came to sleep by his side, having
put on all her jewels. At midnight, when he saw that she was fast
asleep, he struck her with a knife so that she died. Then he
admitted his accomplices, who savagely murdered Hemgupt and
his wife; and with their assistance he carried off any valuable
article upon which he could lay his hands. The ferocious wretch!
As he passed my cage he looked at it, and thought whether he had
time to wring my neck. The barking of a dog saved my life; but my
mistress, my poor Ratnawati-ah, me! ah, me!--

"Queen," said the jay, in deepest grief, "all this have I seen with
mine own eyes, and have heard with mine own ears. It affected me
in early life, and gave me a dislike for the society of the other sex.
With due respect to you, I have resolved to remain an old maid.
Let your majesty reflect, what crime had my poor mistress
committed? A male is of the same disposition as a highway robber;
and she who forms friendship with such an one, cradles upon her
bosom a black and venomous snake."

"Sir Parrot," said the jay, turning to her wooer, "I have spoken. I
have nothing more to say, but that you he-things are all a
treacherous, selfish, wicked race, created for the express purpose
of working our worldly woe, and--"

"When a female, O my king, asserts that she has nothing more to
say, but," broke in Churaman, the parrot with a loud dogmatical
voice, "I know that what she has said merely whets her tongue for
what she is about to say. This person has surely spoken long
enough and drearily enough."

"Tell me, then, O parrot," said the king, "what faults there may be
in the other sex."

"I will relate," quoth Churaman, "an occurrence which in my early
youth determined me to live and to die an old bachelor."

When quite a young bird, and before my schooling began, I was
caught in the land of Malaya, and was sold to a very rich merchant
called Sagardati, a widower with one daughter, the lady Jayashri.
As her father spent all his days and half his nights in his
counting-house, conning his ledgers and scolding his writers, that
young woman had more liberty than is generally allowed to those
of her age, and a mighty bad use she made of it.

O king! men commit two capital mistakes in rearing the "domestic
calamity," and these are over-vigilance and under-vigilance. Some
parents never lose sight of their daughters, suspect them of all evil
intentions, and are silly enough to show their suspicions, which is
an incentive to evil-doing. For the weak-minded things do
naturally say, "I will be wicked at once. What do I now but suffer
all the pains and penalties of badness, without enjoying its
pleasures?" And so they are guilty of many evil actions; for,
however vigilant fathers and mothers may be, the daughter can
always blind their eyes.

On the other hand, many parents take no trouble whatever with
their charges: they allow them to sit in idleness, the origin of
badness; they permit them to communicate with the wicked, and
they give them liberty which breeds opportunity. Thus they also,
falling into the snares of the unrighteous, who are ever a more
painstaking race than the righteous, are guilty of many evil actions.

What, then, must wise parents do? The wise will study the
characters of their children, and modify their treatment
accordingly. If a daughter be naturally good, she will be treated
with a prudent confidence. If she be vicious, an apparent trust will
be reposed in her; but her father and mother will secretly ever be
upon their guard. The one-idea'd --

"All this parrot-prate, I suppose, is only intended to vex me," cried
the warrior king, who always considered himself, and very
naturally, a person of such consequence as ever to be uppermost in
the thoughts and minds of others. "If thou must tell a tale, then tell
one, Vampire! or else be silent, as I am sick to the death of thy
psychics."

"It is well, O warrior king," resumed the Baital.

After that Churaman the parrot had given the young Raja Ram a
golden mine full of good advice about the management of
daughters, he proceeded to describe Jayashri.

She was tall, stout, and well made, of lymphatic temperament, and
yet strong passions. Her fine large eyes had heavy and rather full
eyelids, which are to be avoided. Her hands were symmetrical
without being small, and the palms were ever warm and damp.
Though her lips were good, her mouth was somewhat underhung;
and her voice was so deep, that at times it sounded like that of a
man. Her hair was smooth as the kokila's plume, and her
complexion was that of the young jasmine; and these were the
points at which most persons looked. Altogether, she was neither
handsome nor ugly, which is an excellent thing in woman. Sita the
goddess[FN#77] was lovely to excess; therefore she was carried
away by a demon. Raja Bali was exceedingly generous, and he
emptied his treasury. In this way, exaggeration, even of good, is
exceedingly bad.

Yet must I confess, continued the parrot, that, as a rule, the
beautiful woman is more virtuous than the ugly. The former is
often tempted, but her vanity and conceit enable her to resist, by
the self-promise that she shall be tempted again and again. On the
other hand, the ugly woman must tempt instead of being tempted,
and she must yield, because her vanity and conceit are gratified by
yielding, not by resisting.

"Ho, there!" broke in the jay contemptuously. "What woman
cannot win the hearts of the silly things called men? Is it not said
that a pig-faced female who dwells in Landanpur has a lover?"

I was about to remark, my king! said the parrot, somewhat nettled,
if the aged virgin had not interrupted me, that as ugly women are
more vicious than handsome women, so they are most successful.
"We love the pretty, we adore the plain," is a true saying amongst
the worldly wise. And why do we adore the plain? Because they
seem to think less of themselves than of us-a vital condition of
adoration.

Jayashri made some conquests by the portion of good looks which
she possessed, more by her impudence, and most by her father's
reputation for riches. She was truly shameless, and never allowed
herself fewer than half a dozen admirers at the time. Her chief
amusement was to appoint interviews with them successively, at
intervals so short that she was obliged to hurry away one in order
to make room for another. And when a lover happened to be
jealous, or ventured in any way to criticize her arrangements, she
replied at once by showing him the door. Answer unanswerable!

When Jayashri had reached the ripe age of thirteen, the son of a
merchant, who was her father's gossip and neighbour, returned
home after a long sojourn in far lands, whither he had travelled in
the search of wealth. The poor wretch, whose name, by-the-bye,
was Shridat (Gift of Fortune), had loved her in her childhood; and
he came back, as men are apt to do after absence from familiar
scenes, painfully full of affection for house and home and all
belonging to it. From his cross, stingy old uncle to the snarling
superannuated beast of a watchdog, he viewed all with eyes of love
and melting heart. He could not see that his idol was greatly
changed, and nowise for the better; that her nose was broader and
more club-like, her eyelids fatter and thicker, her under lip more
prominent, her voice harsher, and her manner coarser. He did not
notice that she was an adept in judging of men's dress, and that she
looked with admiration upon all swordsmen, especially upon those
who fought upon horses and elephants. The charm of memory, the
curious faculty of making past time present caused all he viewed to
be enchanting to him.

Having obtained her father's permission, Shridat applied for
betrothal to Jayashri, who with peculiar boldness, had resolved that
no suitor should come to her through her parent. And she, after
leading him on by all the coquetries of which she was a mistress,
refused to marry him, saying that she liked him as a friend, but
would hate him as a husband.

You see, my king! there are three several states of feeling with
which women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and
indifference. Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient,
because the essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as
readily as they fall into it. Hate being a sister excitement will
easily become, if a man has wit enough to effect the change, love;
and hate-love may perhaps last a little longer than love-love. Also,
man has the occupation, the excitement, and the pleasure of
bringing about the change. As regards the neutral state, that poet
was not happy in his ideas who sang --

Whene'er indifference appears, or scorn,
Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!

For a man versed in the Lila Shastra[FN#78] can soon turn a
woman's indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily
permuted to love. In which predicament it is the old thing over
again, and it ends in the pure Asat[FN#79] or nonentity.

"Which of these two birds, the jay or the parrot, had dipped deeper
into human nature, mighty King Vikram?" asked the demon in a
wheedling tone of voice.

The trap was this time set too openly, even for the royal personage,
to fall into it. He hurried on, calling to his son, and not answering a
word. The Vampire therefore resumed the thread of his story at the
place where he had broken it off.

Shridat was in despair when he heard the resolve of his idol. He
thought of drowning himself, of throwing himself down from the
summit of Mount Girnar,[FN#80] of becoming a religious beggar;
in short, of a multitude of follies. But he refrained from all such
heroic remedies for despair, having rightly judged, when he
became somewhat calmer, that they would not be likely to further
his suit. He discovered that patience is a virtue, and he resolved
impatiently enough to practice it. And by perseverance he
succeeded. The worse for him! How vain are men to wish! How
wise is the Deity, who is deaf to their wishes!

Jayashri, for potent reasons best known to herself, was married to
Shridat six months after his return home. He was in raptures. He
called himself the happiest man in existence. He thanked and
sacrificed to the Bhagwan for listening to his prayers. He recalled
to mind with thrilling heart the long years which he had spent in
hopeless exile from all that was dear to him, his sadness and
anxiety, his hopes and joys, his toils and troubles his loyal love and
his vows to Heaven for the happiness of his idol, and for the
furtherance of his fondest desires.

For truly he loved her, continued the parrot, and there is something
holy in such love. It becomes not only a faith, but the best of
faiths-an abnegation of self which emancipates the spirit from its
straightest and earthliest bondage, the "I"; the first step in the
regions of heaven; a homage rendered through the creature to the
Creator; a devotion solid, practical, ardent, not as worship mostly
is, a cold and lifeless abstraction; a merging of human nature into
one far nobler and higher the spiritual existence of the supernal
world. For perfect love is perfect happiness, and the only
perfection of man; and what is a demon but a being without love?
And what makes man's love truly divine, is the fact that it is
bestowed upon such a thing as woman.

"And now, Raja Vikram," said the Vampire, speaking in his proper
person, "I have given you Madanmanjari the jay's and Churaman
the parrot's definitions of the tender passion, or rather their
descriptions of its effects. Kindly observe that I am far from
accepting either one or the other. Love is, according to me,
somewhat akin to mania, a temporary condition of selfishness, a
transient confusion of identity. It enables man to predicate of
others who are his other selves, that which he is ashamed to say
about his real self. I will suppose the beloved object to be ugly,
stupid, vicious, perverse, selfish, low minded, or the reverse; man
finds it charming by the same rule that makes his faults and foibles
dearer to him than all the virtues and good qualities of his
neighbours. Ye call love a spell, an alchemy, a deity. Why?
Because it deifies self by gratifying all man's pride, man's vanity,
and man's conceit, under the mask of complete unegotism. Who is
not in heaven when he is talking of himself? and, prithee, of what
else consists all the talk of lovers?"

It is astonishing that the warrior king allowed this speech to last as
long as it did. He hated nothing so fiercely, now that he was in
middle-age, as any long mention of the "handsome god.[FN#81]"
Having vainly endeavoured to stop by angry mutterings the course
of the Baital's eloquence, he stepped out so vigorously and so
rudely shook that inveterate talker, that the latter once or twice
nearly bit off the tip of his tongue. Then the Vampire became
silent, and Vikram relapsed into a walk which allowed the tale to
be resumed.

Jayashri immediately conceived a strong dislike for her husband,
and simultaneously a fierce affection for a reprobate who before
had been indifferent to her. The more lovingly Shridat behaved to
her, the more vexed end annoyed she was. When her friends talked
to her, she turned up her nose, raising her eyebrows (in token of
displeasure), and remained silent. When her husband spoke words
of affection to her, she found them disagreeable, and turning away
her face, reclined on the bed. Then he brought dresses and
ornaments of various kinds and presented them to her, saying,
"Wear these." Whereupon she would become more angry, knit her
brows, turn her face away, and in an audible whisper call him
"fool." All day she stayed out of the house, saying to her
companions, "Sisters, my youth is passing away, and I have not, up
to the present time, tasted any of this world's pleasures." Then she
would ascend to the balcony, peep through the lattice, and seeing
the reprobate going along, she would cry to her friend, "Bring that
person to me." All night she tossed and turned from side to side,
reflecting in her heart, "I am puzzled in my mind what I shall say,
and whither I shall go. I have forgotten sleep, hunger, and thirst;
neither heat nor cold is refreshing to me."

At last, unable any longer to support the separation from her
reprobate paramour, whom she adored, she resolved to fly with
him. On one occasion, when she thought that her husband was fast
asleep, she rose up quietly, and leaving him, made her way
fearlessly in the dark night to her lover's abode. A footpad, who
saw her on the way, thought to himself, "Where can this woman,
clothed in jewels, be going alone at midnight?" And thus he
followed her unseen, and watched her.

When Jayashri reached the intended place, she went into the house,
and found her lover lying at the door. He was dead, having been
stabbed by the footpad; but she, thinking that he had, according to
custom, drunk intoxicating hemp, sat upon the floor, and raising
his head, placed it tenderly in her lap. Then, burning with the fire
of separation from him, she began to kiss his cheeks, and to fondle
and caress him with the utmost freedom and affection.

By chance a Pisach (evil spirit) was seated in a large
fig-tree[FN#82] opposite the house, and it occurred to him, when
beholding this scene, that he might amuse himself in a
characteristic way. He therefore hopped down from his branch,
vivified the body, and began to return the woman's caresses. But as
Jayashri bent down to kiss his lips, he caught the end of her nose in
his teeth, and bit it clean off. He then issued from the corpse, and
returned to the branch where he had been sitting.

Jayashri was in despair. She did not, however, lose her presence of
mind, but sat down and proceeded to take thought; and when she
had matured her plan she arose, dripping with blood, and walked
straight home to her husband's house. On entering his room she
clapped her hand to her nose, and began to gnash her teeth, and to
shriek so violently, that all the members of the family were
alarmed. The neighbours also collected in numbers at the door,
and, as it was bolted inside, they broke it open and rushed in,
carrying lights. There they saw the wife sitting upon the ground
with her face mutilated, and the husband standing over her,
apparently trying to appease her.

"O ignorant, criminal, shameless, pitiless wretch!" cried the
people, especially the women; "why hast thou cut off her nose, she
not having offended in any way?"

Poor Shridat, seeing at once the trick which had been played upon
him, thought to himself: "One should put no confidence in a
changeful mind, a black serpent, or an armed enemy, and one
should dread a woman's doings. What cannot a poet describe?
What is there that a saint (jogi) does not know? What nonsense
will not a drunken man talk? What limit is there to a woman's
guile? True it is that the gods know nothing of the defects of a
horse, of the thundering of clouds, of a woman's deeds, or of a
man's future fortunes. How then can we know?" He could do
nothing but weep, and swear by the herb basil, by his cattle, by his
grain, by a piece of gold, and by all that is holy, that he had not
committed the crime.

In the meanwhile, the old merchant, Jayashri's father, ran off, and
laid a complaint before the kotwal, and the footmen of the police
magistrate were immediately sent to apprehend the husband, and to
carry him bound before the judge. The latter, after due
examination, laid the affair before the king. An example happening
to be necessary at the time, the king resolved to punish the offence
with severity, and he summoned the husband and wife to the court.

When the merchant's daughter was asked to give an account of
what had happened, she pointed out the state of her nose, and said,
"Maharaj! why inquire of me concerning what is so manifest?"
The king then turned to the husband, and bade him state his
defence. He said, "I know nothing of it," and in the face of the
strongest evidence he persisted in denying his guilt.

Thereupon the king, who had vainly threatened to cut off Shridat's
right hand, infuriated by his refusing to confess and to beg for
mercy, exclaimed, "How must I punish such a wretch as thou art?"
The unfortunate man answered, "Whatever your majesty may
consider just, that be pleased to do." Thereupon the king cried,
"Away with him, and impale him"; and the people, hearing the
command, prepared to obey it.

Before Shridat had left the court, the footpad, who had been
looking on, and who saw that an innocent man was about to be
unjustly punished, raised a cry for justice and, pushing through the
crowd, resolved to make himself heard. He thus addressed the
throne: "Great king, the cherishing of the good, and the
punishment of the bad, is the invariable duty of kings." The ruler
having caused him to approach, asked him who he was, and he
replied boldly, " Maharaj! I am a thief, and this man is innocent
and his blood is about to be shed unjustly. Your majesty has not
done what is right in this affair." Thereupon the king charged him
to tell the truth according to his religion; and the thief related
explicitly the whole circumstances, omitting of course, the murder.

"Go ye," said the king to his messengers, "and look in the mouth of
the woman's lover who has fallen dead. If the nose be there found,
then has this thief-witness told the truth, and the husband is a
guiltless man."

The nose was presently produced in court, and Shridat escaped the
stake. The king caused the wicked Jayashri's face to be smeared
with oily soot, and her head and eyebrows to be shaved; thus
blackened and disfigured, she was mounted upon a little
ragged-limbed ass and was led around the market and the streets,
after which she was banished for ever from the city. The husband
and the thief were then dismissed with betel and other gifts,
together with much sage advice which neither of them wanted.

"My king," resumed the misogyne parrot, "of such excellencies as
these are women composed. It is said that 'wet cloth will
extinguish fire and bad food will destroy strength; a degenerate son
ruins a family, and when a friend is in wrath he takes away life.
But a woman is an inflicter of grief in love and in hate, whatever
she does turns out to be for our ill. Truly the Deity has created
woman a strange being in this world.' And again, 'The beauty of
the nightingale is its song, science is the beauty of an ugly man,
forgiveness is the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a woman
is virtue-but where shall we find it?' And again, 'Among the sages,
Narudu; among the beasts, the jackal; among the birds, the crow;
among men, the barber; and in this world woman-is the most
crafty.'

"What I have told thee, my king, I have seen with mine own eyes,
and I have heard with mine own ears. At the time I was young, but
the event so affected me that I have ever since held female kind to
be a walking pest, a two-legged plague, whose mission on earth,
like flies and other vermin, is only to prevent our being too happy.
O, why do not children and young parrots sprout in crops from the
ground-from budding trees or vinestocks?"

"I was thinking, sire," said the young Dharma Dhwaj to the warrior
king his father, "what women would say of us if they could
compose Sanskrit verses!"

"Then keep your thoughts to yourself," replied the Raja, nettled at
his son daring to say a word in favour of the sex. "You always take
the part of wickedness and depravity--- "

"Permit me, your majesty," interrupted the Baital, "to conclude my
tale."

When Madan-manjari, the jay, and Churaman, the parrot, had
given these illustrations of their belief, they began to wrangle, and
words ran high. The former insisted that females are the salt of the
earth, speaking, I presume, figuratively. The latter went so far as to
assert that the opposite sex have no souls, and that their brains are
in a rudimental and inchoate state of development. Thereupon he
was tartly taken to task by his master's bride, the beautiful
Chandravati, who told him that those only have a bad opinion of
women who have associated with none but the vicious and the low,
and that he should be ashamed to abuse feminine parrots, because
his mother had been one.

This was truly logical.

On the other hand, the jay was sternly reproved for her mutinous
and treasonable assertions by the husband of her mistress, Raja
Ram, who, although still a bridegroom, had not forgotten the
gallant rule of his syntax--

The masculine is more worthy than the feminine;

till Madan-manjari burst into tears and declared that her life was
not worth having. And Raja Ram looked at her as if he could have
wrung her neck.

In short, Raja Vikram, all the four lost their tempers, and with
them what little wits they had. Two of them were but birds, and the
others seem not to have been much better, being young, ignorant,
inexperienced, and lately married. How then could they decide so
difficult a question as that of the relative wickedness and villany of
men and women? Had your majesty been there, the knot of
uncertainty would soon have been undone by the trenchant edge of
your wit and wisdom, your knowledge and experience. You have,
of course, long since made up your mind upon the subject?

Dharma Dhwaj would have prevented his father's reply. But the
youth had been twice reprehended in the course of this tale, and he
thought it wisest to let things take their own way.

"Women," quoth the Raja, oracularly, "are worse than we are; a
man, however depraved he may be, ever retains some notion of
right and wrong, but a woman does not. She has no such regard
whatever."

"The beautiful Bangalah Rani for instance?" said the Baital, with a
demonaic sneer.

At the mention of a word, the uttering of which was punishable by
extirpation of the tongue, Raja Vikram's brain whirled with rage.
He staggered in the violence of his passion, and putting forth both
hands to break his fall, he dropped the bundle from his back. Then
the Baital, disentangling himself and laughing lustily, ran off
towards the tree as fast as his thin brown legs would carry him. But
his activity availed him little.

The king, puffing with fury, followed him at the top of his speed,
and caught him by his tail before he reached the siras-tree, hurled
him backwards with force, put foot upon his chest, and after
shaking out the cloth, rolled him up in it with extreme violence,
bumped his back half a dozen times against the stony ground, and
finally, with a jerk, threw him on his shoulder, as he had done
before.

The young prince, afraid to accompany his father whilst he was
pursuing the fiend, followed slowly in the rear, and did not join
him for some minutes.

But when matters were in their normal state, the Vampire, who had
endured with exemplary patience the penalty of his impudence,
began in honeyed accents,

"Listen, O warrior king, whilst thy servant recounts unto thee
another true tale."

THE VAMPIRE'S THIRD STORY.

Of a High-minded Family.

In the venerable city of Bardwan, O warrior king! (quoth the
Vampire) during the reign of the mighty Rupsen, flourished one
Rajeshwar, a Rajput warrior of distinguished fame. By his valour
and conduct he had risen from the lowest ranks of the army to
command it as its captain. And arrived at that dignity, he did not
put a stop to all improvements, like other chiefs, who rejoice to
rest and return thanks. On the contrary, he became such a reformer
that, to some extent, he remodelled the art of war.

Instead of attending to rules and regulations, drawn up in their
studies by pandits and Brahmans, he consulted chiefly his own
experience and judgment. He threw aside the systematic plans of
campaigns laid down in the Shastras or books of the ancients, and
he acted upon the spur of the moment. He displayed a skill in the
choice of ground, in the use of light troops, and in securing his
own supplies whilst he cut off those of the enemy, which
Kartikaya himself, God of War, might have envied. Finding that
the bows of his troops were clumsy and slow to use, he had them
all changed before compelled so to do by defeat; he also gave his
attention to the sword handles, which cramped the men's grasp but
which having been used for eighteen hundred years were
considered perfect weapons. And having organized a special corps
of warriors using fire arrows, he soon brought it to such perfection
that, by using it against the elephants of his enemies, he gained
many a campaign.

One instance of his superior judgment I am about to quote to thee,
O Vikram, after which I return to my tale; for thou art truly a
warrior king, very likely to imitate the innovations of the great
general Rajeshwar.

(A grunt from the monarch was the result of the Vampire's sneer.)

He found his master's armies recruited from Northern Hindustan,
and officered by Kshatriya warriors, who grew great only because
they grew old and - fat. Thus the energy and talent of the younger
men were wasted in troubles and disorders; whilst the seniors were
often so ancient that they could not mount their chargers unaided,
nor, when they were mounted, could they see anything a dozen
yards before them. But they had served in a certain obsolete
campaign, and until Rajeshwar gave them pensions and dismissals,
they claimed a right to take first part in all campaigns present and
future. The commander-in-chief refused to use any captain who
could not stand steady on his legs, or endure the sun for a whole
day. When a soldier distinguished himself in action, he raised him
to the powers and privileges of the warrior caste. And whereas it
had been the habit to lavish circles and bars of silver and other
metals upon all those who had joined in the war, whether they had
sat behind a heap of sand or had been foremost to attack the foe, he
broke through the pernicious custom, and he rendered the honour
valuable by conferring it only upon the deserving. I need hardly
say that, in an inordinately short space of time, his army beat every
king and general that opposed it.

One day the great commander-in-chief was seated in a certain
room near the threshold of his gate, when the voices of a number
of people outside were heard. Rajeshwar asked, "Who is at the
door, and what is the meaning of the noise I hear?" The porter
replied, "It is a fine thing your honour has asked. Many persons
come sitting at the door of the rich for the purpose of obtaining a
livelihood and wealth. When they meet together they talk of
various things: it is these very people who are now making this
noise."

Rajeshwar, on hearing this, remained silent.

In the meantime a traveller, a Rajput, Birbal by name, hoping to
obtain employment, came from the southern quarter to the palace
of the chief. The porter having listened to his story, made the
circumstance known to his master, saying, "O chief! an armed man
has arrived here, hoping to obtain employment, and is standing at
the door. If I receive a command he shall be brought into your
honour's presence."

"Bring him in," cried the commander-in-chief.

The porter brought him in, and Rajeshwar inquired, "O Rajput,
who and what art thou?"

Birbal submitted that he was a person of distinguished fame for the
use of weapons, and that his name for fidelity and velour had gone
forth to the utmost ends of Bharat-Kandha.[FN#83]

The chief was well accustomed to this style of self introduction,
and its only effect upon his mind was a wish to shame the man by
showing him that he had not the least knowledge of weapons. He
therefore bade him bare his blade and perform some feat.

Birbal at once drew his good sword. Guessing the thoughts which
were hovering about the chief's mind, he put forth his left hand,
extending the forefinger upwards, waved his blade like the arm of
a demon round his head, and, with a dexterous stroke, so shaved
off a bit of nail that it fell to the ground, and not a drop of blood
appeared upon the finger-tip.

"Live for ever!" exclaimed Rajeshwar in admiration. He then
addressed to the recruit a few questions concerning the art of war,
or rather concerning his peculiar views of it. To all of which Birbal
answered with a spirit and a judgment which convinced the hearer
that he was no common sworder.

Whereupon Rajeshwar bore off the new man at arms to the palace
of the king Rupsen, and recommended that he should be engaged
without delay.

The king, being a man of few words and many ideas, after hearing
his commander-in-chief, asked, "O Rajput, what shall I give thee
for thy daily expenditure?"

"Give me a thousand ounces of gold daily," said Birbal, "and then I
shall have wherewithal to live on."

"Hast thou an army with thee?" exclaimed the king in the greatest
astonishment.

"I have not," responded the Rajput somewhat stiffly. "I have first, a
wife; second, a son; third, a daughter; fourth, myself; there is no
fifth person with me."

All the people of the court on hearing this turned aside their heads
to laugh, and even the women, who were peeping at the scene,
covered their mouths with their veils. The Rajput was then
dismissed the presence.

It is, however, noticeable amongst you humans, that the world
often takes you at your own valuation. Set a high price upon
yourselves, and each man shall say to his neighbour, "In this man
there must be something." Tell everyone that you are brave, clever,
generous, or even handsome, and after a time they will begin to
believe you. And when thus you have attained success, it will be
harder to unconvince them than it was to convince them. Thus - -

"Listen not to him, sirrah," cried Raja Vikram to Dharma Dhwaj,
the young prince, who had fallen a little way behind, and was
giving ear attentively to the Vampire's ethics. "Listen to him not.
And tell me, villain, with these ignoble principles of shine, what
will become of modesty, humility, self-sacrifice, and a host of
other Guna or good qualities which - which are good qualities?"

"I know not," rejoined the Baital, "neither do I care. But my
habitually inspiriting a succession of human bodies has taught me
one fact. The wise man knows himself, and is, therefore, neither
unduly humble nor elated, because he had no more to do with
making himself than with the cut of his cloak, or with the fitness of
his loin-cloth. But the fool either loses his head by comparing
himself with still greater fools, or is prostrated when he finds
himself inferior to other and lesser fools. This shyness he calls
modesty, humility, and so forth. Now, whenever entering a corpse,
whether it be of man, woman, or child, I feel peculiarly modest; I
know that my tenement lately belonged to some conceited ass.
And --"

"Wouldst thou have me bump thy back against the ground?" asked
Raja Vikram angrily.

(The Baital muttered some reply scarcely intelligible about his
having this time stumbled upon a metaphysical thread of ideas, and
then continued his story.)

Now Rupsen, the king, began by inquiring of himself why the
Rajput had rated his services so highly. Then he reflected that if
this recruit had asked so much money, it must have been for some
reason which would afterwards become apparent. Next, he hoped
that if he gave him so much, his generosity might some day turn
out to his own advantage. Finally, with this idea in his mind, he
summoned Birbal and the steward of his household, and said to the
latter, "Give this Rajput a thousand ounces of gold daily from our
treasury."

It is related that Birbal made the best possible use of his wealth. He
used every morning to divide it into two portions, one of which
was distributed to Brahmans and Parohitas.[FN#84] Of the
remaining moiety, having made two parts, he gave one as alms to
pilgrims, to Bairagis or Vishnu's mendicants, and to Sanyasis or
worshippers of Shiva, whose bodies, smeared with ashes, were
hardly covered with a narrow cotton cloth and a rope about their
loins, and whose heads of artificial hair, clotted like a rope,
besieged his gate. With the remaining fourth, having caused food
to be prepared, he regaled the poor, while he himself and his
family ate what was left. Every evening, arming himself with
sword and buckler, he took up his position as guard at the royal
bedside, and walked round it all night sword in hand. If the king
chanced to wake and asked who was present, Birbal immediately
gave reply that "Birbal is here; whatever command you give, that
he will obey." And oftentimes Rupsen gave him unusual
commands, for it is said, "To try thy servant, bid him do things in
season and out of season: if he obey thee willingly, know him to be
useful; if he reply, dismiss him at once. Thus is a servant tried,
even as a wife by the poverty of her husband, and brethren and
friends by asking their aid."

In such manner, through desire of money, Birbal remained on
guard all night; and whether eating, drinking, sleeping, sitting,
going or wandering about, during the twenty-four hours, he held
his master in watchful remembrance. This, indeed, is the custom; if
a man sell another the latter is sold, but a servant by doing service
sells himself, and when a man has become dependent, how can he
be happy? Certain it is that however intelligent, clever, or learned a
man may be, yet, while he is in his master's presence, he remains
silent as a dumb man, and struck with dread. Only while he is
away from his lord can he be at ease. Hence, learned men say that
to do service aright is harder than any religious study.

On one occasion it is related that there happened to be heard at
night-time the wailing of a woman in a neighbouring cemetery.
The king on hearing it called out, "Who is in waiting?"

"I am here," replied Birbal; "what command is there?"

"Go," spoke the king, "to the place whence proceeds this sound of
woman's wail, and having inquired the cause of her grief, return
quickly."

On receiving this order the Rajput went to obey it; and the king,
unseen by him, and attired in a black dress, followed for the
purpose of observing his courage.

Presently Birbal arrived at the cemetery. And what sees he there?
A beautiful woman of a light yellow colour, loaded with jewels
from head to foot, holding a horn in her right and a necklace in her
left hand. Sometimes she danced, sometimes she jumped, and
sometimes she ran about. There was not a tear in her eye, but
beating her head and making lamentable cries, she kept dashing
herself on the ground.

Seeing her condition, and not recognizing the goddess born of sea
foam, and whom all the host of heaven loved,[FN#85] Birbal
inquired, "Why art thou thus beating thyself and crying out? Who
art thou? And what grief is upon thee?"

"I am the Royal-Luck," she replied.

"For what reason," asked Birbal, "art thou weeping?"

The goddess then began to relate her position to the Rajput. She
said, with tears, "In the king's palace Shudra (or low caste acts) are
done, and hence misfortune will certainly fall upon it, and I shall
forsake it. After a month has passed, the king, having endured
excessive affliction, will die. In grief for this, I weep. I have
brought much happiness to the king's house, and hence I am full of
regret that this my prediction cannot in any way prove untrue."

"Is there," asked Birbal, "any remedy for this trouble, so that the
king may be preserved and live a hundred years?"

"Yes," said the goddess, "there is. About eight miles to the east
thou wilt find a temple dedicated to my terrible sister Devi. Offer
to her thy son's head, cut off with shine own hand, and the reign of
thy king shall endure for an age." So saying Raj-Lakshmi
disappeared.

Birbal answered not a word, but with hurried steps he turned
towards his home. The king, still in black so as not to be seen,
followed him closely, and observed and listened to everything he
did.

The Rajput went straight to his wife, awakened her, and related to
her everything that had happened. The wise have said, "she alone
deserves the name of wife who always receives her husband with
affectionate and submissive words." When she heard the
circumstances, she at once aroused her son, and her daughter also
awoke. Then Birbal told them all that they must follow him to the
temple of Devi in the wood.

On the way the Rajput said to his wife, "If thou wilt give up thy
son willingly, I will sacrifice him for our master's sake to Devi the
Destroyer."

She replied, "Father and mother, son and daughter, brother and
relative, have I now none. You are everything to me. It is written
in the scripture that a wife is not made pure by gifts to priests, nor
by performing religious rites; her virtue consists in waiting upon
her husband, in obeying him and in loving him - yea! though he be
lame, maimed in the hands, dumb, deaf, blind, one eyed, leprous,
or humpbacked. It is a true saying that 'a son under one's authority,
a body free from sickness, a desire to acquire knowledge, an
intelligent friend, and an obedient wife; whoever holds these five
will find them bestowers of happiness and dispellers of affliction.
An unwilling servant, a parsimonious king, an insincere friend, and
a wife not under control; such things are disturbers of ease and
givers of trouble.'"

Then the good wife turned to her son and said "Child by the gift of
thy head, the king's life may be spared, and the kingdom remain
unshaken."

"Mother," replied that excellent youth, "in my opinion we should
hasten this matter. Firstly, I must obey your command; secondly, I
must promote the interests of my master; thirdly, if this body be of
any use to a goddess, nothing better can be done with it in this
world."

("Excuse me, Raja Vikram," said the Baital, interrupting himself,
"if I repeat these fair discourses at full length; it is interesting to
hear a young person, whose throat is about to be cut, talk so like a
doctor of laws.")

Then the youth thus addressed his sire: "Father, whoever can be of
use to his master, the life of that man in this world has been lived
to good purpose, and by reason of his usefulness he will be
rewarded in other worlds."

His sister, however, exclaimed, "If a mother should give poison to
her daughter, and a father sell his son, and a king seize the entire
property of his subjects, where then could one look for
protection?" But they heeded her not, and continued talking as they
journeyed towards the temple of Devi - the king all the while
secretly following them.

Presently they reached the temple, a single room, surrounded by a
spacious paved area; in front was an immense building capable of
seating hundreds of people. Before the image there were pools of
blood, where victims had lately been slaughtered. In the sanctum
was Devi, a large black figure with ten arms. With a spear in one
of her right hands she pierced the giant Mahisha; and with one of
her left hands she held the tail of a serpent, and the hair of the
giant, whose breast the serpent was biting. Her other arms were all
raised above her head, and were filled with different instruments of
war; against her right leg leaned a lion.

Then Birbal joined his hands in prayer, and with Hindu mildness
thus addressed the awful goddess: "O mother, let the king's life be
prolonged for a thousand years by the sacrifice of my son. O Devi,
mother! destroy, destroy his enemies! Kill! kill! Reduce them to
ashes! Drive them away! Devour them! devour them! Cut them in
two! Drink! drink their blood! Destroy them root and branch! With
thy thunderbolt, spear, scymitar, discus, or rope, annihilate them!
Spheng! Spheng!"

The Rajput, having caused his son to kneel before the goddess,
struck him so violent a blow that his head rolled upon the ground.
He then threw the sword down, when his daughter, frantic with
grief, snatched it up and struck her neck with such force that her
head, separated from her body, fell. In her turn the mother, unable
to survive the loss of her children, seized the weapon and
succeeded in decapitating herself. Birbal, beholding all this
slaughter, thus reflected: "My children are dead why, now, should
I remain in servitude, and upon whom shall I bestow the gold I
receive from the king?" He then gave himself so deep a wound in
the neck, that his head also separated from his body.

Rupsen, the king, seeing these four heads on the ground, said in his
heart, "For my sake has the family of Birbal been destroyed.
Kingly power, for the purpose of upholding which the destruction
of a whole household is necessary, is a mere curse, and to carry on
government in this manner is not just." He then took up the sword
and was about to slay himself, when the Destroying Goddess,
probably satisfied with bloodshed, stayed his hand, bidding him at
the same time ask any boon he pleased.

The generous monarch begged, thereupon, that his faithful servant
might be restored to life, together with all his high-minded family;
and the goddess Devi in the twinkling of an eye fetched from
Patala, the regions below the earth, a vase full of Amrita, the water
of immortality, sprinkled it upon the dead, and raised them all as
before. After which the whole party walked leisurely home, and in
due time the king divided his throne with his friend Birbal.

Having stopped for a moment, the Baital proceeded to remark, in a
sententious tone, "Happy the servant who grudges not his own life
to save that of his master! And happy, thrice happy the master who
can annihilate all greedy longing for existence and worldly
prosperity. Raja, I have to ask thee one searching question - Of
these five, who was the greatest fool?"

"Demon!" exclaimed the great Vikram, all whose cherished
feelings about fidelity and family affection, obedience, and
high-mindedness, were outraged by this Vampire view of the
question; "if thou meanest by the greatest fool the noblest mind, I
reply without hesitating Rupsen, the king."

"Why, prithee?" asked the Baital.

"Because, dull demon," said the king, "Birbal was bound to offer
up his life for a master who treated him so generously; the son
could not disobey his father, and the women naturally and
instinctively killed themselves, because the example was set to
them. But Rupsen the king gave up his throne for the sake of his
retainer, and valued not a straw his life and his high inducements
to live. For this reason I think him the most meritorious."

"Surely, mighty Vikram," laughed the Vampire, "you will be tired
of ever clambering up yon tall tree, even had you the legs and arms
of Hanuman[FN#86] himself."

And so saying he disappeared from the cloth, although it had been
placed upon the ground.

But the poor Baital had little reason to congratulate himself on the
success of his escape. In a short time he was again bundled into the
cloth with the usual want of ceremony, and he revenged himself by
telling another true story.

THE VAMPIRE'S FOURTH STORY.

Of A Woman Who Told The Truth.

"Listen, great king!" again began the Baital.

An unimportant Baniya[FN#87] (trader), Hiranyadatt, had a
daughter, whose name was Madansena Sundari, the beautiful army
of Cupid. Her face was like the moon; her hair like the clouds; her
eyes like those of a muskrat; her eyebrows like a bent bow; her
nose like a parrot's bill; her neck like that of a dove; her teeth like
pomegranate grains; the red colour of her lips like that of a gourd;
her waist lithe and bending like the pards: her hands and feet like
softest blossoms; her complexion like the jasmine-in fact, day by
day the splendour of her youth increased.

When she had arrived at maturity, her father and mother began
often to resolve in their minds the subject of her marriage. And the
people of all that country side ruled by Birbar king of Madanpur
bruited it abroad that in the house of Hiranyadatt had been born a
daughter by whose beauty gods, men, and munis (sages) were
fascinated.

Thereupon many, causing their portraits to be painted, sent them
by messengers to Hiranyadatt the Baniya, who showed them all to
his daughter. But she was capricious, as beauties sometimes are,
and when her father said, "Make choice of a husband thyself," she
told him that none pleased her, and moreover she begged of him to
find her a husband who possessed good looks, good qualities, and
good sense.

At length, when some days had passed, four suitors came from
four different countries. The father told them that he must have
from each some indication that he possessed the required qualities;
that he was pleased with their looks, but that they must satisfy him
about their knowledge.

"I have," the first said, "a perfect acquaintance with the Shastras
(or Scriptures); in science there is none to rival me. As for my
handsome mien, it may plainly be seen by you."

The second exclaimed, "My attainments are unique in the
knowledge of archery. I am acquainted with the art of discharging
arrows and killing anything which though not seen is heard, and
my fine proportions are plainly visible to you."

The third continued, "I understand the language of land and water
animals, of birds and of beasts, and I have no equal in strength. Of
my comeliness you yourself may judge."

"I have the knowledge," quoth the fourth, "how to make a certain
cloth which can be sold for five rubies: having sold it I give the
proceeds of one ruby to a Brahman, of the second I make an
offering to a deity, a third I wear on my own person, a fourth I
keep for my wife; and, having sold the fifth, I spend it in giving
feasts. This is my knowledge, and none other is acquainted with it.
My good looks are apparent."

The father hearing these speeches began to reflect, "It is said that
excess in anything is not good. Sita[FN#88] was very lovely, but
the demon Ravana carried her away; and Bali king of Mahabahpur
gave much alms, but at length he became poor.[FN#89] My
daughter is too fair to remain a maiden; to which of these shall I
give her?"

So saying, Hiranyadatt went to his daughter, explained the
qualities of the four suitors, and asked, "To which shall I give
thee?" On hearing these words she was abashed; and, hanging
down her head, knew not what to reply.

Then the Baniya, having reflected, said to himself, "He who is
acquainted with the Shastras is a Brahman, he who could shoot an
arrow at the sound was a Kshatriya or warrior, and he who made
the cloth was a Shudra or servile. But the youth who understands
the language of birds is of our own caste. To him, therefore, will I
marry her." And accordingly he proceeded with the betrothal of his
daughter.

Meanwhile Madansena went one day, during the spring season into
the garden for a stroll. It happened, just before she came out, that
Somdatt, the son of the merchant Dharmdatt, had gone for pleasure
into the forest, and was returning through the same garden to his
home.

He was fascinated at the sight of the maiden, and said to his friend,
"Brother, if I can obtain her my life will be prosperous, and if I do
not obtain her my living in the world will be in vain."

Having thus spoken, and becoming restless from the fear of
separation, he involuntarily drew near to her, and seizing her hand,
said - "If thou wilt not form an affection for me, I will throw away
my life on thy account."

"Be pleased not to do this," she replied; "it will be sinful, and it
will involve me in the guilt and punishment of shedding blood;
hence I shall be miserable in this world and in that to be."

"Thy blandishments," he replied, "have pierced my heart, and the
consuming thought of parting from thee has burnt up my body, and
memory and understanding have been destroyed by this pain; and
from excess of love I have no sense of right or wrong. But if thou
wilt make me a promise, I will live again."

She replied, "Truly the Kali Yug (iron age) has commenced, since
which time falsehood has increased in the world and truth has
diminished; people talk smoothly with their tongues, but nourish
deceit in their hearts; religion is destroyed, crime has increased,
and the earth has begun to give little fruit. Kings levy fines,
Brahmans have waxed covetous, the son obeys not his sire's
commands, brother distrusts brother; friendship has departed from
amongst friends; sincerity has left masters; servants have given up
service; man has abandoned manliness; and woman has abandoned
modesty. Five days hence, my marriage is to be; but if thou slay
not thyself, I will visit thee first, and after that I will remain with
my husband."

Having given this promise, and having sworn by the Ganges, she
returned home. The merchant's son also went his way.

Presently the marriage ceremonies came on, and Hiranyadatt the
Baniya expended a lakh of rupees in feasts and presents to the
bridegroom. The bodies of the twain were anointed with turmeric,
the bride was made to hold in her hand the iron box for eye paint,
and the youth a pair of betel scissors. During the night before the
wedding there was loud and shrill music, the heads and limbs of
the young couple were rubbed with an ointment of oil, and the
bridegroom's head was duly shaved. The wedding procession was
very grand. The streets were a blaze of flambeaux and torches
carried in the hand, fireworks by the ton were discharged as the
people passed; elephants, camels, and horses richly caparisoned,
were placed in convenient situations; and before the procession
had reached the house of the bride half a dozen wicked boys and
bad young men were killed or wounded.[FN#90] After the
marriage formulas were repeated, the Baniya gave a feast or
supper, and the food was so excellent that all sat down quietly, no
one uttered a complaint, or brought dishonour on the bride's
family, or cut with scissors the garments of his neighbour.

The ceremony thus happily concluded, the husband brought
Madansena home to his own house. After some days the wife of
her husband's youngest brother, and also the wife of his eldest
brother, led her at night by force to her bridegroom, and seated her
on a bed ornamented with flowers.

As her husband proceeded to take her hand, she jerked it away, and
at once openly told him all that she had promised to Somdatt on
condition of his not killing himself.

"All things," rejoined the bridegroom, hearing her words, "have
their sense ascertained by speech; in speech they have their basis,
and from speech they proceed; consequently a falsifier of speech
falsifies everything. If truly you are desirous of going to him, go!

"Receiving her husband's permission, she arose and went off to the
young merchant's house in full dress. Upon the road a thief saw
her, and in high good humour came up and asked -

"Whither goest thou at midnight in such darkness, having put on
all these fine clothes and ornaments?"

She replied that she was going to the house of her beloved.

"And who here," said the thief, "is thy protector?"

"Kama Deva," she replied, "the beautiful youth who by his fiery
arrows wounds with love the hearts of the inhabitants of the three
worlds, Ratipati, the husband of Rati,[FN#91] accompanied by the
kokila bird,[FN#92] the humming bee and gentle breezes." She
then told to the thief the whole story, adding -

"Destroy not my jewels: I give thee a promise before I go, that on
my return thou shalt have all these ornaments."

Hearing this the thief thought to himself that it would be useless
now to destroy her jewels, when she had promised to give them to
him presently of her own good will. He therefore let her go, and
sat down and thus soliloquized:

"To me it is astonishing that he who sustained me in my mother's
womb should take no care of me now that I have been born and am
able to enjoy the good things of this world. I know not whether he
is asleep or dead. And I would rather swallow poison than ask man
for money or favour. For these six things tend to lower a man: --
friendship with the perfidious; causeless laughter; altercation with
women; serving an unworthy master; riding an ass, and speaking
any language but Sanskrit. And these five things the deity writes
on our fate at the hour of birth:-- first, age; secondly, action;
thirdly, wealth; fourthly, science; fifthly, fame. I have now done a
good deed, and as long as a man's virtue is in the ascendant, all
people becoming his servants obey him. But when virtuous deeds
diminish, even his friends become inimical to him."

Meanwhile Madansena had reached the place where Somdatt the
young trader had fallen asleep.

She awoke him suddenly, and he springing up in alarm quickly
asked her, "Art thou the daughter of a deity? or of a saint? or of a
serpent? Tell me truly, who art thou? And whence hast thou
come?"

She replied, "I am human-- Madansena, the daughter of the Baniya
Hiranyadatt. Dost thou not remember taking my hand in that
grove, and declaring that thou wouldst slay thyself if I did not
swear to visit thee first and after that remain with my husband?"

"Hast thou," he inquired, "told all this to thy husband or not?"

She replied, "I have told him everything; and he, thoroughly
understanding the whole affair, gave me permission."

"This matter," exclaimed Somdatt in a melancholy voice, "is like
pearls without a suitable dress, or food without clarified
butter,[FN#93] or singing without melody; they are all alike
unnatural. In the same way, unclean clothes will mar beauty, bad
food will undermine strength, a wicked wife will worry her
husband to death, a disreputable son will ruin his family, an
enraged demon will kill, and a woman, whether she love or hate,
will be a source of pain. For there are few things which a woman
will not do. She never brings to her tongue what is in her heart, she
never speaks out what is on her tongue, and she never tells what
she is doing. Truly the Deity has created woman a strange creature
in this world." He concluded with these words: "Return thou home
with another man's wife I have no concern."

Madansena rose and departed. On her way she met the thief, who,
hearing her tale, gave her great praise, and let her go
unplundered.[FN#94]

She then went to her husband, and related the whole matter to him.
But he had ceased to love her, and he said, "Neither a king nor a
minister, nor a wife, nor a person's hair nor his nails, look well out
of their places. And the beauty of the kokila is its note, of an ugly
man knowledge, of a devotee forgiveness, and of a woman her
chastity."

The Vampire having narrated thus far, suddenly asked the king,
"Of these three, whose virtue was the greatest?"

Vikram, who had been greatly edified by the tale, forgot himself,
and ejaculated, "The Thief's."

"And pray why?" asked the Baital.

"Because," the hero explained, "when her husband saw that she
loved another man, however purely, he ceased to feel affection for
her. Somdatt let her go unharmed, for fear of being punished by
the king. But there was no reason why the thief should fear the law
and dismiss her; therefore he was the best."

"Hi! hi! hi!" laughed the demon, spitefully. "Here, then, ends my
story."

Upon which, escaping as before from the cloth in which he was
slung behind the Raja's back, the Baital disappeared through the
darkness of the night, leaving father and son looking at each other
in dismay.

"Son Dharma Dhwaj," quoth the great Vikram, "the next time
when that villain Vampire asks me a question, I allow thee to take
the liberty of pinching my arm even before I have had time to
answer his questions. In this way we shall never, of a truth, end our
task."

"Your words be upon my head, sire," replied the young prince. But
he expected no good from his father's new plan, as, arrived under
the sires-tree, he heard the Baital laughing with all his might."

Surely he is laughing at our beards, sire," said the beardless prince,
who hated to be laughed at like a young person.

"Let them laugh that win," fiercely cried Raja Vikram, who hated
to be laughed at like an elderly person.

* * * * * * *

The Vampire lost no time in opening a fresh story.

THE VAMPIRE'S FIFTH STORY.

Of the Thief Who Laughed and Wept.

Your majesty (quoth the demon, with unusual politeness), there is
a country called Malaya, on the western coast of the land of
Bharat--you see that I am particular in specifying the place--and in
it was a city known as Chandrodaya, whose king was named
Randhir.

This Raja, like most others of his semi-deified order, had been in
youth what is called a Sarva-rasi[FN#95]; that is, he ate and drank
and listened to music, and looked at dancers and made love much
more than he studied, reflected, prayed, or conversed with the
wise. After the age of thirty he began to reform, and he brought
such zeal to the good cause, that in an incredibly short space of
time he came to be accounted and quoted as the paragon of correct
Rajas. This was very praiseworthy. Many of Brahma's vicegerents
on earth, be it observed, have loved food and drink, and music and
dancing, and the worship of Kama, to the end of their days.

Amongst his officers was Gunshankar, a magistrate of police, who,
curious to say, was as honest as he was just. He administered
equity with as much care before as after dinner; he took no bribes
even in the matter of advancing his family; he was rather merciful
than otherwise to the poor, and he never punished the rich
ostentatiously, in order to display his and his law's disrespect for
persons. Besides which, when sitting on the carpet of justice, he
did not, as some Kotwals do, use rough or angry language to those
who cannot reply; nor did he take offence when none was
intended.

All the people of the city Chandrodaya, in the province of Malaya,
on the western coast of Bharatland, loved and esteemed this
excellent magistrate; which did not, however, prevent thefts being
committed so frequently and so regularly, that no one felt his
property secure. At last the merchants who had suffered most from
these depredations went in a body before Gunshankar, and said to
him:

"O flower of the law! robbers have exercised great tyranny upon
us, so great indeed that we can no longer stay in this city."

Then the magistrate replied, "What has happened, has happened.
But in future you shall be free from annoyance. I will make due
preparation for these thieves."

Thus saying Gunshankar called together his various delegates, and
directed them to increase the number of their people. He pointed
out to them how they should keep watch by night; besides which
he ordered them to open registers of all arrivals and departures, to
make themselves acquainted by means of spies with the
movements of every suspected person in the city, and to raise a
body of paggis (trackers), who could follow the footprints of
thieves even when they wore thieving shoes,[FN#96] till they
came up with and arrested them. And lastly, he gave the patrols
full power, whenever they might catch a robber in the act, to slay
him without asking questions.

People in numbers began to mount guard throughout the city every
night, but, notwithstanding this, robberies continued to be
committed. After a time all the merchants having again met
together went before the magistrate, and said, "O incarnation of
justice! you have changed your officers, you have hired watchmen,
and you have established patrols: nevertheless the thieves have not
diminished, and plundering is ever taking place."

Thereupon Gunshankar carried them to the palace, and made them
lay their petition at the feet of the king Randhir. That Raja, having
consoled them, sent them home, saying, "Be ye of good cheer. I
will to-night adopt a new plan, which, with the blessing of the
Bhagwan, shall free ye from further anxiety."

Observe, O Vikram, that Randhir was one of those concerning
whom the poet sang--

The unwise run from one end to the other.

Not content with becoming highly respectable, correct, and even
unimpeachable in point of character, he reformed even his
reformation, and he did much more than he was required to do.

When Canopus began to sparkle gaily in the southern skies, the
king arose and prepared for a night's work. He disguised his face
by smearing it with a certain paint, by twirling his moustachios up
to his eyes, by parting his beard upon his chin, and conducting the
two ends towards his ears, and by tightly tying a hair from a
horse's tail over his nose, so as quite to change its shape. He then
wrapped himself in a coarse outer garment, girt his loins, buckled
on his sword, drew his shield upon his arm, and without saying a
word to those within the palace, he went out into the streets alone,
and on foot.

It was dark, and Raja Randhir walked through the silent city for
nearly an hour without meeting anyone. As, however, he passed
through a back street in the merchants' quarter, he saw what
appeared to be a homeless dog, lying at the foot of a house-wall.
He approached it, and up leaped a human figure, whilst a loud
voice cried, "Who art thou?"

Randhir replied, "I am a thief; who art thou?"

"And I also am a thief," rejoined the other, much pleased at
hearing this; "come, then, and let us make together. But what art
thou, a high-loper or a lully-prigger[FN#97]?"

"A little more ceremony between coves in the lorst,[FN#98]"
whispered the king, speaking as a flash man, "were not out of
place. But, look sharp, mind old Oliver,[FN#99] or the lamb-skin
man[FN#100] will have the pull of us, and as sure as eggs is eggs
we shall be scragged as soon as lagged.[FN#101]"

"Well, keep your red rag[FN#102] quiet," grumbled the other, "and
let us be working."

Then the pair, king and thief, began work in right earnest. The
gang seemed to swarm in the street. They were drinking spirits,
slaying victims, rubbing their bodies with oil, daubing their eyes
with lamp-black, and repeating incantations to enable them to see
in the darkness; others were practicing the lessons of the god with
the golden spear,[FN#103] and carrying out the four modes of
breaching a house: 1. Picking out burnt bricks. 2.Cutting through
unbaked ones when old, when softened by recent damp, by
exposure to the sun, or by saline exudations. 3. Throwing water on
a mud wall; and 4. Boring through one of wood. The sons of
Skanda were making breaches in the shape of lotus blossoms, the
sun, the new moon, the lake, and the water jar, and they seemed to
be anointed with magic unguents, so that no eye could behold, no
weapon harm them.

At length having filled his bag with costly plunder, the thief said to
the king, "Now, my rummy cove, we'll be off to the flash ken,
where the lads and the morts are waiting to wet their whistles."

Randhir, who as a king was perfectly familiar with "thieves'
Latin," took heart, and resolved to hunt out the secrets of the den.
On the way, his companion, perfectly satisfied with the importance
which the new cove had attached to a rat-hole,[FN#104] and
convinced that he was a true robber, taught him the whistle, the
word, and the sign peculiar to the gang, and promised him that he
should smack the lit[FN#105] that night before "turning in."

So saying the thief rapped twice at the city gate, which was at once
opened to him, and preceding his accomplice led the way to a rock
about two kos (four miles) distant from the walls. Before entering
the dark forest at the foot of the eminence, the robber stood still for
a moment and whistled twice through his fingers with a shrill
scream that rang through the silent glades. After a few minutes the
signal was answered by the hooting of an owl, which the robber
acknowledged by shrieking like a jackal. Thereupon half a dozen
armed men arose from their crouching places in the grass, and one
advanced towards the new comers to receive the sign. It was given,
and they both passed on, whilst the guard sank, as it were, into the
bowels of the earth. All these things Randhir carefully remarked:
besides which he neglected not to take note of all the
distinguishable objects that lay on the road, and, when he entered
the wood, he scratched with his dagger all the tree trunks within
reach.

After a sharp walk the pair reached a high perpendicular sheet of
rock, rising abruptly from a clear space in the jungle, and profusely
printed over with vermilion hands. The thief, having walked up to
it, and made his obeisance, stooped to the ground, and removed a
bunch of grass. The two then raised by their united efforts a heavy
trap door, through which poured a stream of light, whilst a
confused hubbub of voices was heard below.

"This is the ken," said the robber, preparing to descend a thin
ladder of bamboo, "follow me!" And he disappeared with his bag
of valuables.

The king did as he was bid, and the pair entered together a large
hall, or rather a cave, which presented a singular spectacle. It was
lighted up by links fixed to the sombre walls, which threw a smoky
glare over the place, and the contrast after the deep darkness
reminded Randhir of his mother's descriptions of Patal-puri, the
infernal city. Carpets of every kind, from the choicest tapestry to
the coarsest rug, were spread upon the ground, and were strewed
with bags, wallets, weapons, heaps of booty, drinking cups, and all
the materials of debauchery.

Passing through this cave the thief led Randhir into another, which
was full of thieves, preparing for the pleasures of the night. Some
were changing garments, ragged and dirtied by creeping through
gaps in the houses: others were washing the blood from their hands
and feet; these combed out their long dishevelled, dusty hair: those
anointed their skins with perfumed cocoa-nut oil. There were all
manner of murderers present, a villanous collection of Kartikeya's
and Bhawani's[FN#106] crew. There were stabbers with their
poniards hung to lanyards lashed round their naked waists,
Dhaturiya- poisoners[FN#107] distinguished by the little bag slung
under the left arm, and Phansigars[FN#108] wearing their fatal
kerchiefs round their necks. And Randhir had reason to thank the
good deed in the last life that had sent him there in such strict
disguise, for amongst the robbers he found, as might be expected, a
number of his own people, spies and watchmen, guards and
patrols.

The thief, whose importance of manner now showed him to be the
chief of the gang, was greeted with applause as he entered the
robing room, and he bade all make salam to the new companion. A
number of questions concerning the success of the night's work
was quickly put and answered: then the company, having got
ready for the revel, flocked into the first cave. There they sat down
each in his own place, and began to eat and drink and make merry.

After some hours the flaring torches began to burn out, and
drowsiness to overpower the strongest heads. Most of the robbers
rolled themselves up in the rugs, and covering their heads, went to
sleep. A few still sat with their backs to the wall, nodding drowsily
or leaning on one side, and too stupefied with opium and hemp to
make any exertion.

At that moment a servant woman, whom the king saw for the first
time, came into the cave, and looking at him exclaimed, "O Raja!
how came you with these wicked men? Do you run away as fast as
you can, or they will surely kill you when they awake."

"I do not know the way; in which direction am I to go?" asked
Randhir.

The woman then showed him the road. He threaded the confused
mass of snorers, treading with the foot of a tiger-cat, found the
ladder, raised the trap-door by exerting all his strength, and
breathed once more the open air of heaven. And before plunging
into the depths of the wood he again marked the place where the
entrance lay and carefully replaced the bunch of grass.

Hardly had Raja Randhir returned to the palace, and removed the
traces of his night's occupation, when he received a second
deputation of the merchants, complaining bitterly and with the
longest faces about their fresh misfortunes.

"O pearl of equity!" said the men of money, "but yesterday you
consoled us with the promise of some contrivance by the blessing
of which our houses and coffers would be safe from theft; whereas
our goods have never yet suffered so severely as during the last
twelve hours."

Again Randhir dismissed them, swearing that this time he would
either die or destroy the wretches who had been guilty of such
violence.

Then having mentally prepared his measures, the Raja warned a
company of archers to hold themselves in readiness for secret
service, and as each one of his own people returned from the
robbers' cave he had him privily arrested and put to death--because
the deceased, it is said, do not, like Baitals, tell tales. About
nightfall, when he thought that the thieves, having finished their
work of plunder, would meet together as usual for wassail and
debauchery, he armed himself, marched out his men, and led them
to the rock in the jungle.

But the robbers, aroused by the disappearance of the new
companion, had made enquiries and had gained intelligence of the
impending danger. They feared to flee during the daytime, lest
being tracked they should be discovered and destroyed in detail.
When night came they hesitated to disperse, from the certainty that
they would be captured in the morning. Then their captain, who
throughout had been of one opinion, proposed to them that they
should resist, and promised them success if they would hear his
words. The gang respected him, for he was known to be brave:
they all listened to his advice, and they promised to be obedient.

As young night began to cast transparent shade upon the jungle
ground, the chief of the thieves mustered his men, inspected their
bows and arrows, gave them encouraging words, and led them
forth from the cave. Having placed them in ambush he climbed the
rock to espy the movements of the enemy, whilst others applied
their noses and ears to the level ground. Presently the moon shone
full upon Randhir and his band of archers, who were advancing
quickly and carelessly, for they expected to catch the robbers in
their cave. The captain allowed them to march nearly through the
line of ambush. Then he gave the signal, and at that moment the
thieves, rising suddenly from the bush fell upon the royal troops
and drove them back in confusion.

The king also fled, when the chief of the robbers shouted out,
"Hola! thou a Rajput and running away from combat?" Randhir
hearing this halted, and the two, confronting each other, bared their
blades and began to do battle with prodigious fury.

The king was cunning of fence, and so was the thief. They opened
the duel, as skilful swordsmen should, by bending almost double,
skipping in a circle, each keeping his eye well fixed upon the
other, with frowning brows and contemptuous lips; at the same
time executing divers gambados and measured leaps, springing
forward like frogs and backward like monkeys, and beating time
with their sabres upon their shields, which rattled like drums.

Then Randhir suddenly facing his antagonist, cut at his legs with a
loud cry, but the thief sprang in the air, and the blade whistled
harmlessly under him. Next moment the robber chief's sword,
thrice whirled round his head, descended like lightning in a
slanting direction towards the king's left shoulder: the latter,
however, received it upon his target and escaped all hurt, though
he staggered with the violence of the blow.

And thus they continued attacking each other, parrying and
replying, till their breath failed them and their hands and wrists
were numbed and cramped with fatigue. They were so well
matched in courage, strength, and address, that neither obtained the
least advantage, till the robber's right foot catching a stone slid
from under him, and thus he fell to the ground at the mercy of his
enemy. The thieves fled, and the Raja, himself on his prize, tied his
hands behind him, and brought him back to the city at the point of
his good sword.

The next morning Randhir visited his prisoner, whom he caused to
be bathed, and washed, and covered with fine clothes. He then had
him mounted on a camel and sent him on a circuit of the city,
accompanied by a crier proclaiming aloud: "Who hears! who
hears! who hears! the king commands! This is the thief who has
robbed and plundered the city of Chandrodaya. Let all men
therefore assemble themselves together this evening in the open
space outside the gate leading towards the sea. And let them
behold the penalty of evil deeds, and learn to be wise."

Randhir had condemned the thief to be crucified,[FN#109] nailed
and tied with his hands and feet stretched out at full length, in an
erect posture until death; everything he wished to eat was ordered
to him in order to prolong life and misery. And when death should
draw near, melted gold was to be poured down his throat till it
should burst from his neck and other parts of his body.

In the evening the thief was led out for execution, and by chance
the procession passed close to the house of a wealthy landowner.
He had a favourite daughter named Shobhani, who was in the
flower of her youth and very lovely; every day she improved, and
every moment added to her grace and beauty. The girl had been
carefully kept out of sight of mankind, never being allowed outside
the high walls of the garden, because her nurse, a wise woman
much trusted in the neighbourhood, had at the hour of death given
a solemn warning to her parents. The prediction was that the
maiden should be the admiration of the city, and should die a Sati-
widow[FN#110] before becoming a wife. From that hour Shobhani
was kept as a pearl in its casket by her father, who had vowed
never to survive her, and had even fixed upon the place and style
of his suicide.

But the shaft of Fate[FN#111] strikes down the vulture sailing
above the clouds, and follows the worm into the bowels of the
earth, and pierces the fish at the bottom of the ocean--how then can
mortal man expect to escape it? As the robber chief, mounted upon
the camel, was passing to the cross under the old householder's
windows, a fire breaking out in the women's apartments, drove the
inmates into the rooms looking upon the street.

The hum of many voices arose from the solid pavement of heads:
"This is the thief who has been robbing the whole city; let him
tremble now, for Randhir will surely crucify him!"

In beauty and bravery of bearing, as in strength and courage, no
man in Chandrodaya surpassed the robber, who, being
magnificently dressed, looked, despite his disgraceful cavalcade,
like the son of a king. He sat with an unmoved countenance, hardly
hearing in his pride the scoffs of the mob; calm and steady when
the whole city was frenzied with anxiety because of him. But as he
heard the word "tremble" his lips quivered, his eyes flashed fire,
and deep lines gathered between his eyebrows.

Shobhani started with a scream from the casement behind which
she had hid herself, gazing with an intense womanly curiosity into
the thoroughfare. The robber's face was upon a level with, and not
half a dozen feet from, her pale cheeks. She marked his handsome
features, and his look of wrath made her quiver as if it had been a
flash of lightning. Then she broke away from the fascination of his
youth and beauty, and ran breathless to her father, saying:

"Go this moment and get that thief released!

"The old housekeeper replied: "That thief has been pilfering and
plundering the whole city, and by his means the king's archers
were defeated; why, then, at my request, should our most gracious
Raja Randhir release him?"

Shobhani, almost beside herself, exclaimed: "If by giving up your
whole property, you can induce the Raja to release him, then
instantly so do; if he does not come to me, I must give up my life!"

The maiden then covered her head with her veil, and sat down in
the deepest despair, whilst her father, hearing her words, burst into
a cry of grief, and hastened to present himself before the Raja. He
cried out:

"O great king, be pleased to receive four lakhs of rupees, and to
release this thief."

But the king replied: "He has been robbing the whole city, and by
reason of him my guards have been destroyed. I cannot by any
means release him."

Then the old householder finding, as he had expected the Raja
inexorable, and not to be moved, either by tears or bribes, or by the
cruel fate of the girl, returned home with fire in his heart, and
addressed her:

"Daughter, I have said and done all that is possible but it avails
me nought with the king. Now, then, we die."

In the mean time, the guards having led the thief all round the city,
took him outside the gates, and made him stand near the cross.
Then the messengers of death arrived from the palace, and the
executioners began to nail his limbs. He bore the agony with the
fortitude of the brave; but when he heard what had been done by
the old householder's daughter, he raised his voice and wept
bitterly, as though his heart had been bursting, and almost with the
same breath he laughed heartily as at a feast. All were startled by
his merriment; coming as it did at a time when the iron was
piercing his flesh, no man could see any reason for it.

When he died, Shobhani, who was married to him in the spirit,
recited to herself these sayings:

"There are thirty-five millions of hairs on the human body. The
woman who ascends the pile with her husband will remain so
many years in heaven. As the snake-catcher draws the serpent
from his hole, so she, rescuing her husband from hell, rejoices with
him; aye, though he may have sunk to a region of torment, be
restrained in dreadful bonds, have reached the place of anguish, be
exhausted of strength, and afflicted and tortured for his crimes. No
other effectual duty is known for virtuous women at any time after
the death of their lords, except casting themselves into the same
fire. As long as a woman in her successive transmigrations, shall
decline burning herself, like a faithful wife, in the same fire with
her deceased lord, so long shall she not be exempted from
springing again to life in the body of some female animal."

Therefore the beautiful Shobhani, virgin and wife, resolved to burn
herself, and to make the next life of the thief certain. She showed
her courage by thrusting her finger into a torch flame till it became
a cinder, and she solemnly bathed in the nearest stream.

A hole was dug in the ground, and upon a bed of green tree-trunks
were heaped hemp, pitch, faggots, and clarified butter, to form the
funeral pyre. The dead body, anointed, bathed, and dressed in new
clothes, was then laid upon the heap, which was some two feet
high. Shobhani prayed that as long as fourteen Indras reign, or as
many years as there are hairs in her head, she might abide in
heaven with her husband, and be waited upon by the heavenly
dancers. She then presented her ornaments and little gifts of corn
to her friends, tied some cotton round both wrists, put two new
combs in her hair, painted her forehead, and tied up in the end of
her body-cloth clean parched rice[FN#112] and cowrie-shells.
These she gave to the bystanders, as she walked seven times round
the funeral pyre, upon which lay the body. She then ascended the
heap of wood, sat down upon it, and taking the thief's head in her
lap, without cords or levers or upper layer or faggots, she ordered
the pile to be lighted. The crowd standing around set fire to it in
several places, drummed their drums, blew their conchs, and raised
a loud cry of "Hari bol! Hari bol! [FN#113]" Straw was thrown on,
and pitch and clarified butter were freely poured out. But
Shobhani's was a Sahamaran, a blessed easy death: no part of her
body was seen to move after the pyre was lighted--in fact, she
seemed to die before the flame touched her.

By the blessing of his daughter's decease, the old householder
beheaded himself.[FN#114] He caused an instrument to be made
in the shape of a half-moon with an edge like a razor, and fitting
the back of his neck. At both ends of it, as at the beam of a
balance, chains were fastened. He sat down with eyes closed; he
was rubbed with the purifying clay of the holy river,
Vaiturani[FN#115]; and he repeated the proper incantations. Then
placing his feet upon the extremities of the chains, he suddenly
jerked up his neck, and his severed head rolled from his body upon
the ground. What a happy death was this!

The Baital was silent, as if meditating on the fortunate
transmigration which the old householder had thus secured.

"But what could the thief have been laughing at, sire?" asked the
young prince Dharma Dhwaj of his father.

"At the prodigious folly of the girl, my son," replied the warrior
king, thoughtlessly.

"I am indebted once more to your majesty," burst out the Baital,
"for releasing me from this unpleasant position, but the Raja's
penetration is again at fault. Not to leave your royal son and heir
labouring under a false impression, before going I will explain
why the brave thief burst into tears, and why he laughed at such a
moment.

"He wept when he reflected that he could not requite her kindness
in being willing to give up everything she had in the world to save
his life; and this thought deeply grieved him.

Then it struck him as being passing strange that she had begun to
love him when the last sand of his life was well nigh run out; that
wondrous are the ways of the revolving heavens which bestow
wealth upon the niggard that cannot use it, wisdom upon the bad
man who will misuse it, a beautiful wife upon the fool who cannot
protect her, and fertilizing showers upon the stony hills. And
thinking over these things, the gallant and beautiful thief laughed
aloud.

"Before returning to my sires-tree," continued the Vampire, "as I
am about to do in virtue of your majesty's unintelligent reply, I
may remark that men may laugh and cry, or may cry and laugh,
about everything in this world, from their neighbours' deaths,
which, as a general rule, in no wise concern them, to their own
latter ends, which do concern them exceedingly. For my part, I am
in the habit of laughing at everything, because it animates the
brain, stimulates the lungs, beautifies the countenance, and--for the
moment, good-bye, Raja Vikram!

The warrior king, being forewarned this time, shifted the bundle
containing the Baital from his back to under his arm, where he
pressed it with all his might.

This proceeding, however, did not prevent the Vampire from
slipping back to his tree, and leaving an empty cloth with the Raja.

Presently the demon was trussed up as usual; a voice sounded
behind Vikram, and the loquacious thing again began to talk.

THE VAMPIRE'S SIXTH STORY.

In Which Three Men Dispute about a Woman.

On the lovely banks of Jumna's stream there was a city known as
Dharmasthal--the Place of Duty; and therein dwelt a certain
Brahman called Keshav. He was a very pious man, in the constant
habit of performing penance and worship upon the river Sidi. He
modelled his own clay images instead of buying them from others;
he painted holy stones red at the top, and made to them offerings
of flowers, fruit, water, sweetmeats, and fried peas. He had
become a learned man somewhat late in life, having, until twenty
years old, neglected his reading, and addicted himself to
worshipping the beautiful youth Kama-Deva[FN#116] and Rati his
wife, accompanied by the cuckoo, the humming-bee, and sweet
breezes.

One day his parents having rebuked him sharply for his
ungovernable conduct, Keshav wandered to a neighbouring
hamlet, and hid himself in the tall fig-tree which shadowed a
celebrated image of Panchanan.[FN#117] Presently an evil thought
arose in his head: he defiled the god, and threw him into the
nearest tank.

The next morning, when the person arrived whose livelihood
depended on the image, he discovered that his god was gone. He
returned into the village distracted, and all was soon in an uproar
about the lost deity.

In the midst of this confusion the parents of Keshav arrived,
seeking for their son; and a man in the crowd declared that he had
seen a young man sitting in Panchanan's tree, but what had become
of the god he knew not.

The runaway at length appeared, and the suspicions of the villagers
fell upon him as the stealer of Panchanan. He confessed the fact,
pointed out the place where he had thrown the stone, and added
that he had polluted the god. All hands and eyes were raised in
amazement at this atrocious crime, and every one present declared
that Panchanan would certainly punish the daring insult by
immediate death. Keshav was dreadfully frightened; he began to
obey his parents from that very hour, and applied to his studies so
sedulously that he soon became the most learned man of his
country.

Now Keshav the Brahman had a daughter whose name was the
Madhumalati or Sweet Jasmine. She was very beautiful. Whence
did the gods procure the materials to form so exquisite a face?
They took a portion of the most excellent part of the moon to form
that beautiful face? Does any one seek a proof of this? Let him
look at the empty places left in the moon. Her eyes resembled the
full-blown blue nymphaea; her arms the charming stalk of the
lotus; her flowing tresses the thick darkness of night.

When this lovely person arrived at a marriageable age, her mother,
father, and brother, all three became very anxious about her. For
the wise have said, "A daughter nubile but without a husband is
ever a calamity hanging over a house." And, "Kings, women, and
climbing plants love those who are near them." Also, "Who is
there that has not suffered from the sex? for a woman cannot be
kept in due subjection, either by gifts or kindness, or correct
conduct, or the greatest services, or the laws of morality, or by the
terror of punishment, for she cannot discriminate between good
and evil."

It so happened that one day Keshav the Brahman went to the
marriage of a certain customer of his,[FN#118] and his son
repaired to the house of a spiritual preceptor in order to read.
During their absence, a young man came to the house, when the
Sweet Jasmine's mother, inferring his good qualities from his good
looks, said to him, "I will give to thee my daughter in marriage."
The father also had promised his daughter to a Brahman youth
whom he had met at the house of his employer; and the brother
likewise had betrothed his sister to a fellow student at the place
where he had gone to read.

After some days father and son came home, accompanied by these
two suitors, and in the house a third was already seated. The name
of the first was Tribikram, of the second Baman, and of the third
Madhusadan. The three were equal in mind and body, in
knowledge, and in age.

Then the father, looking upon them, said to himself, "Ho! there is
one bride and three bridegrooms; to whom shall I give, and to
whom shall I not give? We three have pledged our word to these
three. A strange circumstance has occurred; what must we do?"

He then proposed to them a trial of wisdom, and made them agree
that he who should quote the most excellent saying of the wise
should become his daughter's husband.

Quoth Tribikram: "Courage is tried in war; integrity in the
payment of debt and interest; friendship in distress; and the
faithfulness of a wife in the day of poverty."

Baman proceeded: "That woman is destitute of virtue who in her
father's house is not in subjection, who wanders to feasts and
amusements, who throws off her veil in the presence of men, who
remains as a guest in the houses of strangers, who is much devoted
to sleep, who drinks inebriating beverages, and who delights in
distance from her husband."

"Let none," pursued Madhusadan, "confide in the sea, nor in
whatever has claws or horns, or who carries deadly weapons;
neither in a woman, nor in a king."

Whilst the Brahman was doubting which to prefer, and rather
inclining to the latter sentiment, a serpent bit the beautiful girl, and
in a few hours she died.

Stunned by this awful sudden death, the father and the three suitors
sat for a time motionless. They then arose, used great exertions,
and brought all kinds of sorcerers, wise men and women who
charm away poisons by incantations. These having seen the girl
said, "She cannot return to life." The first declared, "A person
always dies who has been bitten by a snake on the fifth, sixth,
eighth, ninth, and fourteenth days of the lunar month.'' The second
asserted, "One who has been bitten on a Saturday or a Tuesday
does not survive." The third opined, "Poison infused during certain
six lunar mansions cannot be got under." Quoth the fourth, "One
who has been bitten in any organ of sense, the lower lip, the cheek,
the neck, or the stomach, cannot escape death." The fifth said, "In
this case even Brahma, the Creator, could not restore life--of what
account, then, are we? Do you perform the funeral rites; we will
depart."

Thus saying, the sorcerers went their way. The mourning father
took up his daughter's corpse and caused it to be burnt, in the place
where dead bodies are usually burnt, and returned to his house.

After that the three young men said to one another, "We must now
seek happiness elsewhere. And what better can we do than obey
the words of Indra, the God of Air, who spake thus ?--

"'For a man who does not travel about there is no felicity, and a
good man who stays at home is a bad man. Indra is the friend of
him who travels. Travel!

"'A traveller's legs are like blossoming branches, and he himself
grows and gathers the fruit. All his wrongs vanish, destroyed by
his exertion on the roadside. Travel!

"'The fortune of a man who sits, sits also; it rises when he rises; it
sleeps when he sleeps; it moves well when he moves. Travel!

"'A man who sleeps is like the Iron Age. A man who awakes is like
the Bronze Age. A man who rises up is like the Silver Age. A man
who travels is like the Golden Age. Travel!

"'A traveller finds honey; a traveller finds sweet figs. Look at the
happiness of the sun, who travailing never tires. Travel!"'

Before parting they divided the relics of the beloved one, and then
they went their way.

Tribikram, having separated and tied up the burnt bones, became
one of the Vaisheshikas, in those days a powerful sect. He
solemnly forswore the eight great crimes, namely: feeding at night;
slaying any animal; eating the fruit of trees that give milk, or
pumpkins or young bamboos: tasting honey or flesh; plundering
the wealth of others; taking by force a married woman; eating
flowers, butter, or cheese; and worshipping the gods of other
religions. He learned that the highest act of virtue is to abstain
from doing injury to sentient creatures; that crime does not justify
the destruction of life; and that kings, as the administrators of
criminal justice, are the greatest of sinners. He professed the five
vows of total abstinence from falsehood, eating flesh or fish, theft,
drinking spirits, and marriage. He bound himself to possess
nothing beyond a white loin-cloth, a towel to wipe the mouth, a
beggar's dish, and a brush of woollen threads to sweep the ground
for fear of treading on insects. And he was ordered to fear secular
affairs; the miseries of a future state; the receiving from others
more than the food of a day at once; all accidents; provisions, if
connected with the destruction of animal life; death and disgrace;
also to please all, and to obtain compassion from all.

He attempted to banish his love. He said to himself, "Surely it was
owing only to my pride and selfishness that I ever looked upon a
woman as capable of affording happiness; and I thought, 'Ah! ah!
thine eyes roll about like the tail of the water-wagtail, thy lips
resemble the ripe fruit, thy bosom is like the lotus bud, thy form is
resplendent as gold melted in a crucible, the moon wanes through
desire to imitate the shadow of thy face, thou resemblest the
pleasure-house of Cupid; the happiness of all time is concentrated
in thee; a touch from thee would surely give life to a dead image;
at thy approach a living admirer would be changed by joy into a
lifeless stone; obtaining thee I can face all the horrors of war; and
were I pierced by showers of arrows, one glance of thee would
heal all my wounds.'

"My mind is now averted from the world. Seeing her I say, 'Is this
the form by which men are bewitched? This is a basket covered
with skin; it contains bones, flesh, blood, and impurities. The
stupid creature who is captivated by this--is there a cannibal
feeding in Currim a greater cannibal than he? These persons call a
thing made up of impure matter a face, and drink its charms as a
drunkard swallows the inebriating liquor from his cup. The blind,
infatuated beings! Why should I be pleased or displeased with this
body, composed of flesh and blood? It is my duty to seek Him who
is the Lord of this body, and to disregard everything which gives
rise either to pleasure or to pain.'"

Baman, the second suitor, tied up a bundle of his beloved one's
ashes, and followed--somewhat prematurely--the precepts of the
great lawgiver Manu. "When the father of a family perceives his
muscles becoming flaccid, and his hair grey, and sees the child of
his child, let him then take refuge in a forest. Let him take up his
consecrated fire and all his domestic implements for making
oblations to it, and, departing from the town to the lonely wood, let
him dwell in it with complete power over his organs of sense and
of action. With many sorts of pure food, such as holy sages used to
eat, with green herbs, roots, and fruit, let him perform the five
great sacraments, introducing them with due ceremonies. Let him
wear a black antelope-hide, or a vesture of bark; let him bathe
evening and morning; let him suffer the hair of his head, his beard
and his nails to grow continually. Let him slide backwards and
forwards on the ground; or let him stand a whole day on tiptoe; or
let him continue in motion, rising and sitting alternately; but at
sunrise, at noon, and at sunset, let him go to the waters and bathe
In the hot season let him sit exposed to five fires, four blazing
around him, with the sun above; in the rains let him stand
uncovered, without even a mantle, where the clouds pour the
heaviest showers; in the cold season let him wear damp clothes,
and let him increase by degrees the austerity of his devotions.
Then, having reposited his holy fires, as the law directs, in his
mind, let him live without external fire, without a mansion, wholly
silent, feeding on roots and fruit."

Meanwhile Madhusadan the third, having taken a wallet and
neckband, became a Jogi, and began to wander far and wide, living
on nothing but chaff, and practicing his devotions. In order to see
Brahma he attended to the following duties; 1. Hearing; 2.
Meditation; 3. Fixing the Mind; 4. Absorbing the Mind. He
combated the three evils, restlessness, injuriousness,
voluptuousness by settling the Deity in his spirit, by subjecting his
senses, and by destroying desire. Thus he would do away with the
illusion (Maya) which conceals all true knowledge. He repeated
the name of the Deity till it appeared to him in the form of a Dry
Light or glory. Though connected with the affairs of life, that is,
with affairs belonging to a body containing blood, bones, and
impurities; to organs which are blind, palsied, and full of weakness
and error; to a mind filled with thirst, hunger, sorrow, infatuation;
to confirmed habits, and to the fruits of former births: still he
strove not to view these things as realities. He made a companion
of a dog, honouring it with his own food, so as the better to think
on spirit. He practiced all the five operations connected with the
vital air, or air collected in the body. He attended much to
Pranayama, or the gradual suppression of breathing, and he
secured fixedness of mind as follows. By placing his sight and
thoughts on the tip of his nose he perceived smell; on the tip of his
tongue he realized taste, on the root of his tongue he knew sound,
and so forth. He practiced the eighty-four Asana or postures,
raising his hand to the wonders of the heavens, till he felt no longer
the inconveniences of heat or cold, hunger or thirst. He particularly
preferred the Padma or lotus-posture, which consists of bringing
the feet to the sides, holding the right in the left hand and the left in
the right. In the work of suppressing his breath he permitted its
respiration to reach at furthest twelve fingers' breadth, and
gradually diminished the distance from his nostrils till he could
confine it to the length of twelve fingers from his nose, and even
after restraining it for some time he would draw it from no greater
distance than from his heart. As respects time, he began by
retaining inspiration for twenty-six seconds, and he enlarged this
period gradually till he became perfect. He sat cross-legged,
closing with his fingers all the avenues of inspiration, and he
practiced Prityahara, or the power of restraining the members of
the body and mind, with meditation and concentration, to which
there are four enemies, viz., a sleepy heart, human passions, a
confused mind, and attachment to anything but the one Brahma.
He also cultivated Yama, that is, inoffensiveness, truth, honesty,
the forsaking of all evil in the world, and the refusal of gifts except
for sacrifice, and Nihama, i.e., purity relative to the use of water
after defilement, pleasure in everything whether in prosperity or
adversity, renouncing food when hungry, and keeping down the
body. Thus delivered from these four enemies of the flesh, he
resembled the unruffled flame of the lamp, and by Brahmagnana,
or meditating on the Deity, placing his mind on the sun, moon,
fire, or any other luminous body, or within his heart, or at the
bottom of his throat, or in the centre of his skull, he was enabled to
ascend from gross images of omnipotence to the works and the
divine wisdom of the glorious original.

One day Madhusadan, the Jogi, went to a certain house for food,
and the householder having seen him began to say, "Be so good as
to take your food here this day!" The visitor sat down, and when
the victuals were ready, the host caused his feet and hands to be
washed, and leading him to the Chauka, or square place upon
which meals are served, seated him and sat by him. And he quoted
the scripture: "No guest must be dismissed in the evening by a
housekeeper: he is sent by the returning sun, and whether he come
in fit season or unseasonably, he must not sojourn in the house
without entertainment: let me not eat any delicate food, without
asking my guest to partake of it: the satisfaction of a guest will
assuredly bring the housekeeper wealth, reputation, long life, and a
place in heaven."

The householder's wife then came to serve up the food, rice and
split peas, oil, and spices, all cooked in a new earthen pot with
pure firewood. Part of the meal was served and the rest remained
to be served, when the woman's little child began to cry aloud and
to catch hold of its mother's dress. She endeavoured to release
herself, but the boy would not let go, and the more she coaxed the
more he cried, and was obstinate. On this the mother became
angry, took up the boy and threw him upon the fire, which
instantly burnt him to ashes.

Madhusadan, the Jogi, seeing this, rose up without eating. The
master of the house said to him, "Why eatest thou not?" He
replied, "I am ' Atithi,' that is to say, to be entertained at your
house, but how can one eat under the roof of a person who has
committed such a Rakshasa-like (devilish) deed? Is it not said, 'He
who does not govern his passions, lives in vain'? 'A foolish king, a
person puffed up with riches, and a weak child, desire that which
cannot be procured'? Also, 'A king destroys his enemies, even
when flying; and the touch of an elephant, as well as the breath of
a serpent, are fatal; but the wicked destroy even while laughing'?"

Hearing this, the householder smiled; presently he arose and went
to another part of the tenement, and brought back with him a book,
treating on Sanjivnividya, or the science of restoring the dead to
life. This he had taken from its hidden place, two beams almost
touching one another with the ends in the opposite wall. The
precious volume was in single leaves, some six inches broad by
treble that length, and the paper was stained with yellow orpiment
and the juice of tamarind seeds to keep away insects.

The householder opened the cloth containing the book, untied the
flat boards at the top and bottom, and took out from it a charm.
Having repeated this Mantra, with many ceremonies, he at once
restored the child to life, saying, "Of all precious things,
knowledge is the most valuable; other riches may be stolen, or
diminished by expenditure, but knowledge is immortal, and the
greater the expenditure the greater the increase; it can be shared
with none, and it defies the power of the thief."

The Jogi, seeing this marvel, took thought in his heart, "If I could
obtain that book, I would restore my beloved to life, and give up
this course of uncomfortable postures and difficulty of breathing."
With this resolution he sat down to his food, and remained in the
house.

At length night came, and after a time, all, having eaten supper,
and gone to their sleeping-places, lay down. The Jogi also went to
rest in one part of the house, but did not allow sleep to close his
eyes. When he thought that a fourth part of the hours of darkness
had sped, and that all were deep in slumber, then he got up very
quietly, and going into the room of the master of the house, he
took down the book from the beam-ends and went his ways.

Madhusadan, the Jogi, went straight to the place where the
beautiful Sweet Jasmine had been burned. There he found his two
rivals sitting talking together and comparing experiences. They
recognized him at once, and cried aloud to him, "Brother! thou
also hast been wandering over the world; tell us this--hast thou
learned anything which can profit us?" He replied, "I have learned
the science of restoring the dead to life"; upon which they both
exclaimed, "If thou hast really learned such knowledge, restore our
beloved to life."

Madhusadan proceeded to make his incantations, despite terrible
sights in the air, the cries of jackals, owls, crows, cats, asses,
vultures, dogs, and lizards, and the wrath of innumerable invisible
beings, such as messengers of Yama (Pluto), ghosts, devils,
demons, imps, fiends, devas, succubi, and others. All the three
lovers drawing blood from their own bodies, offered it to the
goddess Chandi, repeating the following incantation, "Hail!
supreme delusion! Hail! goddess of the universe! Hail! thou who
fulfillest the desires of all. May I presume to offer thee the blood
of my body; and wilt thou deign to accept it, and be propitious
towards me!"

They then made a burnt-offering of their flesh, and each one
prayed, "Grant me, O goddess! to see the maiden alive again, in
proportion to the fervency with which I present thee with mine
own flesh, invoking thee to be propitious to me. Salutation to thee
again and again, under the mysterious syllables any! any!"

Then they made a heap of the bones and the ashes, which had been
carefully kept by Tribikram and Baman. As the Jogi Madhusadan
proceeded with his incantation, a white vapour arose from the
ground, and, gradually condensing, assumed a perispiritual form--
the fluid envelope of the soul. The three spectators felt their blood
freeze as the bones and the ashes were gradually absorbed into the
before shadowy shape, and they were restored to themselves only
when the maiden Madhuvati begged to be taken home to her
mother.

Then Kama, God of Love, blinded them, and they began fiercely to
quarrel about who should have the beautiful maid. Each wanted to
be her sole master. Tribikram declared the bones to be the great
fact of the incantation; Baman swore by the ashes; and
Madhusadan laughed them both to scorn. No one could decide the
dispute; the wisest doctors were all nonplussed; and as for the
Raja--well! we do not go for wit or wisdom to kings. I wonder if
the great Raja Vikram could decide which person the woman
belonged to?

"To Baman, the man who kept her ashes, fellow!" exclaimed the
hero, not a little offended by the free remarks of the fiend.

"Yet," rejoined the Baital impudently, "if Tribikram had not
preserved her bones how could she have been restored to life? And
if Madhusadan had not learned the science of restoring the dead to
life how could she have been revivified? At least, so it seems to
me. But perhaps your royal wisdom may explain."

"Devil!" said the king angrily, "Tribikram, who preserved her
bones, by that act placed himself in the position of her son;
therefore he could not marry her. Madhusadan, who, restoring her
to life, gave her life, was evidently a father to her; he could not,
then, become her husband. Therefore she was the wife of Baman,
who had collected her ashes."

"I am happy to see, O king," exclaimed the Vampire, "that in spite
of my presentiments, we are not to part company just yet. These
little trips I hold to be, like lovers' quarrels, the prelude to closer
union. With your leave we will still practice a little suspension."

And so saying, the Baital again ascended the tree, and was
suspended there.

"Would it not be better," thought the monarch, after recapturing
and shouldering the fugitive, "for me to sit down this time and
listen to the fellow's story? Perhaps the double exercise of walking
and thinking confuses me."

With this idea Vikram placed his bundle upon the ground, well tied
up with turband and waistband; then he seated himself
cross-legged before it, and bade his son do the same.

The Vampire strongly objected to this measure, as it was contrary,
he asserted, to the covenant between him and the Raja. Vikram
replied by citing the very words of the agreement, proving that
there was no allusion to walking or sitting.

Then the Baital became sulky, and swore that he would not utter
another word. But he, too, was bound by the chain of destiny.
Presently he opened his lips, with the normal prelude that he was
about to tell a true tale.

THE VAMPIRE'S SEVENTH STORY.

Showing the Exceeding Folly of Many Wise Fools.

The Baital resumed.

Of all the learned Brahmans in the learnedest university of Gaur
(Bengal) none was so celebrated as Vishnu Swami. He could write
verse as well as prose in dead languages, not very correctly, but
still, better than all his fellows--which constituted him a
distinguished writer. He had history, theosophy, and the four
Vedas of Scriptures at his fingers' ends, he was skilled in the
argute science of Nyasa or Disputation, his mind was a mine of
Pauranic or cosmogonico-traditional lore, handed down from the
ancient fathers to the modern fathers: and he had written bulky
commentaries, exhausting all that tongue of man has to say, upon
the obscure text of some old philosopher whose works upon ethics,
poetry, and rhetoric were supposed by the sages of Gaur to contain
the germs of everything knowable. His fame went over all the
country; yea, from country to country. He was a sea of excellent
qualities, the father and mother of Brahmans, cows, and women,
and the horror of loose persons, cut-throats, courtiers, and
courtesans. As a benefactor he was equal to Karna, most liberal of
heroes. In regard to truth he was equal to the veracious king
Yudhishtira.

True, he was sometimes at a loss to spell a common word in his
mother tongue, and whilst he knew to a fingerbreadth how many
palms and paces the sun, the moon, and all the stars are distant
from the earth, he would have been puzzled to tell you where the
region called Yavana[FN#119] lies. Whilst he could enumerate, in
strict chronological succession, every important event that
happened five or six million years before he was born, he was
profoundly ignorant of those that occurred in his own day. And
once he asked a friend seriously, if a cat let loose in the jungle
would not in time become a tiger.

Yet did all the members of alma mater Kasi, Pandits[FN#120] as
well as students, look with awe upon Vishnu Swami's livid cheeks,
and lack-lustre eyes, grimed hands and soiled cottons.

Now it so happened that this wise and pious Brahmanic peer had
four sons, whom he brought up in the strictest and most serious
way. They were taught to repeat their prayers long before they
understood a word of them, and when they reached the age of
four[FN#121] they had read a variety of hymns and spiritual
songs. Then they were set to learn by heart precepts that inculcate
sacred duties, and arguments relating to theology, abstract and
concrete.

Their father, who was also their tutor, sedulously cultivated, as all
the best works upon education advise, their implicit obedience,
humble respect, warm attachment, and the virtues and sentiments
generally. He praised them secretly and reprehended them openly,
to exercise their humility. He derided their looks, and dressed them
coarsely, to preserve them from vanity and conceit. Whenever they
anticipated a "treat," he punctually disappointed them, to teach
them self-denial. Often when he had promised them a present, he
would revoke, not break his word, in order that discipline might
have a name and habitat in his household. And knowing by
experience how much stronger than love is fear, he frequently
threatened, browbeat, and overawed them with the rod and the
tongue, with the terrors of this world, and with the horrors of the
next, that they might be kept in the right way by dread of falling
into the bottomless pits that bound it on both sides.

At the age of six they were transferred to the Chatushpati[FN#122]
or school. Every morning the teacher and his pupils assembled in
the hut where the different classes were called up by turns. They
laboured till noon, and were allowed only two hours, a moiety of
the usual time, for bathing, eating, sleep, and worship, which took
up half the period. At 3 P.M. they resumed their labours, repeating
to the tutor what they had learned by heart, and listening to the
meaning of it: this lasted till twilight. They then worshipped, ate
and drank for an hour: after which came a return of study,
repeating the day's lessons, till 10 P.M.

In their rare days of ease--for the learned priest, mindful of the
words of the wise, did not wish to dull them by everlasting work--
they were enjoined to disport themselves with the gravity and the
decorum that befit young Samditats, not to engage in night frolics,
not to use free jests or light expressions, not to draw pictures on
the walls, not to eat honey, flesh, and sweet substances turned acid,
not to talk to little girls at the well-side, on no account to wear
sandals, carry an umbrella, or handle a die even for love, and by no
means to steal their neighbours' mangoes.

As they advanced in years their attention during work time was
unremittingly directed to the Vedas. Wordly studies were almost
excluded, or to speak more correctly, whenever wordly studies
were brought upon the carpet, they were so evil entreated, that they
well nigh lost all form and feature. History became "The Annals of
India on Brahminical Principles," opposed to the Buddhistical;
geography "The Lands of the Vedas," none other being deemed
worthy of notice; and law, "The Institutes of Manu," then almost
obsolete, despite their exceeding sanctity.

But Jatu-harini[FN#123] had evidently changed these children
before they were born; and Shani[FN#124] must have been in the
ninth mansion when they came to light.

Each youth as he attained the mature age of twelve was formally
entered at the University of Kasi, where, without loss of time, the
first became a gambler, the second a confirmed libertine, the third
a thief, and the fourth a high Buddhist, or in other words an utter
atheist.

Here King Vikram frowned at his son, a hint that he had better not
behave himself as the children of highly moral and religious
parents usually do. The young prince understood him, and briefly
remarking that such things were common in distinguished
Brahman families, asked the Baital what he meant by the word
"Atheist."

Of a truth (answered the Vampire) it is most difficult to explain.
The sages assign to it three or four several meanings: first, one
who denies that the gods exist secondly, one who owns that the
gods exist but denies that they busy themselves with human
affairs; and thirdly, one who believes in the gods and in their
providence, but also believes that they are easily to be set aside.
Similarly some atheists derive all things from dead and
unintelligent matter; others from matter living and energetic but
without sense or will: others from matter with forms and qualities
generable and conceptible; and others from a plastic and
methodical nature. Thus the Vishnu Swamis of the world have
invested the subject with some confusion. The simple, that is to
say, the mass of mortality, have confounded that confusion by
reproachfully applying the word atheist to those whose opinions
differ materially from their own.

But I being at present, perhaps happily for myself, a Vampire, and
having, just now, none of these human or inhuman ideas, meant
simply to say that the pious priest's fourth son being great at
second and small in the matter of first causes, adopted to their
fullest extent the doctrines of the philosophical Buddhas.[FN#125]
Nothing according to him exists but the five elements, earth, water,
fire, air (or wind), and vacuum, and from the last proceeded the
penultimate, and so forth. With the sage Patanjali, he held the
universe to have the power of perpetual progression.[FN#126] He
called that Matra (matter), which is an eternal and infinite
principle, beginningless and endless. Organization, intelligence,
and design, he opined, are inherent in matter as growth is in a tree.
He did not believe in soul or spirit, because it could not be detected
in the body, and because it was a departure from physiological
analogy. The idea "I am," according to him, was not the
identification of spirit with matter, but a product of the mutation of
matter in this cloud-like, error-formed world. He believed in
Substance (Sat) and scoffed at Unsubstance (Asat). He asserted the
subtlety and globularity of atoms which are uncreate. He made
mind and intellect a mere secretion of the brain, or rather words
expressing not a thing, but a state of things. Reason was to him
developed instinct, and life an element of the atmosphere affecting
certain organisms. He held good and evil to be merely
geographical and chronological expressions, and he opined that
what is called Evil is mostly an active and transitive form of Good.
Law was his great Creator of all things, but he refused a creator of
law, because such a creator would require another creator, and so
on in a quasi-interminable series up to absurdity. This reduced his
law to a manner of haphazard. To those who, arguing against it,
asked him their favourite question, How often might a man after he
had jumbled a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the ground
before they would fall into an exact poem? he replied that the
calculation was beyond his arithmetic, but that the man had only to
jumble and fling long enough inevitably to arrive at that end. He
rejected the necessity as well as the existence of revelation, and he
did not credit the miracles of Krishna, because, according to him,
nature never suspends her laws, and, moreover, he had never seen
aught supernatural. He ridiculed the idea of Mahapralaya, or the
great destruction, for as the world had no beginning, so it will have
no end. He objected to absorption, facetiously observing with the
sage Jamadagni, that it was pleasant to eat sweetmeats, but that for
his part he did not wish to become the sweetmeat itself. He would
not believe that Vishnu had formed the universe out of the wax in
his ears. He positively asserted that trees are not bodies in which
the consequences of merit and demerit are received. Nor would he
conclude that to men were attached rewards and punishments from
all eternity. He made light of the Sanskara, or sacrament. He
admitted Satwa, Raja, and Tama,[FN#127] but only as properties
of matter. He acknowledged gross matter (Sthulasharir), and
atomic matter (Shukshma-sharir), but not Linga-sharir, or the
archetype of bodies. To doubt all things was the foundation of his
theory, and to scoff at all who would not doubt was the
corner-stone of his practice. In debate he preferred logical and
mathematical grounds, requiring a categorical "because" in answer
to his "why?" He was full of morality and natural religion, which
some say is no religion at all. He gained the name of atheist by
declaring with Gotama that there are innumerable worlds, that the
earth has nothing beneath it but the circumambient air, and that the
core of the globe is incandescent. And he was called a practical
atheist--a worse form apparently--for supporting the following
dogma: "that though creation may attest that a creator has been, it
supplies no evidence to prove that a creator still exists." On which
occasion, Shiromani, a nonplussed theologian, asked him, "By
whom and for what purpose west thou sent on earth?" The youth
scoffed at the word "sent," and replied, "Not being thy Supreme
Intelligence, or Infinite Nihility, I am unable to explain the
phenomenon." Upon which he quoted--

How sunk in darkness Gaur must be
Whose guide is blind Shiromani!

At length it so happened that the four young men, having
frequently been surprised in flagrant delict, were summoned to the
dread presence of the university Gurus,[FN#128] who addressed
them as follows:--

"There are four different characters in the world: he who perfectly
obeys the commands; he who practices the commands, but follows
evil; he who does neither good nor evil; and he who does nothing
but evil. The third character, it is observed, is also an offender, for
he neglects that which he ought to observe. But ye all belong to the
fourth category."

Then turning to the elder they said:

"In works written upon the subject of government it is advised,
'Cut off the gambler's nose and ears, hold up his name to public
contempt, and drive him out of the country, that he may thus
become an example to others. For they who play must more often
lose than win; and losing, they must either pay or not pay. In the
latter case they forfeit caste, in the former they utterly reduce
themselves. And though a gambler's wife and children are in the
house, do not consider them to be so, since it is not known when
they will be lost.[FN#129] Thus he is left in a state of perfect
not-twoness (solitude), and he will be reborn in hell.' O young
man! thou hast set a bad example to others, therefore shalt thou
immediately exchange this university for a country life."

Then they spoke to the second offender thus :---

"The wise shun woman, who can fascinate a man in the twinkling
of an eye; but the foolish, conceiving an affection for her, forfeit in
the pursuit of pleasure their truthfulness, reputation, and good
disposition, their way of life and mode of thought, their vows and
their religion. And to such the advice of their spiritual teachers
comes amiss, whilst they make others as bad as themselves. For it
is said, 'He who has lost all sense of shame, fears not to disgrace
another; 'and there is the proverb, 'A wild cat that devours its own
young is not likely to let a rat escape; ' therefore must thou too, O
young man! quit this seat of learning with all possible expedition."

The young man proceeded to justify himself by quotations from
the Lila-shastra, his text-book, by citing such 1ines as--

Fortune favours folly and force,

and by advising the elderly professors to improve their skill in the
peace and war of love. But they drove him out with execrations.

As sagely and as solemnly did the Pandits and the Gurus reprove
the thief and the atheist, but they did not dispense the words of
wisdom in equal proportions. They warned the former that petty
larceny is punishable with fine, theft on a larger scale with
mutilation of the hand, and robbery, when detected in the act, with
loss of life[FN#130]; that for cutting purses, or for snatching them
out of a man's waistcloth,[FN#131] 'the first penalty is chopping
off the fingers, the second is the loss of the hand, and the third is
death. Then they call him a dishonour to the college, and they said,
"Thou art as a woman, the greatest of plunderers; other robbers
purloin property which is worthless, thou stealest the best; they
plunder in the night, thou in the day," and so forth. They told him
that he was a fellow who had read his Chauriya Vidya to more
purpose then his ritual.[FN#132] And they drove him from the
door as he in his shamelessness began to quote texts about the four
approved ways of housebreaking, namely, picking out burnt
bricks, cutting through unbaked bricks, throwing water on a mud
wall, and boring one of wood with a centre-bit.

But they spent six mortal hours in convicting the atheist, whose
abominations they refuted by every possible argumentation: by
inference, by comparison, and by sounds, by Sruti and Smriti, i.e.,
revelational and traditional, rational and evidential, physical and
metaphysical, analytical and synthetical, philosophical and
philological, historical, and so forth. But they found all their
endeavours vain. "For," it is said, "a man who has lost all shame,
who can talk without sense, and who tries to cheat his opponent,
will never get tired, and will never be put down." He declared that
a non-ad was far more probable than a monad (the active
principle), or the duad (the passive principle or matter.) He
compared their faith with a bubble in the water, of which we can
never predicate that it does exist or it does not. It is, he said,
unreal, as when the thirsty mistakes the meadow mist for a pool of
water. He proved the eternity of sound.[FN#133] He impudently
recounted and justified all the villanies of the Vamachari or
left-handed sects. He told them that they had taken up an ass's load
of religion, and had better apply to honest industry. He fell foul of
the gods; accused Yama of kicking his own mother, Indra of
tempting the wife of his spiritual guide, and Shiva of associating
with low women. Thus, he said, no one can respect them. Do not
we say when it thunders awfully, "the rascally gods are dying!"
And when it is too wet, "these villain gods are sending too much
rain"? Briefly, the young Brahman replied to and harangued them
all so impertinently, if not pertinently, that they, waxing angry, fell
upon him with their staves, and drove him out of assembly.

Then the four thriftless youths returned home to their father, who
in his just indignation had urged their disgrace upon the Pandits
and Gurus, otherwise these dignitaries would never have resorted
to such extreme measures with so distinguished a house. He took
the opportunity of turning them out upon the world, until such time
as they might be able to show substantial signs of reform. "For," he
said, "those who have read science in their boyhood, and who in
youth, agitated by evil passions, have remained in the insolence of
ignorance, feel regret in their old age, and are consumed by the fire
of avarice." In order to supply them with a motive for the task
proposed, he stopped their monthly allowance But he added, if
they would repair to the neighbouring university of Jayasthal, and
there show themselves something better than a disgrace to their
family, he would direct their maternal uncle to supply them with
all the necessaries of food and raiment.

In vain the youths attempted, with sighs and tears and threats of
suicide, to soften the paternal heart. He was inexorable, for two
reasons. In the first place, after wondering away the wonder with
which he regarded his own failure, he felt that a stigma now
attached to the name of the pious and learned Vishnu Swami,
whose lectures upon "Management during Teens," and whose
"Brahman Young Man's Own Book,'' had become standard works.
Secondly, from a sense of duty, he determined to omit nothing that
might tend to reclaim the reprobates. As regards the monthly
allowance being stopped, the reverend man had become every year
a little fonder of his purse; he had hoped that his sons would have
qualified themselves to take pupils, and thus achieve for
themselves, as he phrased it, "A genteel independence"; whilst
they openly derided the career, calling it "an admirable provision
for the more indigent members of the middle classes." For which
reason he referred them to their maternal uncle, a man of known
and remarkable penuriousness.

The four ne'er-do-weals, foreseeing what awaited them at
Jayasthal, deferred it as a last resource; determining first to see a
little life, and to push their way in the world, before condemning
themselves to the tribulations of reform.

They tried to live without a monthly allowance, and notably they
failed; it was squeezing, as men say, oil from sand. The gambler,
having no capital, and, worse still, no credit, lost two or three
suvernas[FN#134] at play, and could not pay them; in consequence
of which he was soundly beaten with iron-shod staves, and was
nearly compelled by the keeper of the hell to sell himself into
slavery. Thus he became disgusted; and telling his brethren that
they would find him at Jayasthal, he departed, with the intention of
studying wisdom.

A month afterwards came the libertine's turn to be disappointed.
He could no longer afford fine new clothes; even a well-washed
coat was beyond his means. He had reckoned upon his handsome
face, and he had matured a plan for laying various elderly
conquests under contribution. Judge, therefore, his disgust when
all the women-- high and low, rich and poor, old and young, ugly
and beautiful--seeing the end of his waistcloth thrown empty over
his shoulder, passed him in the streets without even deigning a
look. The very shopkeepers' wives, who once had adored his
mustachio and had never ceased talking of his "elegant" gait,
despised him; and the wealthy old person who formerly supplied
his small feet with the choicest slippers, left him to starve. Upon
which he also in a state of repentance, followed his brother to
acquire knowledge.

"Am I not," quoth the thief to himself, "a cat in climbing, a deer in
running, a snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, a dog in
scenting?--keen as a hare, tenacious as a wolf, strong as a lion?--a
lamp in the night, a horse on a plain, a mule on a stony path, a boat
in the water, a rock on land[FN#135]?" The reply to his own
questions was of course affirmative. But despite all these fine
qualities, and notwithstanding his scrupulous strictness in
invocating the house-breaking tool and in devoting a due portion
of his gains to the gods of plunder,[FN#136] he was caught in a
store-room by the proprietor, who inexorably handed him over to
justice. As he belonged to the priestly caste,[FN#137] the fine
imposed upon him was heavy. He could not pay it, and therefore
he was thrown into a dungeon, where he remained for some time.
But at last he escaped from jail, when he made his parting bow to
Kartikeya,[FN#138] stole a blanket from one of the guards, and set
out for Jayasthal, cursing his old profession.

The atheist also found himself in a position that deprived him of all
his pleasures. He delighted in afterdinner controversies, and in
bringing the light troops of his wit to bear upon the unwieldy
masses of lore and logic opposed to him by polemical Brahmans
who, out of respect for his father, did not lay an action against him
for overpowering them in theological disputation.[FN#139] In the
strange city to which he had removed no one knew the son of
Vishnu Swami, and no one cared to invite him to the house. Once
he attempted his usual trick upon a knot of sages who, sitting
round a tank, were recreating themselves with quoting mystical
Sanskrit shlokas[FN#140] of abominable long-windedness. The
result was his being obliged to ply his heels vigorously in flight
from the justly incensed literati, to whom he had said "tush" and
"pish," at least a dozen times in as many minutes. He therefore also
followed the example of his brethren, and started for Jayasthal
with all possible expedition.

Arrived at the house of their maternal uncle, the young men, as by
one assent, began to attempt the unloosening of his purse-strings.
Signally failing in this and in other notable schemes, they
determined to lay in that stock of facts and useful knowledge
which might reconcile them with their father, and restore them to
that happy life at Gaur which they then despised, and which now
brought tears into their eyes.

Then they debated with one another what they should study

* * * * * * *

That branch of the preternatural, popularly called "white magic,"
found with them favour.

* * * * * * *

They chose a Guru or teacher strictly according to the orders of
their faith, a wise man of honourable family and affable
demeanour, who was not a glutton nor leprous, nor blind of one
eye, nor blind of both eyes, nor very short, nor suffering from
whitlows,[FN#141] asthma, or other disease, nor noisy and
talkative, nor with any defect about the fingers and toes, nor
subject to his wife.

* * * * * * *

A grand discovery had been lately made by a certain
physiologico-philosophico- psychologico-materialist, a
Jayasthalian. In investigating the vestiges of creation, the cause of
causes, the effect of effects, and the original origin of that Matra
(matter) which some regard as an entity, others as a non-entity,
others self-existent, others merely specious and therefore
unexistent, he became convinced that the fundamental form of
organic being is a globule having another globule within itselœ
After inhabiting a garret and diving into the depths of his self-
consciousness for a few score years, he was able to produce such
complex globule in triturated and roasted flint by means of--I will
not say what. Happily for creation in general, the discovery died a
natural death some centuries ago. An edifying spectacle, indeed,
for the world to see; a cross old man sitting amongst his gallipots
and crucibles, creating animalculae, providing the corpses of birds,
beasts, and fishes with what is vulgarly called life, and supplying
to epigenesis all the latest improvements!

In those days the invention, being a novelty, engrossed the
thoughts of the universal learned, who were in a fever of
excitement about it. Some believed in it so implicity that they saw
in every experiment a hundred things which they did not see.
Others were so sceptical and contradictory that they would not
preceive what they did see. Those blended with each fact their own
deductions, whilst these span round every reality the web of their
own prejudices. Curious to say, the Jayasthalians, amongst whom
the luminous science arose, hailed it with delight, whilst the
Gaurians derided its claim to be considered an important addition
to human knowledge.

Let me try to remember a few of their words.

"Unfortunate human nature," wrote the wise of Gaur against the
wise of Jayasthal, "wanted no crowning indignity but this! You
had already proved that the body is made of the basest element--
earth. You had argued away the immovability, the ubiquity, the
permanency, the eternity, and the divinity of the soul, for is not
your favourite axiom, ' It is the nature of limbs which thinketh in
man'? The immortal mind is, according to you, an ignoble viscus;
the god-like gift of reason is the instinct of a dog somewhat highly
developed. Still you left us something to hope. Still you allowed us
one boast. Still life was a thread connecting us with the Giver of
Life. But now, with an impious hand, in blasphemous rage ye have
rent asunder that last frail tie." And so forth.

"Welcome! thrice welcome! this latest and most admirable
development of human wisdom," wrote the sage Jayasthalians
against the sage Gaurians, "which has assigned to man his proper
state and status and station in the magnificent scale of being. We
have not created the facts which we have investigated, and which
we now proudly publish. We have proved materialism to be
nature's own system. But our philosophy of matter cannot overturn
any truth, because, if erroneous, it will necessarily sink into
oblivion; if real, it will tend only to instruct and to enlighten the
world. Wise are ye in your generation, O ye sages of Gaur, yet
withal wondrous illogical." And much of this kind.

Concerning all which, mighty king! I, as a Vampire, have only to
remark that those two learned bodies, like your Rajaship's Nine
Gems of Science, were in the habit of talking most about what they
least understood.

The four young men applied the whole force of their talents to
mastering the difficulties of the life-giving process; and in due
time, their industry obtained its reward.

Then they determined to return home. As with beating hearts they
approached the old city, their birthplace, and gazed with moistened
eyes upon its tall spires and grim pagodas, its verdant meads and
venerable groves, they saw a Kanjar,[FN#142] who, having tied up
in a bundle the skin and bones of a tiger which he had found dead,
was about to go on his way. Then said the thief to the gambler,
"Take we these remains with us, and by means of them prove the
truth of our science before the people of Gaur, to the offence of
their noses.[FN#143]" Being now possessed of knowledge, they
resolved to apply it to its proper purpose, namely, power over the
property of others. Accordingly, the wencher, the gambler, and the
atheist kept the Kanjar in conversation whilst the thief vivified a
shank bone; and the bone thereupon stood upright, and hopped
about in so grotesque and wonderful a way that the man, being
frightened, fled as if I had been close behind him.

Vishnu Swami had lately written a very learned commentary on
the mystical words of Lokakshi:

"The Scriptures are at variance--the tradition is at variance. He
who gives a meaning of his own, quoting the Vedas, is no
philosopher.

"True philosophy, through ignorance, is concealed as in the
fissures of a rock.

"But the way of the Great One--that is to be followed."

And the success of his book had quite effaced from the Brahman
mind the holy man's failure in bringing up his children. He
followed up this by adding to his essay on education a twentieth
tome, containing recipes for the "Reformation of Prodigals."

The learned and reverend father received his sons with open arms.
He had heard from his brother-in-law that the youths were
qualified to support themselves, and when informed that they
wished to make a public experiment of their science, he exerted
himself, despite his disbelief in it, to forward their views.

The Pandits and Gurus were long before they would consent to
attend what they considered dealings with Yama (the Devil). In
consequence, however, of Vishnu Swami's name and importunity,
at length, on a certain day, all the pious, learned, and reverend
tutors, teachers, professors, prolocutors, pastors, spiritual fathers,
poets, philosophers, mathematicians, schoolmasters, pedagogues,
bear-leaders, institutors, gerund-grinders, preceptors, dominies,
brushers, coryphaei, dry-nurses, coaches, mentors, monitors,
lecturers, prelectors, fellows, and heads of houses at the university
at Gaur, met together in a large garden, where they usually
diverted themselves out of hours with ball-tossing,
pigeon-tumbling, and kite-flying.

Presently the four young men, carrying their bundle of bones and
the other requisites, stepped forward, walking slowly with eyes
downcast, like shrinking cattle: for it is said, the Brahman must not
run, even when it rains.

After pronouncing an impromptu speech, composed for them by
their father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer
hardly understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular
demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their
short-sighted rivals of Jayasthal had cast cold water, but which,
they remarked in the eloquent peroration of their discourse, the
sages of Gaur had welcomed with that wise and catholic spirit of
inquiry which had ever characterized their distinguished body.

Huge words, involved sentences, and the high-flown compliment,
exceedingly undeserved, obscured, I suppose, the bright wits of the
intellectual convocation, which really began to think that their
liberality of opinion deserved all praise.

None objected to what was being prepared, except one of the heads
of houses; his appeal was generally scouted, because his Sanskrit
style was vulgarly intelligible, and he had the bad name of being a
practical man. The metaphysician Rashik Lall sneered to Vaiswata
the poet, who passed on the look to the theo-philosopher
Vardhaman. Haridatt the antiquarian whispered the metaphysician
Vasudeva, who burst into a loud laugh; whilst Narayan,
Jagasharma, and Devaswami, all very learned in the Vedas, opened
their eyes and stared at him with well-simulated astonishment. So
he, being offended, said nothing more, but arose and walked home.

A great crowd gathered round the four young men and their father,
as opening the bundle that contained the tiger's remains, they
prepared for their task.

One of the operators spread the bones upon the ground and fixed
each one into its proper socket, not forgetting even the teeth and
tusks.

The second connected, by means of a marvellous unguent, the
skeleton with the muscles and heart of an elephant, which he had
procured for the purpose.

The third drew from his pouch the brain and eyes of a large
tom-cat, which he carefully fitted into the animal's skull, and then
covered the body with the hide of a young rhinoceros.

Then the fourth--the atheist--who had been directing the operation,
produced a globule having another globule within itself. And as
the crowd pressed on them, craning their necks, breathless with
anxiety, he placed the Principle of Organic Life in the tiger's body
with such effect that the monster immediately heaved its chest,
breathed, agitated its limbs, opened its eyes, jumped to its feet,
shook itself, glared around, and began to gnash its teeth and lick its
chops, lashing the while its ribs with its tail.

The sages sprang back, and the beast sprang forward. With a roar
like thunder during Elephanta-time,[FN#144] it flew at the nearest
of the spectators, flung Vishnu Swami to the ground and clawed
his four sons. Then, not even stopping to drink their blood, it
hurried after the flying herd of wise men. Jostling and tumbling,
stumbling and catching at one another's long robes, they rushed in
hottest haste towards the garden gate. But the beast, having the
muscles of an elephant as well as the bones of a tiger, made a few
bounds of eighty or ninety feet each, easily distanced them, and
took away all chance of escape. To be brief: as the monster was
frightfully hungry after its long fast, and as the imprudent young
men had furnished it with admirable implements of destruction, it
did not cease its work till one hundred and twenty-one learned and
highly distinguished Pandits and Gurus lay upon the ground
chawed, clawed, sucked dry, and in most cases stone-dead.
Amongst them, I need hardly say, were the sage Vishnu Swami
and his four sons.

Having told this story the Vampire hung silent for a time. Presently
he resumed--

"Now, heed my words, Raja Vikram! I am about to ask thee,
Which of all those learned men was the most finished fool? The
answer is easily found, yet it must be distasteful to thee. Therefore
mortify thy vanity, as soon as possible, or I shall be talking, and
thou wilt be walking through this livelong night, to scanty purpose.
Remember! science without understanding is of little use; indeed,
understanding is superior to science, and those devoid of
understanding perish as did the persons who revivified the tiger.
Before this, I warned thee to beware of thyself, and of shine own
conceit. Here, then, is an opportunity for self-discipline--which of
all those learned men was the greatest fool?"

The warrior king mistook the kind of mortification imposed upon
him, and pondered over the uncomfortable nature of the reply--in
the presence of his son.

Again the Baital taunted him.

"The greatest fool of all," at last said Vikram, in slow and by no
means willing accents, "was the father. Is it not said, 'There is no
fool like an old fool'?"

"Gramercy!" cried the Vampire, bursting out into a discordant
laugh, "I now return to my tree. By this head! I never before heard
a father so readily condemn a father." With these words he
disappeared, slipping out of the bundle.

The Raja scolded his son a little for want of obedience, and said
that he had always thought more highly of his acuteness--never
could have believed that he would have been taken in by so
shallow a trick. Dharma Dhwaj answered not a word to this, but
promised to be wiser another time.

Then they returned to the tree, and did what they had so often done
before.

And, as before, the Baital held his tongue for a time. Presently he
began as follows.

THE VAMPIRE'S EIGHTH STORY.

Of the Use and Misuse of Magic Pills.

The lady Chandraprabha, daughter of the Raja Subichar, was a
particularly beautiful girl, and marriage-able withal. One day as
Vasanta, the Spring, began to assert its reign over the world,
animate and inanimate, she went accompanied by her young
friends and companions to stroll about her father's pleasure-garden.

The fair troop wandered through sombre groves, where the dark
tamale-tree entwined its branches with the pale green foliage of the
nim, and the pippal's domes of quivering leaves contrasted with the
columnar aisles of the banyan fig. They admired the old monarchs
of the forest, bearded to the waist with hangings of moss, the
flowing creepers delicately climbing from the lower branches to
the topmost shoots, and the cordage of llianas stretching from
trunk to trunk like bridges for the monkeys to pass over. Then they
issued into a clear space dotted with asokas bearing rich crimson
fiowers, cliterias of azure blue, madhavis exhibiting petals virgin
white as the snows on Himalaya, and jasmines raining showers of
perfumed blossoms upon the grateful earth. They could not
sufficiently praise the tall and graceful stem of the arrowy areca,
contrasting with the solid pyramid of the cypress, and the more
masculine stature of the palm. Now they lingered in the trellised
walks closely covered over with vines and creepers; then they
stopped to gather the golden bloom weighing down the mango
boughs, and to smell the highly-scented flowers that hung from the
green fretwork of the chambela.

It was spring, I have said. The air was still except when broken by
the hum of the large black bramra bee, as he plied his task amidst
the red and orange flowers of the dak, and by the gushings of many
waters that made music as they coursed down their stuccoed
channels between borders of many coloured poppies and beds of
various flowers. From time to time the dulcet note of the kokila
bird, and the hoarse plaint of the turtle-dove deep hid in her leafy
bower, attracted every ear and thrilled every heart. The south
wind--"breeze of the south,[FN#145] the friend of love and spring"
blew with a voluptuous warmth, for rain clouds canopied the earth,
and the breath of the narcissus, the rose, and the citron, teemed
with a languid fragrance.

The charms of the season affected all the damsels. They amused
themselves in their privacy with pelting blossoms at one another,
running races down the smooth broad alleys, mounting the silken
swings that hung between the orange trees, embracing one another,
and at times trying to push the butt of the party into the fishpond.
Perhaps the liveliest of all was the lady Chandraprabha, who on
account of her rank could pelt and push all the others, without fear
of being pelted and pushed in return.

It so happened, before the attendants had had time to secure
privacy for the princess and her women, that Manaswi, a very
handsome youth, a Brahman's son, had wandered without
malicious intention into the garden. Fatigued with walking, and
finding a cool shady place beneath a tree, he had lain down there,
and had gone to sleep, and had not been observed by any of the
king's people. He was still sleeping when the princess and her
companions were playing together.

Presently Chandraprabha, weary of sport, left her friends, and
singing a lively air, tripped up the stairs leading to the
summer-house. Aroused by the sound of her advancing footsteps,
Manaswi sat up; and the princess, seeing a strange man, started.
But their eyes had met, and both were subdued by love--love
vulgarly called "love at first sight."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the warrior king, testily, "I can never
believe in that freak of Kama Deva." He spoke feelingly, for the
thing had happened to himself more than once, and on no occasion
had it turned out well.

"But there is such a thing, O Raja, as love at first sight," objected
the Baital, speaking dogmatically.

"Then perhaps thou canst account for it, dead one," growled the
monarch surlily.

"I have no reason to do so, O Vikram," retorted the Vampire,
"when you men have already done it. Listen, then, to the words of
the wise. In the olden time, one of your great philosophers
invented a fluid pervading all matter, strongly self-repulsive like
the steam of a brass pot, and widely spreading like the breath of
scandal. The repulsiveness, however, according to that wise man,
is greatly modified by its second property, namely, an energetic
attraction or adhesion to all material bodies. Thus every substance
contains a part, more or less, of this fluid, pervading it throughout,
and strongly bound to each component atom. He called it
'Ambericity,' for the best of reasons, as it has no connection with
amber, and he described it as an imponderable, which, meaning
that it could not be weighed, gives a very accurate and satisfactory
idea of its nature.

"Now, said that philosopher, whenever two bodies containing that
unweighable substance in unequal proportions happen to meet, a
current of imponderable passes from one to the other, producing a
kind of attraction, and tending to adhere. The operation takes place
instantaneously when the force is strong and much condensed.
Thus the vulgar who call things after their effects and not from
their causes, term the action of this imponderable love at first
sight; the wise define it to be a phenomenon of ambericity. As
regards my own opinion about the matter, I have long ago told it to
you, O Vikram! Silliness--"

"Either hold your tongue, fellow, or go on with your story," cried
the Raja, wearied out by so many words that had no manner of
sense.

Well! the effect of the first glance was that Manaswi, the
Brahman's son, fell back in a swoon and remained senseless upon
the ground where he had been sitting; and the Raja's daughter
began to tremble upon her feet, and presently dropped unconscious
upon the floor of the summer-house. Shortly after this she was
found by her companions and attendants, who, quickly taking her
up in their arms and supporting her into a litter, conveyed her
home.

Manaswi, the Brahman's son, was so completely overcome, that he
lay there dead to everything. Just then the learned, deeply read, and
purblind Pandits Muldev and Shashi by name, strayed into the
garden, and stumbled upon the body.

"Friend," said Muldev, "how came this youth thus to fall senseless
on the ground?"

"Man," replied Shashi, "doubtless some damsel has shot forth the
arrows of her glances from the bow of her eyebrows, and thence he
has become insensible!"

"We must lift him up then," said Muldev the benevolent.

"What need is there to raise him?" asked Shashi the misanthrope
by way of reply.

Muldev, however, would not listen to these words. He ran to the
pond hard by, soaked the end of his waistcloth in water, sprinkled
it over the young Brahman, raised him from the ground, and
placed him sitting against the wall. And perceiving, when he came
to himself, that his sickness was rather of the soul than of the body,
the old men asked him how he came to be in that plight.

"We should tell our griefs," answered Manaswi, "only to those
who will relieve us! What is the use of communicating them to
those who, when they have heard, cannot help us? What is to be
gained by the empty pity or by the useless condolence of men in
general?"

The Pandits, however, by friendly looks and words, presently
persuaded him to break silence, when he said, "A certain princess
entered this summer-house, and from the sight of her I have fallen
into this state. If I can obtain her, I shall live; if not, I must die."

"Come with me, young man!" said Muldev the benevolent: "I will
use every endeavour to obtain her, and if I do not succeed I will
make thee wealthy and independent of the world."

Manaswi rejoined: "The Deity in his beneficence has created many
jewels in this world, but the pearl, woman, is chiefest of all; and
for her sake only does man desire wealth. What are riches to one
who has abandoned his wife? What are they who do not possess
beautiful wives? they are but beings inferior to the beasts! wealth
is the fruit of virtue; ease, of wealth; a wife, of ease. And where no
wife is, how can there be happiness?" And the enamoured youth
rambled on in this way, curious to us, Raja Vikram, but perhaps
natural enough in a Brahman's son suffering under that endemic
malady--determination to marry.

"Whatever thou mayest desire," said Muldev, "shall by the
blessing of heaven be given to thee."

Manaswi implored him, saying most pathetically, ''O Pandit,
bestow then that damsel upon me!"

Muldev promised to do so, and having comforted the youth, led
him to his own house. Then he welcomed him politely, seated him
upon the carpet, and left him for a few minutes, promising him to
return. When he reappeared, he held in his hand two little balls or
pills, and showing them to Manaswi, he explained their virtues as
follows:

"There is in our house an hereditary secret, by means of which I
try to promote the weal of humanity. But in all cases my success
depends mainly upon the purity and the hear/wholeness of those
that seek my aid. If thou place this in thy mouth, thou shalt be
changed into a damsel twelve years old, and when thou
withdrawest it again, thou shalt again recover shine original form.
Beware, however, that thou use the power for none but a good
purpose; otherwise some great calamity will befall thee. Therefore,
take counsel of thyself before undertaking this trial!"

What lover, O warrior king Vikram, would have hesitated, under
such circumstances, to assure the Pandit that he was the most
innocent, earnest, and well-intentioned being in the Three Worlds?

The Brahman's son, at least, lost no time in so doing. Hence the
simple-minded philosopher put one of the pills into the young
man's mouth, warning him on no account to swallow it, and took
the other into his own mouth. Upon which Manaswi became a
sprightly young maid, and Muldev was changed to a reverend and
decrepid senior, not fewer than eighty years old.

Thus transformed, the twain walked up to the palace of the Raja
Subichar, and stood for a while to admire the gate. Then passing
through seven courts, beautiful as the Paradise of Indra, they
entered, unannounced, as became the priestly dignity, a hall where,
surrounded by his courtiers, sat the ruler. The latter, seeing the
Holy Brahman under his roof, rose up, made the customary
humble salutation, and taking their right hands, led what appeared
to be the father and daughter to appropriate seats. Upon which
Muldev, having recited a verse, bestowed upon the Raja a blessing
whose beauty has been diffused over all creation.

"May that Deity[FN#146] who as a mannikin deceived the great
king Bali; who as a hero, with a monkey-host, bridged the Salt
Sea; who as a shepherd lifted up the mountain Gobarddhan in the
palm of his hand, and by it saved the cowherds and cowherdesses
from the thunders of heaven--may that Deity be thy protector!"

Having heard and marvelled at this display of eloquence, the Raja
inquired, "Whence hath your holiness come?"

"My country," replied Muldev, "is on the northern side of the great
mother Ganges, and there too my dwelling is. I travelled to a
distant land, and having found in this maiden a worthy wife for my
son, I straightway returned homewards. Meanwhile a famine had
laid waste our village, and my wife and my son have fled I know
not where. Encumbered with this damsel, how can I wander about
seeking them? Hearing the name of a pious and generous ruler, I
said to myself, ' I will leave her under his charge until my return.'
Be pleased to take great care of her."

For a minute the Raja sat thoughtful and silent. He was highly
pleased with the Brahman's perfect compliment. But he could not
hide from himself that he was placed between two difficulties: one,
the charge of a beautiful young girl, with pouting lips, soft speech,
and roguish eyes; the other, a priestly curse upon himself and his
kingdom. He thought, however, refusal the more dangerous; so he
raised his face and exclaimed, "O produce of Brahma's
head,[FN#147] I will do what your highness has desired of me."

Upon which the Brahman, after delivering a benediction of adieu
almost as beautiful and spirit-stirring as that with which he had
presented himself, took the betel[FN#148] and went his ways.

Then the Raja sent for his daughter Chandraprabha and said to her,
"This is the affianced bride of a young Brahman, and she has been
trusted to my protection for a time by her father-in-law. Take her
therefore into the inner rooms, treat her with the utmost regard,
and never allow her to be separated from thee, day or night, asleep
or awake, eating or drinking, at home or abroad."

Chandraprabha took the hand of Sita--as Manaswi had pleased to
call himself--and led the way to her own apartment. Once the seat
of joy and pleasure, the rooms now wore a desolate and
melancholy look. The windows were darkened, the attendants
moved noiselessly over the carpets, as if their footsteps would
cause headache, and there was a faint scent of some drug much
used in cases of deliquium. The apartments were handsome, but
the only ornament in the room where they sat was a large bunch of
withered flowers in an arched recess, and these, though possibly
interesting to some one, were not likely to find favour as a
decoration in the eyes of everybody.

The Raja's daughter paid the greatest attention and talked with
unusual vivacity to the Brahman's daughter-in-law, either because
she had roguish eyes, or from some presentiment of what was to
occur, whichever you please, Raja Vikram, and it is no matter
which. Still Sita could not help perceiving that there was a shade
of sorrow upon the forehead of her fair new friend, and so when
they retired to rest she asked the cause of it.

Then Chandraprabha related to her the sad tale: "One day in the
spring season, as I was strolling in the garden along with my
companions, I beheld a very handsome Brahman, and our eyes
having met, he became unconscious, and I also was insensible. My
companions seeing my condition, brought me home, and therefore
I know neither his name nor his abode. His beautiful form is
impressed upon my memory. I have now no desire to eat or to
drink, and from this distress my colour has become pale and my
body is thus emaciated." And the beautiful princess sighed a sigh
that was musical and melancholy, and concluded by predicting for
herself--as persons similarly placed often do--a sudden and
untimely end about the beginning of the next month.

"What wilt thou give me," asked the Brahman's daughter-in-law
demurely, "if I show thee thy beloved at this very moment?"

The Raja's daughter answered, "I will ever be the lowest of thy
slaves, standing before thee with joined hands."

Upon which Sita removed the pill from her mouth, and instantly
having become Manaswi, put it carefully away in a little bag hung
round his neck. At this sight Chandraprabha felt abashed, and hung
down her head in beautiful confusion. To describe--

"I will have no descriptions, Vampire!" cried the great Vikram,
jerking the bag up and down as if he were sweating gold in it. "The
fewer of thy descriptions the better for us all."

Briefly (resumed the demon), Manaswi reflected upon the eight
forms of marriage--viz., Bramhalagan, when a girl is given to a
Brahman, or man of superior caste, without reward; Daiva, when
she is presented as a gift or fee to the officiating priest at the close
of a sacrifice; Arsha, when two cows are received by the girl's
father in exchange for the bride[FN#149]; Prajapatya, when the
girl is given at the request of a Brahman, and the father says to his
daughter and her to betrothed, "Go, fulfil the duties of religion";
Asura, when money is received by the father in exchange for the
bride; Rakshasha, when she is captured in war, or when her
bridegroom overcomes his rival; Paisacha, when the girl is taken
away from her father's house by craft; and eighthly,
Gandharva-lagan, or the marriage that takes place by mutual
consent.[FN#150]

Manaswi preferred the latter, especially as by her rank and age the
princess was entitled to call upon her father for the Lakshmi
Swayambara wedding, in which she would have chosen her own
husband. And thus it is that Rama, Arjuna, Krishna, Nala, and
others, were proposed to by the princesses whom they married.

For five months after these nuptials, Manaswi never stirred out of
the palace, but remained there by day a woman, and a man by
night. The consequence was that he--I call him "he," for whether
Manaswi or Sita, his mind ever remained masculine--presently
found himself in a fair way to become a father.

Now, one would imagine that a change of sex every twenty-four
hours would be variety enough to satisfy even a man. Manaswi,
however, was not contented. He began to pine for more liberty,
and to find fault with his wife for not taking him out into the
world. And you might have supposed that a young person who,
from love at first sight, had fallen senseless upon the steps of a
summer-house, and who had devoted herself to a sudden and
untimely end because she was separated from her lover, would
have repressed her yawns and little irritable words even for a year
after having converted him into a husband. But no! Chandraprabha
soon felt as tired of seeing Manaswi and nothing but Manaswi, as
Manaswi was weary of seeing Chandraprabha and nothing but
Chandraprabha. Often she had been on the point of proposing
visits and out-of-door excursions. But when at last the idea was
first suggested by her husband, she at once became an injured
woman. She hinted how foolish it was for married people to
imprison themselves and to quarrel all day. When Manaswi
remonstrated, saying that he wanted nothing better than to appear
before the world with her as his wife, but that he really did not
know what her father might do to him, she threw out a cutting
sarcasm upon his effeminate appearance during the hours of light.
She then told him of an unfortunate young woman in an old
nursery tale who had unconsciously married a fiend that became a
fine handsome man at night when no eye could see him, and utter
ugliness by day when good looks show to advantage. And lastly,
when inveighing against the changeableness, fickleness, and
infidelity of mankind, she quoted the words of the poet--

Out upon change! it tires the heart
And weighs the noble spirit down;
A vain, vain world indeed thou art
That can such vile condition own
The veil hath fallen from my eyes,
I cannot love where I despise....

You can easily, O King Vikram, continue for yourself and
conclude this lecture, which I leave unfinished on account of its
length.

Chandraprabha and Sita, who called each other the Zodiacal Twins
and Laughter Light,[FN#151] and All-consenters, easily persuaded
the old Raja that their health would be further improved by air,
exercise, and distractions. Subichar, being delighted with the
change that had taken place in a daughter whom he loved, and
whom he had feared to lose, told them to do as they pleased. They
began a new life, in which short trips and visits, baths and dances,
music parties, drives in bullock chariots, and water excursions
succeeded one another.

It so happened that one day the Raja went with his whole family to
a wedding feast in the house of his grand treasurer, where the
latter's son saw Manaswi in the beautiful shape of Sita. This was a
third case of love at first sight, for the young man immediately said
to a particular friend, "If I obtain that girl, I shall live; if not, I shall
abandon life."

In the meantime the king. having enjoyed the feast, came back to
his palace with his whole family. The condition of the treasurer's
son, however, became very distressing; and through separation
from his beloved, he gave up eating and drinking. The particular
friend had kept the secret for some days, though burning to tell it.
At length he found an excuse for himself in the sad state of his
friend, and he immediately went and divulged all that he knew to
the treasurer. After this he felt relieved.

The minister repaired to the court, and laid his case before the
king, saying, "Great Raja! through the love of that Brahman's
daughter-in-law, my son's state is very bad; he has given up eating
and drinking; in fact he is consumed by the fire of separation. If
now your majesty could show compassion, and bestow the girl
upon him, his life would be saved. If not----"

"Fool!" cried the Raja, who, hearing these words, had waxed very
wroth; "it is not right for kings to do injustice. Listen! when a
person puts any one in charge of a protector, how can the latter
give away his trust without consulting the person that trusted him?
And yet this is what you wish me to do."

The treasurer knew that the Raja could not govern his realm
without him, and he was well acquainted with his master's
character. He said to himself, "This will not last long;" but he
remained dumb, simulating hopelessness, and hanging down his
head, whilst Subichar alternately scolded and coaxed, abused and
flattered him, in order to open his lips. Then, with tears in his eyes,
he muttered a request to take leave; and as he passed through the
palace gates, he said aloud, with a resolute air, "It will cost me but
ten days of fasting!"

The treasurer, having returned home, collected all his attendants,
and went straightway to his son's room. Seeing the youth still
stretched upon his sleeping-mat, and very yellow for the want of
food. he took his hand, and said in a whisper, meant to be audible,
"Alas! poor son, I can do nothing but perish with thee."

The servants, hearing this threat, slipped one by one out of the
room, and each went to tell his friend that the grand treasurer had
resolved to live no longer. After which, they went back to the
house to see if their master intended to keep his word, and curious
to know, if he did intend to die, how, where, and when it was to be.
And they were not disappointed: I do not mean that the wished
their lord to die, as he was a good master to them but still there
was an excitement in the thing----

(Raja Vikram could not refrain from showing his anger at the
insult thus cast by the Baital upon human nature; the wretch,
however, pretending not to notice it, went on without interrupting
himself)

----which somehow or other pleased them.

When the treasurer had spent three days without touching bread or
water, all the cabinet council met and determined to retire from
business unless the Raja yielded to their solicitations. The treasurer
was their working man. "Besides which," said the cabinet council,
"if a certain person gets into the habit of refusing us, what is to be
the end of it, and what is the use of being cabinet councillors any
longer?"

Early on the next morning, the ministers went in a body before the
Raja, and humbly represented that "the treasurer's son is at the
point of death, the effect of a full heart and an empty stomach.
Should he die, the father, who has not eaten or drunk during the
last three days" (the Raja trembled to hear the intelligence, though
he knew it), "his father, we say, cannot be saved. If the father dies
the affairs of the kingdom come to ruin,--is he not the grand
treasurer? It is already said that half the accounts have been
gnawed by white ants, and that some pernicious substance in the
ink has eaten jagged holes through the paper, so that the other half
of the accounts is illegible. It were best, sire, that you agree to
what we represent."

The white ants and corrosive ink were too strong for the Raja's
determination. Still, wishing to save appearances, he replied, with
much firmness, that he knew the value of the treasurer and his son,
that he would do much to save them, but that he had passed his
royal word, and had undertaken a trust. That he would rather die a
dozen deaths than break his promise, or not discharge his duty
faithfully. That man's condition in this world is to depart from it,
none remaining in it; that one comes and that one goes, none
knowing when or where; but that eternity is eternity for happiness
or misery. And much of the same nature, not very novel, and not
perhaps quite to the purpose, but edifying to those who knew what
lay behind the speaker's words.

The ministers did not know their lord's character so well as the
grand treasurer, and they were more impressed by his firm
demeanour and the number of his words than he wished them to
be. After allowing his speech to settle in their minds, he did away
with a great part of its effect by declaring that such were the
sentiments and the principles--when a man talks of his principles,
O Vikram! ask thyself the reason why--instilled into his youthful
mind by the most honourable of fathers and the most virtuous of
mothers. At the same time that he was by no means obstinate or
proof against conviction. In token whereof he graciously permitted
the councillors to convince him that it was his royal duty to break
his word and betray his trust, and to give away another man's wife.

Pray do not lose your temper, O warrior king! Subichar, although a
Raja, was a weak man; and you know, or you ought to know, that
the wicked may be wise in their generation, but the weak never
can.

Well, the ministers hearing their lord's last words, took courage,
and proceeded to work upon his mind by the figure of speech
popularly called "rigmarole." They said: "Great king! that old
Brahman has been gone many days, and has not returned; he is
probably dead and burnt. It is therefore right that by giving to the
grand treasurer's son his daughter-in-law, who is only affianced,
not fairly married, you should establish your government firmly.
And even if he should return, bestow villages and wealth upon
him; and if he be not then content, provide another and a more
beautiful wife for his son, and dismiss him. A person should be
sacrificed for the sake of a family, a family for a city, a city for a
country, and a country for a king!"

Subichar having heard them, dismissed them with the remark that
as so much was to be said on both sides, he must employ the night
in thinking over the matter, and that he would on the next day
favour them with his decision. The cabinet councillors knew by
this that he meant that he would go and consult his wives. They
retired contented, convinced that every voice would be in favour of
a wedding, and that the young girl, with so good an offer, would
not sacrifice the present to the future.

That evening the treasurer and his son supped together.

The first words uttered by Raja Subichar, when he entered his
daughter's apartment, were an order addressed to Sita: "Go thou at
once to the house of my treasurer's son."

Now, as Chandraprabha and Manaswi were generally scolding
each other, Chandraprabha and Sita were hardly on speaking
terms. When they heard the Raja's order for their separation they
were--

--"Delighted?" cried Dharma Dhwaj, who for some reason took the
greatest interest in the narrative.

"Overwhelmed with grief, thou most guileless Yuva Raja (young
prince)!" ejaculated the Vampire.

Raja Vikram reproved his son for talking about thing of which he
knew nothing, and the Baital resumed.

They turned pale and wept, and they wrung their hands, and they
begged and argued and refused obedience. In fact they did
everything to make the king revoke his order.

"The virtue of a woman," quoth Sita, "is destroyed through too
much beauty; the religion of a Brahman is impaired by serving
kings; a cow is spoiled by distant pasturage, wealth is lost by
committing injustice, and prosperity departs from the house where
promises are not kept."

The Raja highly applauded the sentiment, but was firm as a rock
upon the subject of Sita marrying the treasurer's son.

Chandraprabha observed that her royal father, usually so
conscientious, must now be acting from interested motives, and
that when selfishness sways a man, right becomes left and left
becomes right, as in the reflection of a mirror.

Subichar approved of the comparison; he was not quite so
resolved, but he showed no symptoms of changing his mind.

Then the Brahman's daughter-in-law, with the view of gaining
time--a famous stratagem amongst feminines--said to the Raja:
"Great king, if you are determined upon giving me to the grand
treasurer's son, exact from him the promise that he will do what I
bid him. Only on this condition will I ever enter his house!"

"Speak, then," asked the king; "what will he have to do?"

She replied, "I am of the Brahman or priestly caste, he is the son of
a Kshatriya or warrior: the law directs that before we twain can
wed, he should perform Yatra (pilgrimage) to all the holy places."

"Thou hast spoken Veda-truth, girl," answered the Raja, not sorry
to have found so good a pretext for temporizing, and at the same
time to preserve his character for firmness, resolution,
determination.

That night Manaswi and Chandraprabha, instead of scolding each
other, congratulated themselves upon having escaped an imminent
danger--which they did not escape.

In the morning Subichar sent for his ministers, including his grand
treasurer and his love-sick son, and told them how well and wisely
the Brahman's daughter-in-law had spoken upon the subject of the
marriage. All of them approved of the condition; but the young
man ventured to suggest, that while he was a-pilgrimaging the
maiden should reside under his father's roof. As he and his father
showed a disposition to continue their fasts in case of the small
favour not being granted, the Raja, though very loath to separate
his beloved daughter and her dear friend, was driven to do it. And
Sita was carried off, weeping bitterly, to the treasurer's palace.
That dignitary solemnly committed her to the charge of his third
and youngest wife, the lady Subhagya-Sundari, who was about her
own age, and said, "You must both live together, without any kind
of wrangling or contention, and do not go into other people's
houses." And the grand treasurer's son went off to perform his
pilgrimages.

It is no less sad than true, Raja Vikram, that in less than six days
the disconsolate Sita waxed weary of being Sita, took the ball out
of her mouth, and became Manaswi. Alas for the infidelity of
mankind! But it is gratifying to reflect that he met with the
punishment with which the Pandit Muldev had threatened him.
One night the magic pill slipped down his throat. When morning
dawned, being unable to change himself into Sita, Manaswi was
obliged to escape through a window from the lady
Subhagya-Sundari's room. He sprained his ankle with the leap, and
he lay for a time upon the ground--where I leave him whilst
convenient to me.

When Muldev quitted the presence of Subichar, he resumed his old
shape, and returning to his brother Pandit Shashi, told him what he
had done. Whereupon Shashi, the misanthrope, looked black, and
used hard words and told his friend that good nature and
soft-heartedness had caused him to commit a very bad action--a
grievous sin. Incensed at this charge, the philanthropic Muldev
became angry, and said, "I have warned the youth about his purity;
what harm can come of it?"

"Thou hast," retorted Shashi, with irritating coolness, "placed a
sharp weapon in a fool's hand."

"I have not," cried Muldev, indignantly.

"Therefore," drawled the malevolent, "you are answerable for all
the mischief he does with it, and mischief assuredly he will do."

"He will not, by Brahma!" exclaimed Muldev.

"He will, by Vishnu!" said Shashi, with an amiability produced by
having completely upset his friend's temper; "and if within the
coming six months he does not disgrace himself, thou shalt have
the whole of my book-case; but if he does, the philanthropic
Muldev will use all his skill and ingenuity in procuring the
daughter of Raja Subichar as a wife for his faithful friend Shashi."

Having made this covenant, they both agreed not to speak of the
matter till the autumn.

The appointed time drawing near, the Pandits began to make
inquiries about the effect of the magic pills. Presently they found
out that Sita, alias Manaswi, had one night mysteriously
disappeared from the grand treasurer's house, and had not been
heard of since that time. This, together with certain other things
that transpired presently, convinced Muldev, who had cooled down
in six months, that his friend had won the wager. He prepared to
make honourable payment by handing a pill to old Shashi, who at
once became a stout, handsome young Brahman, some twenty
years old. Next putting a pill into his own mouth, he resumed the
shape and form under which he had first appeared before Raja
Subichar; and, leaning upon his staff, he led the way to the palace.

The king, in great confusion, at once recognized the old priest, and
guessed the errand upon which he and the youth were come.
However, he saluted them, and offered them seats, and receiving
their blessings, he began to make inquiries about their health and
welfare. At last he mustered courage to ask the old Brahman where
he had been living for so long a time.

"Great king," replied the priest, "I went to seek after my son, and
having found him, I bring him to your majesty. Give him his wife,
and I will take them both home with me.''

Raja Subichar prevaricated not a little; but presently, being hard
pushed, he related everything that had happened.

"What is this that you have done?" cried Muldev, simulating
excessive anger and astonishment. "Why have you given my son's
wife in marriage to another man? You have done what you wished,
and now, therefore, receive my Shrap (curse)!"

The poor Raja, in great trepidation, said, "O Vivinity! be not thus
angry! I will do whatever you bid me."

Said Muldev, "If through dread of my excommunication you will
freely give whatever I demand of you, then marry your daughter,
Chandraprabha, to this my son. On this condition I forgive you. To
me, now a necklace of pearls and a venomous krishna (cobra
capella); the most powerful enemy and the kindest friend, the most
precious gem and a clod of earth; the softest bed and the hardest
stone; a blade of grass and the loveliest woman--are precisely the
same. All I desire is that in some holy place, repeating the name of
God, I may soon end my days."

Subichar, terrified by this additional show of sanctity, at once
summoned an astrologer, and fixed upon the auspicious moment
and lunar influence. He did not consult the princess, and had he
done so she would not have resisted his wishes. Chandraprabha
had heard of Sita's escape from the treasurer's house, and she had
on the subject her own suspicions. Besides which she looked
forward to a certain event, and she was by no means sure that her
royal father approved of the Gandharba form of marriage--at least
for his daughter. Thus the Brahman's son receiving in due time the
princess and her dowry, took leave of the king and returned to his
own village.

Hardly, however, had Chandraprabha been married to Shashi the
Pandit, when Manaswi went to him, and began to wrangle, and
said, "Give me my wife!" He had recovered from the effects of his
fall, and having lost her he therefore loved her--very dearly.

But Shashi proved by reference to the astrologers, priests, and ten
persons as witnesses, that he had duly wedded her, and brought her
to his home; "therefore," said he, "she is my spouse."

Manaswi swore by all holy things that he had been legally married
to her, and that he was the father of her child that was about to be.
"How then," continued he, "can she be thy spouse?" He would
have summoned Muldev as a witness, but that worthy, after
remonstrating with him, disappeared. He called upon
Chandraprabha to confirm his statement, but she put on an
innocent face, and indignantly denied ever having seen the man.

Still, continued the Baital, many people believed Manaswi's story,
as it was marvellous and incredible. Even to the present day, there
are many who decidedly think him legally married to the daughter
of Raja Subichar.

"Then they are pestilent fellows!" cried the warrior king Vikram,
who hated nothing more than clandestine and runaway matches.
"No one knew that the villain, Manaswi, was the father of her
child; whereas, the Pandit Shashi married her lawfully, before
witnesses, and with all the ceremonies.[FN#152] She therefore
remains his wife, and the child will perform the funeral obsequies
for him, and offer water to the manes of his pitris (ancestors). At
least, so say law and justice."

"Which justice is often unjust enough!" cried the Vampire; "and
ply thy legs, mighty Raja; let me see if thou canst reach the
sires-tree before I do."

* * * * * *

"The next story, O Raja Vikram, is remarkably interesting."

THE VAMPIRE'S NINTH STORY.

Showing That a Man's Wife Belongs Not to His Body but to His
Head.

Far and wide through the lovely land overrun by the Arya from the
Western Highlands spread the fame of Unmadini, the beautiful
daughter of Haridas the Brahman. In the numberless odes, sonnets,
and acrostics addressed to her by a hundred Pandits and poets her
charms were sung with prodigious triteness. Her presence was
compared to light shining in a dark house; her face to the full
moon; her complexion to the yellow champaka flower; her curls to
female snakes; her eyes to those of the deer; her eyebrows to bent
bows; her teeth to strings of little opals; her feet to rubies and red
gems,[FN#153] and her gait to that of the wild goose. And none
forgot to say that her voice affected the author like the song of the
kokila bird, sounding from the shadowy brake, when the breeze
blows coolly, or that the fairy beings of Indra's heaven would have
shrunk away abashed at her loveliness.

But, Raja Vikram! all the poets failed to win the fair Unmadini's
love. To praise the beauty of a beauty is not to praise her. Extol her
wit and talents, which has the zest of novelty, then you may
succeed. For the same reason, read inversely, the plainer and
cleverer is the bosom you would fire, the more personal you must
be upon the subject of its grace and loveliness. Flattery you know,
is ever the match which kindles the Flame of love. True it is that
some by roughness of demeanour and bluntness in speech,
contrasting with those whom they call the "herd," have the art to
succeed in the service of the bodyless god.[FN#154] But even they
must--

The young prince Dharma Dhwaj could not help laughing at the
thought of how this must sound in his father's ear. And the Raja
hearing the ill-timed merriment, sternly ordered the Baital to cease
his immoralities and to continue his story.

Thus the lovely Unmadini, conceiving an extreme contempt for
poets and literati, one day told her father who greatly loved her,
that her husband must be a fine young man who never wrote
verses. Withal she insisted strongly on mental qualities and
science, being a person of moderate mind and an adorer of talent--
when not perverted to poetry.

As you may imagine, Raja Vikram, all the beauty's bosom friends,
seeing her refuse so many good offers, confidently predicted that
she would pass through the jungle and content herself with a bad
stick, or that she would lead ring-tailed apes in Patala.

At length when some time had elapsed, four suitors appeared from
four different countries, all of them claiming equal excellence in
youth and beauty, strength and understanding. And after paying
their respects to Haridas, and telling him their wishes, they were
directed to come early on the next morning and to enter upon the
first ordeal--an intellectual conversation.

This they did.

"Foolish the man," quoth the young Mahasani, "that seeks
permanence in this world--frail as the stem of the plantain-tree,
transient as the ocean foam.

"All that is high shall presently fall; all that is low must finally
perish.

"Unwillingly do the manes of the dead taste the tears shed by their
kinsmen: then wail not, but perform the funeral obsequies with
diligence."

"What ill-omened fellow is this?" quoth the fair Unmadini, who
was sitting behind her curtain;" besides, he has dared to quote
poetry! "There was little chance of success for that suitor.

"She is called a good woman, and a woman of pure descent,"
quoth the second suitor, "who serves him to whom her father and
mother have given her; and it is written in the scriptures that a
woman who in the lifetime of her husband, becoming a devotee,
engages in fasting, and in austere devotion, shortens his days, and
hereafter falls into the fire. For it is said--

"A woman's bliss is found not in the smile
Of father, mother, friend, nor in herself;
Her husband is her only portion here,
Her heaven hereafter."

The word "serve," which might mean "obey," was peculiarly
disagreeable to the fair one's ears, and she did not admire the check
so soon placed upon her devotion, or the decided language and
manner of the youth. She therefore mentally resolved never again
to see that person, whom she determined to be stupid as an
elephant.

"A mother," said Gunakar, the third candidate, "protects her son in
babyhood, and a father when his offspring is growing up. But the
man of warrior descent defends his brethren at all times. Such is
the custom of the world, and such is my state. I dwell on the heads
of the strong!"

Therefore those assembled together looked with great respect upon
the man of velour.

Devasharma, the fourth suitor, contented himself with listening to
the others, who fancied that he was overawed by their cleverness.
And when it came to his turn he simply remarked, "Silence is
better than speech." Being further pressed, he said, "A wise man
will not proclaim his age, nor a deception practiced upon himself,
nor his riches, nor the loss of riches, nor family faults, nor
incantations, nor conjugal love, nor medicinal prescriptions, nor
religious duties, nor gifts, nor reproach, nor the infidelity of his
wife."

Thus ended the first trial. The master of the house dismissed the
two former speakers, with many polite expressions and some
trifling presents. Then having given betel to them, scented their
garments with attar, and sprinkled rose-water over their heads, he
accompanied them to the door, showing much regret. The two
latter speakers he begged to come on the next day.

Gunakar and Devasharma did not fail. When they entered the
assembly-room and took the seats pointed out to them, the father
said, "Be ye pleased to explain and make manifest the effects of
your mental qualities. So shall I judge of them."

"I have made," said Gunakar, "a four-wheeled carriage, in which
the power resides to carry you in a moment wherever you may
purpose to go."

"I have such power over the angel of death," said Devasharma,
"that I can at all times raise a corpse, and enable my friends to do
the same."

Now tell me by thy brains, O warrior King Vikram, which of these
two youths was the fitter husband for the maid?

Either the Raja could not answer the question, or perhaps he would
not, being determined to break the spell which had already kept
him walking to and fro for so many hours. Then the Baital, who
had paused to let his royal carrier commit himself, seeing that the
attempt had failed, proceeded without making any further
comment.

The beautiful Unmadini was brought out, but she hung down her
head and made no reply. Yet she took care to move both her eyes
in the direction of Devasharma. Whereupon Haridas, quoting the
proverb that "pearls string with pearls," formally betrothed to him
his daughter.
The soldier suitor twisted the ends of his mustachios into his eyes,
which were red with wrath, and fumbled with his fingers about the
hilt of his sword. But he was a man of noble birth, and presently
his anger passed away.

Mahasani the poet, however, being a shameless person--and when
can we be safe from such?--forced himself into the assembly and
began to rage and to storm, and to quote proverbs in a loud tone of
voice. He remarked that in this world women are a mine of grief, a
poisonous root, the abode of solicitude, the destroyers of
resolution, the occasioners of fascination, and the plunderers of all
virtuous qualities. From the daughter he passed to the father, and
after saying hard things of him as a "Maha-Brahman,"[FN#155]
who took cows and gold and worshipped a monkey, he fell with a
sweeping censure upon all priests and sons of priests, more
especially Devasharma. As the bystanders remonstrated with him,
he became more violent, and when Haridas, who was a weak man,
appeared terrified by his voice, look, and gesture, he swore a
solemn oath that despite all the betrothals in the world, unless
Unmadini became his wife he would commit suicide, and as a
demon haunt the house and injure the inmates.

Gunakar the soldier exhorted this shameless poet to slay himself at
once, and to go where he pleased. But as Haridas reproved the
warrior for inhumanity, Mahasani nerved by spite, love, rage, and
perversity to an heroic death, drew a noose from his bosom, rushed
out of the house, and suspended himself to the nearest tree.

And, true enough, as the midnight gong struck, he appeared in the
form of a gigantic and malignant Rakshasa (fiend), dreadfully
frightened the household of Haridas, and carried off the lovely
Unmadini, leaving word that she was to he found on the topmost
peak of Himalaya.

The unhappy father hastened to the house where Devasharma
lived. There, weeping bitterly and wringing his hands in despair,
he told the terrible tale, and besought his intended son-in-law to be
up and doing.

The young Brahman at once sought his late rival, and asked his
aid. This the soldier granted at once, although he had been nettled
at being conquered in love by a priestling.

The carriage was at once made ready, and the suitors set out,
bidding the father be of good cheer, and that before sunset he
should embrace his daughter. They then entered the vehicle;
Gunakar with cabalistic words caused it to rise high in the air, and
Devasharma put to flight the demon by reciting the sacred
verse,[FN#156] "Let us meditate on the supreme splendour (or
adorable light) of that Divine Ruler (the sun) who may illuminate
our understandings. Venerable men, guided by the intelligence,
salute the divine sun (Sarvitri) with oblations and praise. Om!"

Then they returned with the girl to the house, and Haridas blessed
them, praising the sun aloud in the joy of his heart. Lest other
accidents might happen, he chose an auspicious planetary
conjunction, and at a fortunate moment rubbed turmeric upon his
daughter's hands.

The wedding was splendid, and broke the hearts of twenty-four
rivals. In due time Devasharma asked leave from his father-in-law
to revisit his home, and to carry with him his bride. This request
being granted, he set out accompanied by Gunakar the soldier, who
swore not to leave the couple before seeing them safe under their
own roof-tree.

It so happened that their road lay over the summits of the wild
Vindhya hills, where dangers of all kinds are as thick as shells
upon the shore of the deep. Here were rocks and jagged precipices
making the traveller's brain whirl when he looked into them. There
impetuous torrents roared and flashed down their beds of black
stone, threatening destruction to those who would cross them. Now
the path was lost in the matted thorny underwood and the pitchy
shades of the jungle, deep and dark as the valley of death. Then the
thunder-cloud licked the earth with its fiery tongue, and its voice
shook the crags and filled their hollow caves. At times, the sun was
so hot, that wild birds fell dead from the air. And at every moment
the wayfarers heard the trumpeting of giant elephants, the fierce
howling of the tiger, the grisly laugh of the foul hyaena, and the
whimpering of the wild dogs as they coursed by on the tracks of
their prey.

Yet, sustained by the five-armed god[FN#157] the little party
passed safely through all these dangers. They had almost emerged
from the damp glooms of the forest into the open plains which
skirt the southern base of the hills, when one night the fair
Unmadini saw a terrible vision.

She beheld herself wading through a sluggish pool of muddy
water, which rippled, curdling as she stepped into it, and which, as
she advanced, darkened with the slime raised by her feet. She was
bearing in her arms the semblance of a sick child, which struggled
convulsively and filled the air with dismal wails. These cries
seemed to be answered by a multitude of other children, some
bloated like toads, others mere skeletons lying upon the bank, or
floating upon the thick brown waters of the pond. And all seemed
to address their cries to her, as if she were the cause of their
weeping; nor could all her efforts quiet or console them for a
moment.

When the bride awoke, she related all the particulars of her
ill-omened vision to her husband; and the latter, after a short
pause, informed her and his friend that a terrible calamity was
about to befall them. He then drew from his travelling wallet a
skein of thread. This he divided into three parts, one for each, and
told his companions that in case of grievous bodily injury, the bit
of thread wound round the wounded part would instantly make it
whole. After which he taught them the Mantra,[FN#158] or
mystical word by which the lives of men are restored to their
bodies, even when they have taken their allotted places amongst
the stars, and which for evident reasons I do not want to repeat. It
concluded, however, with the three Vyahritis, or sacred syllables--
Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svar!

Raja Vikram was perhaps a little disappointed by this declaration.
He made no remark, however, and the Baital thus pursued:

As Devasharma foretold, an accident of a terrible nature did occur.
On the evening of that day, as they emerged upon the plain, they
were attacked by the Kiratas, or savage tribes of the
mountain.[FN#159] A small, black, wiry figure, armed with a bow
and little cane arrows, stood in their way, signifying by gestures
that they must halt and lay down their arms. As they continued to
advance, he began to speak with a shrill chattering, like the note of
an affrighted bird, his restless red eyes glared with rage, and he
waved his weapon furiously round his head. Then from the rocks
and thickets on both sides of the path poured a shower of shafts
upon the three strangers.

The unequal combat did not last long. Gunakar, the soldier,
wielded his strong right arm with fatal effect and struck down
some threescore of the foes. But new swarms came on like angry
hornets buzzing round the destroyer of their nests. And when he
fell, Devasharma, who had left him for a moment to hide his
beautiful wife in the hollow of a tree, returned, and stood fighting
over the body of his friend till he also, overpowered by numbers,
was thrown to the ground. Then the wild men, drawing their
knives, cut off the heads of their helpless enemies, stripped their
bodies of all their ornaments, and departed, leaving the woman
unharmed for good luck.

When Unmadini, who had been more dead than alive during the
affray, found silence succeed to the horrid din of shrieks and
shouts, she ventured to creep out of her refuge in the hollow tree.
And what does she behold? her husband and his friend are lying
upon the ground, with their heads at a short distance from their
bodies. She sat down and wept bitterly.

Presently, remembering the lesson which she had learned that very
morning, she drew forth from her bosom the bit of thread and
proceeded to use it. She approached the heads to the bodies, and
tied some of the magic string round each neck. But the shades of
evening were fast deepening, and in her agitation, confusion and
terror, she made a curious mistake by applying the heads to the
wrong trunks. After which, she again sat down, and having recited
her prayers, she pronounced, as her husband had taught her, the
life-giving incantation.

In a moment the dead men were made alive. They opened their
eyes, shook themselves, sat up and handled their limbs as if to feel
that all was right. But something or other appeared to them all
wrong. They placed their palms upon their foreheads, and looked
downwards, and started to their feet and began to stare at their
hands and legs. Upon which they scrutinized the very scanty
articles of dress which the wild men had left upon them, and lastly
one began to eye the other with curious puzzled looks.

The wife, attributing their gestures to the confusion which one
might expect to find in the brains of men who have just undergone
so great a trial as amputation of the head must be, stood before
them for a moment or two. She then with a cry of gladness flew to
the bosom of the individual who was, as she supposed, her
husband. He repulsed her, telling her that she was mistaken. Then,
blushing deeply in spite of her other emotions, she threw both her
beautiful arms round the neck of the person who must be, she
naturally concluded, the right man. To her utter confusion, he also
shrank back from her embrace.

Then a horrid thought flashed across her mind: she perceived her
fatal mistake, and her heart almost ceased to beat.

"This is thy wife!" cried the Brahman's head that had been fastened
to the soldier's body.

"No; she is thy wife!" replied the soldier's head which had been
placed upon the Brahman's body.

"Then she is my wife!" rejoined the first compound creature.

"By no means! she is my wife," cried the second.

"What then am I?" asked Devasharma-Gunakar.

"What do you think I am?" answered GunakarDevasharma, with
another question.

"Unmadini shall be mine," quoth the head.

"You lie, she shall be mine," shouted the body.

"Holy Yama,[FN#160] hear the villain," exclaimed both of them at
the same moment.

* * * * *

In short, having thus begun, they continued to quarrel violently,
each one declaring that the beautiful Unmadini belonged to him,
and to him only. How to settle their dispute Brahma the Lord of
creatures only knows. I do not, except by cutting off their heads
once more, and by putting them in their proper places. And I am
quite sure, O Raja Vikram! that thy wits are quite unfit to answer
the question, To which of these two is the beautiful Unmadini
wife? It is even said--amongst us Baitals --that when this pair of
half-husbands appeared in the presence of the Just King, a terrible
confusion arose, each head declaiming all the sins and peccadilloes
which its body had committed, and that Yama the holy ruler
himself hit his forefinger with vexation.[FN#161]

Here the young prince Dharma Dhwaj burst out laughing at the
ridiculous idea of the wrong heads. And the warrior king, who, like
single-minded fathers in general, was ever in the idea that his son
had a velleity for deriding and otherwise vexing him, began a
severe course of reproof. He reminded the prince of the common
saying that merriment without cause degrades a man in the opinion
of his fellows, and indulged him with a quotation extensively used
by grave fathers, namely, that the loud laugh bespeaks a vacant
mind. After which he proceeded with much pompousness to
pronounce the following opinion:

"It is said .n the Shastras----"

"Your majesty need hardly display so much erudition! Doubtless it
comes from the lips of Jayudeva or some other one of your Nine
Gems of Science, who know much more about their songs and
their stanzas than they do about their scriptures," insolently
interrupted the Baital, who never lost an opportunity of carping at
those reverend men.

"It is said in the Shastras," continued Raja Vikram sternly, after
hesitating whether he should or should not administer a corporeal
correction to the Vampire, "that Mother Ganga[FN#162] is the
queen amongst rivers, and the mountain Sumeru[FN#163] is the
monarch among mountains, and the tree Kalpavriksha[FN#164] is
the king of all trees, and the head of man is the best and most
excellent of limbs. And thus, according to this reason, the wife
belonged to him whose noblest position claimed her."

"The next thing your majesty will do, I suppose," continued the
Baital, with a sneer, "is to support the opinions of the Digambara,
who maintains that the soul is exceedingly rarefied, confined to
one place, and of equal dimensions with the body, or the fancies of
that worthy philosopher Jaimani, who, conceiving soul and mind
and matter to be things purely synonymous, asserts outwardly and
writes in his books that the brain is the organ of the mind which is
acted upon by the immortal soul, but who inwardly and verily
believes that the brain is the mind, and consequently that the brain
is the soul or spirit or whatever you please to call it; in fact, that
soul is a natural faculty of the body. A pretty doctrine, indeed, for
a Brahman to hold. You might as well agree with me at once that
the soul of man resides, when at home, either in a vein in the
breast, or in the pit of his stomach, or that half of it is in a man's
brain and the other or reasoning half is in his heart, an organ of his
body."

"What has all this string of words to do with the matter, Vampire?"
asked Raja Vikram angrily.

"Only," said the demon laughing, "that in my opinion, as opposed
to the Shastras and to Raja Vikram, that the beautiful Unmadini
belonged, not to the head part but to the body part. Because the
latter has an immortal soul in the pit of its stomach, whereas the
former is a box of bone, more or less thick, and contains brains
which are of much the same consistence as those of a calf."

"Villain!" exclaimed the Raja, "does not the soul or conscious life
enter the body through the sagittal suture and lodge in the brain,
thence to contemplate, through the same opening, the divine
perfections?"

"I must, however, bid you farewell for the moment, O warrior
king, Sakadhipati-Vikramadityal[FN#165]! I feel a sudden and
ardent desire to change this cramped position for one more natural
to me."

The warrior monarch had so far committed himself that he could
not prevent the Vampire from flitting. But he lost no more time in
following him than a grain of mustard, in its fall, stays on a cow's
horn. And when he had thrown him over his shoulder, the king
desired him of his own accord to begin a new tale.

"O my left eyelid flutters," exclaimed the Baital in despair, "my
heart throbs, my sight is dim: surely now beginneth the end. It is as
Vidhata hath written on my forehead--how can it be
otherwise[FN#166]? Still listen, O mighty Raja, whilst I recount to
you a true story, and Saraswati[FN#167] sit on my tongue."

THE VAMPIRE'S TENTH STORY.[FN#168]

Of the Marvellous Delicacy of Three Queens.

The Baital said, O king, in the Gaur country, Vardhman by name,
there is a city, and one called Gunshekhar was the Raja of that
land. His minister was one Abhaichand, a Jain, by whose teachings
the king also came into the Jain faith.

The worship of Shiva and of Vishnu, gifts of cows, gifts of lands,
gifts of rice balls, gaming and spirit-drinking, all these he
prohibited. In the city no man could get leave to do them, and as
for bones, into the Ganges no man was allowed to throw them, and
in these matters the minister, having taken orders from the king,
caused a proclamation to be made about the city, saying,
"Whoever these acts shall do, the Raja having confiscated, will
punish him and banish him from the city."

Now one day the Diwan[FN#169] began to say to the Raja, "O
great king, to the decisions of the Faith be pleased to give ear.
Whosoever takes the life of another, his life also in the future birth
is taken: this very sin causes him to be born again and again upon
earth and to die And thus he ever continues to be born again and to
die. Hence for one who has found entrance into this world to
cultivate religion is right and proper. Be pleased to behold! By
love, by wrath, by pain, by desire, and by fascination overpowered,
the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeva (Shiva) in various ways
upon the earth are ever becoming incarnate. Far better than they is
the Cow, who is free from passion, enmity, drunkenness, anger,
covetousness, and inordinate affection, who supports mankind, and
whose progeny in many ways give ease and solace to the creatures
of the world These deities and sages (munis) believe in the
Cow.[FN#170]

"For such reason to believe in the gods is not good. Upon this earth
be pleased to believe in the Cow. It is our duty to protect the life of
everyone, beginning from the elephant, through ants, beasts, and
birds, up to man. In the world righteousness equal to that there is
none. Those who, eating the flesh of other creatures, increase their
own flesh, shall in the fulness of time assuredly obtain the fruition
of Narak [FN#17l]; hence for a man it is proper to attend to the
conversation of life. They who understand not the pain of other
creatures, and who continue to slay and to devour them, last but
few days in the land, and return to mundane existence, maimed,
limping, one-eyed, blind, dwarfed, hunchbacked, and imperfect in
such wise. Just as they consume the bodies of beasts and of birds,
even so they end by spoiling their own bodies. From drinking
spirits also the great sin arises, hence the consuming of spirits and
flesh is not advisable."

The minister having in this manner explained to the king the
sentiments of his own mind, so brought him over to the Jain faith,
that whatever he said, so the king did. Thus in Brahmans, in Jogis,
in Janganis, in Sevras, in Sannyasis,[FN#172] and in religious
mendicants, no man believed, and according to this creed the rule
was carried on.

Now one day, being in the power of Death, Raja Gunshekhar died.
Then his son Dharmadhwaj sat upon the carpet (throne), and began
to rule. Presently he caused the minister Abhaichand to be seized,
had his head shaved all but seven locks of hair, ordered his face to
be blackened, and mounting him on an ass, with drums beaten, had
him led all about the city, and drove him from the kingdom. From
that time he carried on his rule free from all anxiety.

It so happened that in the season of spring, the king Dharmadhwaj,
taking his queens with him, went for a stroll in the garden, where
there was a large tank with lotuses blooming within it. The Raja
admiring its beauty, took off his clothes and went down to bathe.

After plucking a flower and coming to the bank, he was going to
give it into the hands of one of his queens, when it slipped from his
fingers, fell upon her foot, and broke it with the blow. Then the
Raja being alarmed, at once came out of the tank, and began to
apply remedies to her.

Hereupon night came on, and the moon shone brightly: the falling
of its rays on the body of the second queen formed blisters And
suddenly from a distance the sound of a wooden pestle came out of
a householder's dwelling, when the third queen fainted away with a
severe pain in the head

Having spoken thus much the Baital said "O my king! of these
three which is the most delicate?" The Raja answered, "She indeed
is the most delicate who fainted in consequence of the headache."
The Baital hearing this speech, went and hung himself from the
very same tree, and the Raja, having gone there and taken him
down and fastened him in the bundle and placed him on his
shoulder, carried him away.

THE VAMPIRE'S ELEVENTH STORY.

Which Puzzles Raja Vikram.

There is a queer time coming, O Raja Vikram!--a queer time
coming (said the Vampire), a queer time coming. Elderly people
like you talk abundantly about the good old days that were, and
about the degeneracy of the days that are. I wonder what you
would say if you could but look forward a few hundred years.

Brahmans shall disgrace themselves by becoming soldiers and
being killed, and Serviles (Shudras) shall dishonour themselves by
wearing the thread of the twiceborn, and by refusing to be slaves;
in fact, society shall be all "mouth" and mixed castes.[FN#173]
The courts of justice shall be disused; the great works of peace
shall no longer be undertaken; wars shall last six weeks, and their
causes shall be clean forgotten; the useful arts and great sciences
shall die starved; there shall be no Gems of Science; there shall be
a hospital for destitute kings, those, at least, who do not lose their
heads, and no Vikrama----

A severe shaking stayed for a moment the Vampire's tongue.

He presently resumed. Briefly, building tanks feeding Brahmans;
lying when one ought to lie; suicide, the burning of widows, and
the burying of live children, shall become utterly unfashionable.

The consequence of this singular degeneracy, O mighty Vikram,
will be that strangers shall dwell beneath the roof tree in Bharat
Khanda (India), and impure barbarians shall call the land their
own. They come from a wonderful country, and I am most
surprised that they bear it. The sky which ought to be gold and
blue is there grey, a kind of dark white; the sun looks deadly pale,
and the moon as if he were dead.[FN#174] The sea, when not dirty
green, glistens with yellowish foam, and as you approach the
shore, tall ghastly cliffs, like the skeletons of giants, stand up to
receive or ready to repel. During the greater pert of the sun's
Dakhshanayan (southern declination) the country is covered with a
sort of cold white stuff which dazzles the eyes; and at such times
the air is obscured with what appears to be a shower of white
feathers or flocks of cotton. At other seasons there is a pale glare
produced by the mist clouds which spread themselves over the
lower firmament. Even the faces of the people are white; the men
are white when not painted blue; the women are whiter, and the
children are whitest: these indeed often have white hair.

"Truly," exclaimed Dharma Dhwaj, "says the proverb, 'Whoso
seeth the world telleth many a lie.'"

At present (resumed the Vampire, not heeding the interruption),
they run about naked in the woods, being merely Hindu outcastes.
Presently they will change-- the wonderful white Pariahs! They
will eat all food indifferently, domestic fowls, onions, hogs fed in
the street, donkeys, horses, hares, and (most horrible!) the flesh of
the sacred cow. They will imbibe what resembles meat of
colocynth, mixed with water, producing a curious frothy liquid,
and a fiery stuff which burns the mouth, for their milk will be
mostly chalk and pulp of brains; they will ignore the sweet juices
of fruits and sugar-cane, and as for the pure element they will
drink it, but only as medicine, They will shave their beards instead
of their heads, and stand upright when they should sit down, and
squat upon a wooden frame instead of a carpet, and appear in red
and black like the children of Yama.[FN#175] They will never
offer sacrifices to the manes of ancestors, leaving them after their
death to fry in the hottest of places. Yet will they perpetually
quarrel and fight about their faith; for their tempers are fierce, and
they would burst if they could not harm one another. Even now the
children, who amuse themselves with making puddings on the
shore, that is to say, heaping up the sand, always end their little
games with "punching," which means shutting the hand and
striking one another's heads, and it is soon found that the children
are the fathers of the men.

These wonderful white outcastes will often be ruled by female
chiefs, and it is likely that the habit of prostrating themselves
before a woman who has not the power of cutting off a single
head, may account for their unusual degeneracy and uncleanness.
They will consider no occupation so noble as running after a
jackal; they will dance for themselves, holding on to strange
women, and they will take a pride in playing upon instruments,
like young music girls.

The women, of course, relying upon the aid of the female
chieftains, will soon emancipate themselves from the rules of
modesty. They will eat with their husbands and with other men,
and yawn and sit carelessly before them showing the backs of their
heads. They will impudently quote the words, "By confinement at
home, even under affectionate and observant guardians, women
are not secure, but those are really safe who are guarded by their
own inclinations "; as the poet sang--

Woman obeys one only word, her heart.

They will not allow their husbands to have more than one wife,
and even the single wife will not be his slave when he needs her
services, busying herself in the collection of wealth, in ceremonial
purification, and feminine duty; in the preparation of daily food
and in the superintendence of household utensils. What said Rama
of Sita his wife?" If I chanced to be angry, she bore my impatience
like the patient earth without a murmur; in the hour of necessity
she cherished me as a mother does her child; in the moments of
repose she was a lover to me; in times of gladness she was to me
as a friend." And it is said, "a religious wife assists her husband in
his worship with a spirit as devout as his own. She gives her whole
mind to make him happy; she is as faithful to him as a shadow to
the body, and she esteems him, whether poor or rich, good or bad,
handsome or deformed. In his absence or his sickness she
renounces every gratification; at his death she dies with him, and
he enjoys heaven as the fruit of her virtuous deeds. Whereas if she
be guilty of many wicked actions and he should die first, he must
suffer much for the demerits of his wife."

But these women will talk aloud, and scold as the braying ass, and
make the house a scene of variance, like the snake with the
ichneumon, the owl with the crow, for they have no fear of losing
their noses or parting with their ears. They will (O my mother!)
converse with strange men and take their hands; they will receive
presents from them, and, worst of all, they will show their white
faces openly without the least sense of shame; they will ride
publicly in chariots and mount horses, whose points they pride
themselves upon knowing, and eat and drink in crowded places--
their husbands looking on the while, and perhaps even leading
them through the streets. And she will be deemed the pinnacle of
the pagoda of perfection, that most excels in wit and
shamelessness, and who can turn to water the livers of most men.
They will dance and sing instead of minding their children, and
when these grow up they will send them out of the house to shift
for themselves, and care little if they never see them
again.[FN#176] But the greatest sin of all will be this: when
widowed they will ever be on the look-out for a second husband,
and instances will be known of women fearlessly marrying three,
four, and five times.[FN#177] You would think that all this licence
satisfies them. But no! The more they have the more their weak
minds covet. The men have admitted them to an equality, they will
aim at an absolute superiority, and claim respect and homage; they
will eternally raise tempests about their rights, and if anyone
should venture to chastise them as they deserve, they would call
him a coward and run off to the judge.

The men will, I say, be as wonderful about their women as about
all other matters. The sage of Bharat Khanda guards the frail sex
strictly, knowing its frailty, and avoids teaching it to read and
write, which it will assuredly use for a bad purpose. For women
are ever subject to the god[FN#178] with the sugar-cane bow and
string of bees, and arrows tipped with heating blossoms, and to
him they will ever surrender man, dhan, tan--mind, wealth, and
body. When, by exceeding cunning, all human precautions have
been made vain, the wise man bows to Fate, and he forgets, or he
tries to forget, the past. Whereas this race of white Pariahs will
purposely lead their women into every kind of temptation, and,
when an accident occurs, they will rage at and accuse them, killing
ten thousand with a word, and cause an uproar, and talk scandal
and be scandalized, and go before the magistrate, and make all the
evil as public as possible. One would think they had in every way
done their duty to their women!

And when all this change shall have come over them, they will feel
restless and take flight, and fall like locusts upon the Aryavartta
(land of India). Starving in their own country, they will find
enough to eat here, and to carry away also. They will be
mischievous as the saw with which ornament-makers trim their
shells, and cut ascending as well as descending. To cultivate their
friendship will be like making a gap in the water, and their
partisans will ever fare worse than their foes. They will be selfish
as crows, which, though they eat every kind of flesh, will not
permit other birds to devour that of the crow.

In the beginning they will hire a shop near the mouth of mother
Ganges, and they will sell lead and bullion, fine and coarse
woollen cloths, and all the materials for intoxication. Then they
will begin to send for soldiers beyond the sea, and to enlist
warriors in Zambudwipa (India). They will from shopkeepers
become soldiers: they will beat and be beaten; they will win and
lose; but the power of their star and the enchantments of their
Queen Kompani, a daina or witch who can draw the blood out of a
man and slay him with a look, will turn everything to their good.
Presently the noise of their armies shall be as the roaring of the
sea; the dazzling of their arms shall blind the eyes like lightning;
their battle-fields shall be as the dissolution of the world; and the
slaughter-ground shall resemble a garden of plantain trees after a
storm. At length they shall spread like the march of a host of ants
over the land They will swear, "Dehar Ganga[FN#179]!" and they
hate nothing so much as being compelled to destroy an army, to
take and loot a city, or to add a rich slip of territory to their rule.
And yet they will go on killing and capturing and adding region to
region, till the Abode of Snow (Himalaya) confines them to the
north, the Sindhu-naddi (Incus) to the west, and elsewhere the sea.
Even in this, too, they will demean themselves as lords and
masters, scarcely allowing poor Samudradevta[FN#180] to rule his
own waves.

Raja Vikram was in a silent mood, otherwise he would not have
allowed such ill-omened discourse to pass uninterrupted. Then the
Baital, who in vain had often paused to give the royal carrier a
chance of asking him a curious question, continued his recital in a
dissonant and dissatisfied tone of voice.

By my feet and your head,[FN#181] O warrior king! it will fare
badly in those days for the Rajas of Hindustan, when the
red-coated men of Shaka[FN#182] shall come amongst them.
Listen to my words.

In the Vindhya Mountain there will be a city named Dharmapur,
whose king will be called Mahabul. He will be a mighty warrior,
well-skilled in the dhanur-veda (art of war)[FN#183], and will
always lead his own armies to the field. He will duly regard all the
omens, such as a storm at the beginning of the march, an
earthquake, the implements of war dropping from the hands of the
soldiery, screaming vultures passing over or walking near the
army, the clouds and the sun's rays waxing red, thunder in a clear
sky, the moon appearing small as a star, the dropping of blood
from the clouds, the falling of lightning bolts, darkness filling the
four quarters of the heavens, a corpse or a pan of water being
carried to the right of the army, the sight of a female beggar with
dishevelled hair, dressed in red, and preceding the vanguard, the
starting of the flesh over the left ribs of the commander-in-chief,
and the weeping or turning back of the horses when urged forward.

He will encourage his men to single combats, and will carefully
train them to gymnastics. Many of the wrestlers and boxers will be
so strong that they will often beat all the extremities of the
antagonist into his body, or break his back, or rend him into two
pieces. He will promise heaven to those who shall die in the front
of battle and he will have them taught certain dreadful expressions
of abuse to be interchanged with the enemy when commencing the
contest. Honours will be conferred on those who never turn their
backs in an engagement, who manifest a contempt of death, who
despise fatigue, as well as the most formidable enemies, who shall
be found invincible in every combat, and who display a courage
which increases before danger, like the glory of the sun advancing
to his meridian splendour.

But King Mahabul will be attacked by the white Pariahs, who, as
usual, will employ against him gold, fire, and steel. With gold they
will win over his best men, and persuade them openly to desert
when the army is drawn out for battle. They will use the terrible
"fire weapon,[FN#184]'' large and small tubes, which discharge
flame and smoke, and bullets as big as those hurled by the bow of
Bharata.[FN#185] And instead of using swords and shields, they
will fix daggers to the end of their tubes, and thrust with them like
lances.

Mahabul, distinguished by valour and military skill, will march out
of his city to meet the white foe. In front will be the ensigns, bells,
cows'-tails, and flags, the latter painted with the bird
Garura,[FN#186] the bull of Shiva, the Bauhinia tree, the
monkey-god Hanuman, the lion and the tiger, the fish, an
alms-dish, and seven palm-trees. Then will come the footmen
armed with fire-tubes, swords and shields, spears and daggers,
clubs, and bludgeons. They will be followed by fighting men on
horses and oxen, on camels and elephants. The musicians, the
water-carriers, and lastly the stores on carriages, will bring up the
rear.

The white outcastes will come forward in a long thin red thread,
and vomiting fire like the Jwalamukhi.[FN#187] King Mahabul
will receive them with his troops formed in a circle; another
division will be in the shape of a halfmoon; a third like a cloud,
whilst others shall represent a lion, a tiger, a carriage, a lily, a
giant, and a bull. But as the elephants will all turn round when they
feel the fire, and trample upon their own men, and as the cavalry
defiling in front of the host will openly gallop away; Mahabul,
being thus without resource, will enter his palanquin, and
accompanied by his queen and their only daughter, will escape at
night-time into the forest.

The unfortunate three will be deserted by their small party, and
live for a time on jungle food, fruits and roots; they will even be
compelled to eat game. After some days they will come in sight of
a village, which Mahabul will enter to obtain victuals. There the
wild Bhils, famous for long years, will come up, and surrounding
the party, will bid the Raja throw down his arms. Thereupon
Mahabul, skilful in aiming, twanging and wielding the bow on all
sides, so as to keep off the bolts of the enemy, will discharge his
bolts so rapidly, that one will drive forward another, and none of
the barbarians will be able to approach. But he will have failed to
bring his quiver containing an inexhaustible store of arms, some of
which, pointed with diamonds, shall have the faculty of returning
again to their case after they have done their duty. The conflict will
continue three hours, and many of the Bhils will be slain: at length
a shaft will cleave the king's skull, he will fall dead, and one of the
wild men will come up and cut off his head.

When the queen and the princess shall have seen that Mahabul fell
dead, they will return to the forest weeping and beating their
bosoms. They will thus escape the Bhils, and after journeying on
for four miles, at length they will sit down wearied, and revolve
many thoughts ir; their minds.

They are very lovely (continued the Vampire), as I see them with
the eye of clear-seeing. What beautiful hair! it hangs down like the
tail of the cow of Tartary, or like the thatch of a house; it is shining
as oil, dark as the clouds, black as blackness itself. What charming
faces! likest to water-lilies, with eyes as the stones in unripe
mangos, noses resembling the beaks of parrots, teeth like pearls set
in corals, ears like those of the redthroated vulture, and mouths
like the water of life. What excellent forms! breasts like boxes
containing essences, the unopened fruit of plantains or a couple of
crabs; loins the width of a span, like the middle of the viol; legs
like the trunk of an elephant, and feet like the yellow lotus.

And a fearful place is that jungle, a dense dark mass of thorny
shrubs, and ropy creepers, and tall canes, and tangled brake, and
gigantic gnarled trees, which groan wildly in the night wind's
embrace. But a wilder horror urges the unhappy women on; they
fear the polluting touch of the Bhils; once more they rise and
plunge deeper into its gloomy depths.

The day dawns. The white Pariahs have done their usual work,
They have cut off the hands of some, the feet and heads of others,
whilst many they have crushed into shapeless masses, or scattered
in pieces upon the ground. The field is strewed with corpses, the
river runs red, so that the dogs and jackals swim in blood; the birds
of prey sitting on the branches, drink man's life from the stream,
and enjoy the sickening smell of burnt flesh.

Such will be the scenes acted in the fair land of Bharat.

Perchance two white outcastes, father and son, who with a party of
men are scouring the forest and slaying everything, fall upon the
path which the women have taken shortly before. Their attention is
attracted by footprints leading towards a place full of tigers,
leopards, bears, wolves, and wild dogs. And they are utterly
confounded when, after inspection, they discover the sex of the
wanderers.

"How is it," shall say the father, "that the footprints of mortals are
seen in this part of the forest?"

The son shall reply, "Sir, these are the marks of women's feet: a
man's foot would not be so small."

"It is passing strange," shall rejoin the elder white Pariah, "but thou
speakest truth. Certainly such a soft and delicate foot cannot
belong to anyone but a woman."

"They have only just left the track," shall continue the son, "and
look! this is the step of a married woman. See how she treads on
the inside of her sole, because of the bending of her ankles." And
the younger white outcaste shall point to the queen's footprints.

"Come, let us search the forest for them," shall cry the father,
"what an opportunity of finding wives fortune has thrown in our
hands. But no! thou art in error," he shall continue, after examining
the track pointed out by his son, "in supposing this to be the sign
of a matron. Look at the other, it is much longer; the toes have
scarcely touched the ground, whereas the marks of the heels are
deep. Of a truth this must be the married woman." And the elder
white outcaste shall point to the footprints of the princess.

"Then," shall reply the son, who admires the shorter foot, "let us
first seek them, and when we find them, give to me her who has
the short feet, and take the other to wife thyself."

Having made this agreement they shall proceed on their way, and
presently they shall find the women lying on the earth, half dead
with fatigue and fear. Their legs and feet are scratched and torn by
brambles, their ornaments have fallen off, and their garments are in
strips. The two white outcastes find little difficulty, the first
surprise over, in persuading the unhappy women to follow them
home, and with great delight, conformably to their arrangement,
each takes up his prize on his horse and rides back to the tents. The
son takes the queen, and the father the princess.

In due time two marriages come to pass; the father, according to
agreement, espouses the long foot, and the son takes to wife the
short foot. And after the usual interval, the elder white outcaste,
who had married the daughter, rejoices at the birth of a boy, and
the younger white outcaste, who had married the mother, is
gladdened by the sight of a girl.

Now then, by my feet and your head, O warrior king Vikram,
answer me one question. What relationship will there be between
the children of the two white Pariahs?

Vikram's brow waxed black as a charcoal-burner's, when he again
heard the most irreverent oath ever proposed to mortal king. The
question presently attracted his attention, and he turned over the
Baital's words in his head, confusing the ties of filiality,
brotherhood, and relationship, and connection in general.

"Hem!" said the warrior king, at last perplexed, and remembering,
in his perplexity, that he had better hold his tongue--"ahem!"

"I think your majesty spoke? " asked the Vampire, in an inquisitive
and insinuating tone of voice.

"Hem!" ejaculated the monarch.

The Baital held his peace for a few minutes, coughing once or
twice impatiently. He suspected that the extraordinary nature of
this last tale, combined with the use of the future tense, had given
rise to a taciturnity so unexpected in the warrior king. He therefore
asked if Vikram the Brave would not like to hear another little
anecdote.

"This time the king did not even say "hem!" Having walked at an
unusually rapid pace, he distinguished at a distance the fire kindled
by the devotee, and he hurried towards it with an effort which left
him no breath wherewith to speak, even had he been so inclined.

"Since your majesty is so completely dumbfoundered by it,
perhaps this acute young prince may be able to answer my
question?" insinuated the Baital, after a few minutes of anxious
suspense.

But Dharma Dhwaj answered not a syllable.

CONCLUSION.

At Raja Vikram's silence the Baital was greatly surprised, and he
praised the royal courage and resolution to the skies. Still he did
not give up the contest at once.

"Allow me, great king," pursued the Demon, in a dry tone of voice,
"to wish you joy. After so many failures you have at length
succeeded in repressing your loquacity. I will not stop to enquire
whether it was humility and self-restraint which prevented your
answering my last question, or whether Rajait was mere ignorance
and inability. Of course I suspect the latter, but to say the truth
your condescension in at last taking a Vampire's advice, flatters me
so much, that I will not look too narrowly into cause or motive."

Raja Vikram winced, but maintained a stubborn silence, squeezing
his lips lest they should open involuntarily.

"Now, however, your majesty has mortified, we will suppose, a
somewhat exacting vanity, I also will in my turn forego the
pleasure which I had anticipated in seeing you a corpse and in
entering your royal body for a short time, just to know how queer
it must feel to be a king. And what is more, I will now perform my
original promise, and you shall derive from me a benefit which
none but myself can bestow. First, however, allow me to ask you,
will you let me have a little more air?"

Dharma Dhwaj pulled his father's sleeve, but this time Raja
Vikram required no reminder: wild horses or the executioner's saw,
beginning at the shoulder, would not have drawn a word from him.
Observing his obstinate silence, the Baital, with an ominous smile,
continued:

"Now give ear, O warrior king, to what I am about to tell thee, and
bear in mind the giant's saying, 'A man is justified in killing one
who has a design to kill him.' The young merchant Mal Deo, who
placed such magnificent presents at your royal feet, and
Shanta-Shil the devotee saint, who works his spells, incantations,
and magical rites in a cemetery on the banks of the Godaveri river,
are, as thou knowest, one person--the terrible Jogi, whose wrath
your father aroused in his folly, and whose revenge your blood
alone can satisfy. With regard to myself, the oilman's son, the
same Jogi, fearing lest I might interfere with his projects of
universal dominion, slew me by the power of his penance, and has
kept me suspended, a trap for you, head downwards from the
sires-tree.

"That Jogi it was, you now know, who sent you to fetch me back to
him on your back. And when you cast me at his feet he will return
thanks to you and praise your velour, perseverance and resolution
to the skies. I warn you to beware. He will lead you to the shrine of
Durga, and when he has finished his adoration he will say to you,
'O great king, salute my deity with the eightlimbed reverence.' "

Here the Vampire whispered for a time and in a low tone, lest
some listening goblin might carry his words if spoken out loud to
the ears of the devotee Shanta-Shil.

At the end of the monologue a rustling sound was heard. It
proceeded from the Baital, who was disengaging himself from the
dead body in the bundle, and the burden became sensibly lighter
upon the monarch's back.

The departing Baital, however, did not forget to bid farewell to the
warrior king and to his son. He complimented the former for the
last time, in his own way, upon the royal humility and the
prodigious self-mortification which he had displayed--qualities, he
remarked, which never failed to ensure the proprietor's success in
all the worlds.

Raja Vikram stepped out joyfully, and soon reached the burning
ground. There he found the Jogi, dressed in his usual habit, a
deerskin thrown over his back, and twisted reeds instead of a
garment hanging round his loins. The hair had fallen from his
limbs and his skin was bleached ghastly white by exposure to the
elements. A fire seemed to proceed from his mouth, and the matted
locks dropping from his head to the ground were changed by the
rays of the sun to the colour of gold or saffron. He had the beard of
a goat and the ornaments of a king; his shoulders were high and his
arms long, reaching to his knees: his nails grew to such a length as
to curl round the ends of his fingers, and his feet resembled those
of a tiger. He was drumming upon a skull, and incessantly
exclaiming, "Ho, Kali! ho, Durga! ho, Devi!"

As before, strange beings were holding their carnival in the Jogi's
presence. Monstrous Asuras, giant goblins, stood grimly gazing
upon the scene with fixed eyes and motionless features. Rakshasas
and messengers of Yama, fierce and hideous, assumed at pleasure
the shapes of foul and ferocious beasts. Nagas and Bhutas, partly
human and partly bestial, disported themselves in throngs about
the upper air, and were dimly seen in the faint light of the dawn.
Mighty Daityas, Bramba-daityas, and Pretas, the size of a man's
thumb, or dried up like leaves, and Pisachas of terrible power
guarded the place. There were enormous goats, vivified by the
spirits of those who had slain Brahmans; things with the bodies of
men and the faces of horses, camels and monkeys; hideous worms
containing the souls of those priests who had drunk spirituous
liquors; men with one leg and one ear, and mischievous
blood-sucking demons, who in life had stolen church property.
There were vultures, wretches that had violated the beds of their
spiritual fathers, restless ghosts that had loved low-caste women,
shades for whom funeral rites had not been performed, and who
could not cross the dread Vaitarani stream,[FN#188] and vital
souls fresh from the horrors of Tamisra, or utter darkness, and the
Usipatra Vana, or the sword-leaved forest. Pale spirits, Alayas,
Gumas, Baitals, and Yakshas,[FN#189] beings of a base and
vulgar order, glided over the ground, amongst corpses and
skeletons animated by female fiends, Dakinis, Yoginis, Hakinis,
and Shankinis, which were dancing in frightful revelry. The air
was filled with supernatural sights and sounds, cries of owls and
jackals, cats and crows, dogs, asses, and vultures, high above
which rose the clashing of the bones with which the Jogi sat
drumming upon the skull before him, and tending a huge cauldron
of oil whose smoke was of blue fire. But as he raised his long lank
arm, silver-white with ashes, the demons fled, and a momentary
silence succeeded to their uproar. The tigers ceased to roar and the
elephants to scream; the bears raised their snouts from their foul
banquets, and the wolves dropped from their jaws the remnants of
human flesh. And when they disappeared, the hooting of the owl,
and ghastly "ha! ha!" of the curlew, and the howling of the jackal
died away in the far distance, leaving a silence still more
oppressive.

As Raja Vikram entered the burning-ground, the hollow sound of
solitude alone met his ear. Sadly wailed the wet autumnal blast.
The tall gaunt trees groaned aloud, and bowed and trembled like
slaves bending before their masters. Huge purple clouds and
patches and lines of glaring white mist coursed furiously across the
black expanse of firmament, discharging threads and chains and
lozenges and balls of white and blue, purple and pink lightning,
followed by the deafening crash and roll of thunder, the dreadful
roaring of the mighty wind, and the torrents of plashing rain. At
times was heard in the distance the dull gurgling of the swollen
river, interrupted by explosions, as slips of earth-bank fell
headlong into the stream. But once more the Jogi raised his arm
and all was still: nature lay breathless, as if awaiting the effect of
his tremendous spells.

The warrior king drew near the terrible man, unstrung his bundle
from his back, untwisted the portion which he held, threw open the
cloth, and exposed to Shanta-Shil's glittering eyes the corpse,
which had now recovered its proper form--that of a young child.
Seeing it, the devotee was highly pleased, and thanked Vikram the
Brave, extolling his courage and daring above any monarch that
had yet lived. After which he repeated certain charms facing
towards the south, awakened the dead body, and placed it in a
sitting position. He then in its presence sacrificed to his goddess,
the White One,[FN#190] all that he had ready by his side--betel
leaf and flowers, sandal wood and unbroken rice, fruits, perfumes,
and the flesh of man untouched by steel. Lastly, he half filled his
skull with burning embers, blew upon them till they shot forth
tongues of crimson light, serving as a lamp, and motioning the
Raja and his son to follow him, led the way to a little fane of the
Destroying Deity erected in a dark clump of wood, outside and
close to the burning ground.

They passed through the quadrangular outer court of the temple
whose piazza was hung with deep shade.[FN#191] In silence they
circumambulated the small central shrine, and whenever
Shanta-Shil directed, Raja Vikram entered the Sabha, or vestibule,
and struck three times upon the gong, which gave forth a loud and
warning sound.

They then passed over the threshold, and looked into the gloomy
inner depths. There stood Smashana-Kali,[FN#192] the goddess, in
her most horrid form. She was a naked and very black woman,
with half-severed head, partly cut and partly painted, resting on her
shoulder; and her tongue lolled out from her wide yawning
mouth[FN#193]; her eyes were red like those of a drunkard; and
her eyebrows were of the same colour: her thick coarse hair hung
like a mantle to her heels. She was robed in an elephant's hide,
dried and withered, confined at the waist with a belt composed of
the hands of the giants whom she had slain in war: two dead
bodies formed her earrings, and her necklace was of bleached
skulls. Her four arms supported a scimitar, a noose, a trident, and a
ponderous mace. She stood with one leg on the breast of her
husband, Shiva, and she rested the other on his thigh. Before the
idol lay the utensils of worship, namely, dishes for the offerings,
lamps, jugs, incense, copper cups, conches and gongs; and all of
them smelt of blood.

As Raja Vikram and his son stood gazing upon the hideous
spectacle, the devotee stooped down to place his skull-lamp upon
the ground, and drew from out his ochre-coloured cloth a sharp
sword which he hid behind his back.

"Prosperity to shine and thy son's for ever and ever, O mighty
Vikram!" exclaimed Shanta-Shil, after he had muttered a prayer
before the image. "Verily thou hast right royally redeemed thy
pledge, and by the virtue of thy presence all my wishes shall
presently be accomplished. Behold! the Sun is about to drive his
car over the eastern hills, and our task now ends. Do thou
reverence before this my deity, worshipping the earth through thy
nose, and so prostrating thyself that thy eight limbs may touch the
ground.[FN#194] Thus shall thy glory and splendour be great; the
Eight Powers[FN#195] and the Nine Treasures shall be thine, and
prosperity shall ever remain under thy roof-tree."

Raja Vikram, hearing these words, recalled suddenly to mind all
that the Vampire had whispered to him. He brought his joined
hands open up to his forehead, caused his two thumbs to touch his
brow several times, and replied with the greatest humility,

"O pious person! I am a king ignorant of the way to do such
obeisance. Thou art a spiritual preceptor: be pleased to teach me
and I will do even as thou desirest."

Then the Jogi, being a cunning man, fell into his own net. As he
bent him down to salute the goddess, Vikram, drawing his sword,
struck him upon the neck so violent a blow, that his head rolled
from his body upon the ground. At the same moment Dharma
Dhwaj, seizing his father's arm, pulled him out of the way in time
to escape being crushed by the image, which fell with the sound of
thunder upon the floor of the temple.

A small thin voice in the upper air was heard to cry, "A man is
justified in killing one who has the desire to kill him." Then glad
shouts of triumph and victory were heard in all directions. They
proceeded from the celestial choristers, the heavenly dancers, the
mistresses of the gods, and the nymphs of Indra's Paradise, who
left their beds of gold and precious stones, their seats glorious as
the meridian sun, their canals of crystal water, their perfumed
groves, and their gardens where the wind ever blows in softest
breezes, to applaud the velour and good fortune of the warrior
king.

At last the brilliant god, Indra himself, with the thousand eyes,
rising from the shade of the Parigat tree, the fragrance of whose
flowers fills the heavens, appeared in his car drawn by yellow
steeds and cleaving the thick vapours which surround the earth--
whilst his attendants sounded the heavenly drums and rained a
shower of blossoms and perfumes--bade the Vikramajit the Brave
ask a boon.

The Raja joined his hands and respectfully replied,

"O mighty ruler of the lower firmament, let this my history
become famous throughout the world!"

"It is well," rejoined the god. "As long as the sun and moon
endure, and the sky looks down upon the ground, so long shall this
thy adventure be remembered over all the earth. Meanwhile rule
thou mankind."

Thus saying, Indra retired to the delicious Amrawati[FN#196]
Vikram took up the corpses and threw them into the cauldron
which Shanta-Shil had been tending. At once two heroes started
into life, and Vikram said to them, "When I call you, come!"

With these mysterious words the king, followed by his son,
returned to the palace unmolested. As the Vampire had predicted,
everything was prosperous to him, and he presently obtained the
remarkable titles, Sakaro, or foe of the Sakas, and
Sakadhipati-Vikramaditya.

And when, after a long and happy life spent in bringing the world
under the shadow of one umbrella, and in ruling it free from care,
the warrior king Vikram entered the gloomy realms of Yama, from
whom for mortals there is no escape, he left behind him a name
that endured amongst men like the odour of the flower whose
memory remains long after its form has mingled with the
dust.[FN#197]

 FOOTNOTES

[FN#1] Metamorphoseon, seu de Asino Aureo, libri Xl. The well
known and beautiful episode is in the fourth. the fifth, and the sixth
books.

[FN#2] This ceremony will be explained in a future page.

[FN#3] A common exclamation of sorrow, surprise, fear, and
other emotions. It is especially used by women.

[FN#4] Quoted from view of the Hindoos, by William Ward, of
Serampore (vol. i. p. 25).

[FN#5] In Sanskrit, Vetala-pancha-Vinshati. "Baital" is the
modern form of " Vetala.

[FN#6] In Arabic, Badpai el Hakim.

[FN#7] Dictionnaire philosophique sub v. " Apocryphes."

[FN#8] I do not mean that rhymes were not known before the days
of Al-Islam, but that the Arabs popularized assonance and
consonance in Southern Europe.

[FN#9] "Vikrama" means "valour " or " prowess."

[FN#10] Mr. Ward of Serampore is unable to quote the names of
more than nine out of the eighteen, namely: Sanskrit, Prakrit,
Naga, Paisacha, Gandharba, Rakshasa, Ardhamagadi, Apa, and
Guhyaka - most of them being the languages of different orders of
fabulous beings. He tells us, however, that an account of these
dialects may be found in the work called Pingala.

[FN#11] Translated by Sir Wm. Jones, 1789; and by Professor
Williams, 1856.

[FN#12] Translated by Professor H. H. Wilson.

[FN#13] The time was propitious to savans. Whilst Vikramaditya
lived, Magha, another king, caused to be written a poem called
after his name For each verse he is said to have paid to learned
men a gold piece, which amounted to a total of 5,280l. - a large
sum in those days, which preceded those of Paradise Lost. About
the same period Karnata, a third king, was famed for patronizing
the learned men who rose to honour at Vikram's court. Dhavaka, a
poet of nearly the same period, received from King Shriharsha the
magnificent present of 10,000l. for a poem called the Ratna-Mala.

[FN#14] Lieut. Wilford supports the theory that there were eight
Vikramadityas, the last of whom established the era. For further
particulars, the curious reader will consult Lassen's Anthologia,
and Professor H. H. Wilson's Essay on Vikram (New), As. Red..
ix. 117.

[FN#15] History tells us another tale. The god Indra and the King
of Dhara gave the kingdom to Bhartari-hari, another son of
Gandhar-ba-Sena, by a handmaiden. For some time, the brothers
lived together; but presently they quarrelled. Vikram being
dismissed from court, wandered from place to place in abject
poverty, and at one time hired himself as a servant to a merchant
living in Guzerat. At length, Bhartari-hari, disgusted with the
world on account of the infidelity of his wife, to whom he was
ardently attached, became a religious devotee, and left the
kingdom to its fate. In the course of his travels, Vikram came to
Ujjayani, and finding it without a head, assumed the sovereignty.
He reigned with great splendour, conquering by his arms Utkala,
Vanga, Kuch-bahar, Guzerat, Somnat, Delhi, and other places;
until, in his turn, he was conquered, and slain by Shalivahan.

[FN#16] The words are found, says Mr. Ward, in the Hindu
History compiled by Mrityungaya.

[FN#17] These duties of kings are thus laid down in the
Rajtarangini. It is evident, as Professor H. H. Wilson says, that the
royal status was by no means a sinecure. But the rules are
evidently the closet work of some pedantic, dogmatic Brahman,
teaching kingcraft to kings. He directs his instructions, not to
subordinate judges, but to the Raja as the chief magistrate, and
through him to all appointed for the administration of his justice.

[FN#18] Lunus, not Luna.

[FN#19] That is to say, "upon an empty stomach."

[FN#20] There are three sandhyas amongst the Hindus--morning,
mid-day, and sunset; and all three are times for prayer.

[FN#21] The Hindu Cupid.

[FN#22] Patali, the regions beneath the earth.

[FN#23] The Hindu Triad.

[FN#24] Or Avanti, also called Padmavati. It is the first meridian
of the Hindus, who found their longitude by observation of lunar
eclipses, calculated for it and Lanka, or Ceylon. The clepsydra was
used for taking time.

[FN#25] In the original only the husband ''practiced austere
devotion." For the benefit of those amongst whom the "pious wife"
is an institution, I have extended the privilege.

[FN#26] A Moslem would say, "This is our fate." A Hindu refers
at once to metempsychosis, as naturally as a modern
Swedenborgian to spiritism.

[FN#27] In Europe, money buys this world, and delivers you from
the pains of purgatory; amongst the Hindus, it furthermore opens
the gate of heaven.

[FN#28] This part of the introduction will remind the reader of the
two royal brothers and their false wives in the introduction to the
Arabian Nights. The fate of Bhartari Raja, however, is historical.

[FN#29] In the original, "Div"--a supernatural being god, or
demon. This part of the plot is variously told. According to some,
Raja Vikram was surprised, when entering the city to see a grand
procession at the house of a potter and a boy being carried off on
an elephant to the violent grief of his parents The King inquired
the reason of their sorrow, and was told that the wicked Div that
guarded the city was in the habit of eating a citizen per diem.
Whereupon the valorous Raja caused the boy to dismount; took his
place; entered the palace; and, when presented as food for the
demon, displayed his pugilistic powers in a way to excite the
monsters admiration.

[FN#30] In India, there is still a monastic order the pleasant duty
of whose members is to enjoy themselves as much as possible. It
has been much the same in Europe. "Representez-vous le convent
de l'Escurial ou du Mont Cassin, ou les cenobites ont toutes sortes
de commodities, necessaires, utiles, delectables. superflues,
surabondantes, puisqu'ils ont les cent cinquante mille, les quatre
cent mille, les cinq cent mille ecus de rente; et jugez si monsieur
l'abbe a de quoi laisser dormir la meridienne a ceux qui
voudront."--Saint Augustin, de l'Ouvrage des Moines, by Le
Camus, Bishop of Belley, quoted by Voltaire, Dict. Phil., sub v.
"Apocalypse."

[FN#31] This form of matrimony was recognized by the ancient
Hindus, and is frequent in books. It is a kind of Scotch wedding--
ultra-Caledonian--taking place by mutual consent, without any
form or ceremony. The Gandharbas are heavenly minstrels of
Indra's court, who are supposed to be witnesses.

[FN#32] The Hindu Saturnalia.

[FN#33] The powders are of wheaten flour, mixed with wild
ginger-root, sappan-wood, and other ingredients. Sometimes the
stuff is thrown in syringes.

[FN#34] The Persian proverb is-- "Bala e tavilah bar sat i
maimun": "The woes of the stable be on the monkey's head!" In
some Moslem countries a hog acts prophylactic. Hence probably
Mungo Park's troublesome pig at Ludamar.

[FN#35] So the moribund father of the "babes in the wood"
lectures his wicked brother, their guardian:
"To God and you I recommend
My children deare this day:
But little while, be sure, we have
Within this world to stay."
But, to appeal to the moral sense of a goldsmith!

[FN#36] Maha (great) raja (king): common address even to those
who are not royal.

[FN#37] The name means. "Quietistic Disposition."

[FN#38] August. In the solar-lunar year of the Hindu the months
are divided into fortnights--light and dark.

[FN#39] A flower, whose name frequently occurs in Sanskrit
poetry.

[FN#40] The stars being men's souls raised to the sky for a time
pro portioned to their virtuous deeds on earth.

[FN#41] A measure of length, each two miles.

[FN#42] The warm region below.

[FN#43] Hindus admire only glossy black hair; the "bonny brown
hair" loved by our ballads is assigned by them to low-caste men,
witches, and fiends.

[FN#44] A large kind of bat; a popular and silly Anglo-Indian
name. It almost justified the irate Scotchman in calling "prodigious
leears" those who told him in India that foxes flew and tress were
tapped for toddy.

[FN#45] The Hindus, like the European classics and other ancient
peoples, reckon four ages:--The Satya Yug, or Golden Age,
numbered 1,728,000 years: the second, or Treta Yug, comprised
1,296,000; the Dwapar Yug had 864,000 and the present, the Kali
Yug, has shrunk to 832,000 years.

[FN#46] Especially alluding to prayer. On this point, Southey
justly remarks (Preface to Curse of Kehama): "In the religion of
the Hindoos there is one remarkable peculiarity. Prayers, penances,
and sacrifices are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value,
in one degree depending upon the disposition or motive of the
person who performs them. They are drafts upon heaven for which
the gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the
worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has
made them formidable to the supreme deities themselves."
Moreover, the Hindu gods hear the prayers of those who desire the
evil of others. Hence when a rich man becomes poor, his friends
say, "See how sharp are men's teeth!" and, "He is ruined because
others could not bear to see his happiness!"

[FN#47] A pond. natural or artificial; in the latter case often
covering an extent of ten to twelve acres.

[FN#48] The Hindustani "gilahri," or little grey squirrel, whose
twittering cry is often mistaken for a bird's.

[FN#49] The autumn or rather the rainy season personified - a
hackneyed Hindu prosopopoeia.

[FN#50] Light conversation upon the subject of women is a
persona offence to serious-minded Hindus.

[FN#51] Cupid in his two forms, Eros and Anteros.

[FN#52] This is true to life in the East, women make the first
advances, and men do the begueules.

[FN#53] Raja-hans, a large grey goose, the Hindu equivalent for
our swan.

[FN#54] Properly Karnatak; karna in Sanskrit means an ear.

[FN#55] Danta in Sanskrit is a tooth.

[FN#56] Padma means a foot.

[FN#57] A common Hindu phrase equivalent to our " I manage to
get on."

[FN#58] Meaning marriage maternity, and so forth.

[FN#59] Yama is Pluto; 'mother of Yama' is generally applied to
an old scold.

[FN#60] Snake-land: the infernal region.

[FN#61] A form of abuse given to Durga, who was the mother of
Ganesha (Janus); the latter had an elephant's head.

[FN#62] Unexpected pleasure, according to the Hindus, gives a
bristly elevation to the down of the body.

[FN#63] The Hindus banish " flasks,'' et hoc genus omne, from
these scenes, and perhaps they are right.

[FN#64] The Pankha, or large common fan, is a leaf of the
Corypha umbraculifera, with the petiole cut to the length of about
five feet, pared round the edges and painted to look pretty. It is
waved by the servant standing behind a chair.

[FN#65] The fabulous mass of precious stones forming the sacred
mountain of Hindu mythology.

[FN#66] "I love my love with an 'S,' because he is stupid and not
pyschological."

[FN#67] Hindu mythology has also its Cerberus, Trisisa, the "
three headed " hound that attends dreadful Yama (Pluto)

[FN#68] Parceque c'est la saison des amours.

[FN#69] The police magistrate, the Catual of Camoens.

[FN#70] The seat of a Hindu ascetic.

[FN#71] The Hindu scriptures.

[FN#72] The Goddess of Prosperity.

[FN#73] In the original the lover is not blamed; this would be the
Hindu view of the matter; we might be tempted to think of the old
injunction not to seethe a kid in the mother's milk.

[FN#74] In the original a "maina "-the Gracula religiosa.

[FN#75] As we should say, buried them.

[FN#76] A large kind of black bee, common in India.

[FN#77] The beautiful wife of the demigod Rama Chandra.

[FN#78] The Hindu Ars Amoris.

[FN#79] The old philosophers, believing in a " Sat " (xx xx),
postulated an Asat (xx xx xx) and made the latter the root of the
former.

[FN#80] In Western India, a place celebrated for suicides.

[FN#81] Kama Deva. "Out on thee, foul fiend, talk'st thou of
nothing but ladies?"

[FN#82] The pipal or Ficus religiosa, a favourite roosting-place
for fiends.

[FN#83] India.

[FN#84] The ancient name of a priest by profession, meaning "
praepositus " or praeses. He was the friend and counsellor of a
chief, the minister of a king, and his companion in peace and war.
(M. Muller's Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 485).

[FN#85] Lakshmi, the Goddess of Prosperity. Raj-Lakshmi would
mean the King's Fortune, which we should call tutelary genius.
Lakshichara is our " luckless," forming, as Mr. Ward says, an
extraordinary coincidence of sound and meaning in languages so
different. But the derivations are very distinct.

[FN#86] The Monkey God.

[FN#87] Generally written "Banyan."

[FN#88] The daughter of Raja Janaka, married to Ramachandra.
The latter placed his wife under the charge of his brother
Lakshmana, and went into the forest to worship, when the demon
Ravana disguised himself as a beggar, and carried off the prize.

[FN#89] This great king was tricked by the god Vishnu out of the
sway of heaven and earth, but from his exceeding piety he was
appointed to reign in Patala, or Hades.

[FN#90] The procession is fair game, and is often attacked in the
dark with sticks and stones, causing serious disputes. At the supper
the guests confer the obligation by their presence, and are
exceedingly exacting.

[FN#91] Rati is the wife of Kama, the God of Desire; and we
explain the word by "Spring personified."

[FN#92] The Indian Cuckoo (Cucuius Indicus). It is supposed to
lay its eggs in the nest of the crow.

[FN#93] This is the well-known Ghi or Ghee, the one sauce of
India which is as badly off in that matter as England.

[FN#94] The European reader will observe that it is her purity
which carries the heroine through all these perils. Moreover, that
her :virtue is its own reward, as it loses to her the world.

[FN#95] Literally, "one of all tastes"--a wild or gay man, we
should say.

[FN#96] These shoes are generally made of rags and bits of
leather; they have often toes behind the foot, with other similar
contrivances, yet they scarcely ever deceive an experienced man.

[FN#97] The high-toper is a swell-thief, the other is a low dog.

[FN#98] Engaged in shoplifting.

[FN#99] The moon.

[FN#100] The judge.

[FN#101] To be lagged is to be taken; scragging is hanging.

[FN#102] The tongue.

[FN#103] This is the god Kartikeya, a mixture of Mars and
Mercury, who revealed to a certain Yugacharya the scriptures
known as "Chauriya-Vidya"--Anglice, "Thieves' Manual." The
classical robbers of the Hindu drama always perform according to
its precepts. There is another work respected by thieves and called
the "Chora-Panchashila," because consisting of fifty lines.

[FN#104] Supposed to be a good omen.

[FN#105] Share the booty.

[FN#106] Bhawani is one of the many forms of the destroying
goddess, the wife of Shiva.

[FN#107] Wretches who kill with the narcotic seed of the
stramonium.

[FN#108] Better know as "Thugs," which in India means simply
"rascals."

[FN#109] Crucifixion, until late years, was common amongst the
Buddhists of the Burmese empire. According to an eye-witness,
Mr. F. Carey, the puishment was inflicted in two ways.
Sometimes criminals were crucified by their hands and feet being
nailed to a scaffold; others were merely tied up, and fed. In these
cases the legs and feet of the patient began to swell and mortify at
the expiration fo three or four days; men are said to have lived in
this state for a fortnight, and at last they expired from fatigue and
mortification. The sufferings from cramp also must be very
severe. In India generally impalement was more common than
crucifixion.

[FN#110] Our Suttee. There is an admirable Hindu proverb,
which says, "No one knows the ways of woman; she kill her
husband and becomes a Sati."

[FN#111] Fate and Destiny are rather Moslem than Hindu fancies.

[FN#112] Properly speaking, the husbandman should plough with
not fewer than four bullocks; but few can afford this. If he plough
with a cow or a bullock, and not with a bull, the rice produced by
his ground is unclean, and may not be used in any religious
ceremony.

[FN#113] A shout of triumph, like our "Huzza" or "Hurrah!" of
late degraded into "Hooray." "Hari bol" is of course religious,
meaning "Call upon Hari!" i.e. Krishna, i.e. Vishnu.

[FN#114] This form of suicide is one of those recognized in India.
So in Europe we read of fanatics who, with a suicidal ingenuity,
have succeeded in crucifying themselves.

[FN#115] The river of Jaganath in Orissa; it shares the honours of
sanctity with some twenty-nine others, and in the lower regions it
represents the classical Styx.

[FN#116] Cupid. His wife Rati is the spring personified. The
Hindu poets always unite love and spring, and perhaps
physiologically they are correct.

[FN#117] An incarnation of the third person of the Hindu Triad,
or Triumvirate, Shiva the God of Destruction, the Indian Bacchus.
The image has five faces, and each face has three eyes. In Bengal
it is found in many villages, and the women warn their children not
to touch it on pain of being killed.

[FN#118] A village Brahman on stated occasions receives fees
from all the villagers.

[FN#119] The land of Greece.

[FN#120] Savans, professors. So in the old saying, "Hanta, Pandit
Sansara "--Alas! the world is learned! This a little antedates the
well-known schoolmaster.

[FN#121] Children are commonly sent to school at the age of five.
Girls are not taught to read, under the common idea that they will
become widows if they do.

[FN#122] Meaning the place of reading the four Shastras.

[FN#123] A certain goddess who plays tricks with mankind. If a
son when grown up act differently from what his parents did,
people say that he has been changed in the womb.

[FN#124] Shani is the planet Saturn, which has an exceedingly
baleful influence in India as elsewhere.

[FN#125] The Eleatic or Materialistic school of Hindu
philosophy, which agrees to explode an intelligent soparate First
Cause.

[FN#126] The writings of this school give an excellent view of the
"progressive system," which has popularly been asserted to be a
modern idea. But Hindu philosophy seems to have exhausted every
fancy that can spring from the brain of man.

[FN#127] Tama is the natural state of matter, Raja is passion
acting upon nature, and Satwa is excellence These are the three
gunas or qualities of matter.

[FN#128] Spiritual preceptors and learned men.

[FN#129] Under certain limitations, gambling is allowed hy Hindu
law and the winner has power over the person and property of the
loser. No "debts of honour" in Hindustan!

[FN#130] Quotations from standard works on Hindu criminal law,
which in some points at least is almost as absurd as our civilized
codes.

[FN#131] Hindus carry their money tied up in a kind of sheet. which
is wound round the waist and thrown over the shoulder.

[FN#132] A thieves' manual in the Sanskrit tongue; it aspires to the
dignity of a "Scripture."

[FN#133] All sounds, say the Hindus, are of similar origin, and they
do not die; if they did, they could not be remembered.

[FN#134] Gold pieces.

[FN#135] These are the qualifications specified by Hindu classical
authorities as necessary to make a distinguished thief.

[FN#136] Every Hindu is in a manner born to a certain line of life,
virtuous or vicious, honest or dishonest and his Dharma, or religious
duty, consists in conforming to the practice and the worship of his
profession. The "Thug," for instance, worships Bhawani, who enables
him to murder successfully; and his remorse would arise from
neglecting to murder.

[FN#137] Hindu law sensibly punishes, in theory at least, for the
same offence the priest more severely than the layman--a hint for him
to practice what he preaches.

[FN#138] The Hindu Mercury, god of rascals.

[FN#139] A penal offence in India. How is it that we English have
omitted to codify it? The laws of Manu also punish severely all
disdainful expressions, such as "tush" or "pish," addressed during
argument to a priest.

[FN#140] Stanzas, generally speaking, on serious subjects.

[FN#141] Whitlows on the nails show that the sufferer, in the last
life, stole gold from a Brahman.

[FN#142] A low caste Hindu, who catches and exhibits snakes and
performs other such mean offices.

[FN#143] Meaning, in spite of themselves.

[FN#144] When the moon is in a certain lunar mansion, at the
conclusion of the wet season.

[FN#145] In Hindustan, it is the prevailing wind of the hot weather.

[FN#146] Vishnu, as a dwarf, sank down into and secured in the
lower regions the Raja Bali, who by his piety and prayerfulness was
subverting the reign of the lesser gods; as Ramachandra he built a
bridge between Lanka (Ceylon) and the main land; and as Krishna he
defended, by holding up a hill as an umbrella for them, his friends the
shepherds and shepherdesses from the thunders of Indra, whose
worship they had neglected.

[FN#147] The priestly caste sprang, as has been said, from the
noblest part of the Demiurgus; the three others from lower members.

[FN#148] A chew of betel leaf and spices is offered by the master of
the house when dismissing a visitor.

[FN#149] Respectable Hindus say that receiving a fee for a daughter
is like selling flesh.

[FN#150] A modern custom amongst the low caste is for the bride
and bridegroom, in the presence of friends, to place a flower garland
on each other's necks, and thus declare themselves man and wife. The
old classical Gandharva-lagan has been before explained.

[FN#151] Meaning that the sight of each other will cause a smile,
and that what one purposes the other will consent to.

[FN#152] This would be the verdict of a Hindu jury.

[FN#153] Because stained with the powder of Mhendi, or the
Lawsonia inermis shrub.

[FN#154] Kansa's son: so called because the god Shiva, when struck
by his shafts, destroyed him with a fiery glance.

[FN#155] "Great Brahman"; used contemptuously to priests who
officiate for servile men. Brahmans lose their honour by the
following things: By becoming servants to the king; by pursuing any
secular business; by acting priests to Shudras (serviles); by officiating
as priests for a whole village; and by neglecting any part of the three
daily services. Many violate these rules; yet to kill a Brahman is still
one of the five great Hindu sins. In the present age of the world, the
Brahman may not accept a gift of cows or of gold; of course he
despises the law. As regards monkey worship, a certain Rajah of
Nadiya is said to have expended œ10,000 in marrying two monkeys
with all the parade and splendour of the Hindu rite.

[FN#156] The celebrated Gayatri, the Moslem Kalmah.

[FN#157] Kama again.

[FN#158] From "Man," to think; primarily meaning, what makes
man think.

[FN#159] The Cirrhadae of classical writers.

[FN#160] The Hindu Pluto; also called the Just King.

[FN#161] Yama judges the dead. whose souls go to him in four
hours and forty minutes; therefore a corpse cannot be burned till after
that time. His residence is Yamalaya. and it is on the south side of the
earth; down South, as we say. (I, Sam. xxv. 1, and xxx. 15). The
Hebrews, like the Hindus, held the northern parts of the world to be
higher than the southern. Hindus often joke a man who is seen
walking in that direction, and ask him where he is going.

[FN#162] The "Ganges," in heaven called Mandakini. I have no idea
why we still adhere to our venerable corruption of the word.

[FN#163] The fabulous mountain supposed by Hindu geographers
to occupy the centre of the universe.

[FN#164] The all-bestowing tree in Indra's Paradise which grants
everything asked of it. It is the Tuba of Al-Islam and is not unknown
to the Apocryphal New Testament.

[FN#165] "Vikramaditya, Lord of the Saka." This is prevoyance on
the part of the Vampire; the king had not acquired the title.

[FN#166] On the sixth day after the child's birth, the god Vidhata
writes all its fate upon its forehead. The Moslems have a similar idea,
and probably it passed to the Hindus.

[FN#167] Goddess of eloquence. "The waters of the Saraswati " is
the classical Hindu phrase for the mirage.

[FN#168] This story is perhaps the least interesting in the collection.
I have translated it literally, in order to give an idea of the original.
The reader will remark in it the source of our own nursery tale about
the princess who was so high born and delicately bred, that she could
discover the three peas laid beneath a straw mattress and four feather
beds. The Hindus, however, believe that Sybaritism can be carried so
far; I remember my Pandit asserting the truth of the story.

[FN#169] A minister. The word, as is the case with many in this
collection, is quite modern Moslem, and anachronistic.

[FN#170] The cow is called the mother of the gods, and is declared
by Brahma, the first person of the triad, Vishnu and Shiva being the
second and the third, to be a proper object of worship. "If a European
speak to the Hindu about eating the flesh of cows," says an old
missionary, "they immediately raise their hands to their ears; yet
milkmen, carmen, and farmers beat the cow as unmercifully as a
carrier of coals beats his ass in England."The Jains or Jainas (from ji,
to conquer; as subduing the passions) are one of the atheistical sects
with whom the Brahmans have of old carried on the fiercest religious
controversies, ending in many a sanguinary fight. Their tenets are
consequently exaggerated and ridiculed, as in the text. They believe
that there is no such God as the common notions on the subject point
out, and they hold that the highest act of virtue is to abstain from
injuring sentient creatures. Man does not possess an immortal spirit:
death is the same to Brahma and to a fly. Therefore there is no
heaven or hell separate from present pleasure or pain. Hindu
Epicureans!--"Epicuri de grege porci."

[FN#171] Narak is one of the multitudinous places of Hindu
punishment, said to adjoin the residence of Ajarna. The less
cultivated Jains believe in a region of torment. The illuminati,
however, have a sovereign contempt for the Creator, for a future
state, and for all religious ceremonies. As Hindus, however, they
believe in future births of mankind, somewhat influenced by present
actions. The "next birth" in the mouth of a Hindu, we are told, is the
same as "to-morrow" in the mouth of a Christian. The
metempsychosis is on an extensive scale: according to some, a person
who loses human birth must pass through eight millions of successive
incarnationsÄfish, insects, worms, birds, and beastsÄbefore he can
reappear as a man.

[FN#172] Jogi, or Yogi, properly applies to followers of the Yoga or
Patanjala school, who by ascetic practices acquire power over the
elements. Vulgarly, it is a general term for mountebank vagrants,
worshippers of Shiva. The Janganis adore the same deity, and carry
about a Linga. The Sevras are Jain beggars, who regard their chiefs
as superior to the gods of other sects. The Sannyasis are mendicant
followers of Shiva; they never touch metals or fire, and. in religious
parlance, they take up the staff They are opposed to the Viragis,
worshippers of Vishnu, who contend as strongly against the
worshippers of gods who receive bloody offerings. as a Christian
could do against idolatry.

[FN#173] The Brahman, or priest, is supposed to proceed from the
mouth of Brahma, the creating person of the Triad; the Khshatriyas
(soldiers) from his arms; the Vaishyas (enterers into business) from
his thighs; and the Shudras, "who take refuge in the Brahmans," from
his feet. Only high caste men should assume the thread at the age of
puberty.

[FN#174] Soma. the moon, I have said, is masculine in India.

[FN#175] Pluto.

[FN#176] Nothing astonishes Hindus so much as the apparent want
of affection between the European parent and child.

[FN#177] A third marriage is held improper and baneful to a Hindu
woman. Hence. before the nuptials they betroth the man to a tree,
upon which the evil expends itself, and the tree dies.

[FN#178] Kama

[FN#179] An oath. meaning, "From such a falsehood preserve me,
Ganges!"

[FN#180] The Indian Neptune.

[FN#181] A highly insulting form of adjuration.

[FN#182] The British Islands--according to Wilford.

[FN#183] Literally the science (veda) of the bow (dhanush). This
weapon, as everything amongst the Hindus, had a divine origin: it
was of three kinds--the common bow, the pellet or stone bow, and the
crossbow or catapult.

[FN#184] It is a disputed point whether the ancient Hindus did or did
not know the use of gunpowder.

[FN#185] It is said to have discharged balls, each 6,400 pounds in
weight.

[FN#186] A kind of Mercury, a god with the head and wings of a
bird, who is the Vahan or vehicle of the second person of the Triad,
Vishnu.

[FN#187] The celebrated burning springs of Baku, near the Caspian,
are so called. There are many other "fire mouths."

[FN#188] The Hindu Styx.

[FN#189] From Yaksha, to eat; as Rakshasas are from Raksha, to
preserve.--See Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p. 57.

[FN#190] Shiva is always painted white, no one knows why. His
wife Gauri has also a European complexion. Hence it is generally
said that the sect popularly called "Thugs," who were worshippers of
these murderous gods. spared Englishmen, the latter being supposed
to have some rapport with their deities.

[FN#191] The Hindu shrine is mostly a small building, with two
inner compartments. the vestibule and the Garbagriha, or adytum, in
which stands the image.

[FN#192] Meaning Kali of the cemetery (Smashana); another form
of Durga.

[FN#193] Not being able to find victims, this pleasant deity, to
satisfy her thirst for the curious juice, cut her own throat that the
blood might spout up into her mouth. She once found herself dancing
on her husband, and was so shocked that in surprise she put out her
tongue to a great length, and remained motionless. She is often
represented in this form.

[FN#194] This ashtanga, the most ceremonious of the five forms of
Hindu salutation, consists of prostrating and of making the eight parts
of the body--namely, the temples, nose and chin, knees and hands--
touch the ground.

[FN#195] "Sidhis," the personified Powers of Nature. At least, so we
explain them: but people do not worship abstract powers.

[FN#196] The residence of Indra, king of heaven, built by Wishwa-
Karma, the architect of the gods.

[FN#197] In other words, to the present day, whenever a Hindu
novelist, romancer, or tale writer seeks a peg upon which to suspend
the texture of his story, he invariably pitches upon the glorious, pious,
and immortal memory of that Eastern King Arthur, Vikramaditya,
shortly called Vikram.

house of the vampire by George Sylvester Viereck
00:13:00 - Jun 19 2006
Times Read: 34

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

I

The freakish little leader of the orchestra, newly imported from Sicily to New York, tossed his conductor's wand excitedly through the air, drowning with musical thunders the hum of conversation and the clatter of plates.

Yet neither his apish demeanour nor the deafening noises that responded to every movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure of Reginald Clarke and the young man at his side as they smilingly wound their way to the exit.

The boy's expression was pleasant, with an inkling of wistfulness, while the soft glimmer of his lucid eyes betrayed the poet and the dreamer. The smile of Reginald Clarke was the smile of a conqueror. A suspicion of silver in his crown of dark hair only added dignity to his bearing, while the infinitely ramified lines above the heavy-set mouth spoke at[Pg 2] once of subtlety and of strength. Without stretch of the imagination one might have likened him to a Roman cardinal of the days of the Borgias, who had miraculously stepped forth from the time-stained canvas and slipped into twentieth century evening-clothes.

With the affability of complete self-possession he nodded in response to greetings from all sides, inclining his head with special politeness to a young woman whose sea-blue eyes were riveted upon his features with a look of mingled hate and admiration.

The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued to stare at him wild-eyed, as a damned soul in purgatory might look at Satan passing in regal splendour through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.

Reginald Clarke walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners, still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of certain rumours he had heard concerning Ethel Brandenbourg's mad love for the man from whose features she could not even now turn her eyes. Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.[Pg 3] There was a time in her career, some years ago in Paris, when it was whispered that she had secretly married him and, not much later, obtained a divorce. The matter was never cleared up, as both preserved an uncompromising silence upon the subject of their matrimonial experience. Certain it was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald Clarke had completely dominated her brush, and that, ever since he had thrown her aside, her pictures were but plagiarisms of her former artistic self.

The cause of the rupture between them was a matter only of surmise; but the effect it had on the woman testified clearly to the remarkable power of Reginald Clarke. He had entered her life and, behold! the world was transfixed on her canvases in myriad hues of transcending radiance; he had passed from it, and with him vanished the brilliancy of her colouring, as at sunset the borrowed amber and gold fade from the face of the clouds.

The glamour of Clarke's name may have partly explained the secret of his charm, but, [Pg 4]even in circles where literary fame is no passport, he could, if he chose, exercise an almost terrible fascination. Subtle and profound, he had ransacked the coffers of mediæval dialecticians and plundered the arsenals of the Sophists. Many years later, when the vultures of misfortune had swooped down upon him, and his name was no longer mentioned without a sneer, he was still remembered in New York drawing-rooms as the man who had brought to perfection the art of talking. Even to dine with him was a liberal education.

Clarke's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his marvellous style. Ernest Fielding's heart leaped in him at the thought that henceforth he would be privileged to live under one roof with the only writer of his generation who could lend to the English language the rich strength and rugged music of the Elizabethans.

Reginald Clarke was a master of many instruments. Milton's mighty organ was no less obedient to his touch than the little lute of the troubadour. He was never the same; [Pg 5]that was his strength. Clarke's style possessed at once the chiselled chasteness of a Greek marble column and the elaborate deviltry of the late Renaissance. At times his winged words seemed to flutter down the page frantically like Baroque angels; at other times nothing could have more adequately described his manner than the timeless calm of the gaunt pyramids.

The two men had reached the street. Reginald wrapped his long spring coat round him.

"I shall expect you to-morrow at four," he said.

The tone of his voice was deep and melodious, suggesting hidden depths and cadences.

"I shall be punctual."

The younger man's voice trembled as he spoke.

"I look forward to your coming with much pleasure. I am interested in you."

The glad blood mounted to Ernest's cheeks at praise from the austere lips of this arbiter of literary elegance.

An almost imperceptible smile crept over the other man's features.

[Pg 6]"I am proud that my work interests you," was all the boy could say.

"I think it is quite amazing, but at present," here Clarke drew out a watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."

He held Ernest's hand for a moment in a firm genial grasp, then turned away briskly, while the boy remained standing open-mouthed. The crowd jostling against him carried him almost off his feet, but his eyes followed far into the night the masterful figure of Reginald Clarke, toward whom he felt himself drawn with every fiber of his body and the warm enthusiasm of his generous youth.

[Pg 7]
II

With elastic step, inhaling the night-air with voluptuous delight, Reginald Clarke made his way down Broadway, lying stretched out before him, bathed in light and pulsating with life.

His world-embracing intellect was powerfully attracted by the Giant City's motley activities. On the street, as in the salon, his magnetic power compelled recognition, and he stepped through the midst of the crowd as a Circassian blade cleaves water.

After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweller's shop. Arrayed in the window were priceless gems that shone in the glare of electricity, like mystical serpent-eyes—green, pomegranate and water-blue. And as he stood there the dazzling radiance before him was transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and [Pg 8]very wonderful that might, some day, be a poem.

Then his attention was diverted by a small group of tiny girls dancing on the sidewalk to the husky strains of an old hurdy-gurdy. He joined the circle of amused spectators, to watch those pink-ribboned bits of femininity swaying airily to and fro in unison with the tune. One especially attracted his notice—a slim olive-coloured girl from a land where it is always spring. Her whole being translated into music, with hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the girl suggested an orange-leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The rasping street-organ, perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some flute-playing Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark of hair.

For several minutes Reginald Clarke followed with keen delight each delicate curve her graceful limbs described. Then—was it that she grew tired, or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her?—the music oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost clumsy. The look of [Pg 9]interest in Clarke's eyes died, but his whole form quivered, as if the rhythm of the music and the dance had mysteriously entered into his blood.

He continued his stroll, seemingly without aim; in reality he followed, with nervous intensity, the multiform undulations of the populace, swarming through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose strength was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth, Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact with life.

He turned east along Fourteenth street, where cheap vaudevilles are strung together as glass-pearls on the throat of a wanton. Gaudy bill-boards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this sordid wilderness of décolleté art. Street-snipes, a few workingmen, dilapidated sportsmen, and women whose ruined youth thick lay[Pg 10]ers of powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore, constituted the bulk of the audience. Reginald Clarke, apparently unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his appearance excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a programme. The drink he left untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar, paying no attention to the boards, but studying the audience with cursory interest until the appearance of Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl.

When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The words of her song were crude, but not without a certain lilt that delighted the uncultured ear, while the girl's voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant. When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt attention, eagerly gazing at her. For, as she sang the last line and tore the hyacinth-blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a [Pg 11]strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her spell.

Clarke, too, was captivated by that tremour, the infinite sadness of which suggested the plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust preys on creatures marked for its spoil.

The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain. As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza, an inscrutable smile curled on Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard and cracked: the tremour had gone from her voice.

[Pg 12]

[Pg 13]
III

Long before the appointed time Ernest walked up and down in front of the abode of Reginald Clarke, a stately apartment-house overlooking Riverside Drive.

Misshapen automobiles were chasing by, carrying to the cool river's marge the restlessness and the fever of American life. But the bustle and the noise seemed to the boy only auspicious omens of the future.

Jack, his room-mate and dearest friend, had left him a month ago, and, for a space, he had felt very lonely. His young and delicate soul found it difficult to grapple with the vague fears that his nervous brain engendered, when whispered sounds seemed to float from hidden corners, and the stairs creaked under mysterious feet.

He needed the voice of loving kindness to call him back from the valley of haunting shadows, where his poet's soul was wont to [Pg 14]linger overlong; in his hours of weakness the light caress of a comrade renewed his strength and rekindled in his hand the flaming sword of song.

And at nightfall he would bring the day's harvest to Clarke, as a worshipper scattering precious stones, incense and tapestries at the feet of a god.

Surely he would be very happy. And as the heart, at times, leads the feet to the goal of its desire, while multicoloured dreams, like dancing-girls, lull the will to sleep, he suddenly found himself stepping from the elevator-car to Reginald Clarke's apartment.

Already was he raising his hand to strike the electric bell when a sound from within made him pause half-way.

"No, there's no help!" he heard Clarke say. His voice had a hard, metallic clangour.

A boyish voice answered plaintively. What the words were Ernest could not distinctly hear, but the suppressed sob in them almost brought the tears to his eyes. He instinctively knew that this was the finale of some tragedy.

[Pg 15]He withdrew hastily, so as not to be a witness of an interview that was not meant for his ears.

Reginald Clarke probably had good reason for parting with his young friend, whom Ernest surmised to be Abel Felton, a talented boy, whom the master had taken under his wings.

In the apartment a momentary silence had ensued.

This was interrupted by Clarke: "It will come again, in a month, in a year, in two years."

"No, no! It is all gone!" sobbed the boy.

"Nonsense. You are merely nervous. But that is just why we must part. There is no room in one house for two nervous people."

"I was not such a nervous wreck before I met you."

"Am I to blame for it—for your morbid fancies, your extravagance, the slow tread of a nervous disease, perhaps?"

"Who can tell? But I am all confused. I don't know what I am saying. Everything is so puzzling—life, friendship, you. I fancied [Pg 16]you cared for my career, and now you end our friendship without a thought!"

"We must all follow the law of our being."

"The laws are within us and in our control."

"They are within us and beyond us. It is the physiological structure of our brains, our nerve-cells, that makes and mars our lives.

"Our mental companionship was so beautiful. It was meant to last."

"That is the dream of youth. Nothing lasts. Everything flows—panta rei. We are all but sojourners in an inn. Friendship, as love, is an illusion. Life has nothing to take from a man who has no illusions."

"It has nothing to give him."

They said good-bye.

At the door Ernest met Abel.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"For a little pleasure trip."

Ernest knew that the boy lied.

He remembered that Abel Felton was at work upon some book, a play or a novel. It occurred to him to inquire how far he had progressed with it.

[Pg 17]Abel smiled sadly. "I am not writing it."

"Not writing it?"

"Reginald is."

"I am afraid I don't understand."

"Never mind. Some day you will."

[Pg 18]

[Pg 19]
IV

"I am so happy you came," Reginald Clarke said, as he conducted Ernest into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking the Hudson and Riverside Drive.

Dazzled and bewildered, the boy's eyes wandered from object to object, from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous details, the whole arrangement possessed style and distinction.

A satyr on the mantelpiece whispered obscene secrets into the ears of Saint Cecilia. The argent limbs of Antinous brushed against the garments of Mona Lisa. And from a corner a little rococo lady peered coquettishly at the gray image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was a picture of Napoleon facing the image of the Crucified. Above all, in the semi-darkness, artificially produced by heavy draperies, towered two busts.

[Pg 20]"Shakespeare and Balzac!" Ernest exclaimed with some surprise.

"Yes," explained Reginald, "they are my gods."

His gods! Surely there was a key to Clarke's character. Our gods are ourselves raised to the highest power.

Clarke and Shakespeare!

Even to Ernest's admiring mind it seemed almost blasphemous to name a contemporary, however esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of song, whose great gaunt shadow, thrown against the background of the years has assumed immense, unproportionate, monstrous dimensions.

Yet something might be said for the comparison. Clarke undoubtedly was universally broad, and undoubtedly concealed, with no less exquisite taste than the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid raiment of his art. They certainly were affinities. It would not have been surprising to him to see the clear calm head of Shakespeare rise from behind his host.

Perhaps—who knows?—the very presence [Pg 21]of the bust in his room had, to some extent, subtly and secretly moulded Reginald Clarke's life. A man's soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment. Even comparative trifles, the number of the house in which we live, or the colour of the wallpaper of a room, may determine a destiny.

The boy's eyes were again surveying the fantastic surroundings in which he found himself; while, from a corner, Clarke's eyes were watching his every movement, as if to follow his thoughts into the innermost labyrinth of the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint quatrain in one of Clarke's most marvellous poems. And he could have sworn that the grin of the Hindu monkey-god on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm of two stanzas whose grotesque cadence had haunted him for years.

At last Clarke broke the silence. "You like my studio?" he asked.

[Pg 22]The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.

"Like it? Why, it's stunning. It set up in me the queerest train of thought."

"I, too, have been in a whimsical mood to-night. Fancy, unlike genius, is an infectious disease."

"What is the peculiar form it assumed in your case?"

"I have been wondering whether all the things that environ us day by day are, in a measure, fashioning our thought-life. I sometimes think that even my little mandarin and this monkey-idol which, by the way, I brought from India, are exerting a mysterious but none the less real influence upon my work."

"Great God!" Ernest replied, "I have had the identical thought!"

"How very strange!" Clarke exclaimed, with seeming surprise.

"It is said tritely but truly, that great minds travel the same roads," Ernest observed, inwardly pleased.

"No," the older man subtly remarked,[Pg 23] "but they reach the same conclusion by a different route."

"And you attach serious importance to our fancy?"

"Why not?"

Clarke was gazing abstractedly at the bust of Balzac.

"A man's genius is commensurate with his ability of absorbing from life the elements essential to his artistic completion. Balzac possessed this power in a remarkable degree. But, strange to say, it was evil that attracted him most. He absorbed it as a sponge absorbs water; perhaps because there was so little of it in his own make-up. He must have purified the atmosphere around him for miles, by bringing all the evil that was floating in the air or slumbering in men's souls to the point of his pen.

"And he"—his eyes were resting on Shakespeare's features as a man might look upon the face of a brother—"he, too, was such a nature. In fact, he was the most perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind. From life and from books he drew his material, each [Pg 24]time reshaping it with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation, infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly greater than he. It alone explains his unique achievement. Who was he? What education did he have, what opportunities? None. And yet we find in his work the wisdom of Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh's fancies and discoveries, Marlowe's verbal thunders and the mysterious loveliness of Mr. W.H."

Ernest listened, entranced by the sound of Clarke's mellifluous voice. He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous power of giving to the wildest fancies an air of vraisemblance.

[Pg 25]
V

"Yes," said Walkham, the sculptor, "it's a most curious thing."

"What is?" asked Ernest, who had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was looking at him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five thousand years.

"How our dreams of yesterday stare at us like strangers to-day."

"On the contrary," remarked Reginald, "it would be strange if they were still to know us. In fact, it would be unnatural. The skies above us and the earth underfoot are in perpetual motion. Each atom of our physical nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change is identical with life."

"It sometimes seems," said the sculptor, "as if thoughts evaporated like water."

"Why not, under favorable conditions?"

"But where do they go? Surely they cannot perish utterly?"

[Pg 26]"Yes, that is the question. Or, rather, it is not a question. Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual universe."

"But what," inquired Ernest, "is the particular reason for your reflection?"

"It is this," the sculptor replied; "I had a striking motive and lost it."

"Do you remember," he continued, speaking to Reginald, "the Narcissus I was working on the last time when you called at my studio?"

"Yes; it was a striking thing and impressed me very much, though I cannot recall it at the moment."

"Well, it was a commission. An eccentric young millionaire had offered me eight thousand dollars for it. I had an absolutely original conception. But I cannot execute it. It's as if a breeze had carried it away."

"That is very regrettable."

"Well, I should say so," replied the sculptor.

Ernest smiled. For everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having twice figured in the divorce court, he was at pres[Pg 27]ent defraying the expenses of three households.

The sculptor had meanwhile seated himself at Reginald's writing-table, unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him. Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action.

"By Jove!" he cried. "What is this?"

"It's an epic of the French Revolution," Reginald replied, not without surprise.

"But, man, do you know that I have discovered my motive in it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at Walkham, whose sanity he began to doubt.

"Listen!"

And the sculptor read, trembling with emotion, a long passage whose measured cadence delighted Ernest's ear, without, however, enlightening his mind as to the purport of Walkham's cryptic remark.

[Pg 28]Reginald said nothing, but the gleam in his eye showed that this time, at least, his interest was alert.

Walkham saw the hopelessness of making clear his meaning without an explanation.

"I forget you haven't a sculptor's mind. I am so constituted that, with me, all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form. I do not hear music; I see it rise with domes and spires, with painted windows and Arabesques. The scent of the rose is to me tangible. I can almost feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to me, by its rhythmic flow, something which, at first indefinite, crystallised finally into my lost conception of Narcissus."

"It is extraordinary," murmured Reginald. "I had not dreamed of it."

"So you do not think it rather fantastic?" remarked Ernest, circumscribing his true meaning.

"No, it is quite possible. Perhaps his Narcissus was engaging the sub-conscious strata of my mind while I was writing this passage. And surely it would be strange if the under[Pg 29]currents of our mind were not reflected in our style."

"Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist ought to be able to read beneath and between our lines, not only what we express, but also what we leave unexpressed?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of our state of mind? That would open a new field to psychology."

"Only to those that have the key, that can read the hidden symbols. It is to me a matter-of-course that every mind-movement below or above the threshold of consciousness must, of a necessity, leave its imprint faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities."

"This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to the majority, delight the hearts of the few," Ernest interjected.

"Yes, to the few that possess the key. I distinctly remember how an uncle of mine once laid down a discussion on higher mathematics and blushed fearfully when his inno[Pg 30]cent wife looked over his shoulder. The man who had written it was a roué."

"Then the seemingly most harmless books may secretly possess the power of scattering in young minds the seed of corruption," Walkham remarked.

"If they happen to understand," Clarke observed thoughtfully. "I can very well conceive of a lecherous text-book of the calculus, or of a reporter's story of a picnic in which burnt, under the surface, undiscoverable, save to the initiate, the tragic passion of Tristram and Iseult."

[Pg 31]
VI

Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul.

The strange personality of the master of the house had enveloped the lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's soul from the obsession of Reginald Clarke.

Ernest was lazily stretching himself on a [Pg 32]couch, waving the smoke of his cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk.

"Your friend Jack is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in yours. I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes."

"So we are; but friendship bridges the chasm between."

"How long have you known him?"

"We have been chums ever since our sophomore year."

"What attracted you in him?"

"It is no simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude, our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as through a glass darkly."

"It is true that personal feeling colours our spectacles and distorts the perspective. Still, we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must learn to see clearly into our own hearts if we would give vitality to our work. Indis[Pg 33]cretion is the better part of literature, and it behooves us to hound down each delicate elusive shadow of emotion, and convert it into copy."

"It is because I am so self-analytical that I realise the complexity of my nature, and am at a loss to define my emotions. Conflicting forces sway us hither and thither without neutralising each other. Physicology isn't physics. There were many things to attract me to Jack. He was subtler, more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my college-mates."

"That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes are those of a girl. You still care for him very much?"

"It isn't a matter of caring. We are two beings that live one life."

"A sort of psychic Siamese twins?"

"Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our hearts root in the same soil; the same books have nourished us, the same great winds have shaken our being, and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of friendship."

[Pg 34]"He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so, as a rather commonplace companion."

"There is in him a hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after years and still be near each other."

"You are very young," Reginald replied.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah—never mind."

"So you do not believe that two hearts may ever beat as one?"

"No, that is an auditory delusion. Not even two clocks beat in unison. There is always a discrepancy, infinitesimal, perhaps, but a discrepancy nevertheless."

A sharp ring of the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a curly head peeped through the door.

"Hello, Ernest! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh in his voice. Then, noticing Clarke, he shook hands with [Pg 35]the great man unceremoniously, with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred in the atmosphere of an American college.

His touch seemed to thrill Clarke, who breathed heavily and then stepped to the window, as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.

It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence, as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.

"I have come to take Ernest away from you," said Jack. "He looks a trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles in his blood."

"I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," Reginald replied.

"Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly.

But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.

[Pg 36]

[Pg 37]
VII

The two boys had bathed their souls in the sea-breeze, and their eyes in light.

The tide of pleasure-loving humanity jostling against them had carried their feet to the "Lion Palace." From there, seated at table and quenching their thirst with high-balls, they watched the feverish palpitations of the city's life-blood pulsating in the veins of Coney Island, to which they had drifted from Brighton Beach.

Ernest blew thoughtful rings of smoke into the air.

"Do you notice the ferocious look in the mien of the average frequenter of this island resort?" he said to Jack, whose eyes, following the impulse of his more robust youth, were examining specimens of feminine flotsam on the waves of the crowd.

"It is," he continued, speaking to himself [Pg 38]for want of an audience, "the American who is in for having a 'good time.' And he is going to get it. Like a huntsman, he follows the scent of happiness; but I warrant that always it eludes him. Perhaps his mad race is only the epitome of humanity's vain pursuit of pleasure, the eternal cry that is never answered."

But Jack was not listening. There are times in the life of every man when a petticoat is more attractive to him than all the philosophy of the world.

Ernest was a little hurt, and it was not without some silent remonstrance that he acquiesced when Jack invited to their table two creatures that once were women.

"Why?"

"But they are interesting."

"I cannot find so."

They both had seen better times—of course. Then money losses came, with work in shop or factory, and the voice of the tempter in the commercial wilderness.

One, a frail nervous little creature, who had instinctively chosen a seat at Ernest's side, [Pg 39]kept prattling in his ear, ready to tell the story of her life to any one who was willing to treat her to a drink. Something in her demeanour interested him.

"And then I had a stroke of luck. The manager of a vaudeville was my friend and decided to give me a trial. He thought I had a voice. They called me Betsy, the Hyacinth Girl. At first it seemed as if people liked to hear me. But I suppose that was because I was new. After a month or two they discharged me."

"And why?"

"I suppose I was just used up, that's all."

"Frightful!"

"I never had much of a voice—and the tobacco smoke—and the wine—I love wine."

She gulped down her glass.

"And do you like your present occupation?"

"Why not? Am I not young? Am I not pretty?"

This she said not parrotwise, but with a simple coquettishness that was all her own.

On the way to the steamer a few moments [Pg 40]later, Ernest asked, half-reproachfully: "Jack—and you really enjoyed this conversation?"

"Didn't you?"

"Do you mean this?"

"Why, yes; she was—very agreeable."

Ernest frowned.

"We're twenty, Ernest. And then, you see, it's like a course in sociology. Susie—"

"Susie, was that her name?"

"Yes."

"So she had a name?"

"Of course."

"She shouldn't. It should be a number."

"They may not be pillars of society; still, they're human."

"Yes," said Ernest, "that is the most horrible part of it."

[Pg 41]
VIII

The moon was shining brightly.

Swift and sure the prow of the night-boat parted the silvery foam.

The smell of young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls. Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children. A boy selling candy. The crying of babies.

The two friends were sitting on the upper deck, muffled in their long rain-coats.

In the distance the Empire City rose radiant from the mist.

"Say, Ernest, you should spout some poetry as of old. Are your lips stricken mute, or are you still thinking of Coney Island?"

"Oh, no, the swift wind has taken it away.[Pg 42] I am clean, I am pure. Life has passed me. It has kissed me, but it has left no trace."

He looked upon the face of his friend. Their hands met. They felt, with keen enjoyment, the beauty of the night, of their friendship, and of the city beyond.

Then Ernest's lips moved softly, musically, twitching with a strange ascetic passion that trembled in his voice as he began:

"Huge steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air
Her Babylonian towers, while on high,
Like gilt-scaled serpents, glide the swift trains by,
Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair.
A thousand lights are jewels in her hair,
The sea her girdle, and her crown the sky;
Her life-blood throbs, the fevered pulses fly.
Immense, defiant, breathless she stands there.

"And ever listens in the ceaseless din,
Waiting for him, her lover, who shall come,
Whose singing lips shall boldly claim their own,
And render sonant what in her was dumb,
[Pg 43] The splendour, and the madness, and the sin,
Her dreams in iron and her thoughts of stone."

He paused. The boat glided on. For a long time neither spoke a word.

After a while Jack broke the silence: "And are you dreaming of becoming the lyric mouth of the city, of giving utterance to all its yearnings, its 'dreams in iron and its thoughts of stone'?"

"No," replied Ernest, simply, "not yet. It is strange to what impressions the brain will respond. In Clarke's house, in the midst of inspiring things, inspiration failed me. But while I was with that girl an idea came to me—an idea, big, real."

"Will it deal with her?"

Ernest smiled: "Oh, no. She personally has nothing to do with it. At least not directly. It was the commotion of blood and—brain. The air—the change. I don't know what."

"What will it be?" asked Jack, with interest all alert.

[Pg 44]"A play, a wonderful play. And its heroine will be a princess, a little princess, with a yellow veil."

"What of the plot?"

"That I shall not tell you to-day. In fact, I shall not breathe a word to any one. It will take you all by surprise—and the public by storm."

"So it will be playable?"

"If I am not very much mistaken, you will see it on Broadway within a year. And," he added graciously, "I will let you have two box-seats for the first night."

They both chuckled at the thought, and their hearts leaped within them.

"I hope you will finish it soon," Jack observed after a while. "You haven't done much of late."

"A similar reflection was on my mind when you came yesterday. That accounts for the low spirits in which you found me."

"Ah, indeed," Jack replied, measuring Ernest with a look of wonder. "But now your face is aglow. It seems that the blood rushes [Pg 45]to your head swifter at the call of an idea than at the kiss of a girl."

"Thank God!" Ernest remarked with a sigh of relief. "Mighty forces within me are fashioning the limpid thought. Passion may grip us by the throat momentarily; upon our backs we may feel the lashes of desire and bathe our souls in flames of many hues; but the joy of activity is the ultimate passion."

[Pg 46]

[Pg 47]
IX

It seemed, indeed, as if work was to Ernest what the sting of pleasure is to the average human animal. The inter-play of his mental forces gave him the sensuous satisfaction of a woman's embrace. His eyes sparkled. His muscle tightened. The joy of creation was upon him.

Often very material reasons, like stone weights tied to the wings of a bird, stayed the flight of his imagination. Magazines were waiting for his copy, and he was not in the position to let them wait. They supplied his bread and butter.

Between the bread and butter, however, the play was growing scene by scene. In the lone hours of the night he spun upon the loom of his fancy a brilliant weft of swift desire—heavy, perfumed, Oriental—interwoven with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined with the thread of [Pg 48]the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells beneath our very feet.

The man who encompasses heaven and hell is a perfect man. But there are many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both. Surely the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of murder than the poet who depicts it in glowing words. The things he writes are as real to him as the things that he lives. But in his realm the poet is supreme. His hands may be red with blood or white with leprosy: he still remains king. Woe to him, however, if he transcends the limits of his kingdom and translates into action the secret of his dreams. The throng that before applauded him will stone his quivering body or nail to the cross his delicate hands and feet.

Sometimes days passed before Ernest could concentrate his mind upon his play. Then the [Pg 49]fever seized him again, and he strung pearl on pearl, line on line, without entrusting a word to paper. Even to discuss his work before it had received the final brush-strokes would have seemed indecent to him.

Reginald, too, seemed to be in a turmoil of work. Ernest had little chance to speak to him. And to drop even a hint of his plans between the courses at breakfast would have been desecration.

Sunset followed sunset, night followed night. The stripling April had made room for the lady May. The play was almost completed in Ernest's mind, and he thought, with a little shudder, of the physical travail of the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain to paper would demand all his powers. For, of late, his thoughts seemed strangely evanescent; they seemed to run away from him whenever he attempted to seize them.

The day was glad with sunshine, and he decided to take a long walk in the solitude of the Palisades, to steady hand and nerve for the final task.

He told Reginald of his intention, but met [Pg 50]with little response. Reginald's face was wan and bore the peculiar pallor of one who had worked late at night.

"You must be frightfully busy?" Ernest asked, with genuine concern.

"So I am," Reginald replied. "I always work in a white heat. I am restless, nervous, feverish, and can find no peace until I have given utterance to all that clamours after birth."

"What is it that is so engaging your mind, the epic of the French Revolution?"

"Oh, no. I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a stroke of work on it for several weeks. In fact, ever since Walkham called, I simply couldn't. It seemed as if a rough hand had in some way destroyed the web of my thought. Poetry in the writing is like red hot glass before the master-blower has fashioned it into birds and trees and strange fantastic shapes. A draught, caused by the opening of a door may distort it. But at present I am engaged upon more important work. I am modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of molten gold."

[Pg 51]"You make me exceedingly anxious to know what you have in store for us. It seems to me you have reached a point where even you can no longer surpass yourself."

Reginald smiled. "Your praise is too generous, yet it warms like sunshine. I will confess that my conception is unique. It combines with the ripeness of my technique the freshness of a second spring."

Ernest was bubbling with anticipated delights. His soul responded to Reginald's touch as a harp to the winds. "When," he cried, "shall we be privileged to see it?"

Reginald's eyes were already straying back to his writing table. "If the gods are propitious," he remarked, "I shall complete it to-night. To-morrow is my reception, and I have half promised to read it then."

"Perhaps I shall be in the position soon to let you see my play."

"Let us hope so," Reginald replied absent-mindedly. The egotism of the artist had once more chained him to his work.

[Pg 52]

[Pg 53]
X

That night a brilliant crowd had gathered in Reginald Clarke's house. From the studio and the adjoining salon arose a continual murmur of well-tuned voices. On bare white throats jewels shone as if in each a soul were imprisoned, and voluptuously rustled the silk that clung to the fair slim forms of its bearers in an undulating caress. Subtle perfumes emanated from the hair and the hands of syren women, commingling with the soft plump scent of their flesh. Fragrant tapers, burning in precious crystal globules stained with exquisite colours, sprinkled their shimmering light over the fashionable assemblage and lent a false radiance to the faces of the men, while in the hair and the jewels of the women each ray seemed to dance like an imp with its mate.

A seat like a throne, covered with furs of tropic beasts of prey, stood in one corner of [Pg 54]the room in the full glare of the light, waiting for the monarch to come. Above were arranged with artistic raffinement weird oriental draperies, resembling a crimson canopy in the total effect. Chattering visitors were standing in groups, or had seated themselves on the divans and curiously-fashioned chairs that were scattered in seeming disorder throughout the salon. There were critics and writers and men of the world. Everybody who was anybody and a little bigger than somebody else was holding court in his own small circle of enthusiastic admirers. The Bohemian element was subdued, but not entirely lacking. The magic of Reginald Clarke's name made stately dames blind to the presence of some individuals whom they would have passed on the street without recognition.

Ernest surveyed this gorgeous assembly with the absent look of a sleep-walker. Not that his sensuous soul was unsusceptible to the atmosphere of culture and corruption that permeated the whole, nor to the dazzling colour effects that tantalised while they delighted the eye. But to-night they shrivelled into insig[Pg 55]nificance before the splendour of his inner vision. A radiant dreamland palace, his play, had risen from the night of inchoate thought. It was wonderful, it was real, and needed for its completion only the detail of actual construction. And now the characters were hovering in the recesses of his brain, were yearning to leave that many-winded labyrinth to become real beings of paper and ink. He would probably have tarried overlong in this fanciful mansion, had not the reappearance of an unexpected guest broken his reverie.

"Jack!" he exclaimed in surprise, "I thought you a hundred miles away from here."

"That shows that you no longer care for me," Jack playfully answered. "When our friendship was young, you always had a presentiment of my presence."

"Ah, perhaps I had. But tell me, where do you hail from?"

"Clarke called me up on the telephone—long-distance, you know. I suppose it was meant as a surprise for you. And you certainly looked surprised—not even pleasantly.[Pg 56] I am really head-over-heels at work. But you know how it is. Sometimes a little imp whispers into my ears daring me to do a thing which I know is foolish. But what of it? My legs are strong enough not to permit my follies to overtake me."

"It was certainly good of you to come. In fact, you make me very glad. I feel that I need you to-night—I don't know why. The feeling came suddenly—suddenly as you. I only know I need you. How long can you stay?"

"I must leave you to-morrow morning. I have to hustle somewhat. You know my examinations are taking place in a day or two and I've got to cram up a lot of things."

"Still," remarked Ernest, "your visit will repay you for the loss of time. Clarke will read to us to-night his masterpiece."

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I only know it's the real thing. It's worth all the wisdom bald-headed professors may administer to you in concentrated doses at five thousand a year."

"Come now," Jack could not help saying,[Pg 57] "is your memory giving way? Don't you remember your own days in college—especially the mathematical examinations? You know that your marks came always pretty near the absolute zero."

"Jack," cried Ernest in honest indignation, "not the last time. The last time I didn't flunk."

"No, because your sonnet on Cartesian geometry roused even the math-fiend to compassion. And don't you remember Professor Squeeler, whose heart seemed to leap with delight whenever he could tell you that, in spite of incessant toil on your part, he had again flunked you in physics with fifty-nine and a half per cent.?"

"And he wouldn't raise the mark to sixty! God forgive him,—I cannot."

Here their exchange of reminiscences was interrupted. There was a stir. The little potentates of conversation hastened to their seats, before their minions had wholly deserted them.

The king was moving to his throne!

Assuredly Reginald Clarke had the bear[Pg 58]ing of a king. Leisurely he took his seat under the canopy.

A hush fell on the audience; not a fan stirred as he slowly unfolded his manuscript.

[Pg 59]
XI

The music of Reginald Clarke's intonation captivated every ear. Voluptuously, in measured cadence, it rose and fell; now full and strong like the sound of an organ, now soft and clear like the tinkling of bells. His voice detracted by its very tunefulness from what he said. The powerful spell charmed even Ernest's accustomed ear. The first page gracefully glided from Reginald's hand to the carpet before the boy dimly realised that he was intimately familiar with every word that fell from Reginald's lips. When the second page slipped with seeming carelessness from the reader's hand, a sudden shudder ran through the boy's frame. It was as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. There could be no doubt of it. This was more than mere coincidence. It was plagiarism. He wanted to cry out. But the room swam before his eyes.[Pg 60] Surely he must be dreaming. It was a dream. The faces of the audience, the lights, Reginald, Jack—all phantasmagoria of a dream.

Perhaps he had been ill for a long time. Perhaps Clarke was reading the play for him. He did not remember having written it. But he probably had fallen sick after its completion. What strange pranks our memories will play us! But no! He was not dreaming, and he had not been ill.

He could endure the horrible uncertainty no longer. His overstrung nerves must find relaxation in some way or break with a twang. He turned to his friend who was listening with rapt attention.

"Jack, Jack!" he whispered.

"What is it?"

"That is my play!"

"You mean that you inspired it?"

"No, I have written it, or rather, was going to write it."

"Wake up, Ernest! You are mad!"

"No, in all seriousness. It is mine. I told you—don't you remember—when we returned [Pg 61]from Coney Island—that I was writing a play."

"Ah, but not this play."

"Yes, this play. I conceived it, I practically wrote it."

"The more's the pity that Clarke had preconceived it."

"But it is mine!"

"Did you tell him a word about it?"

"No, to be sure."

"Did you leave the manuscript in your room?"

"I had, in fact, not written a line of it. No, I had not begun the actual writing."

"Why should a man of Clarke's reputation plagiarise your plays, written or unwritten?"

"I can see no reason. But—"

"Tut, tut."

For already this whispered conversation had elicited a look like a stab from a lady before them.

Ernest held fast to the edge of a chair. He must cling to some reality, or else drift rudderless in a dim sea of vague apprehensions.

Or was Jack right?

[Pg 62]Was his mind giving way? No! No! No! There must be a monstrous secret somewhere, but what matter? Did anything matter? He had called on his mate like a ship lost in the fog. For the first time he had not responded. He had not understood. The bitterness of tears rose to the boy's eyes.

Above it all, melodiously, ebbed and flowed the rich accents of Reginald Clarke.

Ernest listened to the words of his own play coming from the older man's mouth. The horrible fascination of the scene held him entranced. He saw the creations of his mind pass in review before him, as a man might look upon the face of his double grinning at him from behind a door in the hideous hours of night.

They were all there! The mad king. The subtle-witted courtiers. The sombre-hearted Prince. The Queen-Mother who had loved a jester better than her royal mate, and the fruit of their shameful alliance, the Princess Marigold, a creature woven of sunshine and sin.

Swiftly the action progressed. Shadows of [Pg 63]impending death darkened the house of the King. In the horrible agony of the rack the old jester confessed. Stripped of his cap and bells, crowned with a wreath of blood, he looked so pathetically funny that the Princess Marigold could not help laughing between her tears.

The Queen stood there all trembling and pale. Without a complaint she saw her lover die. The executioner's sword smote the old man's head straight from the trunk. It rolled at the feet of the King, who tossed it to Marigold. The little Princess kissed it and covered the grinning horror with her yellow veil.

The last words died away.

There was no applause. Only silence. All were stricken with the dread that men feel in the house of God or His awful presence in genius.

But the boy lay back in his chair. The cold sweat had gathered on his brow and his temples throbbed. Nature had mercifully clogged his head with blood. The rush of it drowned the crying voice of the nerves, deadening for a while both consciousness and pain.

[Pg 64]

[Pg 65]
XII

Somehow the night had passed—somehow in bitterness, in anguish. But it had passed.

Ernest's lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted Reginald in the studio.

Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in his most characteristic pose, supporting his head with his hand and looking with clear piercing eyes searchingly at the boy.

"Yes," he observed, "it's a most curious psychical phenomenon."

"You cannot imagine how real it all seemed to me."

The boy spoke painfully, dazed, as if struck by a blow.

"Even now it is as if something has gone from me, some struggling thought that I cannot—cannot remember."

[Pg 66]Reginald regarded him as a physical experimenter might look upon the subject of a particularly baffling mental disease.

"You must not think, my boy, that I bear you any malice for your extraordinary delusion. Before Jack went away he gave me an exact account of all that has happened. Divers incidents recurred to him from which it appears that, at various times in the past, you have been on the verge of a nervous collapse."

A nervous collapse! What was the use of this term but a euphemism for insanity?

"Do not despair, dear child," Reginald caressingly remarked. "Your disorder is not hopeless, not incurable. Such crises come to every man who writes. It is the tribute we pay to the Lords of Song. The minnesinger of the past wrote with his heart's blood; but we moderns dip our pen into the sap of our nerves. We analyse life, love art—and the dissecting knife that we use on other men's souls finally turns against ourselves.

"But what shall a man do? Shall he sacrifice art to hygiene and surrender the one attribute that makes him chiefest of created [Pg 67]things? Animals, too, think. Some walk on two legs. But introspection differentiates man from the rest. Shall we yield up the sweet consciousness of self that we derive from the analysis of our emotion, for the contentment of the bull that ruminates in the shade of a tree or the healthful stupidity of a mule?"

"Assuredly not."

"But what shall a man do?"

"Ah, that I cannot tell. Mathematics offers definite problems that admit of a definite solution. Life states its problems with less exactness and offers for each a different solution. One and one are two to-day and to-morrow. Psychical values, on each manipulation, will yield a different result. Still, your case is quite clear. You have overworked yourself in the past, mentally and emotionally. You have sown unrest, and must not be surprised if neurasthenia is the harvest thereof."

"Do you think—that I should go to some sanitarium?" the boy falteringly asked.

"God forbid! Go to the seashore, somewhere where you can sleep and play. Take your body along, but leave your brain behind—[Pg 68]at least do not take more of it with you than is necessary. The summer season in Atlantic City has just begun. There, as everywhere in American society, you will be much more welcome if you come without brains."

Reginald's half-bantering tone reassured Ernest a little. Timidly he dared approach once more the strange event that had wrought such havoc with his nervous equilibrium.

"How do you account for my strange obsession—one might almost call it a mania?"

"If it could be accounted for it would not be strange."

"Can you suggest no possible explanation?"

"Perhaps a stray leaf on my desk a few indications of the plot, a remark—who knows? Perhaps thought-matter is floating in the air. Perhaps—but we had better not talk of it now. It would needlessly excite you."

"You are right," answered Ernest gloomily, "let us not talk of it. But whatever may be said, it is a marvellous play."

"You flatter me. There is nothing in it that you may not be able to do equally well—some day."

[Pg 69]"Ah, no," the boy replied, looking up to Reginald with admiration. "You are the master."

[Pg 70]

[Pg 71]
XIII

Lazily Ernest stretched his limbs on the beach of Atlantic City. The sea, that purger of sick souls, had washed away the fever and the fret of the last few days. The wind was in his hair and the spray was in his breath, while the rays of the sun kissed his bare arms and legs. He rolled over in the glittering sand in the sheer joy of living.

Now and then a wavelet stole far into the beach, as if to caress him, but pined away ere it could reach its goal. It was as if the enamoured sea was stretching out its arms to him. Who knows, perhaps through the clear water some green-eyed nymph, or a young sea-god with the tang of the sea in his hair, was peering amorously at the boy's red mouth. The people of the deep love the red warm blood of human kind. It is always the young that they lure to their watery haunts, never the [Pg 72]shrivelled limbs that totter shivering to the grave.

Such fancies came to Ernest as he lay on the shore in his bathing attire, happy, thoughtless,—animal.

The sun and the sea seemed to him two lovers vying for his favor. The sudden change of environment had brought complete relaxation and had quieted his rebellious, assertive soul. He was no longer a solitary unit but one with wind and water, herb and beach and shell. Almost voluptuously his hand toyed with the hot sand that glided caressingly through his fingers and buried his breast and shoulder under its glittering burden.

A summer girl who passed lowered her eyes coquettishly. He watched her without stirring. Even to open his mouth or to smile would have seemed too much exertion.

Thus he lay for hours. When at length noon drew nigh, it cost him a great effort of will to shake off his drowsy mood and exchange his airy costume for the conventional habilaments of the dining-room.

He had taken lodgings in a fashionable [Pg 73]hotel. An unusual stroke of good luck, hack-work that paid outrageously well, had made it possible for him to idle for a time without a thought of the unpleasant necessity of making money.

One single article to which he signed his name only with reluctance had brought to him more gear than a series of golden sonnets.

"Surely," he thought, "the social revolution ought to begin from above. What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives for a week's work almost more than I for a song?"

Thus soliloquising, he reached the dining-room. The scene that unfolded itself before him was typical—the table over-loaded, the women over-dressed.

The luncheon was already in full course when he came. He mumbled an apology and seated himself on the only remaining chair next to a youth who reminded him of a well-dressed dummy. With slight weariness his eyes wandered in all directions for more congenial faces when they were arrested by a lady on the opposite side of the table. She was [Pg 74]clad in a silk robe with curiously embroidered net-work that revealed a nervous and delicate throat. The rich effect of the net-work was relieved by the studied simplicity with which her heavy chestnut-colored hair was gathered in a single knot. Her face was turned away from him, but there was something in the carriage of her head that struck him as familiar. When at last she looked him in the face, the glass almost fell from his hand: it was Ethel Brandenbourg. She seemed to notice his embarrassment and smiled. When she opened her lips to speak, he knew by the haunting sweetness of the voice that he was not mistaken.

"Tell me," she said wistfully, "you have forgotten me? They all have."

He hastened to assure her that he had not forgotten her. He recollected now that he had first been introduced to her in Walkham's house some years ago, when a mere college boy, he had been privileged to attend one of that master's famous receptions. She had looked quite resolute and very happy then, not at all like the woman who had stared so [Pg 75]strangely at Reginald in the Broadway restaurant.

He regarded this encounter as very fortunate. He knew so much of her personal history that it almost seemed to him as if they had been intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar ground with him. Neither as much as whispered the name of Reginald Clarke. Yet it was he, and the knowledge of what he was to them, that linked their souls with a common bond.

[Pg 76]

[Pg 77]
XIV

It was the third day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy had increased. Ethel was sitting in a large wicker-chair. She restlessly fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand. Ernest lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between his hands, he gazed into her eyes.

"Why are you trying so hard to make love to me?" the woman asked, with the half-amused smile with which the Eve near thirty receives the homage of a boy. There is an element of insincerity in that smile, but it is a weapon of defence against love's artillery.

Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in the boy's eyes and the cry of the blood pierces the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves and loses.

Ethel Brandenbourg was listening, but the idea of love had not yet entered into her mind.[Pg 78] Her interest in Ernest was due in part to his youth and the trembling in his voice when he spoke of love. But what probably attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately knew the man who still held her woman's heart in the hollow of his hand. It was half in play, therefore, that she had asked him that question.

Why did he make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it was the irresistible desire to be petted which young poets share with domesticated cats. But what should he tell her? Polite platitudes were out of place between them.

Besides he knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the most precious, the only irretrievable thing in the universe—time. And to him time was song; for money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his lips with rhythmic speech; only in the intervals of his singing might he listen to the voice of his heart—strangest of all watches, that tells [Pg 79]the time not by minutes and hours, but by the coming and going of love.

The woman beside him seemed to read his thoughts.

"Child, child," she said, "why will you toy with love? Like Jehovah, he is a jealous god, and nothing but the whole heart can placate him. Woe to the woman who takes a poet for a lover. I admit it is fascinating, but it is playing va banque. In fact, it is fatal. Art or love will come to harm. No man can minister equally to both. A genuine poet is incapable of loving a woman."

"Pshaw! You exaggerate. Of course, there is a measure of truth in what you say, but it is only one side of the truth, and the truth, you know, is always Janus-faced. In fact, it often has more than two faces. I can assure you that I have cared deeply for the women to whom my love-poetry was written. And you will not deny that it is genuine."

"God forbid! Only you have been using the wrong preposition. You should have said that it was written at them."

Ernest stared at her in child-like wonder.

[Pg 80]"By Jove! you are too devilishly clever!" he exclaimed.

After a little silence he said not without hesitation: "And do you apply your theory to all artists, or only to us makers of rhyme?"

"To all," she replied.

He looked at her questioningly.

"Yes," she said, with a new sadness in her voice, "I, too, have paid the price."

"You mean?"

"I loved."

"And art?"

"That was the sacrifice."

"Perhaps you have chosen the better part," Ernest said without conviction.

"No," she replied, "my tribute was brought in vain."

This she said calmly, but Ernest knew that her words were of tragic import.

"You love him still?" he observed simply.

Ethel made no reply. Sadness clouded her face like a veil or like a grey mist over the face of the waters. Her eyes went out to the sea, following the sombre flight of the sea-mews.

[Pg 81]In that moment he could have taken her in his arms and kissed her with infinite tenderness.

But tenderness between man and woman is like a match in a powder-magazine. The least provocation, and an amorous explosion will ensue, tumbling down the card-houses of platonic affection. If he yielded to the impulse of the moment, the wine of the springtide would set their blood afire, and from the flames within us there is no escape.

"Come, come," she said, "you do not love me."

He protested.

"Ah!" she cried triumphantly, "how many sonnets would you give for me? If you were a usurer in gold instead of in rhyme, I would ask how many dollars. But it is unjust to pay in a coin that we value little. To a man starving in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than all the treasures of the earth. To you, I warrant your poems are the standard of appreciation. How many would you give for me? One, two, three?"

"More."

[Pg 82]"Because you think love would repay you with compound interest," she observed merrily.

He laughed.

And when love turns to laughter the danger is passed for the moment.

[Pg 83]
XV

Thus three weeks passed without apparent change in their relations. Ernest possessed a personal magnetism that, always emanating from him, was felt most deeply when withdrawn. He was at all times involuntarily exerting his power, which she ever resisted, always on the alert, always warding off.

When at last pressure of work made his immediate departure for New York imperative, he had not apparently gained the least ground. But Ethel knew in her heart that she was fascinated, if not in love. The personal fascination was supplemented by a motherly feeling toward Ernest that, sensuous in essence, was in itself not far removed from love. She struggled bravely and with external success against her emotions, never losing sight of the fact that twenty and thirty are fifty.

Increasingly aware of her own weakness, [Pg 84]she constantly attempted to lead the conversation into impersonal channels, speaking preferably of his work.

"Tell me," she said, negligently fanning herself, "what new inspiration have you drawn from your stay at the seaside?"

"Why," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "volumes and volumes of it. I shall write the great novel of my life after I am once more quietly installed at Riverside Drive."

"The great American novel?" she rejoined.

"Perhaps."

"Who will be your hero—Clarke?"

There was a slight touch of malice in her words, or rather in the pause between the penultimate word and the last. Ernest detected its presence, and knew that her love for Reginald was dead. Stiff and cold it lay in her heart's chamber—beside how many others?—all emboxed in the coffin of memory.

"No," he replied after a while, a little piqued by her suggestion, "Clarke is not the hero. What makes you think that he casts a spell on everything I do?"

"Dear child," she replied, "I know him.[Pg 85] He cannot fail to impress his powerful personality upon all with whom he comes in contact, to the injury of their intellectual independence. Moreover, he is so brilliant and says everything so much better than anybody else, that by his very splendor he discourages effort in others. At best his influence will shape your development according to the tenets of his mind—curious, subtle and corrupted. You will become mentally distorted, like one of those hunchback Japanese trees, infinitely wrinkled and infinitely grotesque, whose laws of growth are not determined by nature, but by the diseased imagination of the East."

"I am no weakling," Ernest asserted, "and your picture of Clarke is altogether out of perspective. His splendid successes are to me a source of constant inspiration. We have some things in common, but I realise that it is along entirely different lines that success will come to me. He has never sought to influence me, in fact, I never received the smallest suggestion from him." Here the Princess Marigold seemed to peer at him through the veil of the past, but he waved her aside. "As for [Pg 86]my story," he continued, "you need not go so far out of your way to find the leading character?"

"Who can it be?" Ethel remarked, with a merry twinkle, "You?"

"Ethel," he said sulkingly, "be serious. You know that it is you."

"I am immensely flattered," she replied. "Really, nothing pleases me better than to be immortalised in print, since I have little hope nowadays of perpetuating my name by virtue of pencil or brush. I have been put into novels before and am consumed with curiosity to hear the plot of yours."

"If you don't mind, I had rather not tell you just yet," Ernest said. "It's going to be called Leontina—that's you. But all depends on the treatment. You know it doesn't matter much what you say so long as you say it well. That's what counts. At any rate, any indication of the plot at this stage would be decidedly inadequate."

"I think you are right," she ventured. "By all means choose your own time to tell me. Let's talk of something else. Have you writ[Pg 87]ten anything since your delightful book of verse last spring? Surely now is your singing season. By the time we are thirty the springs of pure lyric passion are usually exhausted."

Ethel's inquiry somehow startled him. In truth, he could find no satisfactory answer. A remark relative to his play—Clarke's play—rose to the threshold of his lips, but he almost bit his tongue as soon as he realised that the strange delusion which had possessed him that night still dominated the undercurrents of his cerebration. No, he had accomplished but little during the last few months—at least, by way of creative literature. So he replied that he had made money. "That is something," he said. "Besides, who can turn out a masterpiece every week? An artist's brain is not a machine, and in the respite from creative work I have gathered strength for the future. But," he added, slightly annoyed, "you are not listening."

His exclamation brought her back from the train of thoughts that his words had suggested. For in his reasoning she had recognised the [Pg 88]same arguments that she had hourly repeated to herself in defence of her inactivity when she was living under the baneful influence of Reginald Clarke. Yes, baneful; for the first time she dared to confess it to herself. In a flash the truth dawned upon her that it was not her love alone, but something else, something irresistable and very mysterious, that had dried up the well of creation in her. Could it be that the same power was now exerting its influence upon the struggling soul of this talented boy? Rack her brains as she might, she could not definitely formulate her apprehensions and a troubled look came into her eyes.

"Ethel," the boy repeated, impatiently, "why are you not listening? Do you realise that I must leave you in half an hour?"

She looked at him with deep tenderness. Something like a tear lent a soft radiance to her large child-like eyes.

Ernest saw it and was profoundly moved. In that moment he loved her passionately.

"Foolish boy," she said softly; then, lowering her voice to a whisper: "You may kiss me before you go."

[Pg 89]His lips gently touched hers, but she took his head between her hands and pressed her mouth upon his in a long kiss.

Ernest drew back a little awkwardly. He had not been kissed like this before.

"Poet though you are," Ethel whispered, "you have not yet learned to kiss."

She was deeply agitated when she noticed that his hand was fumbling for the watch in his vest-pocket. She suddenly released him, and said, a little hurt: "No, you must not miss your train. Go by all means."

Vainly Ernest remonstrated with her.

"Go to him," she said, and again, "go to him."

With a heavy heart the boy obeyed. He waved his hat to her once more from below, and then rapidly disappeared in the crowd. For a moment strange misgivings cramped her heart, and something within her called out to him: "Do not go! Do not return to that house." But no sound issued from her lips. Worldly wisdom had sealed them, had stifled the inner voice. And soon the boy's golden head was swallowed up in the distance.

[Pg 90]

[Pg 91]
XVI

While the train sped to New York, Ethel Brandenbourg was the one object engaging Ernest's mind. He still felt the pressure of her lips upon his, and his nostrils dilated at the thought of the fragrance of her hair brushing against his forehead.

But the moment his foot touched the ferry-boat that was to take him to Manhattan, the past three weeks were, for the time being at least, completely obliterated from his memory. All his other interests that he had suppressed in her company because she had no part in them, came rushing back to him. He anticipated with delight his meeting with Reginald Clarke. The personal attractiveness of the man had never seemed so powerful to Ernest as when he had not heard from him for some time. Reginald's letters were always brief. "Professional writers," he was wont to say,[Pg 92] "cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private correspondence. They must turn it into copy." He longed to sit with the master in the studio when the last rays of the daylight were tremulously falling through the stained window, and to discuss far into the darkening night philosophies young and old. He longed for Reginald's voice, his little mannerisms, the very perfume of his rooms.

There also was a deluge of letters likely to await him in his apartment. For in his hurried departure he had purposely left his friends in the dark as to his whereabouts. Only to Jack he had dropped a little note the day after his meeting with Ethel.

He earnestly hoped to find Reginald at home, though it was well nigh ten o'clock in the evening, and he cursed the "rapid transit" for its inability to annihilate space and time. It is indeed disconcerting to think how many months, if not years, of our earthly sojourn the dwellers in cities spend in transportation conveyances that must be set down as a dead loss in the ledger of life. A nervous impatience against things material overcame Ernest [Pg 93]in the subway. It is ever the mere stupid obstacle of matter that weights down the wings of the soul and prevents it from soaring upward to the sun.

When at last he had reached the house, he learned from the hall-boy that Clarke had gone out. Ruffled in temper he entered his rooms and went over his mail. There were letters from editors with commissions that he could not afford to reject. Everywhere newspapers and magazines opened their yawning mouths to swallow up what time he had. He realised at once that he would have to postpone the writing of his novel for several weeks, if not longer.

Among the letters was one from Jack. It bore the postmark of a little place in the Adirondacks where he was staying with his parents. Ernest opened the missive not without hesitation. On reading and rereading it the fine lines on his forehead, that would some day deepen into wrinkles, became quite pronounced and a look of displeasure darkened his face. Something was wrong with Jack, a slight change that defied analysis. Their souls were [Pg 94]out of tune. It might only be a passing disturbance; perhaps it was his own fault. It pained him, nevertheless. Somehow it seemed of late that Jack was no longer able to follow the vagaries of his mind. Only one person in the world possessed a similar mental vision, only one seemed to understand what he said and what he left unsaid. Reginald Clarke, being a man and poet, read in his soul as in an open book. Ethel might have understood, had not love, like a cloud, laid itself between her eyes and the page.

It was with exultation that Ernest heard near midnight the click of Reginald's key in the door. He found him unchanged, completely, radiantly himself. Reginald possessed the psychic power of undressing the soul, of seeing it before him in primal nakedness. Although no word was said of Ethel Brandenbourg except the mere mention of her presence in Atlantic City, Ernest intuitively knew that Reginald was aware of the transformation that absence had wrought in him. In the presence of this man he could be absolutely himself, without shame or fear of mis-[Pg 95]understanding; and by a strange metamorphosis, all his affection for Ethel and Jack went out for the time being to Reginald Clarke.

[Pg 96]

[Pg 97]
XVII

The next day Ernest wrote a letter of more or less superficial tenderness to Ethel. She had wounded his pride by proving victorious in the end over his passion and hers; besides, he was in the throes of work. When after the third day no answer came, he was inclined to feel aggrieved. It was plain now that she had not cared for him in the least, but had simply played with him for lack of another toy. A flush of shame rose to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyse his own emotions, and stunned, if not stabbed, his passion step by step. Work was calling to him. It was that which gave life its meaning, not the love of a season. How far away, how unreal, she now seemed to him. Yes, she was right, he had not cared deeply; and his novel, too, would be written only at her. It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his interest, not the living prototype.

Once in a conversation with Reginald he [Pg 98]touched upon the subject. Reginald held that modern taste no longer permitted even the photographer to portray life as it is, but insisted upon an individual visualisation. "No man," he remarked, "was ever translated bodily into fiction. In contradiction to life, art is a process of artificial selection."

Bearing in mind this motive, Ernest went to work to mould from the material in hand a new Ethel, more real than life. Unfortunately he found little time to devote to his novel. It was only when, after a good day's work, a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his desk, that he could think of concentrating his mind upon "Leontina." The result was that when he went to bed his imagination was busy with the plan of his book, and the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on his eyelid so that he could not sleep.

When at last sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still at work, not in orderly sequence but along trails monstrous and grotesque. Hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and leering incubi oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning he [Pg 99]awoke unrested. The tan vanished from his face and little lines appeared in the corners of his mouth. It was as if his nervous vitality were sapped from him in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often at night when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator outside brought him back to himself.

In one of his morbid moods he wrote a sonnet which he showed to Reginald after the latter's return from a short trip out of town. Reginald read it, looking at the boy with a curious, lurking expression.

O gentle Sleep, turn not thy face away,
But place thy finger on my brow, and take
All burthens from me and all dreams that ache;
Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,
Seeing I am aweary of the day.
But, lo! thy lips are ashen and they quake.
What spectral vision sees thou that can shake
Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay?
Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam
[Pg 100] Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream
Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head
Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse
The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,
Or startle Nero in his golden house.

"Good stuff," Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did you write it?"

"The night when you were out of town," Ernest rejoined.

"I see," Reginald replied.

There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused Ernest's attention.

"What do you see?" he asked quickly.

"Nothing," Reginald replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state of nerves is still far from satisfactory."

[Pg 101]
XVIII

After Ernest's departure Ethel Brandenbourg's heart was swaying hither and thither in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into chaos. A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words, reechoing with an ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love. His jewelled sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique. Ethel clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from Reginald's lips had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of Reginald's visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her from between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason came [Pg 102]and whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to give her heart into the keeping of a boy. His love, she knew, would have been exacting, irritating at times. He would have asked her to sympathise with every phase of his life, and would have expected active interest on her part in much that she had done with long ago. Thus, untruth would have stolen into her life and embittered it. When mates are unequal, Love must paint its cheeks and, in certain moods at least, hide its face under a mask. Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and sorrow in its train.

These things she told herself over and over again while she penned a cool and calculating answer to Ernest's letter. She rewrote it many times, and every time it became more difficult to reply. At last she put her letter aside for a few days, and when it fell again into her hand it seemed so unnatural and strained that she destroyed it.

Thus several weeks had passed, and Ernest no longer exclusively occupied her mind when, one day early in September, while glancing over a magazine, she came upon his name in [Pg 103]the table of contents. Once more she saw the boy's wistful face before her, and a trembling something stirred in her heart. Her hand shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem. It was a piece of sombre brilliance. Like black-draped monks half crazed with mystic devotion, the poet's thoughts flitted across the page. It was the wail of a soul that feels reason slipping from it and beholds madness rise over its life like a great pale moon. A strange unrest emanated from it and took possession of her. And again, with an insight that was prophetic, she distinctly recognised behind the vague fear that had haunted the poet the figure of Reginald Clarke.

A half-forgotten dream, struggling to consciousness, staggered her by its vividness. She saw Clarke as she had seen him in days gone by, grotesquely transformed into a slimy sea-thing, whose hungry mouths shut sucking upon her and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence. And in that moment it became [Pg 104]clear to her that she must take into her hands the salvation of Ernest Fielding from the clutches of the malign power that had mysteriously enveloped his life.

[Pg 105]
XIX

The summer was brief, and already by the middle of September many had returned to the pleasures of urban life. Ethel was among the first-comers; for, after her resolve to enter the life of the young poet once more, it would have been impossible for her to stay away from the city much longer. Her plan was all ready. Before attempting to see Ernest she would go to meet Reginald and implore him to free the boy from his hideous spell. An element of curiosity unconsciously entered her determination. When, years ago, she and Clarke had parted, the man had seemed, for once, greatly disturbed and had promised, in his agitation, that some day he would communicate to her what would exonerate him in her eyes. She had answered that all words between them were purposeless, and that she hoped never to see his face again. The experi[Pg 106]ence that the years had brought to her, instead of elucidating the mystery of Reginald's personality, had, on the contrary, made his behaviour appear more and more unaccountable. She had more than once caught herself wishing to meet him again and to analyse dispassionately the puzzling influences he had exerted upon her. And she could at last view him dispassionately; there was triumph in that. She was dimly aware that something had passed from her, something by which he had held her, and without which his magnetism was unable to play upon her.

So when Walkham sent her an invitation to one of his artistic "at homes" she accepted, in the hope of meeting Reginald. It was his frequentation of Walkham's house that had for several years effectively barred her foot from crossing the threshold. It was with a very strange feeling she greeted the many familiar faces at Walkham's now; and when, toward ten o'clock, Reginald entered, politely bowing in answer to the welcome from all sides, her heart beat in her like a drum. But she calmed herself, and, catching his eye, so [Pg 107]arranged it that early in the evening they met in an alcove of the drawing-room.

"It was inevitable," Reginald said. "I expected it."

"Yes," she replied, "we were bound to meet."

Like a great rush of water, memory came back to her. He was still horribly fascinating as of old—only she was no longer susceptible to his fascination. He had changed somewhat in those years. The lines about his mouth had grown harder and a steel-like look had come into his eyes. Only for a moment, as he looked at her, a flash of tenderness seemed to come back to them. Then he said, with a touch of sadness: "Why should the first word between us be a lie?"

Ethel made no answer.

Reginald looked at her half in wonder and said: "And is your love for the boy so great that it overcame your hate of me?"

Ah, he knew! She winced.

"He has told you?"

"Not a word."

There was something superhuman in his [Pg 108]power of penetration. Why should she wear a mask before him, when his eyes, like the eyes of God, pierced to the core of her being?

"No," she replied, "it is not love, but compassion for him."

"Compassion?"

"Yes, compassion for your victim."

"You mean?"

"Reginald!"

"I am all ear."

"I implore you."

"Speak."

"You have ruined one life."

He raised his eyebrows derogatively.

"Yes," she continued fiercely, "ruined it! Is not that enough?"

"I have never wilfully ruined any one's life."

"You have ruined mine."

"Wilfully?"

"How else shall I explain your conduct?"

"I warned you."

"Warning, indeed! The warning that the snake gives to the sparrow helpless under its gaze."

[Pg 109]"Ah, but who tells you that the snake is to blame? Is it not rather the occult power that prescribes with blood on brazen scroll the law of our being?"

"This is no solace to the sparrow. But whatever may be said, let us drop the past. Let us consider the present. I beg of you, leave this boy—let him develop without your attempting to stifle the life in him or impressing upon it the stamp of your alien mind."

"Ethel," he protested, "you are unjust. If you knew—" Then an idea seemed to take hold of him. He looked at her curiously.

"What if I knew?" she asked.

"You shall know," he said, simply. "Are you strong?"

"Strong to withstand anything at your hand. There is nothing that you can give me, nothing that you can take away."

"No," he remarked, "nothing. Yes, you have changed. Still, when I look upon you, the ghosts of the past seem to rise like live things."

"We both have changed. We meet now [Pg 110]upon equal grounds. You are no longer the idol I made of you."

"Don't you think that to the idol this might be a relief, not a humiliation? It is a terrible torture to sit in state with lips eternally shut. Sometimes there comes over the most reticent of us a desire to break through the eternal loneliness that surrounds the soul. It is this feeling that prompts madmen to tear off their clothes and exhibit their nakedness in the market-place. It's madness on my part, or a whim, or I don't know what; but it pleases me that you should know the truth."

"You promised me long ago that I should."

"To-day I will redeem my promise, and I will tell you another thing that you will find hard to believe."

"And that is?"

"That I loved you."

Ethel smiled a little sceptically. "You have loved often."

"No," he replied. "Loved, seriously loved, I have, only once."

[Pg 111]
XX

They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant where they had often, in the old days, lingered late into the night over a glass of Lacrimæ Christi. But no pale ghost of the past rose from the wine. Only a wriggling something, with serpent eyes, that sent cold shivers down her spine and held her speechless and entranced.

When their order had been filled and the waiter had posted himself at a respectful distance, Reginald began—at first leisurely, a man of the world. But as he proceeded a strange exultation seemed to possess him and from his eyes leaped the flame of the mystic.

"You must pardon me," he commenced, "if I monopolise the conversation, but the revelations I have to make are of such a nature that I may well claim your attention. I will start with my earliest childhood. You remember [Pg 112]the picture of me that was taken when I was five?"

She remembered, indeed. Each detail of his life was deeply engraven on her mind.

"At that time," he continued, "I was not held to be particularly bright. The reason was that my mind, being pre-eminently and extraordinarily receptive, needed a stimulus from without. The moment I was sent to school, however, a curious metamorphosis took place in me. I may say that I became at once the most brilliant boy in my class. You know that to this day I have always been the most striking figure in any circle in which I have ever moved."

Ethel nodded assent. Silently watching the speaker, she saw a gleam of the truth from afar, but still very distant and very dim.

Reginald lifted the glass against the light and gulped its contents. Then in a lower voice he recommenced: "Like the chameleon, I have the power of absorbing the colour of my environment."

"Do you mean that you have the power of [Pg 113]absorbing the special virtues of other people?" she interjected.

"That is exactly what I mean."

"Oh!" she cried, for in a heart-beat many things had become clear to her. For the first time she realised, still vaguely but with increasing vividness, the hidden causes of her ruin and, still more plainly, the horrible danger of Ernest Fielding.

He noticed her agitation, and a look of psychological curiosity came into his eyes.

"Ah, but that is not all," he observed, smilingly. "That is nothing. We all possess that faculty in a degree. The secret of my strength is my ability to reject every element that is harmful or inessential to the completion of my self. This did not come to me easily, nor without a struggle. But now, looking back upon my life, many things become transparent that were obscure even to me at the time. I can now follow the fine-spun threads in the intricate web of my fate, and discover in the wilderness of meshes a design, awful and grandly planned."

His voice shook with conviction, as he ut[Pg 114]tered these words. There was something strangely gruesome in this man. It was thus that she had pictured to herself the high-priest of some terrible and mysterious religion, demanding a human sacrifice to appease the hunger of his god. She was fascinated by the spell of his personality, and listened with a feeling not far removed from awe. But Reginald suddenly changed his tone and proceeded in a more conversational manner.

"The first friend I ever cared for was a boy marvellously endowed for the study of mathematics. At the time of our first meeting at school, I was unable to solve even the simplest algebraical problem. But we had been together only for half a month, when we exchanged parts. It was I who was the mathematical genius now, whereas he became hopelessly dull and stuttered through his recitations only with a struggle that brought the tears to his eyes. Then I discarded him. Heartless, you say? I have come to know better. Have you ever tasted a bottle of wine that had been uncorked for a long time? If you have, you have probably found it flat—the essence was [Pg 115]gone, evaporated. Thus it is when we care for people. Probably—no, assuredly—there is some principle prisoned in their souls, or in the windings of their brains, which, when escaped, leaves them insipid, unprofitable and devoid of interest to us. Sometimes this essence—not necessarily the finest element in a man's or a woman's nature, but soul-stuff that we lack—disappears. In fact, it invariably disappears. It may be that it has been transformed in the processes of their growth; it may also be that it has utterly vanished by some inadvertence, or that we ourselves have absorbed it."

"Then we throw them away?" Ethel asked, pale, but dry-eyed. A shudder passed through her body and she clinched her glass nervously. At that moment Reginald resembled a veritable Prince of Darkness, sinister and beautiful, painted by the hand of a modern master. Then, for a space, he again became the man of the world. Smiling and self-possessed, he filled the glasses, took a long sip of the wine and resumed his narrative.

"That boy was followed by others. I ab[Pg 116]sorbed many useless things and some that were evil. I realised that I must direct my absorptive propensities. This I did. I selected, selected well. And all the time the terrible power of which I was only half conscious grew within me."

"It is indeed a terrible power," she cried; "all the more terrible for its subtlety. Had I not myself been its victim, I should not now find it possible to believe in it."

"The invisible hand that smites in the dark is certainly more fearful than a visible foe. It is also more merciful. Think how much you would have suffered had you been conscious of your loss."

"Still it seems even now to me that it cannot have been an utter, irreparable loss. There is no action without reaction. Even I—even we—must have received from you some compensation for what you have taken away."

"In the ordinary processes of life the law of action and reaction is indeed potent. But no law is without exception. Think of radium, for instance, with its constant and seemingly inexhaustible outflow of energy. It is a diffi[Pg 117]cult thing to imagine, but our scientific men have accepted it as a fact. Why should we find it more difficult to conceive of a tremendous and infinite absorptive element? I feel sure that it must somewhere exist. But every phenomenon in the physical world finds its counterpart in the psychical universe. There are radium-souls that radiate without loss of energy, but also without increase. And there are souls, the reverse of radium, with unlimited absorptive capacities."

"Vampire-souls," she observed, with a shudder, and her face blanched.

"No," he said, "don't say that." And then he suddenly seemed to grow in stature. His face was ablaze, like the face of a god.

"In every age," he replied, with solemnity, "there are giants who attain to a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever have reached. But in their youth a vision came to them, which they set out to seek. They take the stones of fancy to build them a palace in the kingdom of truth, projecting into reality dreams, monstrous and impossible. Often they fail and, tumbling from their airy [Pg 118]heights, end a quixotic career. Some succeed. They are the chosen. Carpenter's sons they are, who have laid down the Law of a World for milleniums to come; or simple Corsicans, before whose eagle eye have quaked the kingdoms of the earth. But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron and the wit of a hundred men. And from the iron they take the strength, and from a hundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, they appear in all departments of life. In their hand is gathered to-day the gold of the world. Mighty potentates of peace and war, they unlock new seas and from distant continents lift the bars. Single-handed, they accomplish what nations dared not hope; with Titan strides they scale the stars and succeed where millions fail. In art they live, the makers of new periods, the dreamers of new styles. They make themselves the vocal sun-glasses of God. Homer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Balzac—they concentrate the dispersed rays of a thousand lesser luminaries in one singing flame that, like a giant torch, lights up humanity's path."

[Pg 119]She gazed at him, open-mouthed. The light had gone from his visage. He paused, exhausted, but even then he looked the incarnation of a force no less terrible, no less grand. She grasped the immensity of his conception, but her woman's soul rebelled at the horrible injustice to those whose light is extinguished, as hers had been, to feed an alien flame. And then, for a moment, she saw the pale face of Ernest staring at her out of the wine.

"Cruel," she sobbed, "how cruel!"

"What matter?" he asked. "Their strength is taken from them, but the spirit of humanity, as embodied in us, triumphantly marches on."

[Pg 120]

[Pg 121]
XXI

Reginald's revelations were followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, they exchanged a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mind returned, again and again, to the word he had not spoken. He had said nothing of the immediate bearing of his monstrous power upon her own life and that of Ernest Fielding.

At last, somewhat timidly, she approached the subject.

"You said you loved me," she remarked.

"I did."

"But why, then—"

"I could not help it."

"Did you ever make the slightest attempt?"

"In the horrible night hours I struggled against it. I even implored you to leave me."

"Ah, but I loved you!"

[Pg 122]"You would not be warned, you would not listen. You stayed with me, and slowly, surely, the creative urge went out of your life."

"But what on earth could you find in my poor art to attract you? What were my pictures to you?"

"I needed them, I needed you. It was a certain something, a rich colour effect, perhaps. And then, under your very eyes, the colour that vanished from your canvases reappeared in my prose. My style became more luxurious than it had been, while you tortured your soul in the vain attempt of calling back to your brush what was irretrievably lost."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"You would have laughed in my face, and I could not have endured your laugh. Besides, I always hoped, until it was too late, that I might yet check the mysterious power within me. Soon, however, I became aware that it was beyond my control. The unknown god, whose instrument I am, had wisely made it stronger than me."

"But why," retorted Ethel, "was it neces[Pg 123]sary to discard me, like a cast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the power to please?"

Her frame shook with the remembered emotion of that moment, when years ago he had politely told her that she was nothing to him.

"The law of being," Reginald replied, almost sadly, "the law of my being. I should have pitied you, but the eternal reproach of your suffering only provoked my anger. I cared less for you every day, and when I had absorbed all of you that my growth required, you were to me as one dead, as a stranger you were. There was between us no further community of interest; henceforth, I knew, our lives must move in totally different spheres. You remember that day when we said good-bye?"

"You mean that day when I lay before you on my knees," she corrected him.

"That day I buried my last dream of personal happiness. I would have gladly raised you from the floor, but love was utterly gone. If I am tenderer to-day than I am wont to be, it is because you mean so much to me as the [Pg 124]symbol of my renunciation. When I realised that I could not even save the thing I loved from myself, I became hardened and cruel to others. Not that I know no kindly feeling, but no qualms of conscience lay their prostrate forms across my path. There is nothing in life for me but my mission."

His face was bathed in ecstasy. The pupils were luminous, large and threatening. He had the look of a madman or a prophet.

After a while Ethel remarked: "But you have grown into one of the master-figures of the age. Why not be content with that? Is there no limit to your ambition?"

Reginald smiled: "Ambition! Shakespeare stopped when he had reached his full growth, when he had exhausted the capacity of his contemporaries. I am not yet ready to lay down my pen and rest."

"And will you always continue in this criminal course, a murderer of other lives?"

He looked her calmly in the face. "I do not know."

"Are you the slave of your unknown god?"

"We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes:[Pg 125] You, Ernest, I. There is no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no hand."

"Then," Ethel retorted, eagerly, "if I attempted to wrest your victim from you, I should also be the tool of your god?"

"Assuredly. But I am his chosen."

"Can you—can you not set him free?"

"I need him—a little longer. Then he is yours."

"But can you not, if I beg you again on my knees, at least loosen his chains before he is utterly ruined?"

"It is beyond my power. If I could not rescue you, whom I loved, what in heaven or on earth can save him from his fate? Besides, he will not be utterly ruined. It is only a part of him that I absorb. In his soul are chords that I have not touched. They may vibrate one day, when he has gathered new strength. You, too, would have spared yourself much pain had you striven to attain success in different [Pg 126]fields—not where I had garnered the harvest of a lifetime. It is only a portion of his talent that I take from him. The rest I cannot harm. Why should he bury that remainder?"

His eyes strayed through the window to the firmament, as if to say that words could no more bend his indomitable will than alter the changeless course of the stars.

Ethel had half-forgotten the wrong she herself had suffered at his hands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling madman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions. But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginald crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding, as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upon a fly.

Love, all conquering love, welled up in her. She would fight for Ernest as a tiger cat fights for its young. She would place herself in the way of the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations, and save, at any cost, the brilliant boy who did not love her.

[Pg 127]
XXII

The last rays of the late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest's window. He was lying on his couch, in a leaden, death-like slumber that, for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by the presence of Reginald Clarke.

The latter was standing at the boy's bedside, calm, unmoved as ever. The excitement of his conversation with Ethel had left no trace on the chiselled contour of his forehead. Smilingly fastening an orchid of an indefinable purple tint in his evening coat, radiant, buoyant with life, he looked down upon the sleeper. Then he passed his hand over Ernest's forehead, as if to wipe off beads of sweat. At the touch of his hand the boy stirred uneasily. When it was not withdrawn his countenance twitched in pain. He moaned as men moan under the influence of some anæsthetic, without possessing the power to break through [Pg 128]the narrow partition that separates them from death on the one side and from consciousness on the other. At last a sigh struggled to his seemingly paralysed lips, then another. Finally the babbling became articulate.

"For God's sake," he cried, in his sleep, "take that hand away!"

And all at once the benignant smile on Reginald's features was changed to a look of savage fierceness. He no longer resembled the man of culture, but a disappointed, snarling beast of prey. He took his hand from Ernest's forehead and retired cautiously through the half-open door.

Hardly had he disappeared when Ernest awoke. For a moment he looked around, like a hunted animal, then sighed with relief and buried his head in his hand. At that moment a knock at the door was heard, and Reginald re-entered, calm as before.

"I declare," he exclaimed, "you have certainly been sleeping the sleep of the just."

"It isn't laziness," Ernest replied, looking up rather pleased at the interruption. "But I've a splitting headache."

[Pg 129]"Perhaps those naps are not good for your health."

"Probably. But of late I have frequently found it necessary to exact from the day-hours the sleep which the night refuses me. I suppose it is all due to indigestion, as you have suggested. The stomach is the source of all evil."

"It is also the source of all good. The Greeks made it the seat of the soul. I have always claimed that the most important item in a great poet's biography is an exact reproduction of his menu."

"True, a man who eats a heavy beefsteak for breakfast in the morning is incapable of writing a sonnet in the afternoon."

"Yes," Reginald added, "we are what we eat and what our forefathers have eaten before us. I ascribe the staleness of American poetry to the griddle-cakes of our Puritan ancestors. I am sorry we cannot go deeper into the subject at present. But I have an invitation to dinner where I shall study, experimentally, the influence of French sauces on my versification."

[Pg 130]"Good-bye."

"Au revoir." And, with a wave of the hand, Reginald left the room.

When the door had closed behind him, Ernest's thoughts took a more serious turn. The tone of light bantering in which the preceding conversation had taken place had been assumed on his part. For the last few weeks evil dreams had tortured his sleep and cast their shadow upon his waking hours. They had ever increased in reality, in intensity and in hideousness. Even now he could see the long, tapering fingers that every night were groping in the windings of his brain. It was a well-formed, manicured hand that seemed to reach under his skull, carefully feeling its way through the myriad convolutions where thought resides.

And, oh, the agony of it all! A human mind is not a thing of stone, but alive, horribly alive to pain. What was it those fingers sought, what mysterious treasures, what jewels hidden in the under-layer of his consciousness? His brain was like a human gold-mine, quaking under the blow of the pick and the [Pg 131]tread of the miner. The miner! Ah, the miner! Ceaselessly, thoroughly, relentlessly, he opened vein after vein and wrested untold riches from the quivering ground; but each vein was a live vein and each nugget of gold a thought!

No wonder the boy was a nervous wreck. Whenever a tremulous nascent idea was formulating itself, the dream-hand clutched it and took it away, brutally severing the fine threads that bind thought to thought. And when the morning came, how his head ached! It was not an acute pain, but dull, heavy, incessant.

These sensations, Ernest frequently told himself, were morbid fancies. But then, the monomaniac who imagines that his arms have been mangled or cut from his body, might as well be without arms. Mind can annihilate obstacles. It can also create them. Psychology was no unfamiliar ground to Ernest, and it was not difficult for him to seek in some casual suggestion an explanation for his delusion, the fixed notion that haunted him day and night. But he also realized that to explain a phenomenon is not to explain it away. The man who [Pg 132]analyses his emotions cannot wholly escape them, and the shadow of fear—primal, inexplicable fear—may darken at moments of weakness the life of the subtlest psychologist and the clearest thinker.

He had never spoken to Reginald of his terrible nightmares. Coming on the heel of the fancy that he, Ernest, had written "The Princess With the Yellow Veil," a fancy that, by the way, had again possessed him of late, this new delusion would certainly arouse suspicion as to his sanity in Reginald's mind. He would probably send him to a sanitarium; he certainly would not keep him in the house. Beneficence itself in all other things, his host was not to be trifled with in any matter that interfered with his work. He would act swiftly and without mercy.

For the first time in many days Ernest thought of Abel Felton. Poor boy! What had become of him after he had been turned from the house? He would not wait for any one to tell him to pack his bundle. But then, that was impossible; Reginald was fond of him.

[Pg 133]Suddenly Ernest's meditations were interrupted by a noise at the outer door. A key was turned in the lock. It must be he—but why so soon? What could have brought him back at this hour? He opened the door and went out into the hall to see what had happened. The figure that he beheld was certainly not the person expected, but a woman, from whose shoulders a theatre-cloak fell in graceful folds,—probably a visitor for Reginald. Ernest was about to withdraw discreetly, when the electric light that was burning in the hallway fell upon her face and illumined it.

Then indeed surprise overcame him. "Ethel," he cried, "is it you?"

[Pg 134]

[Pg 135]
XXIII

Ernest conducted Ethel Brandenbourg to his room and helped her to remove her cloak.

While he was placing the garment upon the back of a chair, she slipped a little key into her hand-bag. He looked at her with a question in his eyes.

"Yes," she replied, "I kept the key; but I had not dreamed that I would ever again cross this threshold."

Meanwhile it had grown quite dark. The reflection of the street lanterns without dimly lit the room, and through the twilight fantastic shadows seemed to dance.

The perfume of her hair pervaded the room and filled the boy's heart with romance. Tenderness long suppressed called with a thousand voices. The hour, the strangeness and unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps even a boy's [Pg 136]pardonable vanity, roused passion from its slumbers and once again wrought in Ernest's soul the miracle of love. His arm encircled her neck and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy and caressing things.

"Turn on the light," she pleaded.

"You were not always so cruel."

"No matter, I have not come to speak of love."

"Why, then, have you come?"

Ernest felt a little awkward, disappointed, as he uttered these words.

What could have induced her to come to his rooms? He loosened his hold on her and did as she asked.

How pale she looked in the light, how beautiful! Surely, she had sorrowed for him; but why had she not answered his letter? Yes, why?

"Your letter?" She smiled a little sadly. "Surely you did not expect me to answer that?"

"Why not?" He had again approached her and his lips were close to hers. "Why not? I have yearned for you. I love you."

[Pg 137]His breath intoxicated her; it was like a subtle perfume. Still she did not yield.

"You love me now—you did not love me then. The music of your words was cold—machine-made, strained and superficial. I shall not answer, I told myself: in his heart he has forgotten you. I did not then realise that a dangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your mind every image but its own."

"I don't understand."

"Do you think I would have come here if it were a light matter? No, I tell you, it is a matter of life and death to you, at least as an artist."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Have you done a stroke of work since I last saw you?"

"Yes, let me see, surely, magazine articles and a poem."

"That is not what I want to know. Have you accomplished anything big? Have you grown since this summer? How about your novel?"

"I—I have almost finished it in my mind, [Pg 138]but I have found no chance to begin with the actual writing. I was sick of late, very sick."

No doubt of it! His face was pinched and pale, and the lines about the mouth were curiously contorted, like those of a man suffering from a painful internal disease.

"Tell me," she ventured, "do you ever miss anything?"

"Do you mean—are there thieves?"

"Thieves! Against thieves one can protect oneself."

He stared at her wildly, half-frightened, in anticipation of some dreadful revelation. His dream! His dream! That hand! Could it be more than a dream? God! His lips quivered.

Ethel observed his agitation and continued more quietly, but with the same insistence: "Have you ever had ideas, plans that you began without having strength to complete them? Have you had glimpses of vocal visions that seemed to vanish no sooner than seen? Did it ever seem to you as if some mysterious and superior will brutally interfered with the workings of your brain?"

[Pg 139]Did it seem so to him! He himself could not have stated more plainly the experience of the last few months. Each word fell from her lips like the blow of a hammer. Shivering, he put his arm around her, seeking solace, not love. This time she did not repulse him and, trustingly, as a child confides to his mother, he depicted to her the suffering that harrowed his life and made it a hell.

As she listened, indignation clouded her forehead, while rising tears of anger and of love weighed down her lashes. She could bear the pitiful sight no longer.

"Child," she cried, "do you know who your tormentor is?"

And like a flash the truth passed from her to him. A sudden intimation told him what her words had still concealed.

"Don't! For Christ's sake, do not pronounce his name!" he sobbed. "Do not breathe it. I could not endure it. I should go mad."

[Pg 140]

[Pg 141]
XXIV

Very quietly, with difficulty restraining her own emotion so as not to excite him further, Ethel had related to Ernest the story of her remarkable interview with Reginald Clarke. In the long silence that ensued, the wings of his soul brushed against hers for the first time, and Love by a thousand tender chains of common suffering welded their beings into one.

Caressingly the ivory of her fingers passed through the gold of his hair and over his brow, as if to banish the demon-eyes that stared at him across the hideous spaces of the past. In a rush a thousand incidents came back to him, mute witnesses of a damning truth. His play, the dreams that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mind upon his novel which hitherto he had ascribed to nervous disease—all, piling fact on fact, became one monstrous monument of Reginald Clarke's crime. At last Ernest understood the parting [Pg 142]words of Abel Felton and the look in Ethel's eye on the night when he had first linked his fate with the other man's. Walkham's experience, too, and Reginald's remarks on the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed toward the new and horrible spectre that Ethel's revelation had raised in place of his host.

And then, again, the other Reginald appeared, crowned with the lyric wreath. From his lips golden cadences fell, sweeter than the smell of many flowers or the sound of a silver bell. He was once more the divine master, whose godlike features bore no trace of malice and who had raised him to a place very near his heart.

"No," he cried, "it is impossible. It's all a dream, a horrible nightmare."

"But he has himself confessed it," she interjected.

"Perhaps he has spoken in symbols. We all absorb to some extent other men's ideas, without robbing them and wrecking their thought-life. Reginald may be unscrupulous in the use of his power of impressing upon others the [Pg 143]stamp of his master-mind. So was Shakespeare. No, no, no! You are mistaken; we were both deluded for the moment by his picturesque account of a common, not even a discreditable, fact. He may himself have played with the idea, but surely he cannot have been serious."

"And your own experience, and Abel Felton's and mine—can they, too, be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulder?"

"But, come to think of it, the whole theory seems absurd. It is unscientific. It is not even a case of mesmerism. If he had said that he hypnotised his victims, the matter would assume a totally different aspect. I admit that something is wrong somewhere, and that the home of Reginald Clarke is no healthful abode for me. But you must also remember that probably we are both unstrung to the point of hysteria."

But to Ethel his words carried no conviction.

"You are still under his spell," she cried, anxiously.

A little shaken in his confidence, Ernest re[Pg 144]sumed: "Reginald is utterly incapable of such an action, even granting that he possessed the terrible power of which you speak. A man of his splendid resources, a literary Midas at whose very touch every word turns into gold, is under no necessity to prey on the thoughts of others. Circumstances, I admit, are suspicious. But in the light of common day this fanciful theory shrivels into nothing. Any court of law would reject our evidence as madness. It is too utterly fantastic, utterly alien to any human experience."

"Is it though?" Ethel replied with peculiar intonation.

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Surely," she answered, "you must know that in the legends of every nation we read of men and women who were called vampires. They are beings, not always wholly evil, whom every night some mysterious impulse leads to steal into unguarded bedchambers, to suck the blood of the sleepers and then, having waxed strong on the life of their victims, cautiously to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are very red. It is even said that they can [Pg 145]find no rest in the grave, but return to their former haunts long after they are believed to be dead. Those whom they visit, however, pine away for no apparent reason. The physicians shake their wise heads and speak of consumption. But sometimes, ancient chronicles assure us, the people's suspicions were aroused, and under the leadership of a good priest they went in solemn procession to the graves of the persons suspected. And on opening the tombs it was found that their coffins had rotted away and the flowers in their hair were black. But their bodies were white and whole; through no empty sockets crept the vermin, and their sucking lips were still moist with a little blood."

Ernest was carried away in spite of himself by her account, which vividly resembled his own experience. Still he would not give in.

"All this is impressive. I admit it is very impressive. But you yourself speak of such stories as legends. They are unfounded upon any tangible fact, and you cannot expect a man schooled in modern sciences to admit, as having any possible bearing upon his life, the crude belief of the Middle Ages!"

[Pg 146]"Why not?" she responded. "Our scientists have proved true the wildest theories of mediæval scholars. The transmutation of metals seems to-day no longer an idle speculation, and radium has transformed into potential reality the dream of perpetual motion. The fundamental notions of mathematics are being undermined. One school of philosophers claims that the number of angles in a triangle is equal to more than two right angles; another propounds that it is less. Even great scientists who have studied the soul of nature are turning to spiritism. The world is overcoming the shallow scepticism of the nineteenth century. Life has become once more wonderful and very mysterious. But it also seems that, with the miracles of the old days, their terrors, their nightmares and their monsters have come back in a modern guise."

Ernest became even more thoughtful. "Yes," he observed, "there is something in what you say." Then, pacing the room nervously, he exclaimed: "And still I find it impossible to believe your explanation. Reginald a vampire! It seems so ludicrous. If [Pg 147]you had told me that such creatures exist somewhere, far away, I might have discussed the matter; but in this great city, in the shadow of the Flatiron Building—no!"

She replied with warmth: "Yet they exist—always have existed. Not only in the Middle Ages, but at all times and in all regions. There is no nation but has some record of them, in one form or another. And don't you think if we find a thought, no matter how absurd it may seem to us, that has ever occupied the minds of men—if we find, I say, such a perennially recurrent thought, are we not justified in assuming that it must have some basis in the actual experience of mankind?"

Ernest's brow became very clouded, and infinite numbers of hidden premature wrinkles began to show. How wan he looked and how frail! He was as one lost in a labyrinth in which he saw no light, convinced against his will, or rather, against his scientific conviction, that she was not wholly mistaken.

"Still," he observed triumphantly, "your vampires suck blood; but Reginald, if vampire he be, preys upon the soul. How can a [Pg 148]man suck from another man's brain a thing as intangible, as quintessential as thought?"

"Ah," she replied, "you forget, thought is more real than blood!"

[Pg 149]
XXV

Only three hours had passed since Ethel had startled Ernest from his sombre reveries, but within this brief space their love had matured as if each hour had been a year. The pallor had vanished from his cheeks and the restiveness from his eyes. The intoxication of her presence had rekindled the light of his countenance and given him strength to combat the mighty forces embodied in Reginald Clarke. The child in him had made room for the man. He would not hear of surrendering without a struggle, and Ethel felt sure she might leave his fate in his own hand. Love had lent him a coat of mail. He was warned, and would not succumb. Still she made one more attempt to persuade him to leave the house at once with her.

"I must go now," she said. "Will you not come with me, after all? I am so afraid to think of you still here."

[Pg 150]"No, dear," he replied. "I shall not desert my post. I must solve the riddle of this man's life; and if, indeed, he is the thing he seems to be, I shall attempt to wrest from him what he has stolen from me. I speak of my unwritten novel."

"Do not attempt to oppose him openly. You cannot resist him."

"Be assured that I shall be on my guard. I have in the last few hours lived through so much that makes life worth living, that I would not wantonly expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go without certainty—cannot, if there is some truth in our fears, leave the best of me behind."

"What are you planning to do?"

"My play—I am sure now that it is mine—I cannot take from him; that is irretrievably lost. He has read it to his circle and prepared for its publication. And, no matter how firmly convinced you or I may be of his strange power, no one would believe our testimony. They would pronounce us mad. Perhaps we are mad!"

[Pg 151]"No; we are not mad; but it is mad for you to stay here," she asserted.

"I shall not stay here one minute longer than is absolutely essential. Within a week I shall have conclusive proof of his guilt or innocence."

"How will you go about it?"

"His writing table—"

"Ah!"

"Yes, perhaps I can discover some note, some indication, some proof—"

"It's a dangerous game."

"I have everything to gain."

"I wish I could stay here with you," she said. "Have you no friend, no one whom you could trust in this delicate matter?"

"Why, yes—Jack."

A shadow passed over her face.

"Do you know," she said, "I have a feeling that you care more for him than for me?"

"Nonsense," he said, "he is my friend, you, you—immeasurably more."

"Are you still as intimate with him as when I first met you?"

"Not quite; of late a troubling something, [Pg 152]like a thin veil, seems to have passed between us. But he will come when I call him. He will not fail me in my hour of need."

"When can he be here?"

"In two or three days."

"Meanwhile be very careful. Above all, lock your door at night."

"I will not only lock, but barricade it. I shall try with all my power to elucidate this mystery without, however, exposing myself to needless risks."

"I will go, then. Kiss me good-bye."

"May I not take you to the car?"

"You had better not."

At the door she turned back once more. "Write me every day, or call me up on the telephone."

He straightened himself, as if to convince her of his strength. Yet when at last the door had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for a moment. And, if he had not been ashamed to appear a weakling before the woman he loved, who knows if any power on earth could have kept him in that house where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk!

[Pg 153]There was a misgiving, too, in the woman's heart as she left the boy behind,—a prey to the occult power that, seeking expression in multiple activities, has made and unmade emperors, prophets and poets.

As she stepped into a street car she saw from afar, as in a vision, the face of Reginald Clarke. It seemed very white and hungry. There was no human kindness in it—only a threat and a sneer.

[Pg 154]

[Pg 155]
XXVI

For over an hour Ernest paced up and down his room, wildly excited by Ethel's revelations. It required an immense amount of self-control for him to pen the following lines to Jack: "I need you. Come."

After he had entrusted the letter to the hall-boy, a reaction set in and he was able to consider the matter, if not with equanimity, at least with a degree of calmness. The strangest thing to him was that he could not bring himself to hate Reginald, of whose evil influence upon his life he was now firmly convinced. Here was another shattered idol; but one—like the fragment of a great god-face in the desert—intensely fascinating, even in its ruin. Then yielding to a natural impulse, Ernest looked over his photographs and at once laid hold upon the austere image of his master and friend. No—it was preposter[Pg 156]ous; there was no evil in this man. There was no trace of malice in this face, the face of a prophet or an inspired madman, a poet. And yet, as he scrutinised the picture closely a curious transformation seemed to take place in the features; a sly little line appeared insinuatingly about Reginald's well-formed mouth, and the serene calm of his Jupiter-head seemed to turn into the sneak smile of a thief. Nevertheless, Ernest was not afraid. His anxieties had at last assumed definite shape; it was possible now to be on his guard. It is only invisible, incomprehensible fear, crouching upon us from the night, that drives sensitive natures to the verge of madness and transforms stern warriors into cowards.

Ernest realised the necessity of postponing the proposed investigation of Reginald's papers until the morning, as it was now near eleven, and he expected to hear at any moment the sound of his feet at the door. Before retiring he took a number of precautions. Carefully he locked the door to his bedroom and placed a chair in front of it. To make doubly sure, he fastened the handle to an exquisite[Pg 157] Chinese vase, a gift of Reginald's, that at the least attempt to force an entrance from without would come down with a crash.

Then, although sleep seemed out of the question, he went to bed. He had hardly touched the pillow when a leaden weight seemed to fall upon his eyes. The day's commotion had been too much for his delicate frame. By force of habit he pulled the cover over his ear and fell asleep.

All night he slept heavily, and the morning was far advanced when a knock at the door that, at first, seemed to come across an immeasurable distance, brought him back to himself. It was Reginald's manservant announcing that breakfast was waiting.

Ernest got up and rubbed his eyes. The barricade at the door at once brought back to his mind with startling clearness the events of the previous evening.

Everything was as he had left it. Evidently no one had attempted to enter the room while he slept. He could not help smiling at the arrangement which reminded him of his childhood, when he had sought by similar [Pg 158]means security from burglars and bogeys. And in the broad daylight Ethel's tales of vampires seemed once more impossible and absurd. Still, he had abundant evidence of Reginald's strange influence, and was determined to know the truth before nightfall. Her words, that thought is more real than blood, kept ringing in his ears. If such was the case, he would find evidence of Reginald's intellectual burglaries, and possibly be able to regain a part of his lost self that had been snatched from him by the relentless dream-hand.

But under no circumstances could he face Reginald in his present state of mind. He was convinced that if in the fleeting vision of a moment the other man's true nature should reveal itself to him, he would be so terribly afraid as to shriek like a maniac. So he dressed particularly slowly in the hope of avoiding an encounter with his host. But fate thwarted this hope. Reginald, too, lingered that morning unusually long over his coffee. He was just taking his last sip when Ernest entered the room. His behaviour was of an almost bourgeois kindness. Benevolence fair[Pg 159]ly beamed from his face. But to the boy's eyes it had assumed a new and sinister expression.

"You are late this morning, Ernest," he remarked in his mildest manner. "Have you been about town, or writing poetry? Both occupations are equally unhealthy." As he said this he watched the young man with the inscrutable smile that at moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite and the leer of the criminal.

He could not endure it; he could not look upon that face any longer. His feet almost gave way under him, cold sweat gathered on his brow, and he sank on a chair trembling and studiously avoiding the other man's gaze.

At last Reginald rose to go. It seemed impossible to accuse this splendid impersonation of vigorous manhood of cunning and underhand methods, of plagiarisms and of theft. As he stood there he resembled more than anything a beautiful tiger-cat, a wonderful thing of strength and will-power, indomitable and insatiate. Yet who could tell whether [Pg 160]this strength was not, after all, parasitic. If Ethel's suspicions were justified, then, indeed, more had been taken from him than he could ever realise. For in that case it was his life-blood that circled in those veins and the fire of his intellect that set those lips aflame!

[Pg 161]
XXVII

Reginald Clarke had hardly left the room when Ernest hastily rose from his seat. While it was likely that he would remain in undisturbed possession of the apartment the whole morning, the stake at hand was too great to permit of delay.

Palpitating and a little uncertain, he entered the studio where, scarcely a year ago, Reginald Clarke had bidden him welcome. Nothing had changed there since then; only in Ernest's mind the room had assumed an aspect of evil. The Antinous was there and the Faun and the Christ-head. But their juxtaposition to-day partook of the nature of the blasphemous. The statues of Shakespeare and Balzac seemed to frown from their pedestals as his fingers were running through Reginald's papers. He brushed against a semblance of Napoleon that was standing on the [Pg 162]writing-table, so that it toppled over and made a noise that weirdly re-echoed in the silence of the room. At that moment a curious family resemblance between Shakespeare, Balzac, Napoleon—and Reginald, forcibly impressed itself upon his mind. It was the indisputable something that marks those who are chosen to give ultimate expression to some gigantic world-purpose. In Balzac's face it was diffused with kindliness, in that of Napoleon sheer brutality predominated. The image of one who was said to be the richest man of the world also rose before his eyes. Perhaps it was only the play of his fevered imagination, but he could have sworn that this man's features, too, bore the mark of those unoriginal, great absorptive minds who, for better or for worse, are born to rob and rule. They seemed to him monsters that know neither justice nor pity, only the law of their being, the law of growth.

Common weapons would not avail against such forces. Being one, they were stronger than armies; nor could they be overcome in single combat. Stealth, trickery, the outfit of [Pg 163]the knave, were legitimate weapons in such a fight. In this case the end justified the means, even if the latter included burglary.

After a brief and fruitless search of the desk, he attempted to force open a secret drawer, the presence of which he had one day accidentally discovered. He tried a number of keys to no account, and was thinking of giving up his researches for the day until he had procured a skeleton key, when at last the lock gave way.

The drawer disclosed a large file of manuscript. Ernest paused for a moment to draw breath. The paper rustled under his nervous fingers. And there—at last—his eyes lit upon a bulky bundle that bore this legend: "Leontina, A Novel."

It was true, then—all, his dream, Reginald's confession. And the house that had opened its doors so kindly to him was the house of a Vampire!

Finally curiosity overcame his burning indignation. He attempted to read. The letters seemed to dance before his eyes—his hands trembled.

[Pg 164]At last he succeeded. The words that had first rolled over like drunken soldiers now marched before his vision in orderly sequence. He was delighted, then stunned. This was indeed authentic literature, there could be no doubt about it. And it was his. He was still a poet, a great poet. He drew a deep breath. Sudden joy trembled in his heart. This story set down by a foreign hand had grown chapter by chapter in his brain.

There were some slight changes—slight deviations from the original plan. A defter hand than his had retouched it here and there, but for all that it remained his very own. It did not belong to that thief. The blood welled to his cheek as he uttered this word that, applied to Reginald, seemed almost sacrilegious.

He had nearly reached the last chapter when he heard steps in the hallway. Hurriedly he restored the manuscript to its place, closed the drawer and left the room on tiptoe.

It was Reginald. But he did not come alone. Someone was speaking to him. The voice seemed familiar. Ernest could not make [Pg 165]out what it said. He listened intently and—was it possible? Jack? Surely he could not yet have come in response to his note! What mysterious power, what dim presentiment of his friend's plight had led him hither? But why did he linger so long in Reginald's room, instead of hastening to greet him? Cautiously he drew nearer. This time he caught Jack's words:

"It would be very convenient and pleasant. Still, some way, I feel that it is not right for me, of all men, to take his place here."

"That need not concern you," Reginald deliberately replied; "the dear boy expressed the desire to leave me within a fortnight. I think he will go to some private sanitarium. His nerves are frightfully overstrained."

"This seems hardly surprising after the terrible attack he had when you read your play."

"That idea has since then developed into a monomania."

"I am awfully sorry for him. I cared for him much, perhaps too much. But I always feared that he would come to such an end.[Pg 166] Of late his letters have been strangely unbalanced."

"You will find him very much changed. In fact, he is no longer the same."

"No," said Jack, "he is no longer the friend I loved."

Ernest clutched for the wall. His face was contorted with intense agony. Each word was like a nail driven into his flesh. Crucified upon the cross of his own affection by the hand he loved, all white and trembling he stood there. Tears rushed to his eyes, but he could not weep. Dry-eyed he reached his room and threw himself upon his bed. Thus he lay—uncomforted and alone.

[Pg 167]
XXVIII

Terrible as was his loneliness, a meeting with Jack would have been more terrible. And, after all, it was true, a gulf had opened between them.

Ethel alone could bring solace to his soul. There was a great void in his heart which only she could fill. He hungered for the touch of her hand. He longed for her presence strongly, as a wanton lusts for pleasure and as sad men crave death.

Noiselessly he stole to the door so as not to arouse the attention of the other two men, whose every whisper pierced his heart like a dagger. When he came to Ethel's home, he found that she had gone out for a breath of air. The servant ushered him into the parlor, and there he waited, waited, waited for her.

Greatly calmed by his walk, he turned the details of Clarke's conversation over in his mind, and the conviction grew upon him that [Pg 168]the friend of his boyhood was not to blame for his course of action. Reginald probably had encircled Jack's soul with his demoniacal influence and singled him out for another victim. That must never be. It was his turn to save now. He would warn his friend of the danger that threatened him, even if his words should be spoken into the wind. For Reginald, with an ingenuity almost satanic, had already suggested that the delusion of former days had developed into a monomania, and any attempt on his part to warn Jack would only seem to confirm this theory. In that case only one way was left open. He must plead with Reginald himself, confront at all risks that snatcher of souls. To-night he would not fall asleep. He would keep his vigil. And if Reginald should approach his room, if in some way he felt the direful presence, he must speak out, threaten if need be, to save his friend from ruin. He had fully determined upon this course when a cry of joy from Ethel, who had just returned from her walk, interrupted his reverie. But her gladness changed to anxiety when she saw how pale he was. Ernest [Pg 169]recounted to her the happenings of the day, from the discovery of his novel in Reginald's desk to the conversation which he had accidentally overheard. He noticed that her features brightened as he drew near the end of his tale.

"Was your novel finished?" she suddenly asked.

"I think so."

"Then you are out of danger. He will want nothing else of you. But you should have taken it with you."

"I had only sufficient presence of mind to slip it back into the drawer. To-morrow I shall simply demand it."

"You will do nothing of the kind. It is in his handwriting, and you have no legal proof that it is yours. You must take it away secretly. And he will not dare to reclaim it."

"And Jack?"

She had quite forgotten Jack. Women are invariably selfish for those they love.

"You must warn him," she replied.

"He would laugh at me. However, I must speak to Reginald."

[Pg 170]"It is of no avail to speak to him. At least, you must not do so before you have obtained the manuscript. It would unnecessarily jeopardise our plans."

"And after?"

"After, perhaps. But you must not expose yourself to any danger."

"No, dear," he said, and kissed her; "what danger is there, provided I keep my wits about me? He steals upon men only in their sleep and in the dark."

"Be careful, nevertheless."

"I shall. In fact, I think he is not at home at this moment. If I go now I may be able to get hold of the manuscript and hide it before he returns."

"I cannot but tremble to think of you in that house."

"You shall have no more reason to tremble in a day or two."

"Shall I see you to-morrow?"

"I don't think so. I must go over my papers and things so as to be ready at any moment to leave the house."

"And then?"

[Pg 171]"Then—"

He took her in his arms and looked long and deeply into her eyes.

"Yes," she replied—"at least, perhaps."

Then he turned to go, resolute and happy. How strangely he had matured since the summer! Her heart swelled with the consciousness that it was her love that had effected this transformation.

"As I cannot expect you to-morrow, I shall probably go to the opera, but I shall be at home before midnight. Will you call me up then? A word from you will put me at ease for the night, even if it comes over the telephone."

"I will call you up. We moderns have an advantage over the ancients in this respect: the twentieth-century Pyramus can speak to Thisbe even if innumerable walls sever his body from hers."

"A quaint conceit! But let us hope that our love-story will end less tragically," she said, tenderly caressing his hair. "Oh, we shall be happy, you and I," she added, after a while. "The iron finger of fate that lay so heavily [Pg 172]on our lives is now withdrawn. Almost withdrawn. Yes, almost. Only almost."

And then a sudden fear overcame her.

"No," she cried, "do not go, do not go! Stay with me; stay here. I feel so frightened. I don't know what comes over me. I am afraid—afraid for you."

"No, dear," he rejoined, "you need not be afraid. In your heart you don't want me to desert a friend, and, besides, leave the best part of my artistic life in Reginald's clutch."

"Why should you expose yourself to God knows what danger for a friend who is ready to betray you?"

"You forget friendship is a gift. If it exacts payment in any form, it is no longer either friendship or a gift. And you yourself have assured me that I have nothing to fear from Reginald. I have nothing to give to him."

She rallied under his words and had regained her self-possession when the door closed behind him. He walked a few blocks very briskly. Then his pace slackened. Her words had unsettled him a little, and when he reached home he did not at once resume his [Pg 173]exploration of Reginald's papers. He had hardly lit a cigarette when, at an unusually early hour, he heard Reginald's key in the lock.

Quickly he turned the light out and in the semi-darkness, lit up by an electric lantern below, barricaded the door as on the previous night. Then he went to bed without finding sleep.

Supreme silence reigned over the house. Even the elevator had ceased to run. Ernest's brain was all ear. He heard Reginald walking up and down in the studio. Not the smallest movement escaped his attention. Thus hours passed. When the clock struck twelve, he was still walking up and down, down and up, up and down.

One o'clock.

Still the measured beat of his footfall had not ceased. There was something hypnotic in the regular tread. Nature at last exacted its toll from the boy. He fell asleep.

Hardly had he closed his eyes when again that horrible nightmare—no longer a nightmare—tormented him. Again he felt the [Pg 174]pointed delicate fingers carefully feeling their way along the innumerable tangled threads of nerve-matter that lead to the innermost recesses of self....

A subconscious something strove to arouse him, and he felt the fingers softly withdrawn.

He could have sworn that he heard the scurrying of feet in the room. Bathed in perspiration he made a leap for the electric light.

But there was no sign of any human presence. The barricade at the door was undisturbed. But fear like a great wind filled the wings of his soul.

Yet there was nothing, nothing to warrant his conviction that Reginald Clarke had been with him only a few moments ago, plying his horrible trade. The large mirror above the fireplace only showed him his own face, white, excited,—the face of a madman.

[Pg 175]
XXIX

The next morning's mail brought a letter from Ethel, a few lines of encouragement and affection. Yes, she was right; it would not do for him to stay under one roof with Reginald any longer. He must only obtain the manuscript and, if possible, surprise him in the attempt to exercise his mysterious and criminal power. Then he would be in the position to dictate terms and to demand Jack's safety as the price of his silence.

Reginald, however, had closeted himself that day in his studio busily writing. Only the clatter of his typewriter announced his presence in the house. There was no chance for conversation or for obtaining the precious manuscript of "Leontina."

Meanwhile Ernest was looking over his papers and preparing everything for a quick departure. Glancing over old letters and notes, [Pg 176]he became readily interested and hardly noticed the passage of the hours.

When the night came he only partly undressed and threw himself upon the bed. It was now ten. At twelve he had promised Ethel to speak to her over the telephone. He was determined not to sleep at all that night. At last he would discover whether or not on the previous and other nights Reginald had secretly entered his room.

When one hour had passed without incident, his attention relaxed a little. His eyes were gradually closing when suddenly something seemed to stir at the door. The Chinese vase came rattling to the floor.

At once Ernest sprang up. His face had blanched with terror. It was whiter than the linen in which they wrap the dead. But his soul was resolute.

He touched a button and the electric light illuminated the whole chamber. There was no nook for even a shadow to hide. Yet there was no one to be seen. From without the door came no sound. Suddenly something soft touched his foot. He gathered all his will [Pg 177]power so as not to break out into a frenzied shriek. Then he laughed, not a hearty laugh, to be sure. A tiny nose and a tail gracefully curled were brushing against him. The source of the disturbance was a little Maltese cat, his favourite, that by some chance had remained in his room. After its essay at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the foot of his bed.

The presence of a living thing was a certain comfort, and the reservoir of his strength was well nigh exhausted.

He dimly remembered his promise to Ethel, but his lids drooped with sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed in this way, when suddenly his blood congealed with dread.

He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald Clarke—unmistakably—groping in his brain as if searching for something that had still escaped him.

He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a man, dis[Pg 178]appearing in the wall that separated Reginald's apartments from his room....

This time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard something like a secret door softly closing behind retreating steps. A sudden fierce anger seized him. He was oblivious of the danger of the terrible power of the older man, oblivious of the love he had once borne him, oblivious of everything save the sense of outraged humanity and outraged right.

The law permits us to shoot a burglar who goes through our pockets at night. Must he tolerate the ravages of this a thousand times more dastardly and dangerous spiritual thief? Was Reginald to enjoy the fruit of other men's labour unpunished? Was he to continue growing into the mightiest literary factor of the century by preying upon his betters? Abel, Walkham, Ethel, he, Jack, were they all to be victims of this insatiable monster?

Was this force resistless as it was relentless?

No, a thousand times, no!

He dashed himself against the wall at the place where the shadow of Reginald Clarke [Pg 179]had disappeared. In doing so he touched upon a secret spring. The wall gave way noiselessly. Speechless with rage he crossed the next room and the one adjoining it, and stood in Reginald's studio. The room was brilliantly lighted, and Reginald, still dressed, was seated at his writing-table scribbling notes upon little scraps of paper in his accustomed manner.

At Ernest's approach he looked up without evincing the least sign of terror or surprise. Calmly, almost majestically, he folded his arms over his breast, but there was a menacing glitter in his eyes as he confronted his victim.

[Pg 180]

[Pg 181]
XXX

Silently the two men faced each other. Then Ernest hissed:

"Thief!"

Reginald shrugged his shoulders.

"Vampire!"

"So Ethel has infected you with her absurd fancies! Poor boy! I am afraid.... I have been wanting to tell you for some time.... But I think.... We have reached the parting of our road!"

"And that you dare to tell me!"

The more he raged, the calmer Reginald seemed to become.

"Really," he said, "I fail to understand.... I must ask you to leave my room!"

"You fail to understand? You cad!" Ernest cried. He stepped to the writing-table and opened the secret drawer with a blow. A bundle of manuscripts fell on the floor with a [Pg 182]strange rustling noise. Then, seizing his own story, he hurled it upon the table. And behold—the last pages bore corrections in ink that could have been made only a few minutes ago!

Reginald smiled. "Have you come to play havoc with my manuscripts?" he remarked.

"Your manuscripts? Reginald Clarke, you are an impudent impostor! You have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind, strutting through life in borrowed and stolen plumes!"

And at once the mask fell from Reginald's face.

"Why stolen?" he coolly said, with a slight touch of irritation. "I absorb. I appropriate. That is the most any artist can say for himself. God creates; man moulds. He gives us the colours; we mix them."

"That is not the question. I charge you with having wilfully and criminally interfered in my life; I charge you with having robbed me of what was mine; I charge you with being utterly vile and rapacious, a hypocrite and a parasite!"

[Pg 183]"Foolish boy," Reginald rejoined austerely. "It is through me that the best in you shall survive, even as the obscure Elizabethans live in him of Avon. Shakespeare absorbed what was great in little men—a greatness that otherwise would have perished—and gave it a setting, a life."

"A thief may plead the same. I understand you better. It is your inordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your monstrous power."

"You err. Self-love has never entered into my actions. I am careless of personal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I am Shakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubted in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears the Host!"

He stood up at full length, the personification of grandeur and power. A tremendous force trembled in his very finger tips. He was [Pg 184]like a gigantic dynamo, charged with the might of ten thousand magnetic storms that shake the earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets through infinities of space....

Under ordinary circumstances Ernest or any other man would have quailed before him. But the boy in that epic moment had grown out of his stature. He felt the sword of vengeance in his hands; to him was intrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of Ethel and of Jack. His was the struggle of the individual soul against the same blind and cruel fate that in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.

"By what right," he cried, "do you assume that you are the literary Messiah? Who appointed you? What divine power has made you the steward of my mite and of theirs whom you have robbed?"

"I am a light-bearer. I tread the high hills of mankind ... I point the way to the future. I light up the abysses of the past. Were not my stature gigantic, how could I hold the torch in all men's sight? The very souls that I tread underfoot realise, as their [Pg 185]dying gaze follows me, the possibilities with which the future is big.... Eternally secure, I carry the essence of what is cosmic ... of what is divine.... I am Homer ... Goethe ... Shakespeare.... I am an embodiment of the same force of which Alexander, Cæsar, Confucius and the Christos were also embodiments.... None so strong as to resist me."

A sudden madness overcame Ernest at this boast. He must strike now or never. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac—this demon of strength. With a power ten times intensified, he raised a heavy chair so as to hurl it at Reginald's head and crush it.

Reginald stood there calmly, a smile upon his lips.... Primal cruelties rose from the depth of his nature.... Still he smiled, turning his luminous gaze upon the boy ... and, behold ... Ernest's hand began to shake ... the chair fell from his grasp.... He tried to call for help, but no sound issued from his lips.... Utterly paralysed he confronted ... the Force....

[Pg 186]

Minutes—eternities passed.

And still those eyes were fixed upon him.

But this was no longer Reginald!

It was all brain ... only brain ... a tremendous brain-machine ... infinitely complex ... infinitely strong. Not more than a mile away Ethel endeavoured to call to him through the night. The telephone rang, once, twice, thrice, insistingly. But Ernest heard it not. Something dragged him ... dragged the nerves from his body dragged, dragged, dragged.... It was an irresistible suction ... pitiless ... passionless ... immense.

Sparks, blue, crimson and violet, seemed to play around the living battery. It reached the finest fibres of his mind.... Slowly ... every trace of mentality disappeared.... First the will ... then feeling ... judgment ... memory ... fear even.... All that was stored in his brain-cells came forth to be absorbed by that mighty engine....

The Princess With the Yellow Veil appeared ... flitted across the room and [Pg 187]melted away. She was followed by childhood memories ... girls' heads, boys' faces.... He saw his dead mother waving her arms to him.... An expression of death-agony distorted the placid features.... Then, throwing a kiss to him, she, too, disappeared. Picture on picture followed.... Words of love that he had spoken ... sins, virtues, magnanimities, meannesses, terrors ... mathematical formulas even, and snatches of songs. Leontina came and was swallowed up.... No, it was Ethel who was trying to speak to him ... trying to warn.... She waved her hands in frantic despair.... She was gone.... A pale face ... dark, dishevelled hair.... Jack.... How he had changed! He was in the circle of the vampire's transforming might. "Jack," he cried. Surely Jack had something to explain ... something to tell him ... some word that if spoken would bring rest to his soul. He saw the words rise to the boy's lips, but before he had time to utter them his image also had vanished. And Reginald ... Reginald, too, [Pg 188]was gone.... There was only the mighty brain ... panting ... whirling.... Then there was nothing.... The annihilation of Ernest Fielding was complete.

Vacantly he stared at the walls, at the room and at his master. The latter was wiping the sweat from his forehead. He breathed deeply.... The flush of youth spread over his features.... His eyes sparkled with a new and dangerous brilliancy.... He took the thing that had once been Ernest Fielding by the hand and led it to its room.

[Pg 189]
XXXI

With the first flush of the morning Ethel appeared at the door of the house on Riverside Drive. She had not heard from Ernest, and had been unable to obtain connection with him at the telephone. Anxiety had hastened her steps. She brushed against Jack, who was also directing his steps to the abode of Reginald Clarke.

At the same time something that resembled Ernest Fielding passed from the house of the Vampire. It was a dull and brutish thing, hideously transformed, without a vestige of mind.

"Mr. Fielding," cried Ethel, beside herself with fear as she saw him descending.

"Ernest!" Jack gasped, no less startled at the change in his friend's appearance.

Ernest's head followed the source of the sound, but no spark of recognition illumined [Pg 190]the deadness of his eyes. Without a present and without a past ... blindly ... a gibbering idiot ... he stumbled down the stairs.

Butterfly by Hans Christian Anderson
00:09:22 - Jun 19 2006
Times Read: 35

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

The Butterfly.
[138]

[139]The butterfly wished to procure a bride for himself—of course, one of the flowers—a pretty little one. He looked about him. Each one sat quietly and thoughtfully on her stalk, as a young maiden should sit, when she is not affianced; but there were many of them, and it was a difficult matter to choose amongst them. The butterfly could not make up his mind; so he flew to the daisy. The French call her Marguerite; they know that she can tell fortunes, and she does this when lovers pluck off leaf after leaf and ask her at each one a question about the beloved one: "How does he love me?—With all his heart?—With [140]sorrow?—Above all?—Can not refrain from it?—Quite secretly?—A little bit?—Not at all?"—or questions to the same import. Each one asks in his own language. The butterfly flew towards her and questioned her; he did not pluck off the leaves, but kissed each separate one, thinking that by so doing, he would make himself more agreeable to the good creature.

"Sweet Margaret Daisy," said he, "of all the flowers you are the wisest woman! You can prophesy! Tell me, shall I obtain this one or that one? Which one? If I but know this, I can fly to the charming one at once, and pay my court!"

Margaret did not answer. She could not bear to be called a woman, for she was a young girl, and when one is a young girl, one is not a woman.

He asked again, he asked a third time, [141]but as she did not answer a single word, he questioned her no more and flew away without further parley, intent on his courtship.

It was early spring time, and there was an abundance of snow-drops and crocuses. "They are very neat," said the butterfly, "pretty little confirmed ones, but a little green!" He, like all young men looked at older girls.

From thence he flew to the anemones; but he found them a little too sentimental; the tulips, too showy; the broom, not of a good family; the linden blossoms, too small—then they had so many relations; as to the apple blossoms, why to look at them you would think them as healthy as roses, but to-day they blossom and to-morrow, if the wind blows, they drop off; a marriage with them would be too short. The pea blossom pleased him most, she was [142]pink and white, she was pure and refined and belonged to the housewifely girls that look well, and still can make themselves useful in the kitchen. He had almost concluded to make love to her, when he saw hanging near to her, a pea-pod with its white blossom. "Who is that?" asked he. "That is my sister," said the pea blossom.

"How now, is that the way you look when older?" This terrified the butterfly and he flew away.

The honeysuckles were hanging over the fence—young ladies with long faces and yellow skins—but he did not fancy their style of beauty. Yes, but which did he like? Ask him!

The spring passed, the summer passed, and then came the autumn. The flowers appeared in their most beautiful dresses, but of what avail was this? The butterfly's [143]fresh youthful feelings had vanished. In old age, the heart longs for fragrance, and dahlias and gillyflowers are scentless. So the butterfly flew to the mint. "She has no flower at all, but she is herself a flower, for she is fragrant from head to foot and each leaf is filled with perfume. I shall take her!"

But the mint stood stiff and still, and at last said: "Friendship—but nothing more! I am old and you are old! We can live very well for one another, but to marry? No! Do not let us make fools of ourselves in our old age."

So the butterfly obtained no one.

The butterfly remained a bachelor.

Many violent and transient showers came late in the autumn; the wind blew so coldly down the back of the old willow trees, that it cracked within them. It did not do to fly about in summer garments, for even [144]love itself would then grow cold. The butterfly however preferred not to fly out at all; he had by chance entered a door-way, and there was fire in the stove—yes, it was just as warm there, as in summer-time;—there he could live. "Life is not enough," said he, "one must have sunshine, liberty and a little flower!"

He flew against the window-panes, was seen, was run through by a pin and placed in a curiosity-box; one could not do more for him.

"Now I also am seated on a stalk like a flower," said the butterfly, "it is not so comfortable after all! But it is as well as being married, for then one is tied down!" He consoled himself with this.

"What a wretched consolation!" said the flower, that grew in the pot in the room.

"One can not entirely trust to flowers [145]that grow in pots," thought the butterfly, "they have too much intercourse with men."

ICE-MAIDEN: by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
00:08:23 - Jun 19 2006
Times Read: 36

ADMIN: | EDIT | DELETE |

The Ice-Maiden.
[7]
I.ToC
LITTLE RUDY.

Let us visit Switzerland and look around us in the glorious country of mountains, where the forest rises out of steep rocky walls; let us ascend to the dazzling snow-fields, and thence descend to the green plains, where the rivulets and brooks hasten away, foaming up, as if they feared not to vanish, as they reached the sea.

The sun beams upon the deep valley, it burns also upon the heavy masses of snow; so that after the lapse of years, they melt into shining ice-blocks, and become rolling avalanches and heaped-up glaciers.

[8]Two of these lie in the broad clefts of the rock, under the Schreckhorn and Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. They are so remarkable that many strangers come to gaze at them, in the summer time, from all parts of the world; they come over the high snow-covered mountains, they come from the deepest valleys, and they are obliged to ascend during many hours, and as they ascend, the valley sinks deeper and deeper, as though seen from an air-balloon.

Far around the peaks of the mountains, the clouds often hang like heavy curtains of smoke; whilst down in the valley, where the many brown wooden houses lie scattered about, a sun-beam shines, and here and there brings out a tiny spot, in radiant green, as though it were transparent. The water roars, froths and foams below, the [9]water hums and tinkles above, and it looks as if silver ribbons were fluttering over the cliffs.

On each side of the way, as one ascends, are wooden houses; each house has a little potato-garden, and that is a necessity, for in the door-way are many little mouths. There are plenty of children, and they can consume abundance of food; they rush out of the houses, and throng about the travellers, come they on foot or in carriage. The whole horde of children traffic; the little ones offer prettily carved wooden houses, for sale, similar to those they build on the mountains. Rain or shine, the children assemble with their wares.

Some twenty years ago, there stood here, several times, a little boy, who wished to sell his toys, but he always kept aloof from the other children; he stood with serious [10]countenance and with both hands tightly clasped around his wooden box, as if he feared it would slip away from him; but on account of this gravity, and because the boy was so small, it caused him to be remarked, and often he made the best bargain, without knowing why. His grandfather lived still higher in the mountains, and it was he who carved the pretty wooden houses. There stood in the room, an old cup-board, full of carvings; there were nut-crackers, knives, spoons, and boxes with delicate foliage, and leaping chamois; there was everything, which could rejoice a merry child's eye, but this little fellow, (he was named Rudy) looked at and desired only the old gun under the rafters. His grandfather had said, that he should have it some day, but that he must first grow big and strong enough to use it.

[11]Small as the boy was, he was obliged to take care of the goats, and if he who can climb with them is a good guardian, well then indeed was Rudy. Why he climbed even higher than they! He loved to take the bird's nests from the trees, high in the air, for he was bold and daring; and he only smiled when he stood by the roaring water-fall, or when he heard a rolling avalanche.

He never played with the other children; he only met them, when his grandfather sent him out to sell his carvings, and Rudy took but little interest in this; he much preferred to wander about the rocks, or to sit and listen to his grandfather relate about old times and about the inhabitants of Meiringen, where he came from. He said that these people had not been there since the beginning of the world; they had [12]come from the far North, where the race called Swedes, dwelt. To know this, was indeed great wisdom, and Rudy knew this; but he became still wiser, through the intercourse which he had with the other occupants of the house—belonging to the animal race. There was a large dog, Ajola, an heir-loom from Rudy's father; and a cat, and she was of great importance to Rudy, for she had taught him to climb. "Come out on the roof!" said the cat, quite plain and distinctly, for when one is a child, and can not yet speak, one understands the hens and ducks, the cats and dogs remarkably well; they speak for us as intelligibly as father or mother. One needs but to be little, and then even grandfather's stick can neigh, and become a horse, with head, legs and tail. With some children, this knowledge slips away later than with others, and [13]people say of these, that they are very backward, that they remain children fearfully long.—People say so many things!

"Come with me, little Rudy, out on the roof!" was about the first thing that the cat said, that Rudy understood. "It is all imagination about falling; one does not fall, when one does not fear to do so. Come, place your one paw so, and your other so! Take care of your fore-paws! Look sharp with your eyes, and give suppleness to your limbs! If there be a hole, jump, hold fast, that's the way I do!"

And Rudy did so, and that was the reason that he sat out on the roof with the cat so often; he sat with her in the tree-tops, yes, he sat on the edge of the rocks, where the cats could not come. "Higher, higher!" said the trees and bushes. "See, how we climb! how high we go, how [14]firm we hold on, even on the outermost peaks of the rocks!"

And Rudy went generally on the mountain before the sun rose, and then he got his morning drink, the fresh, strengthening mountain air, the drink, that our Lord only can prepare, and men can read its recipe, and thus it stands written: "the fresh scent of the herbs of the mountains and the mint and thyme of the valleys."

All heaviness is imbibed by the hanging clouds, and the wind sends it out like grape-shot into the fir-woods; the fragrant breeze becomes perfume, light and fresh and ever fresher—that was Rudy's morning drink.

The blessing bringing daughters of the Sun, the sun-beams, kissed his cheeks, and Vertigo stood and watched, but dared not approach him; and the swallows below from grandfather's house, where there were [15]no less than seven nests, flew up to him and the goats, and they sang: "We and you! and you and we!" They brought greetings from home, even from the two hens, the only birds in the room; with whom however Rudy never had intercourse.

Little as he was, he had traveled, and not a little, for so small a boy; he was born in the Canton Valais, and had been carried from there over the mountains. Lately he had visited the Staubbach, which waves in the air like a silver gauze, before the snow decked, dazzling white mountain: "the Jungfrau." And he had been in Grindelwald, near the great glaciers; but that was a sad story. There, his mother had found her death, and, "little Rudy," so said his grandfather, "had lost his childish merriment." "When the boy was not a year old, he laughed more than he cried," so wrote [16]his mother, "but since he was in the ice-gap, quite another mind has come over him." His grand-father did not like to speak on the subject, but every one on the mountain knew all about it.

Rudy's father had been a postilion, and the large dog in the room, had always followed him on his journeys to the lake of Geneva, over the Simplon. In the valley of the Rhone, in Canton Valais, still lived Rudy's family, on his father's side, and his father's brother was a famous chamois hunter and a well-known guide. Rudy was only a year old, when he lost his father, and his mother longed to return to her relations in Berner Oberlande. Her father lived a few hours walk from Grindelwald; he was a carver in wood, and earned enough by it to live. In the month of June, carrying her little child, she started homewards, [17]accompanied by two chamois hunters; intending to cross the Gemmi on their way to Grindelwald. They already had accomplished the longer part of their journey, had passed the high ridges, had come to the snow-plains, they already saw the valley of their home, with its well-known wooden houses, and had now but to reach the summit of one of the great glaciers. The snow had freshly fallen and concealed a cleft,—which did not lead to the deepest abyss, where the water roared—but still deeper than man could reach. The young woman, who was holding her child, slipped, sank and was gone; one heard no cry, no sigh, nought but a little child weeping. More than an hour elapsed, before her companions could bring poles and ropes, from the nearest house, in order to afford assistance. After great exertion they drew from the ice-gap, [18]what appeared to be two lifeless bodies; every means were employed and they succeeded in calling the child back to life, but not the mother. So the old grandfather received instead of a daughter, a daughter's son in his house; the little one, who laughed more than he wept, but, who now, seemed to have lost this custom. A change in him, had certainly taken place, in the cleft of the glacier, in the wonderful cold world; where, according to the belief of the Swiss peasant, the souls of the damned are incarcerated until the day of judgment.

Not unlike water, which after long journeying, has been compressed into blocks of green glass, the glaciers lie here, so that one huge mass of ice is heaped on the other. The rushing stream roars below and melts snow and ice; within, hollow caverns and mighty clefts open, this is a wonderful [19]palace of ice, and in it dwells the Ice-Maiden, the Queen of the glaciers. She, the murderess, the destroyer, is half a child of air and half the powerful ruler of the streams; therefore, she had received the power, to elevate herself with the speed of the chamois to the highest pinnacle of the snow-topped mountain; where the most daring mountaineer had to hew his way, in order to take firm foot-hold. She sails up the rushing river on a slender fir-branch—springs from one cliff to another, with her long snow-white hair, fluttering around her, and with her bluish-green mantle, which resembles the water of the deep Swiss lakes.

"Crush, hold fast! the power is mine!" cried she. "They have stolen a lovely boy from me, a boy, whom I had kissed, but not kissed to death. He is again with men, [20]he tends the goats on the mountains; he climbs up, up high, beyond the reach of all others, but not beyond mine! He is mine, I shall have him!"—

And she ordered Vertigo to fulfil her duty; it was too warm for the Ice-Maiden, in summer-time, in the green spots where the mint thrives. Vertigo arose; one came, three came, (for Vertigo had many sisters, very many of them) and the Maiden chose the strongest among those that rule within doors and without. They sit on the balusters and on the spires of the steep towers, they tread through the air as the swimmer glides through the water and entice their prey down the abyss. Vertigo and the Ice-Maiden seize on men as the polypus clutches at all within its reach. Vertigo was to gain possession of Rudy. "Yes, just catch him for me" said Vertigo. "I cannot do [21]it! The cat, the dirty thing, has taught him her arts! The child of the race of man, possesses a power, that repulses me; I cannot get at the little boy, when he hangs by the branches over the abyss. I may tickle him on the soles of his feet or give him a box on the ear whilst he is swinging in the air, it is of no avail. I can do nothing!"

"We can do it!" said the Ice-Maiden. "You or I! I! I!"—

"No, no!" sounded back the echo of the church-bells through the mountain, like a sweet melody; it was like speech, an harmonious chorus of all the spirits of nature, mild, good, full of love, for it came from the daughters of the sun-beams, who encamped themselves every evening in a circle around the pinnacles of the mountains, and spread out their rose-coloured [22]wings, that grow more and more red as the sun sinks, and glow over the high Alps; men call it, "the Alpine glow." When the sun is down, they enter the peaks of the rocks and sleep on the white snow, until the sun rises, and then they sally forth. Above all, they love flowers, butterflies, and men, and amongst them they had chosen little Rudy as their favourite.

"You will not catch him! You shall not have him!" said they. "I have caught and kept stronger and larger ones!" said the Ice-Maiden.

Then the daughters of the Sun sang a lay of the wanderer, whose cloak the whirlwind had torn off and carried away. The wind took the covering, but not the man. "Ye children of strength can seize, but not hold him; he is stronger, he is more [23]spirit-like, than we; he ascends higher than the Sun, our mother! He possesses the magic word, that restrains wind and water, so that they are obliged to obey and serve him!"

So sounded cheerfully the bell-like chorus.

And every morning the sun-beams shone through the tiny window in the grandfather's house, on the quiet child. The daughters of the sun-beams kissed him, they wished to thaw him, to warm him and to carry away with them the icy kiss, which the queenly maiden of the glaciers had given him, as he lay on his dead mother's lap, in the deep icy gap, whence he was saved through a miracle.

[24]
II.ToC
THE JOURNEY TO THE NEW HOME.

Rudy was now eight years old. His father's brother, in Rhonethal, the other side of the mountain, wished to have the boy, for he thought that with him he would fare and prosper better; his grandfather perceived this and gave his consent.

Rudy must go. There were others to take leave of him, besides his grandfather; first there was Ajola, the old dog.

"Your father was post-boy and I was post-dog," said Ajola. "We have travelled up and down; I know dogs and men on the other side of the mountain. It is not my custom to speak much, but now, that we shall not have much time to converse [25]with each other, I must talk a little more than usual. I will relate a story to you; I shall tell you how I have earned my bread, and how I have eaten it. I do not understand it and I suppose that you will not either, but it matters not, for I have discovered that the good things of this earth are not equally divided between dogs or men. All are not fitted to lie on the lap and sip milk, I have not been accustomed to it; but I saw a little dog seated in the coach with us and it occupied a person's place. The woman who was its mistress, or who belonged to its mistress, had a bottle filled with milk, out of which she fed it; it got sweet sugar biscuits too, but it would not even eat them; only snuffed at them, and so the woman ate them herself. I ran in the mud, by the side of the coach, as hungry as a dog could be; [26]I chewed my crude thoughts, that was not right—but this is often done! If I could but have been carried on some one's knee and have been seated in a coach! But one cannot have all one desires. I have not been able to do so, neither with barking nor with yawning."

That was Ajola's speech, and Rudy seized him by the neck and kissed him on his moist mouth, and then he took the cat in his arms, but she was angry at it.

"You are getting too strong for me, and I will not use my claws against you! Just climb over the mountains, I taught you to climb! Never think that you will fall, then you are secure!"

Then the cat ran away, without letting Rudy see how her grief shone out of her eye.

The hens ran about the floor; one had [27]lost her tail; a traveller, who wished to be a hunter, had shot it off, because the creature had taken the hen for a bird of prey!

"Rudy is going over the mountain!" said one hen. "He is always in a hurry," said the other, "and I do not care for leave-takings!" and so they both tripped away.

And the goats, too, said farewell and cried: "Mit, mit, mah!" and that was so sad.

There were two nimble guides in the neighbourhood, and they were about to cross the mountains; they were to descend to the other side of the Gemmi, and Rudy followed them on foot. This was a severe march for such a little chap, but he had strength and courage, and felt not fatigue.

The swallows accompanied them a part of the way. They sang: "We and you! [28]You and us!" The road went over the rapid Lütschine, which rushes forth from the black clefts of the glacier of Grindelwald, in many little streams. The fallen timber and the quarry-stones serve as bridges; they pass the alder-bush and descend the mountain where the glacier has detached itself from the mountain side; they cross over the glacier, over the blocks of ice, and go around them. Rudy was obliged to creep a little, to walk a little, his eyes sparkled with delight, and he trod as firmly with his iron-shod mountain shoes, as though he wished to leave his foot-prints where he had stepped. The black mud which the mountain stream had poured upon the glacier gave it a calcined appearance, but the bluish-green, glassy ice still shone through it. They were obliged to go around the little ponds [29]which were dammed up by blocks of ice; during these wanderings they came too near a large stone, which lay tottering on the brink of a crevice in the ice. The stone lost its equilibrium, it fell, rolled and the echo resounded from the deep hollow paths of the glacier.

Up, ever up; the glacier stretched itself on high—as a river, of wildly heaped up masses of ice, compressed among the steep cliffs. For an instant Rudy thought on what they had told him, about his having laid with his mother, in one of these cold-breathing chasms. Such thoughts soon vanished; it seemed to him as though it were some other story—one of the many which had been related to him. Now and then, when the men thought that the ascent was too difficult for the little lad, they would reach him their hand, but he was [30]never weary and stood on the slippery ice as firm as a chamois. Now they reached the bottom of the rocks, they were soon among the bare stones, which were void of moss; soon under the low fir-trees and again out on the green common—ever changing, ever new. Around them arose the snow mountains, whose names were as familiar to Rudy as they were to every child in the neighbourhood: "the Jungfrau," "the Mönch," and "the Eiger."

Rudy had never been so high before, had never before trodden on the vast sea of snow, which lay there with its immoveable waves. The wind blew single flakes about, as it blows the foam upon the waters of the sea.

Glacier stood by glacier, if one may say so, hand in hand; each one was an ice-palace for the Ice-Maiden, whose power and [31]will is: "to catch and to bury." The sun burned warmly, the snow was dazzling, as if sown with bluish-white, glittering diamond sparks. Countless insects (butterflies and bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Föhn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the night quarters above and then the road beyond, the deep rocky chasms, where the water forced its way through the blocks of stone with terrible rapidity, engraved itself indelibly on Rudy's mind.

[32]On the other side of the sea of snow, a forsaken stone hut gave them protection and shelter for the night; a fire was quickly lighted, for they found within it charcoal and fir branches; they arranged their couch as well as possible. The men seated themselves around the fire, smoked their tobacco and drank the warm spicy drink, which they had prepared for themselves. Rudy had his share too and they told him of the mysterious beings of the Alpine country; of the singular fighting snakes in the deep lakes; of the people of night; of the hordes of spectres, who carry sleepers through the air, towards the wonderful floating city of Venice; of the wild shepherd, who drives his black sheep over the meadow; it is true, they had never been seen, but the sound of the bells and the unhappy bellowing of the flock, had been heard.

[33]Rudy listened eagerly, but without any fear, for he did not even know what that was, and whilst he listened he thought he heard the ghost-like hollow bellowing! Yes, it became more and more distinct, the men heard it also, they stopped talking, listened and told Rudy he must not sleep.

It was the Föhn which blew, the powerful storm-wind, which rushes down the mountains into the valley and with its strength bends the trees, as if they were mere reeds, and lifts the wooden houses from one side of the river to the other, as if the move had been made on a chess-board.

After the lapse of an hour, they told Rudy that the storm had now blown over and that he might rest; with this license, fatigued by his march, he at once fell asleep.

They departed early in the morning; [34]the sun showed Rudy new mountains, new glaciers and snow-fields; they had now reached Canton Valais and the other side of the mountain ridge which was visible at Grindelwald, but they were still far from the new home. Other chasms, precipices, pasture-grounds; forests and paths through the woods, unfolded themselves to the view; other houses, other human beings—but what human beings! Deformed creatures, with unmeaning, fat, yellowish-white faces; with a large, ugly, fleshy lump on their necks; these were cretins who dragged themselves miserably along and gazed with their stupid eyes on the strangers who arrived among them. As for the women, the greatest number of them were frightful!

Were these the inhabitants of the new home?

FOOTNOTES:

[A] A humid south wind on the lakes of Switzerland, a fearful storm.

[35]
III.ToC
THE FATHER'S BROTHER.

The people in the uncle's house, looked, thank heaven, like those whom Rudy was accustomed to see. But one cretin was there, a poor silly lad, one of the many miserable creatures, who on account of their poverty and need, always make their home among the families of Canton Valais and remain with each but a couple of months. The wretched Saperli happened to be there when Rudy arrived.

Rudy's father's brother was still a vigorous hunter and was also a cooper by trade; his wife, a lively little person, had what is called a bird's face; her eyes resembled [36]those of an eagle and she had a long neck entirely covered with down.

Everything was new to Rudy, the dress, manners and customs, yes, even the language, but that is soon acquired and understood by a child's ear. Here, they seemed to be better off, than in his grandfather's house; the dwelling rooms were larger, the walls looked gay with their chamois horns and highly polished rifles; over the door-way hung the picture of the blessed Virgin; alpine roses and a burning lamp stood before it.

His uncle, was as we have said before, one of the most famous chamois hunters in the neighbourhood and also the most experienced and best guide.

Rudy was to be the pet of the household, although there already was one, an old deaf and blind dog, whom they could no [37]longer use; but they remembered his many past services and he was looked upon as a member of the family and was to pass his old days in peace. Rudy patted the dog, but he would have nothing to do with strangers; Rudy did not long remain one, for he soon took firm hold both in house and heart.

"One is not badly off in Canton Valais," said his uncle, "we have the chamois, they do not die out so soon as the mountain goat! It is a great deal better here now, than in the old times; they may talk about their glory as much as they please. The present time is much better, for a hole has been made in the purse and light and air let into our quiet valley. When old worn-out customs die away, something new springs forth!" said he. When uncle became talkative, he told of the years of his [38]childhood and of his father's active time, when Valais was still a closed purse, as the people called it, and when it was filled with sick people and miserable cretins. French soldiers came, they were the right kind of doctors, they not only shot down the sickness but the men also.

"The Frenchmen can beat the stones until they surrender! they cut the Simplon-road out of the rocks—they have hewn out such a road, that I now can tell a three year old child to go to Italy! Keep to the highway, and a child may find his way there!" Then the uncle would sing a French song and cry hurrah for Napoleon Bonaparte.

Rudy now heard for the first time of France, of Lyons—the large city of the Rhone—for his uncle had been there.

"I wonder if Rudy will become an agile [39]chamois hunter in a few years? He has every disposition for it!" said his uncle, and instructed him how to hold a rifle, how to aim and to fire. In the hunting season, he took him with him in the mountains and made him drink the warm chamois blood, which prevents the hunter from becoming dizzy. He taught him to heed the time when the avalanches roll down the different sides of the mountain—at mid-day or at night-fall—which depended upon the heat of the rays of the sun. He taught him to notice the chamois, in order to learn from them how to jump, so as to alight steadily upon the feet. If there was no resting place in the clefts of the rock for the foot, he must know how to support himself with the elbow, and be able to climb by means of the muscles of the thigh and calf, even the neck must serve when it is necessary. [40]The chamois are cunning, they place out-guards—but the hunter must be still more cunning and follow the trail—and he can deceive them by hanging his coat and hat on his alpine stick, and so make the chamois take the coat for the man.

One day when Rudy was out with his uncle hunting, he tried this sport.

The rocky path was not wide; indeed there was scarcely any, only a narrow ledge, close to the dizzy abyss. The snow was half-thawed, the stones crumbled when trodden upon, and his uncle stretched himself out full length and crept along. Each stone as it broke away, fell, knocked itself, bounded and then rolled down; it made many leaps from one rocky wall to another until it found repose in the black deep. Rudy stood about a hundred steps behind his uncle on the outermost cliff, and saw a [41]huge golden vulture, hovering over his uncle, and sailing towards him through the air, as though wishing to cast the creeping worm into the abyss with one blow of his wing, and to make carrion of him. His uncle had only eyes for the chamois and its young kid, on the other side of the cleft. Rudy looked at the bird, understood what it wanted, and laid his hand on his rifle in order to shoot it. At that moment the chamois leaped—his uncle fired—the ball hit the animal, but the kid was gone, as though flight and danger had been its life's experience. The monstrous bird terrified by the report of the gun, took flight in another direction, and Rudy's uncle knew nought of his danger, until Rudy told him of it.

As they now were on their way home in the gayest spirits—his uncle playing one of his youthful melodies on his flute—they [42]suddenly heard not far from them a singular sound; they looked sideways, they gazed aloof and saw high above them the snow covering of the rugged shelf of the rock, waving like an outspread piece of linen when agitated by the wind. The icy waves cracked like slabs of marble, they broke, dissolved in foaming, rushing water and sounded like a muffled thunder-clap. It was an avalanche rolling down, not over Rudy and his uncle, but near, only too near to them.

"Hold fast, Rudy," cried he, "firm, with your whole strength!"

And Rudy clasped the trunk of a tree; his uncle climbed into its branches and held fast, whilst the avalanche rolled many fathoms away from them. But the air-drift of the blustering storm, which accompanied it, bowed down the trees and bushes [43]around them like dry reeds and threw them beyond. Rudy lay cast on the earth; the trunk of the tree on which he had held was as though sawed off, and its crown was hurled still farther along. His uncle lay amongst the broken branches, with his head shattered; his hands were yet warm, but his face was no longer to be recognized. Rudy stood pale and trembling; this was the first terror of his life, the first hour of fear that he had ever known.

Late in the evening, he returned with his message of death to his home, which was now one of sorrow.

The wife stood without words, without tears, and not until the corpse was brought home did her sorrow find an outburst. The poor cretin crept to his bed and was not seen all day, but towards evening he came to Rudy, and said: "Write a letter for me. [44]Saperli cannot write! Saperli can take the letter to the post office."

"A letter for you," asked Rudy, "and to whom?"

"To our Lord Christ!"

"What do you mean?"

And the half-witted creature gave a touching glance at Rudy, folded his hands and said piously and solemnly: "Jesus Christ! Saperli wishes to send him a letter, praying him to let Saperli lie dead and not the man of this house!"

And Rudy pressed his hand, "the letter cannot be sent, the letter will not give him back to us!"

It was difficult for Rudy to explain the impossibility to him.

"Now you are the stay of the house!" said his foster-mother, and Rudy became it.

[45]
IV.ToC
BABETTE.

Who is the best shot in Canton Valais? The chamois knew only too well: "Beware of Rudy!" they could say. Who is the handsomest hunter?—"It is Rudy." The young girls said this also, but they did not say: "Beware of Rudy!" No, not even the grave mothers, for he nodded to them quite as amicably as to the young girls. He was so bold and gay, his cheeks were brown, his teeth fresh and white and his coal-black eyes glittered; he was a handsome young fellow and but twenty years old. The icy water did not sting him when he swam, he could turn around in it like a [46]fish; he could climb as did no one, and he was as firm on the rocky walls as a snail—for he had good sinews and muscles that served him well in leaping—the cat had first taught him this, and later the chamois. One could not trust one's self to a better guide than to Rudy. In this way he could collect quite a fortune, but he had no taste for the trade of a cooper, which his uncle had taught him; his delight and pleasure was to shoot chamois, and this was profitable also. Rudy was a good match if one did not look higher than one's station, and in dancing he was just the kind of dancer that young girls dream about, and one or the other were always thinking of him when they were awake.

"He kissed me whilst dancing!" said the schoolmaster's Annette to her most intimate friend, but she should not have [47]said this, not even to her dearest friend, but it is difficult to keep such things to one's self—like sand in a purse with a hole in it, it soon runs out—and although Rudy was so steady and good it was soon known that he kissed whilst dancing.

"Watch him," said an old hunter, "he has commenced with A, and he will kiss the whole alphabet through!"

A kiss, at a dance, was all they could say in their gossipping, but he had kissed Annette, and she was by no means the flower of his heart.

Down near Bex, between the great walnut trees, close by a rapid little stream, dwelt the rich miller. The dwelling-house was a large three-storied building, with little towers covered with wood and coated with sheets of lead, which shone in the sunshine and in the moonshine; the largest tower [48]had for a weather-cock a bright arrow which pierced an apple and which was intended to represent the apple shot by Tell. The mill looked neat and comfortable, so that it was really worth describing and drawing, but the miller's daughter could neither be described nor drawn, at least so said Rudy. Yet she was imprinted in his heart, and her eyes acted as a fire-brand upon it, and this had happened suddenly and unexpectedly. The most wonderful part of all was, that the miller's daughter, the pretty Babette, thought not of him, for she and Rudy had never even spoken two words with each other.

The miller was rich, and riches placed her much too high to be approached; "but no one," said Rudy to himself, "is placed so high as to be unapproachable; one must climb and one does not fall, when one does [49]not think of it." This knowledge he had brought from home with him.

Now it so happened that Rudy had business at Bex and it was quite a journey there, for the railroad was not completed. The broad valley of Valais stretches itself from the glaciers of the Rhone, under the foot of the Simplon-mountain, between many varying mountain-heights, with its mighty river, the Rhone, which often swells and destroys everything, overflooding fields and roads. The valley makes a bend, between the towns of Sion and St. Maurice, like an elbow and becomes so narrow at Maurice, that there only remains sufficient room for the river bed and a cart way. Here an old tower stands like a sentry before the Canton Valais; it ends at this point and overlooks the bridge, which has a wall towards the custom-house. Now [50]begins the Canton called Pays de Vaud and the nearest town is Bex, where everything becomes luxuriant and fruitful—one is in a garden of walnut and chestnut trees and here and there, cypress and pomegranate blossoms peep out—it is as warm as the South; one imagines one's self transplanted into Italy.

Rudy reached Bex, accomplished his business and looked about him, but he did not see a single miller's boy, not to speak of Babette. It appeared as though they were not to meet.

It was evening, the air was heavy with the wild thyme and blooming linden, a glistening veil lay over the forest-clad mountains, there was a stillness over everything, but not the quiet of sleep. It seemed as though all nature retained her breath, as if she felt disposed to allow her image to be imprinted upon the firmament.

[51]Here and there, there were poles standing on the green fields, between the trees; they held the telegraph wire, which has been conducted through this peaceful valley. An object leant against one of these poles, so immoveable, that one might have taken it for a withered trunk of a tree; but it was Rudy. He slept not and still less was he dead; but as the most important events of this earth, as well as affairs of vital moment for individuals pass over the wires, without their giving out a tone or a tremulous movement, even so flashed through Rudy, thoughts—powerful, overwhelming, speaking of the happiness of his life; his, henceforth, "constant thought." His eyes were fixed upon a point in the trellis-work, and this was a light in Babette's sitting room. Rudy was so motionless, one might have thought that he was observing a [52]chamois, in order to shoot it. Now, however, he was like the chamois—which appears sculptured on the rock, and suddenly if a stone rolls, springs and flies away—thus stood Rudy, until a thought struck him.

"Never despair," said he. "I shall make a visit to the mill, and say: Good evening miller, good evening Babette! One does not fall when one does not think of it! Babette must see me, if I am to be her husband!"

And Rudy laughed, was of good cheer and went to the mill; he knew what he wanted, he wanted Babette.

The river, with its yellowish white water rolled on; the willow trees and the lindens bowed themselves deep in the hastening water; Rudy went along the path, and as it says in the old child's song:
[53]
—— —— —— Zu des Müllers Haus,
Aber da war Niemand drinnen
Nur die Katze schaute aus![B]

The house-cat stood on the step, put up her back and said: "Miau!" but Rudy had no thoughts for her language, he knocked, no one heard, no one opened. "Miau!" said the cat. If Rudy had been little, he would have understood the speech of animals and known that the cat told him: "There is no one at home!" He was obliged to cross over to the mill, to make inquiries, and here he had news. The master of the house was away on a journey, far away in the town of Interlaken—inter lacus, "between the lakes"—as the school-master, Annette's father, had explained, in his wisdom. Far away was the miller and Babette with him; there was to be a [54]shooting festival, which was to commence on the following day and to continue for a whole week. The Swiss from all the German cantons were to meet there.

Poor Rudy, one could well say that he had not taken the happiest time to visit Bex; now he could return and that was what he did. He took the road over Sion and St. Maurice, back to his own valley, back to his own mountain, but he was not down-cast. On the following morning, when the sun rose, his good humour had returned, in fact it had never left him.

"Babette is in Interlaken, many a day's journey from here!" said he to himself, "it is a long road thither, if one goes by the highway, but not so far if one passes over the rocks and that is the road for a chamois hunter! I went this road formerly, for there is my home, where I lived with [55]my grandfather when I was a little child, and they have a shooting festival in Interlaken! I will be the first one there, and that will I be with Babette also, as soon as I have made her acquaintance!"

With his light knapsack containing his Sunday clothes, with his gun and his huntsman's pouch, Rudy ascended the mountain. The short road, was a pretty long one, but the shooting-match had but commenced to-day and was to last more than a week; the miller and Babette were to remain the whole time, with their relations in Interlaken. Rudy crossed the Gemmi, for he wished to go to Grindelwald.

He stepped forwards merry and well, out into the fresh, light mountain air. The valley sank beneath him, the horizon widened; here and there a snow-peak, and soon appeared the whole shining white [56]alpine chain. Rudy knew every snow mountain, onward he strode towards the Schreckhorn, that elevates its white powdered snow-finger high in the air.

At last he crossed the ridge of the mountain and the pasture-grounds and reached the valley of his home; the air was light and his spirits gay, mountain and valley stood resplendent with verdure and flowers. His heart was filled with youthful thoughts;—that one can never grow old, never die; but live, rule and enjoy;—free as a bird, light as a bird was he. The swallows flew by and sang as in his childhood: "We and you, and You and we!" All was happiness.

Below lay the velvet-green meadow, with its brown wooden houses, the Lütschine hummed and roared. He saw the glacier with its green glass edges and its black [57]crevices in the deep snow, and the under and upper glacier. The sound of the church-bells was carried over to him, as if they chimed a welcome home; his heart beat loudly and expanded, so, that for a moment, Babette vanished from it; his heart widened, it was so full of recollections. He retraced his steps, over the path, where he used to stand when a little boy, with the other children, on the edge of the ditch, and where he sold carved wooden houses. Yonder, under the fir-trees was his grandfather's house,—strangers dwelled there. Children came running up the path, wishing to sell; one of them held an alpine rose towards him. Rudy took it for a good omen and thought of Babette. Quickly he crossed the bridge, where the two Lütschines meet; the leafy trees had increased and the walnut trees [58]gave deeper shade. He saw the streaming Swiss and Danish flags—the white cross on the red cloth—and Interlaken lay before him.

It was certainly a magnificent town; like no other, it seemed to Rudy. A Swiss town in its Sunday dress, was not like other trading-places, a mass of black stone houses, heavy, uninviting and stiff. No! it looked as though the wooden houses, on the mountain had run down into the green valley, to the clear, swift river and had ranged themselves in a row—a little in and out—so as to form a street, the most splendid of all streets, which had grown up since Rudy was here as a child. It appeared to him, that here all the pretty wooden houses that his grandfather had carved, and with which the cup-board at home used to be filled, had placed themselves [59]there and had grown in strength, as the old, the oldest chestnut trees had done. Each house had carved wood-work around the windows and balconies, projecting roofs, pretty and neat; in front of every house a little flower garden extended into the stone-covered street. The houses were all placed on one side, as if they wished to conceal the forest-green meadow, where the cows with their tinkling bells made one fancy one's self near the high alpine pasture-grounds. The meadow was enclosed with high mountains, that leaned to one side so that the Jungfrau, the most stately of the Swiss mountains, with its glistening snow-clad top, was visible.

What a quantity of well dressed ladies and gentlemen from foreign countries! What multitudes of inhabitants from the different cantons! The shooters, with their [60]numbers placed in a wreath around their hats, waiting to take their turn. Here was music and song, hurdy-gurdys and wind instruments, cries and confusion. The houses and bridges were decked with devices and verses; banners and flags floated, rifles sounded shot after shot; this was the best music to Rudy's ear and he entirely forgot Babette, although he had come for her sake.

The marksmen thronged towards the spot where the target-shooting was; Rudy was soon among them and he was the best, the luckiest, for he always hit the mark.

"Who can the strange hunter be?" they asked, "He speaks the French language as though he came from Canton Valais!" "He speaks our German very distinctly!" said others. "He is said to have lived in the neighbourhood of [61]Grindelwald, when a child!" said one of them.

There was life in the youth; his eyes sparkled, his aim was true. Good luck gives courage, and Rudy had courage at all times; he soon had a large circle of friends around him, they praised him, they did homage to him, and Babette had almost entirely left his thoughts. At that moment a heavy hand struck him on the shoulder, and a gruff voice addressed him in the French tongue:

"You are from Canton Valais?"

Rudy turned around. A stout person, with a red, contented countenance, stood by him and that was the rich miller of Bex. He covered with his wide body, the slight pretty Babette, who however, soon peeped out with her beaming dark eyes. The rich peasant became consequential because the [62]hunter from his canton had made the best shot and was the honoured one. Rudy was certainly a favourite of fortune, that, for which he had journeyed thither and almost forgotten had sought him.

When one meets a countryman far from one's home, why then one knows one another, and speaks together. Rudy was the first at the shooting festival and the miller was the first at Bex, through his money and mill, and so the two men pressed each other's hands: this they had never done before. Babette also, gave Rudy her little hand and he pressed her's in return and looked at her, so—that she became quite red.

The miller told of the long journey which they had made here, of the many large towns which they had seen—that was a real journey; they had come in the steam-boat and had been driven by post and rail!

[63]"I came by the short road," said Rudy, "I came over the mountains; there is no path so high, that one can not reach it!"

"But one can break one's neck," said the miller, "you look as though you would do so some day, you are so daring!"

"One does not fall, when one does not think of it!" said Rudy.

And the miller's family in Interlaken, with whom the miller and Babette were staying, begged Rudy to pay them a visit, for he was from the same canton as their relations.

These were glad tidings for Rudy, fortune smiled upon him, as it always does on those that rely upon themselves and think upon the saying: "Our Lord gives us nuts, but he does not crack them for us!" Rudy made himself quite at home [64]with the miller's relations; they drank the health of the best marksman. Babette knocked her glass against his and Rudy gave thanks for the honour shown him.

In the evening, they all walked under the walnut trees, in front of the decorated hôtels; there was such a crowd, such a throng, that Rudy was obliged to offer his arm to Babette. "He was so rejoiced to have met people from Pays de Vaud," said he, "Pays de Vaud and Valais were good neighbourly cantons." His joy was so profound that it struck Babette, she must press his hand. They walked along almost like old acquaintances; she was so amusing, the darling little creature, it became her so prettily Rudy thought, when she described what was laughable and overdone in the dress of the ladies, and ridiculed their manners and walk. She did [65]not do this in order to mock them, for no doubt they were very good people, yes! kind and amiable. Babette knew what was right, for she had a god-mother that was a distinguished English lady. She was in Bex, eighteen years ago, when Babette was baptized; she had given Babette, the expensive breastpin which she wore. The god-mother had written her two letters; this year she was to meet her in Interlaken, with her daughters; they were old maids, over thirty years old, said Babette;—she was just eighteen.

The sweet little mouth was not still a minute; everything that Babette said, sounded to Rudy of great importance. Then he related how often he had been in Bex, how well he knew the mill; how often he had seen Babette, but she of course had never remarked him; he told [66]how, when he reached the mill, with many thoughts to which he could give no utterance, she and her father were far away; still not so far as to render it impossible for him to ascend the rocky wall which made the road so long.

Yes, he said this; and he also said how much he thought of her; that it was for her sake and not on account of the shooting festival that he had come.

Babette remained very still, for what he confided to her was almost too much joy.

The sun set behind the rocky wall, whilst they were walking, and there stood the Jungfrau in all her radiant splendour, surrounded by the dark green circle of the adjacent mountains. The vast crowd of people stopped to look at it, Rudy and Babette also gazed upon its grandeur.

[67]"It is nowhere more beautiful than here!" said Babette.

"Nowhere!" said Rudy, and looked at Babette.

"I must leave to-morrow!" said he, a little later.

"Visit us in Bex," whispered Babette, "it will delight my father!"

FOOTNOTES:

[B]
The cat looked out from the miller's house,
No one was in, not even a mouse!

[68]
V.ToC
HOMEWARDS.

Ah! how much Rudy carried with him, as he went home the next morning over the mountains. Yes, there were three silver goblets, two very fine rifles and a silver coffee pot, which one could use if one wished to go to house-keeping; but he carried with him something far, far more important, far mightier, or rather that carried him over the high mountains.

The weather was raw, moist and cold, grey and heavy; the clouds lowered over the mountain-tops like mourning veils, and enveloped the shining peaks of the rocks. The sound of the axe resounded from the depths of the forest, and the trunks of the trees rolled down the mountain, looking in [69]the distance like slight sticks, but on approaching them they were heavy trees, suitable for making masts. The Lütschine rushed on with its monotonous sound, the wind blustered, the clouds sailed by.

Suddenly a young girl approached Rudy, whom he had not noticed before; not until she was beside him; she also was about crossing the mountain. Her eyes had so peculiar a power that one was forced to look into them; they were so strangely clear—clear as glass, so deep, so fathomless—

"Have you a beloved one?" asked Rudy; for to have a beloved one was everything to him.

"I have none!" said she, and laughed; but it was as though she was not speaking the truth. "Do not let us take a by-way," continued she, "we must go more to the left, that way is shorter!"

[70]"Yes, so as to fall down a precipice!" said Rudy; "Do you know no better way, and yet wish to be a guide?"

"I know the road well," said she, "my thoughts are with me; yours are beneath in the valley; here on high, one must think on the Ice-Maiden, for they say she is not well disposed to mankind!"

"I do not fear her," said Rudy, "she was forced to let me go when I was a child, so I suppose I can slip away from her now that I am older!"

The darkness increased, the rain fell, the snow came; it shone and dazzled. "Give me your hand, I will help you to ascend!" said the girl, and touched him with icy-cold fingers.

"You help me," said Rudy, "I do not yet need a woman's help in climbing!" He strode quickly on, away from her; the [71]snow-shower formed a curtain around him, the wind whistled by him and he heard the young girl laugh and sing; it sounded so oddly! Yes, that was certainly a spirit in the service of the Ice-Maiden. Rudy had heard of them, when he had passed a night on high; when he had crossed the mountain, as a little boy.

The snow fell more scantily and the shadows lay under him; he looked back, there was no one to be seen, but he heard laughing and jodling and it did not appear to come from a human being. When Rudy reached the uppermost portion of the mountain, where the rocky path leads to the valley of the Rhone, he saw in the direction of Chamouni, two bright stars, twinkling and shining in the clear streaks of blue; he thought of Babette, of himself, of his happiness and became warmed by his thoughts.

[72]
VI.ToC
THE VISIT TO THE MILL.

"You bring princely things into the house!" said the old foster-mother, her singular eagle-eyes glistened and she made strange and hasty motions with her lean neck.

"Fortune is with you, Rudy, I must kiss you, my sweet boy!"

Rudy allowed himself to be kissed, but one could read in his countenance, that he but submitted to circumstances and to little household miseries. "How handsome you are, Rudy!" said the old woman.

"Do not put notions into my head!" answered Rudy, and laughed, but still it pleased him.

[73]"I say it once more," said the old woman, "fortune is with you!"

"Yes, I agree with you there!" said he; thought of Babette and longed to be in the deep valley. "They must have returned, two days have passed since they expected to do so. I must go to Bex!"

Rudy went to Bex, and the inhabitants of the mill had returned; he was well received and they brought him greetings from the family at Interlaken. Babette did not talk much, she had grown silent; but her eyes spoke and that was quite enough for Rudy. The miller who generally liked to carry on the conversation—for he was accustomed to have every one laugh at his witty sayings and puns—was he not the rich miller?—seemed now to prefer to listen. Rudy recounted to him his hunting expeditions; described the difficulties, the [74]dangers and the privations of the chamois hunter when on the lofty mountain peak; how often he must climb over the insecure snow-ledges, that the wind had blown on the rocky brink, and how he must pass over slight bridges that the snow-drifts had thrown across the abyss. Rudy looked fearless, his eyes sparkled whilst he spoke of the shrewdness of the chamois, of their daring leaps, of the violence of the Föhn and of the rolling avalanches. He observed that with every description he won more and more favour; but what pleased the miller more than all, was the account of the lamb's vulture and the bold golden eagle.

In Canton Valais, not far from here, there was an eagle's nest, very slyly built under the projecting edge of the rock; a young one was in it, but no one could steal it! An Englishman had offered Rudy a few [75]days before, a whole handful of gold, if he would bring him the young one alive, "but everything has a limit," said he, "the young eagle cannot be taken away, and it would be madness to attempt it!"

The wine and conversation flowed freely; but the evening appeared all too short for Rudy; yet it was past midnight, when he went home from his first visit to the mill.

The light shone a little while longer through the window and between the green trees; the parlour-cat came out of an opening in the roof and the kitchen-cat came along the gutter.

"Do you know the latest news at the mill?" said the parlour-cat, "there has been a silent betrothal in the house! Father does not yet know it, but Rudy and Babette have reached each other their paws under the table, and he trod three times on my [76]fore-paws, but still I did not mew, for that would have awakened attention!"

"I should have done it, nevertheless!" said the kitchen-cat.

"What is suited to the kitchen is not suited to the parlour," said the parlour-cat. "I should like to know what the miller will say, when he hears of the betrothal!"

Yes, what the miller would say! That was what Rudy would have liked to know, for Rudy was not at all patient. When the omnibus rumbled over the bridge of the Rhone, between Valais and Pays de Vaud not many days after, Rudy sat in it and was of good cheer; filled with pleasing thoughts of the "Yes," of the same evening.

When evening came and the omnibus returned, yes, there sat Rudy within, but the parlour-cat, was running about in the mill with great news.

[77]"Listen, you, in the kitchen! The miller knows everything now. This has had an exquisite ending! Rudy came here towards evening; he and Babette had much to whisper and to chatter about, as they stood in the walk, under the miller's chamber. I lay close to their feet but they had neither eyes nor thoughts for me. 'I am going directly to your father,' said Rudy, 'this is an honourable affair!' 'Shall I follow you?' asked Babette, 'it may give you more courage!' 'I have courage enough,' said Rudy, 'but if you are there, he will be forced to look at it in a more favourable light!' They went in. Rudy trod heavily on my tail! Rudy is indescribably awkward; I mewed, but neither he nor Babette had ears to hear it. They opened the door, they entered and I preceded them; I leaped upon the back of a chair, for I did not [78]know but that Rudy would overturn everything! But the miller reversed all, that was a great step! Out of the door, up the mountains, to the chamois! Rudy can aim at them now, but not at our little Babette!"

"But what was said?" asked the kitchen-cat.

"Said? Everything. 'I care for her and she cares for me! When there is milk enough in the jug for one, there is milk enough in the jug for two!' 'But she is placed too high for you,' said the miller, 'she sits on gold dust, so now you know it; you can not reach her!' 'Nothing is too high; he who wills can reach anything!' said Rudy. He is too headstrong on this subject! 'But you cannot reach the eaglet, you said so yourself lately! Babette is still higher!' 'I will have them both!' said Rudy. 'Yes, I will bestow her upon you, [79]if you make me a present of the eaglet alive!' said the miller and laughed until the tears stood in his eyes.

"'Thanks for your visit, Rudy! Come again to-morrow, you will find no one at home. Farewell, Rudy!' Babette said farewell also, as sorrowfully as a kitten, that cannot see its mother. 'A word is a word, a man is a man,' said Rudy, 'do not weep Babette, I shall bring the eaglet!' 'I hope that you will break your neck!' said the miller. That's what I call an overturning! Now Rudy has gone, and Babette sits and weeps; but the miller sings in German, he learned to do so whilst on his journey! I do not intend to trouble myself any longer about it, it does no good!"

"There is still a prospect!" said the kitchen-cat.

[80]
VII.ToC
THE EAGLE'S NEST.

Merry and loud sounded the jodel from the mountain-path, it indicated good humour and joyous courage; it was Rudy; he was going to his friend Vesinand.

"You must help me! We will take Ragli with us; I am going after the eaglet on the brink of the rock!"

"Do you not wish to go after the black spot in the moon? That is quite as easy," said Vesinand; "you are in a good humour!"

"Yes, because I am thinking of my wedding; but seriously, you shall know how my affairs stand!"

Vesinand and Ragli soon knew what Rudy wished.

[81]"You are a bold fellow," said they, "do not do this! You will break your neck!"

"One does not fall, when one does not think of it!" said Rudy.

About mid-day, they set out with poles, ladders and ropes; their path lay through bushes and brambles, over the rolling stones, up, up in the dark night.

The water rushed beneath them; the water flowed above them and the humid clouds chased each other in the air. The hunters approached the steep brink of the rock; it became darker and darker, the rocky walls almost met; high above them in the narrow fissure the air penetrated and gave light. Under their feet there was a deep abyss with its roaring waters.

They all three sat still, awaiting the grey of the morning; then the eagle would fly out; they must shoot him before they could [82]think of obtaining the young one. Rudy seemed to be a part of the stone on which he sat; his rifle placed before him, ready to take aim, his eyes immoveably fastened on yon high cleft which concealed the eagle's nest. The three huntsmen waited long.

A crashing, whizzing noise sounded high above them; a large hovering object darkened the air. Two rifle barrels were aimed as the black eagle flew from its nest; a shot was heard, the out-spread wings moved an instant, then the bird slowly sank as if it wished to fill the entire cliff with its outstretched wings and bury the huntsmen in its fall. The eagle sank in the deep; the branches of the trees and bushes cracked, broken by the fall of the bird.

They now displayed their activity; three of the longest ladders were tied together; they stood them on the farthest point where [83]the foot could place itself with security, close to the brink of the precipice—but they were not long enough; there was still a great space from the outermost projecting cliff, which protected the nest; the rocky wall was perfectly smooth. After some consultation, they decided to lower into the opening two ladders tied together and to fasten them to the three already beneath them. With great difficulty they dragged them up and attached them with cords; the ladders shot over the projecting cliffs and hung over the chasm; Rudy sat already on the lowest round.

It was an ice-cold morning, and the mist mounted from the black ravine. Rudy sat there like a fly on a rocking blade of grass, which a nest-building bird has dropped in its hasty flight, on the edge of a factory chimney; but the fly had the advantage of [84]escaping by its wings, poor Rudy had none, he was almost sure to break his neck. The wind whistled around him and the roaring water from the thawed glaciers, the palace of the Ice-Maiden, poured itself into the abyss.

He gave the ladders a swinging motion—as the spider swings herself by her long thread—he seized them with a strong and steady hand, but they shook as if they had worn-out hasps.

The five long ladders looked like a tremulous reed, as they reached the nest and hung perpendicularly over the rocky wall. Now came the most dangerous part; Rudy had to climb as a cat climbs; but Rudy could do this, for the cat had taught it to him. He did not feel that Vertigo trod in the air behind him and stretched her polypus-like arms towards him. Now he stood on the highest round of the ladder and perceived [85]that he was not sufficiently high to enable him to see into the nest; he could reach it with his hands. He tried how firm the twigs were, which plaited in one another formed the bottom of the nest; when he had assured himself of a thick and immoveable one, he swung himself off of the ladder. He had his breast and head over the nest, out of which streamed towards him a stifling stench of carrion; torn lambs, chamois and birds lay decomposing around him. Vertigo, who had no power over him, blew poisonous vapours into his face to stupify him; below in the black, yawning abyss, sat the Ice-Maiden herself, on the hastening water, with her long greenish-white hair and stared at him with death-like eyes, which were pointed at him like two rifle barrels.

"Now, I shall catch you!"

[86]Seated in one corner of the eagle's nest was the eaglet, who could not fly yet, although so strong and powerful. Rudy fastened his eyes on it, held himself with his whole strength firmly by one hand, and with the other threw the noose around it. It was captured alive, its legs were in the knot; Rudy cast the rope over his shoulder, so that the animal dangled some distance below him, and sustained himself by another rope which hung down, until his feet touched the upper round of the ladder.

"Hold fast, do not think that you will fall and then you are sure not to do so!" That was the old lesson, and he followed it; held fast, climbed, was sure not to fall and he did not.

There resounded a strong jodling, and a joyous one too. Rudy stood on the firm, rocky ground with the young eaglet.

[87]
VIII.ToC
THE NEWS WHICH THE PARLOUR-CAT RELATED.

"Here is what you demanded!" said Rudy, on entering the house of the miller at Bex, as he placed a large basket on the floor and took off the covering. Two yellow eyes, with black circles around them, fiery and wild, looked out as if they wished to set on fire, or to kill those around them. The short beak yawned ready to bite and the neck was red and downy.

"The eaglet!" cried the miller. Babette screamed, jumped to one side and could neither turn her eyes from Rudy, nor from the eaglet.

"You do not allow yourself to be frightened!" said the miller.

[88]"And you keep your word, at all times," said Rudy, "each has his characteristic trait!"

"But why did you not break your neck?" asked the miller.

"Because I held on firmly," answered Rudy, "and I hold firmly on Babette!"

"First see that you have her!" said the miller and laughed; that was a good sign; Babette knew this.

"Let us take the eaglet from the basket, it is terrible to see how he glares! How did you get him?"

Rudy was obliged to recount his adventure, whilst the miller stared at him with eyes, which grew larger and larger.

"With your courage and with your luck you could take care of three wives!" said the miller.

"Thanks! Thanks!" cried Rudy.

[89]"Yes, but you have not yet Babette!" said the miller as he struck the young chamois hunter, jestingly on the shoulder.

"Do you know the latest news in the mill?" said the parlour-cat to the kitchen-cat. "Rudy has brought us the young eagle and taken Babette in exchange. They have kissed each other and the father looked on. That is just as good as a betrothal; the old man did not overturn anything, he drew in his claws, took his nap and left the two seated, caressing each other. They have so much to relate, they will not get through till Christmas!"

They had not finished at Christmas.

The wind whistled through the brown foliage, the snow swept through the valley as it did on the high mountains. The Ice-Maiden sat in her proud castle and arrayed herself in her winter costume; the ice walls [90]stood in glazed frost; where the mountain streams waved their watery veil in summer, were now seen thick elephantine icicles, shining garlands of ice, formed of fantastic ice crystals, encircled the fir-trees, which were powdered with snow.

The Ice-Maiden rode on the blustering wind over the deepest valleys. The snow covering lay over all Bex; Rudy stayed in doors more than was his wont, and sat with Babette. The wedding was to take place in the summer; their friends talked so much of it that it often made their ears burn. All was sunshine with them, and the loveliest alpine rose was Babette, the sprightly, laughing Babette, who was as charming as the early spring; the spring that makes the birds sing, that will bring the summer time and the wedding day.

[91]"How can they sit there and hang over each other," exclaimed the parlour-cat, "I am really tired of their eternal mewing!"

[92]
IX.ToC
THE ICE-MAIDEN.

The early spring time had unfolded the green leaves of the walnut and chestnut trees; they were remarkably luxuriant from the bridge of St. Maurice to the banks of the lake of Geneva.

The Rhone, which rushes forth from its source, has under the green glacier the palace of the Ice-Maiden. She is carried by it and the sharp wind to the elevated snow-fields, where she extends herself on her damp cushions in the brilliant sunshine. There she sits and gazes, with far-seeing sight, upon the valley where mortals busily move about like so many ants.

"Beings endowed with mental powers, as the children of the Sun, call you," said [93]the Ice-Maiden—"ye are worms! One snow-ball rolled and you and your houses and towns are crushed and swept away!" She raised her proud head still higher and looked with death-beaming eyes far around and below her. From the valley resounded a rumbling, a blasting of rocks, men were making railways and tunnels. "They are playing like moles," said she, "they excavate passages, and a noise is made like the firing of a gun. When I transpose my castles, it roars louder than the rolling of the thunder!"

A smoke arose from the valley and moved along like a floating veil, like a waving plume; it was the locomotive which led the train over the newly built railroad—this crooked snake, whose limbs are formed of cars upon cars. It shot along with the speed of an arrow.

[94]"They are playing the masters with their mental powers," said the Ice-Maiden, "but the powers of nature are the ruling ones!" and she laughed and her laugh was echoed in the valley.

"Now an avalanche is rolling!" said the men below.

Still more loudly sang the children of the Sun; they sang of the "thoughts" of men which fetter the sea to the yoke, cut down mountains and fill up valleys; of human thoughts which rule the powers of nature. At this moment, a company of travellers crossed the snow-field where the Maiden sat; they had bound themselves firmly together with ropes, in order to form a large body on the smooth ice-field by the deep abyss.

"Worms!" said she, "as if you were lords of creation!" She turned from them [95]and looked mockingly upon the deep valley, where the cars were rushing by.

"There sit those thoughts in their power of strength! I see them all!—There sits one, proud as a king and alone! They sit in masses! There, half are asleep! When the steam-dragon stops, they will descend and go their way! The thoughts go out into the world!" She laughed.

"There rolls another avalanche!" they said in the valley.

"It will not catch us!" said two on the back of the steam dragon;—"two souls and one thought"—these were Rudy and Babette; the miller was there also.

"As baggage," said he, "I go along, as the indispensable!"

"There sit the two," said the Ice-Maiden, "I have crushed many a chamois; I have bent and broken millions of alpine [96]roses, so that no roots were left! I shall annihilate them! The thoughts! The mental powers!" She laughed.

"There rolls another avalanche!" they said in the valley.

[97]
X.ToC
THE GOD-MOTHER.

In Montreux, one of the adjoining towns, which with Clarens, Vernex and Crin forms a garland around the northeast part of the lake of Geneva, dwelt Babette's god-mother, a distinguished English lady, with her daughters and a young relation. Although she had but lately arrived, the miller had already made her his visit and announced Babette's engagement; had spoken of Rudy and the eaglet; of the visit to Interlaken and in short had told the whole story. This had rejoiced her in the highest degree, both for Rudy and Babette's sake, as well as for the miller's; they must all visit her—therefore they came. Babette was to see [98]her god-mother, and the god-mother was to see Babette.

At the end of the lake of Geneva, by the little town of Villeneuve, lay the steam-boat which after half an hour's trip from Vernex, arrived at Montreux. This is one of the coasts which are sung of by the poets. Here sat Byron, by the deep bluish green lake, under the walnut trees and wrote his melodious verses upon the prisoner of the deep sombre castle of Chillon. Here, where Clarens with its weeping willows, mirrored itself in the waters, once wandered Rousseau and dreamt of Heloïse. Yonder, where the Rhone glides along under Savoy's snow-topped mountains and not far from its mouth, in the lake lies a little island, indeed it is so small, that from the coast it is taken for a vessel. It is a valley between the rocks, which a lady caused to [99]be dammed up a hundred years ago and to be covered with earth and planted with three acacia-trees, which now shade the whole island. Babette was quite charmed with this little spot; they must and should go there, yes, it must be charming beyond description to be on the island; but the steamer sailed by, and stopped as it should, at Vernex.

The little party wandered between the white, sunlighted walls, which surround the vineyards of the little mountain town of Montreux, through the fig-trees which flourish before every peasant's house and in whose gardens, the laurel and cypress trees are green. Half-way up the hill stood the boarding house where the god-mother resided.

The reception was very cordial. The god-mother was a large amiable person and had a round smiling countenance; as a [100]child she must have had a real Raphael's angel head, but now it was an old angel's head with silvery white hair, well curled. The daughters were tall, slender, refined and much dressed. The young cousin who was with them, was clad in white from head to foot; he had golden hair and immense whiskers; he immediately showed little Babette the greatest attention.

Richly bound books, loose music and drawings lay strewn about the large table; the balcony door stood open and one had a view of the beautiful out-spread lake, which was so shining, so still, that the mountains of Savoy with their little villages, their forest and their snowy peaks mirrored themselves in it.

Rudy, who usually was so full of life, so merry and so daring, did not feel in his element; he moved about over the smooth [101]floor as though he were treading on peas. How wearily the time dragged along, it was just as if one was in a tread mill! If they did go walking, why, that was just as slow; Rudy could take two steps forwards and two steps backwards and still remain in the pace of the others.

When they came to Chillon, (the old sombre castle on the rocky island) they entered in order to see the dungeon and the martyr's stake, as well as the rusty chains on the wall; the stone bed for those condemned to death and the trap-door where the wretched beings impaled on iron goads, were hurled into the breakers. It was a place of execution elevated through Byron's song to the world of poetry. Rudy was sad, he lent over the broad stone sill of the window, gazed into the deep blue water and over to the little solitary island with [102]its three acacias and wished himself there, free from the whole gossiping society. Babette was remarkably merry, she had been indescribably amused. The cousin found her perfect.

"Yes, a perfect jackanapes!" said Rudy; this was the first time, that he had said something, that did not please her. The Englishman had presented her with a little book, as a souvenir of Chillon,—Byron's poem of "The Prisoner of Chillon," in the French language, so that Babette might read it.

"The book may be good," said Rudy, "but the finely combed fellow that gave it to you does not please me!"

"He looked like a meal-bag, without meal in it!" said the miller and laughed at his own wit. Rudy laughed and thought that this was very well said.

[103]
XI.ToC
THE COUSIN.

When Rudy came to the mill, a couple of days afterwards, he found the young Englishman there. Babette had just cooked some trout for him and had dressed them with parsley in order to make them appear more inviting. That was assuredly not necessary. What did the Englishman want here? Did he come in order to have Babette entertain and wait upon him?

Rudy was jealous and that amused Babette; it rejoiced her, to learn the feelings of his heart, the strong as well as the weak ones.

Until now love had been a play and she played with Rudy's whole heart; yet he [104]was her happiness, her life's thought, the noblest one! The more gloomy he looked, the more her eyes laughed and she would have liked to kiss the blonde Englishman with his golden whiskers, if she could have succeeded by so doing, in making Rudy rush away furious. Then, yes then, she would have known how much he loved her. That was not right, that was not wise in little Babette; but she was only nineteen! She did not reflect and still less did she think how her behaviour towards the young Englishman might be interpreted; for it was lighter and merrier than was seemly for the honourable and newly affianced daughter of the miller.

The mill lay where the highway slopes—under the snow covered rocky heights—which are called here, in the language of the country "Diablerets" close to a rapid [105]mountain stream, which was of a greyish white, like bubbling soap suds. A smaller stream, rushes forth from the rocks on the other side of the river, passes through an enclosed, broad rafter-made-gutter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gutter was so full of water, that it streamed over and offered a most slippery way, to one who had the idea of crossing more quickly to the mill; a young man had this idea—the Englishman. Guided by the light, which shone from Babette's window, he arrived in the evening, clothed in white, like a miller's boy; he had not learnt to climb and nearly tumbled head over heels into the stream, but escaped with wet sleeves and splashed pantaloons. He reached Babette's window, muddy and wet through, there he climbed into the old linden tree and imitated the screech of an owl, for he [106]could not sing like any other bird. Babette heard it and peeped through the thin curtains, but when she remarked the white man and recognized him, her little heart fluttered with alarm, but also with anger. She hastily extinguished the light, fastened the windows securely and then she let him howl.

If Rudy was in the mill it would have been dreadful, but Rudy was not there; no, it was much worse, for he was below. There was loud conversation, angry words; there might be blows; yes, perhaps murder.

Babette was terrified; she opened the window, called Rudy's name and begged him to go; she said she would not suffer him to remain.

"You will not suffer me to remain," he exclaimed, "then it is a preconcerted thing! You were expecting other friends, friends better than myself; shame on you, Babette!"

[107]"You are detestable," said Babette, "I hate you!" and she wept. "Go! Go!"

"I have not deserved this!" said he, and departed. His cheeks burned like fire, his heart burned like fire.

Babette threw herself on her bed and wept.

"So much as I love you, Rudy, how can you believe ill of me!"

She was angry, very angry, and this was good for her; otherwise she would have sorrowed deeply; but now she could sleep, and she slept the strengthening sleep of youth.

[108]
XII.ToC
THE EVIL POWERS.

Rudy forsook Bex and went on his way home, in the fresh, cool air, up the snow-covered mountain, where the Ice-Maiden ruled. The leafy trees which lay beneath him, looked like potato vines; fir-trees and bushes became less frequent; the alpine roses grew in the snow, which lay in little spots like linen put out to bleach. There stood a blue anemone, he crushed it with the barrel of his gun.

Higher up two chamois appeared and Rudy's eyes gained lustre and his thoughts took a new direction; but he was not near enough to make a good shot; he ascended still higher, where only stiff grass grows [109]between the blocks of stone; the chamois were quietly crossing the snow field; he hurried hastily on; the fog was descending and he suddenly stood before the steep rocky wall. The rain commenced to fall.

He felt a burning thirst; heat in his head, cold in all his limbs; he grasped his hunting flask, but it was empty; he had not thought of filling it when he rushed up the hill. He had never been ill, but now he was so; he was weary and had a desire to throw himself down to sleep, but everything was streaming with water. He endeavoured to collect his ideas, but all objects danced before his eyes. Suddenly he perceived a newly built house leaning against the rocks and in the doorway stood a young girl. Yes, it appeared to him that it was the schoolmaster's Annette, whom he had once kissed whilst dancing; but it was not [110]Annette and yet he had seen her before—perhaps in Grindelwald, on the evening when he returned from the shooting-festival at Interlaken.

"Where do you come from?" asked he.

"I am at home," said she, "I tend my flock!"

"Your flock, where do they pasture? Here are only cliffs and snow!"

"You have a ready answer," said she and laughed; "below there is a charming meadow! There are my goats! I take good care of them! I lose none of them, what is mine, remains mine!"

"You are bold!" said Rudy.

"So are you!" answered she.

"Have you any milk? Do give me some, my thirst is intolerable!"

"I have something better than milk," said she, "and you shall have it! [111]Travellers came yesterday with their guide, but they forgot a flask of wine, such as you have never tasted; they will not come for it, I shall not drink it, so drink you!"

She brought the wine, poured it in a wooden cup and handed it to Rudy.

"That is good," said he, "I have never drunk such a warming, such a fiery wine!" His eyes beamed, a life, a glow came over him; all sorrow and oppression seemed to die away; gushing, fresh human nature stirred itself within him.

"Why this is the schoolmaster's Annette," exclaimed he, "give me a kiss!"

"Yes, give me the beautiful ring, which you wear on your finger!"

"My engagement ring?"

"Just that one!" said the young girl and pouring wine into the cup, put it to his lips and he drank. Then the joy of life streamed [112]in his blood; the whole world seemed to belong to him. "Why torment one's self? Every thing is made for our enjoyment and happiness! The stream of life is the stream of joy, and forgetfulness is felicity!" He looked at the young girl, it was Annette and then again not Annette; still less, an enchanted phantom, as he had named her, when he met her near Grindelwald. The girl on the mountain was fresh as the newly fallen snow, blooming as the alpine rose and light as a kid; and a human being like Rudy. He wound his arm about her, looked in her strange clear eyes, yes, only for a second—but was it spiritual life or was it death which flowed through him? Was he raised on high, or did he sink into the deep, murderous ice-pit, deeper and ever deeper? He saw icy walls like bluish green glass, numberless clefts yawned around, and [113]the water sounded as it dropped, like a chime of bells; it was pearly, clear and shone in bluish white flames. The Ice-Maiden gave him a kiss, which made him shiver from head to foot and he gave a cry of pain. He staggered and fell; it grew dark before his eyes, but soon all became clear to him again; the evil powers had had their sport with him.

The alpine maiden had vanished, the mountain hut had vanished, the water beat against the bare rocky walls and all around him lay snow. Rudy wet to the skin, trembled from cold and his ring had disappeared, his engagement ring, which Babette had given him. He tried to fire off his rifle which lay near him in the snow but it missed. Humid clouds lay in the clefts like firm masses of snow and Vertigo watched for her powerless prey; beneath him in the [114]deep chasm it sounded as if a block of the rock was rolling down and was endeavouring to crush and tear up all that met it in its fall.

In the mill sat Babette and wept; Rudy had not been there for six days; he who had been so wrong; he who must beg her forgiveness, because she loved him with her whole heart.

[115]
XIII.ToC
IN THE MILLER'S HOUSE.

"What confusion!" said the parlour-cat to the kitchen-cat.

"Now all is wrong between Rudy and Babette. She sits and weeps and he thinks no longer on her, I suppose.

"I cannot bear it!" said the kitchen-cat.

"Nor I," said the parlour-cat, "but I shall not worry myself any longer about it! Babette can take the red-whiskered one for a dear one, but he has not been here either, since he tried to get on the roof!"

Within and without, the evil powers ruled, and Rudy knew this, and reflected upon what had taken place both around and within him, whilst upon the mountain. [116]Were those faces, or was all a feverish dream? He had never known fever or sickness before. Whilst he condemned Babette, he also condemned himself. He thought of the wild, wicked feelings which had lately possessed him. Could he confess everything to Babette? Every thought, which in the hour of temptation might have become a reality? He had lost her ring and by this loss had she won him back. Could she confess to him? It seemed as if his heart would break when he thought of her; so many recollections passed through his soul. He saw her a lively, laughing, petulant child; many a loving word, which she had said to him in the fullness of her heart, shot like a sunbeam through his breast and soon all there was sunshine for Babette.

She must be able to confess to him and she should do so.

[117]He came to the mill, he came to confession; and this commenced with a kiss, and ended with the fact that Rudy was the sinner; his great fault was, that he had doubted Babette's fidelity; yes, that was indeed atrocious in him! Such mistrust, such violence could bring them both into misfortune! Yes, most surely! Thereupon Babette preached him a little sermon, which much diverted her and became her charmingly; in one article Rudy was quite right; the god-mother's relation was a jackanapes! She should burn the book that he had given her, and not possess the slightest object which could remind her of him.

"Now it is all arranged," said the parlour-cat, "Rudy is here again, they understand each other and that is a great happiness!"

"Last night," said the kitchen-cat, "I [118]heard the rats say that the greatest happiness was to eat tallow candles, and to have abundance of tainted meat. Now who must one believe, the rats or the lovers?"

"Neither of them," said the parlour-cat, "that is the surest way!"

The greatest happiness for Rudy and Babette was drawing near; they were awaiting, so they said, their happiest day, their wedding day.

But the wedding was not to be in the church of Bex, nor in the miller's house; the god-mother wished it to be solemnized near her, and the marriage ceremony was to take place in the beautiful little church of Montreux. The miller insisted that her desire should be fulfilled; he alone knew what the god-mother intended for the young couple; they were to receive a bridal present from her, which was well worth so [119]slight a concession. The day was appointed. They were to leave for Villeneuve, in time to arrive at Montreux early in the morning, and so enable the god-mother's daughters to dress the bride.

"Then I suppose there will be a wedding here in the house, on the following day," said the parlour-cat, "otherwise, I would not give a single mew for the whole thing!"

"There will be a feast here," said the kitchen-cat, "the ducks are slain, the pigeons necks wrung, and a whole deer hangs on the wall. My teeth itch just with looking on! To-morrow the journey commences!"

Yes, to-morrow! Rudy and Babette sat together for the last time in the mill.

Without was the alpine glow; the evening bells pealed; the daughters of the Sun sang: "What is for the best will take place!"

[120]
XIV.ToC
THE VISIONS OF THE NIGHT.

The sun had gone down; the clouds lowered themselves into the Rhone valley—between the high mountains; the wind blew from the south over the mountains—an African wind, a Föhn,—which tore the clouds asunder. When the wind had passed, all was still for an instant; the parted clouds hung in fantastic forms between the forest-grown mountains. Over the hastening Rhone, their shapes resembled sea-monsters of the primeval world, soaring eagles of the air and leaping frogs of the ditches—they seemed to sink into the rapid stream and to sail on the river, yet they still floated in the air. The stream [121]carried away a pine tree, torn up by the roots; and the water sent whirlpools ahead; this was Vertigo, with her attendants, and they danced in circles on the foaming stream. The moon shone on the snow of the mountain-peaks; it lighted up the dark forest and the singular white clouds; the peasants of the mountain, saw through their window panes, the nightly apparitions and the spirits of the powers of nature, as they sailed before the Ice-Maiden. She came from her glacier castle, she sat in a frail bark, a felled fir-tree; the water of the glaciers carried her up the stream out to the main sea.

"The wedding guests are coming!" was whizzed and sung in the air and in the water.

Visions without and visions within!

Babette dreamt a wonderful dream.

[122]It appeared to her, as though she was married to Rudy, and had been so for many years. He had gone chamois hunting and as she sat at home, the young Englishman with the golden whiskers was beside her; his eyes were fiery, his words seemed endowed with magical power; he reached her his hand and she was obliged to follow him.

They flew from home. Steadily downwards.

A weight lay upon her heart and it grew ever heavier. It was a sin against Rudy, a sin against God; suddenly she stood forsaken. Her clothes were torn by the thorns; her hair had grown grey; she looked up in her sorrow and she saw Rudy on the edge of the rock. She stretched her arms towards him, but she ventured neither to call, nor to implore him; but [123]she soon saw that it was not he himself, only his hunting coat and hat, which were hanging on his alpine staff, as the hunters are accustomed to place them, in order to deceive the chamois! Babette moaned in boundless anguish:

"Ah! would that I had died on my wedding day, my happiest day! Oh! my heavenly Father! That would have been a mercy, a life's happiness! Then we would have obtained, the best, that could have happened to us! No one knows his future!" In her impious sorrow, she threw herself down the steep precipice. It seemed as if a string broke, and a sorrowful tone resounded.

Babette awoke—the dream was at an end and obliterated; but she knew that she had dreamt of something terrible, and of the young Englishman, whom she had neither seen, nor thought of, for many months. [124]Was he perhaps in Montreux? Should she see him at her wedding? A slight shadow flitted over her delicate mouth, her brow contracted; but her smile soon returned; her eyes sparkled again; the sun shone so beautifully without, and to-morrow, yes to-morrow was her and Rudy's wedding day.

Rudy had already arrived, when she came down stairs, and they soon left for Villeneuve. They were so happy, the two, and the miller also; he laughed and was radiant with joy; he was a good father, an honest soul.

"Now we are the masters of the house!" said the parlour-cat.

[125]
XV.ToC
CONCLUSION.

It was not yet night, when the three joyous people reached Villeneuve and took their dinner. The miller seated himself in an arm-chair with his pipe and took a little nap. The betrothed went out of the town arm in arm, out on the carriage way, under the bush-grown rocks, to the deep bluish-green lake. Sombre Chillon, with its grey walls and heavy towers, mirrored itself in the clear water; but still nearer lay the little island, with its three acacias, and it looked like a bouquet on the lake.

"How charming it must be there!" said Babette; she felt again the greatest desire to visit it, and this wish could be [126]immediately fulfilled; for a boat lay on the shore and the rope which fastened it, was easy to untie. As no one was visible, from whom they could ask permission, they took the boat without hesitation, for Rudy could row well. The oars skimmed like the fins of a fish, over the pliant water, which is so yielding and still so strong; which is all back to carry, but all mouth to engulph; which smiles—yes, is gentleness itself, and still awakens terror—and is so powerful in destroying. The rapid current soon brought the boat to the island; they stepped on land. There was just room enough for the two to dance.

Rudy swung Babette three times around, and then they seated themselves on the little bench, under the acacias, looked into each other's eyes, held each other by the hand, and everything around them shone in the splendour of the setting sun. The [127]forests of fir-trees on the mountains became of a pinkish lilac aspect, the colour of blooming heath, and where the bare rocks were apparent, they glowed as if they were transparent. The clouds in the sky were radiant with a red glow; the whole lake was like a fresh flaming rose leaf. As the shadows arose to the snow-covered mountains of Savoy, they became dark blue, but the uppermost peak seemed like red lava and pointed out for a moment, the whole range of mountains, whose masses arose glowing from the bosom of the earth.

It seemed to Rudy and Babette, that they had never seen such an alpine glow. The snow-covered Dent-du-Midi, had a lustre like the full moon, when it rises to the horizon.

"So much beauty, so much happiness!" they both said.

"Earth can give me no more," said Rudy, [128]"an evening hour like this is a whole life! How often have I felt as now, and thought that if everything should end suddenly, how happily have I lived! How blessed is this world! The day ended, a new one dawned and I felt that it was still more beautiful! How bountiful is our Lord, Babette!"

"I am so happy!" said she.

"Earth can give me no more!" exclaimed Rudy.

The evening bells resounded from the Savoy and Swiss mountains; the bluish-black Jura arose in golden splendour towards the west.

"God give you that which is most excellent and best, Rudy!" said Babette.

"He will do that," answered Rudy, "to-morrow I shall have it! To-morrow you will be entirely mine! Mine own, little, lovely wife!"

[129]"The boat!" cried Babette at the same moment.

The boat, which was to convey them back, had broken loose and was sailing from the island.

"I will go for it!" said Rudy. He threw off his coat, drew off his boots, sprang in the lake and swam towards the boat.

The clear, bluish-grey water of the ice mountains, was cold and deep. Rudy gave but a single glance and it seemed as though he saw a gold ring, rolling, shining and sporting—he thought on his lost engagement ring—and the ring grew larger, widened into a sparkling circle and within it shone the clear glacier; all about yawned endless deep chasms; the water dropped and sounded like a chime of bells, and shone with bluish-white flames. He saw in a second, what we must say in many long words. [130]Young hunters and young girls, men and women, who had once perished in the glacier, stood there living, with open eyes and smiling mouth; deep below them chimed from buried towns the peal of church bells; under the arches of the churches knelt the congregation; pieces of ice formed the organ pipes, and the mountain stream played the organ. On the clear transparent ground sat the Ice-Maiden; she raised herself towards Rudy, kissed his feet, and the coldness of death ran through his limbs and gave him an electric shock—ice and fire. He could not perceive the difference.

"Mine, mine!" sounded around him and within him.

"I kissed you, when you were young, kissed you on your mouth! Now I kiss your feet, you are entirely mine!"

[131]He vanished in the clear blue water.

Everything was still; the church bells stopped ringing; the last tones died away with the splendour of the red clouds.

"You are mine!" sounded in the deep. "You are mine!" sounded from on high, from the infinite.

How happy to fly from love to love, from earth to heaven!

A string broke, a cry of grief was heard, the icy kiss of death conquered; the prelude ended; so that the drama of life might commence, discord melted into harmony.—

Do you call this a sad story?

Poor Babette! For her it was a period of anguish.

The boat drifted farther and farther. No one on shore knew that the lovers were on the island. The evening darkened, the [132]clouds lowered themselves; night came. She stood there, solitary, despairing, moaning. A flash of lightning passed over the Jura mountains, over Switzerland and over Savoy. From all sides flash upon flash of lightning, clap upon clap of thunder, which rolled continuously many minutes. At times the lightning was vivid as sunshine, and you could distinguish the grape vines; then all became black again in the dark night. The lightning formed knots, ties, zigzags, complicated figures; it struck in the lake, so that it lit it up on all sides; whilst the noise of the thunder was made louder by the echo. The boat was drawn on shore; all living objects sought shelter. Now the rain streamed down.

"Where can Rudy and Babette be in this frightful weather!" said the miller.

Babette sat with folded hands, with her [133]head in her lap, mute with sorrow, with screaming and bewailing.

"In the deep water," said she to herself, "he is as far down as the glaciers!"

She remembered what Rudy had related to her of his mother's death, of his preservation, and how he was withdrawn death-like, from the clefts of the glacier. "The Ice-Maiden has him again!"

There was a flash of lightning, as dazzling as the sunlight on the white snow. Babette started up; at this instant, the sea rose like a glittering glacier; there stood the Ice-Maiden majestic, pale, blue, shining, and at her feet lay Rudy's corpse. "Mine!" said she, and then all around was fog and night and streaming water.

"Cruel!" moaned Babette, "why must he die, now that the day of our happiness approached. God! Enlighten my [134]understanding! Enlighten my heart! I do not understand thy ways! Notwithstanding all thy omnipotence and wisdom, I still grope in the darkness."

God enlightened her heart. A thought like a ray of mercy, her last night's dream in all its vividness flashed through her; she remembered the words which she had spoken: "the wish for the best for herself and Rudy."

"Woe is me! Was that the sinful seed in my heart? Did my dream foretell my future life? Is all this misery for my salvation? Me, miserable one!"

Lamenting, sat she in the dark night. In the solemn stillness, sounded Rudy's last words; the last ones he had uttered: "Earth has no more happiness to give me!" She had heard it in the fullness of her joy, she heard it again in all the depths of her sorrow.
[135]

A couple of years have passed since then. The lake smiles, the coast smiles; the vine branches are filled with ripe grapes; the steamboats glide along with waving flags and the pleasure boats float over the watery mirror, with their two expanded sails like white butterflies. The railroad to Chillon is opened; it leads into the Rhone valley; strangers alight at every station; they arrive with their red covered guide books and read of remarkable sights which are to be seen. They visit Chillon, they stand upon the little island, with its three acacias—out on the lake—and they read in the book about the betrothed ones, who sailed over one evening in the year 1856;—of the death of the bridegroom, and: "it was not till the next morning, that the despairing shrieks of the bride were heard on the coast!"

[136]The book does not tell, however, of Babette's quiet life with her father; not in the mill, where strangers now dwell, but in the beautiful house, near the railway station. There she looks from the window many an evening and gazes over the chestnut trees, upon the snow mountains, where Rudy once climbed. She sees in the evening hours the alpine glow—the children of the Sun encamp themselves above, and repeat the song of the wanderer, whose mantle the whirlwind tore off, and carried away: "it took the covering but not the man."

There is a rosy hue on the snow of the mountains; there is a rosy hue in every heart, where the thought dwells, that: "God always gives us that which is best for us!" but it is not always revealed to us, as it once happened to Babette in her dream.

Historical personifications of death
23:54:29 - Jun 18 2006
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Select Cross-Cultural and Historical Personifications of Death

This extensive introduction includes some of the more well known, along with some lesser known Death "incarnations", and I use that term loosely, as in many cultures, the Angel of Death can be quite an adept shapeshifter. We have tried to cull together as much information and as many examples of Death in personification as possible. I'm certain that there are many more. To include them all, we would have a page of encyclopedic proportions! Prior to The Azrael Project, if one were seeking information on the Death entity, you would literally need to research thousands of books and pour through stacks of research papers. With this project, you need look no further than here to begin your journey.

One of the earliest known depictions of a personified Death was found at Catal Huyuk, a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia dating from the 7th Millennium B.C... Death takes the form represented by gigantic black birds of vulture-like appearance menacing headless human corpses. Many Stone Age cave paintings depict Death as a winged being, tall and extremely thin and pale in complexion. In these earliest renditions, Death was not given a name, simply an image, that to the people of that day, was representative of a major force or "deity". Something much larger than life that could never be appeased, no matter how many "sacrifices" were given unto It. The assignation of names and titles, and even personality, came much later as the world grew "larger" and more diverse in the eyes of man. When humankind literally separated himself from the animal kingdom and began to think about the meaning of life, while always having the recognize the inevitability of Death.

We begin with Azrael, a name of Hebrew derivation. While not the earliest known appellation, it is probably the most recognized name given the Angel of Death in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world. Literally meaning "whom God helps", Azrael remains at all times a legate of the supreme consciousness, which for the multi-cultural aim of this book, we shall refer to as the "Godsoul".

From Islamic teachings, it is written that "when Michael, Gabriel and Israfel failed to provide seven handfuls of earth for the creation of Adam, the 4th angel on this mission, Azrael, succeeded, and because of this feat, he was appointed to separate body from soul". (Encyclopedia of Religion & Ethics- Hastings). It is said that Azrael keeps a scroll containing the name of every person born in the world. The time of death...is not known to Azrael. When the day of death approaches, Allah lets a leaf inscribed with the person's name drop from his throne. Azrael reads the name and within forty days must separate the soul from the body. He is often described, in the Koran, as a "divine being endowed with immense power so awesome that he had to be restrained in 70,000 chains of a thousand years journey's length each. By the Godsoul's command; it is written, Azrael spread his wings and opened his eyes and upon seeing this spectacle, the angels fainted away." It is further stated that Azrael was given "all of the powers of the heavens to enable him to master death." The Koran also recorded the following statement of a man engaging in conversation with Death: "When people lament and weep too much over the death of a person, the Angel of Death will stand at the door and say, 'what cause have you for such violent complaint? I am only the messenger of God and have done His bidding, and if you rebel against Him, I shall return often to take one of your house."

Although this passage may seem overly ominous, it typifies man's personal interaction with a personified Death, particularly in the pantheon we are discussing, so heavily influenced by religious fear and the dominance of their God. Nearly all historical literature treats Death as a divine creation of the Godsoul for purposes of separating the soul from the body at the time of passing. This is well exemplified in the following excerpt, also from Moslem teachings: "When a righteous person dies, the Angel of Death comes with a host of divinity carrying sweet odors of paradise and makes the soul leave the body like a drop taken out of a bucket of water. Though, when a wicked person dies, Death comes in the company of demons, who pull the soul out as with iron spits."

In Jewish literature, it is written that "Azrael appears to our spirit in a form determined by our beliefs, actions and dispositions during life. He may even manifest invisibly so that a man may die of a rose in aromatic pain...or of a rotting stench." In Islamic lore, it is said that "Azrael, the Angel of Death, is veiled before the creatures of God with a million veils and that his true immensity is vaster than the heavens, and the east and the west are between his hands like a dish on which all things have been set to balance." It is further written, "that when the soul sees Azrael, it 'falls in love', and thus is withdrawn from the body as if by a seduction."

In some Jewish folklore, the Angel of Death is called Sammael (Samael), meaning the "drug of God" since it was believed that his sword was tipped with gall. In the Talmud, 'Abodah Zarah 20', Sammael is described as "altogether full of eyes. At the time of death, he (the Angel of Death) takes his stand above the place of ones head with his sword drawn and a drop of poison suspended on its tip." Often, Death is depicted as bearing some form of weapon or energy directing instrument; a knife, a sword, a scythe, a shaft of light, or a rod of fire, to name a few. Perhaps one of the more pronounced cases of Death's visitation in this example, is the tale of Joshua ben Levi, a Talmudian scholar. When time came for him to die, the Angel of Death (Sammael, in this case) appeared to him whereby Joshua demanded to be shown his place in 'paradise'. When the angel consented to this, Joshua demanded the angel's knife so that Death would not use it to frighten him on the way. This request was also granted, whereupon Joshua sprang with the weapon over the wall of paradise. Death, who by Talmudic law was not permitted to enter, caught hold of Joshua's garment; but Joshua swore that he would not come out. The Godsoul then declared that Joshua should not leave paradise unless he was absolved of his oath. The Angel of Death then demanded back his knife, and, upon Joshua's refusal, a heavenly voice rang out, "Give him back the knife because the children of men have need of it!" Mankind understands the symbolic power of weaponry. In Joshua's case, the image of the knife symbolizes power over life and death, as well as the means to inflict death at higher command.

While Azrael was the most prominent name mentioned in this culture, in certain Arabic lore, Death is occasionally referred to by another name, Iblis, as in the Arabian Nights Tale, The Angel of Death and the Proud King; And Iblis came (to the proud king)...so the king bowed his head to him and he said, 'I am the Angel of Death and I purpose to take thy soul.' Replied the king, 'Have patience with me a little whilst I return to my house and take leave of my people and children...' 'By no means so,' answered the angel; 'thou shalt never return nor look on them again, for the fated term of thy life is past.' So saying, he took the soul of the king...and departed thence."

Longfellow makes mention of Azrael in a poem included in Tales of a Wayside Inn, wherein a Spanish Jew tells a tale of Azrael and King Solomon. The king is entertaining a "learned man" who is a rajah. As they walk, a figure in the twilight air is gazing intently at the man. The rajah asks Solomon: "What is yon shape, that, pallid as the dead, is watching me, as if he sought to trace in the dim light the features of my face?" The king calmly tells his guest that it is Azrael, the Angel of Death. The man then asks Solomon to get him as far away from Azrael as possible. With the aid of his magic ring, the king sends him off to India. Azrael asks Solomon who the man was who left so suddenly. The king gives Azrael the name, and Azrael thanks the king for sending the man off to India, since he was on his way "to seek him there."

Osiris is the Egyptian embodiment of the "Death Energy". Although not necessarily considered the "personification" of Death in particular, (as the Egyptian pantheon is divided into may higher and lower aspects) he is described in ancient texts as a "dark lord, having beautiful yet terrible dark eyes and an equally dark complexion: He is also said to have reached a height of five and a half yards! Egyptian concept of a true, anthropomorphic personification of the Death entity was best exemplified as Anubis (who is actually an "aspect" of Osiris). While Osiris is considered "God of the Dead", Anubis is the "Guardian of the Dead" whose function was to weigh the heart of the deceased against a feather to determine the soul's place in eternity.

Seker, is an even older version of Egyptian Death personified, particularly in the area of ancient Memphis. He was said to be enthroned in a region of utter blackness and is depicted in the form of a mummy and called the "greatest god who was in the beginning and dwelleth in darkness." Originally, as "death gods" go, Seker and Osiris had many attributes in common, and the eventual fusion of the two was the result of the triumph of Osiris over the many "lesser" and varied Egyptian death gods. While Seker represented death as absolute and final, Osiris represented the death which was merely a temporary point of transition. Egyptian mythology is rife with Death allegory. This excerpt from the Coffin Text of the Middle Kingdom (circa 2160-1580 B.C..) vividly shows how the Egyptians personified Death very realistically: "Save me from the claws of him who takes for himself what he sees: May the glowing breath of his mouth not take me away."

We could no doubt spend this page alone detailing the many, varied incarnations and aspects of Death in the Egyptian pantheon. However, there are far more specific books available on general Egyptian history and belief that would cover that in length.

Thanatos, the Greek embodiment of Death is described as "the figure of a priest in sable garments and the twin brother of Morpheus (sleep)." The Greeks endeavored to exclude any thought of his gloomy nature by viewing him as a "gentle god, who came quietly upon the dying." Here, again, Death is personified with a secondary aspect, Charon, the ferryman who carries the souls of the dead across the Lethe, (which means 'river of forgetfulness'). It is from this culture that we get the concept of "paying the ferryman" for passage to the other side. If no payment was rendered unto him, usually the equivalent of a farthing or penny, the soul was destined to wander beside the river eternally. Hence, the practice of putting pennies on a dead man's eyes.

Charon, himself, was not a part of Greek mythology until approximately the 5th Century BC., when an inscription praised him as "You who release many men from toil." He is often portrayed as a stern and formidable old man who insists that the rules of passage be respected. This is well illustrated in Bullfinch's retelling of an incident first described by Virgil: "Charon, old and squalid, but strong and vigorous...was receiving passengers of all kinds into his boat. Magnanimous heroes, boys and unmarried girls, as numerous as the leaves that fall at autumn, or the flocks that fly southward at the approach of winter. They stood pressing for a passage and longing to touch the opposite shore. But the stern ferryman took in only such as he chose, driving the rest back. Aeneas, wondering at the sight, asked the Sibyl, 'Why this discrimination?' She answered, 'Those who are taken on board the bark are the souls of those who have received due burial rites; the host of others who have remained unburied are not permitted to pass the flood, but wander a hundred years, and flit to and fro about the shore, till at last they are taken over.' Aeneas, displaying the sacred golden bough, finally persuades Charon to make an exception and allow him, one of the living, to cross into the realm of the dead in order to bury a fallen comrade and see his father. " It is from the account of this highly unusual round-trip that we have some of history's most detailed impressions of the "lower world" in which the souls of the dead are to be found. "Charon with eyes like burning coals herds them in, and with a whistling oar flails on the stragglers to his wake of souls." (from Dante's Inferno, 1300AD). Although, in classical mythology, Charon is usually imagined as a grim and solemn figure with an awesome task to perform, he has also been portrayed with humor, and even tender passion.

It is interesting to note that the name Charon is also mentioned in Etruscan history as "The god of the dead" replete with an image painted in the tomb of Orca-Tarquina (5th century BC). It is highly likely that Charon was "imported" into the Greek pantheon from this contemporary region.

Modern Greek folklore has transmuted the concept of Charon into a whole new personification. Death is no longer the withered ferryman, but rather the driver of the "death coach". In many parts of Greece, it is believed that, as time passed on and men became less connected to their gods (i.e., more concerned with material gains rather than spiritual pursuits) Death had to venture into the land of the living to retrieve souls. Hence, the personification of the death-coach, a black plumed, funerary coach pulled by huge black horses and driven by a faceless driver with burning eyes, who is in effect, Death Himself. Still today, in the age of motorized transport, if one were to hear the prance of hooves coming down the road, all ears are tuned in the hopes the coach doesn't stop in front of one's home. It is believed that if the death-coach stops to claim a soul, the driver would dismount and knock twice on the door signaling that someone in that house had just died.

To the ancient Romans, Orcus was the god of death and was described as a "pale divinity, almost devoid of flesh and furnished with immense, black wings." His function was to carry the souls of the dead to the underworld, which they believed was literally a place beneath the earth's surface. Here, as well, Death is personified with more than one aspect. Februus, of Etruscan origin, was also an incarnation of Death in ancient Rome. He had a whole month set aside as 'the month of the dead', our equivalent of February. Death also had a third aspect, a female personification, Libitina, the Goddess of Funerals. This triumvirate of deities comprised primary Roman belief. However, there was still another, more pronounced and detailed female Roman personification of Death. Her face was seldom portrayed, nor were temples dedicated to her, or were sacrifices offered her, as they were to Orcus, her male equivalent. Today, her very name has sunk into such obscurity that it is seldom mentioned when the gods and goddesses of antiquity are reviewed. Her name was Mors, (a familiar derivation of much of our current reference to death) and she was worshipped by the ancients and often sung about by their poets. This female deity, remembered today mostly from Roman verse, was a reigning personification of Death. It was Mors, pale, wan and emaciated...whom the poets describe as "ravenous, treacherous and furious, roving about...ready to swallow up all who came her way." She was manifest as a black robed, dark winged figure who might, like an enormous bird of prey, hover above her intended victim until the moment came to seize it. In M.A. Dwight's 1864 epic, Grecian & Roman Mythology, it is noted that "Mors was not so honoured with temples and sacrifices because Death is inexorable, inaccessible to entreaties and unmoved by prayers and offerings." Death in the form of this deadly, female hunter is a striking figure to contemplate, especially when we consider that most contemporary personifications portray Death as masculine, if a gender is specified at all, and that, in fact, women much more than men, provide care and comfort to the terminally ill. Mors appears then to represent, the type of very powerful female deity who laid claim to many cultures, as well as to human imagination, before the patriarchal god became the dominant image.

There is also another interesting correlation to the image of Mors. Within the often blended pantheons of ancient Etruscan and ancient Roman, there is mentioned another feminine anthropomorphism of Death; Tuchulcha (from the Etruscan) who is described as a bird-like being with snakes for hair, who's menacing stare, it is said, could kill with but a glance.

In the Hindu/Tibetan pantheon, Shiva (Siva) is the penultimate archetype of Death, again, with a secondary aspect called Mahakala, who is Death personified. Shiva is referred to as "the formed", and Mahakala, "the formless" embodiment of the Death energy. This passage from Aghora, At the Left Hand of God by Robert Svoboda describes them best; "Mahakala has no limitation of any kind whatsoever, at least in the universe we know. He has no form at all, none. At least Shiva manifests a form we can concentrate on. Mahakala, being the utterly formless, which means He can assume all forms at will."

Shiva is attributed as a "compassionate yet terrible divinity whose sight made even Vishnu, (the Hindu/Tibetan aspect of the great Godsoul) wince". Mahakala is said "to make everyone cry, and cries himself out of the joy of releasing imprisoned souls." Rudra, is another name found in this complex pantheon. Literally translated, it means 'the crier" or "he who makes others cry." Rudra is the ancient name for Shiva, and in texts "is so called because he makes everyone cry who comes into contact with Him because He separates them from their limited existence to which they are tightly attached." Of Rudra, it is further written, "By my magnanimity I have removed this individual from all the pains and miseries of existence, and the fellow was not even aware of my presence. Now he is truly at peace. People are fools to cry for their dead; They should cry for themselves."

In Svoboda's Aghora, it states, "Everyone is afraid of dying, which explains why no one is willing to love Mahakala. Only two persons in all our scriptures have loved Mahakala, and both of them became immortal...Destruction is necessary but, unfortunately, no one is willing to face Death. Even for Rama and Krisha, who were real incarnations of God, there was one moment of shock, one tremor, when Mahakala appeared before them...The sight of Mahakala is so terrible that even God incarnate quails before Him..."

There are a variety of "faces" of Death in Indian culture, dependant upon particular religious "sects" and beliefs. Kali, a feminine aspect of Death comes immediately to mind. Although, she is referred to more as "the Destroyer" or "the Devourer", no doubt she embodies the same energy as Mahakala. Kali, "The Black Mother", is portrayed rather frightfully. She is naked, dishevelled, wild-eyed and maniacal. In her hands she brandishes a blood-stained knife and a bloody human head. A necklace of skulls lies on her breast. She is often depicted, in Indian art, as having one foot on Shiva, who is lying on the ground like a corpse. Kali has many different names and faces in Indian culture.

Yama is called the "King of Death" in Buddhism, and certain Hindu pantheons. He is also referred to as judge of the dead, evaluating their activities while on earth to determine their fate after death. He is described as having "flesh of green or black, and robes of blood-red. He wears and crown and a flower in his hair and has many eyes, legs and arms. Each appendage bearing mystic implements and human skulls." (Much like the images of Kali.). Another of Yama's names is Vajra-Bhairava, which literally means "terrible lightning". Yet another name that pops up is Daikoku-ten, of Oriental Buddhist origin, and is pretty much the equivalent of Siva/Mahakala. He is called "the Great Black One".

There are numerous tales from India's vast apocryphal texts of human interaction with Yama. One in particular describes "that it is difficult to prevail on Yama when he comes at the appointed hour to seek his victim on earth. However, the gentle and beautiful Savitri, wife of Satyavan, succeeded in persuading the god of death to give her back her husband...As Yama was bearing away Satyavan's soul, his wife followed obstinantly...until Yama was so moved by this fidelity and love, that he offered her fulfillment of her wish, provided she did not ask to have her husband brought back to life!"

Emma-O is referred to as "the King of the Dead" in ancient Oriental Buddhism. It is said that he became Death because he was the first man to die. His description is one of a red-faced, angry looking deity with a coarse beard, attired in judges robes with a berreta bearing the sigil of a king. In his right hand, he has a tablet, the emblem of official authority. In his left hand, he holds a staff with two accusing faces on top; one called "The Seeing Eye", and the other, "The Sensitive Nose". Emma is still part of the popular pantheons of Buddhism throughout Japan and China.

Secular Chinese Buddhism has another name for the Lord of Death, Yen-wang, whose job it is to decide when one's time is up. He then severs the mystical cord that connects body to soul. It is from Eastern beliefs that we get the concept of the "silver cord", that etheric "umbilical" that connects body to soul until the time of death.

In the modern Japanese pantheon, the "Goddess of Death" is called Yuki-Onne, which literally means "the Snow Queen" who "chills to numbness those she takes so as to make their transition as peaceful and painless as possible." She also serves to cut the cord at life's end.

Hel was labeled the "goddess of Death" in the Germanic and Scandinavian lands. She was said to dwell in "the land of shades called Niflheim". Her face was portrayed as half normal, and half the colour of the night sky (much like images of Shiva). It was said that Odin (the Germanic equal to God) "gave her power over nine worlds, so that she could determine where everyone should dwell after death." There are a lot of feminine Death personifications in this part of the world. There is also mention of Freya, leader of the mysterious Valkyries, (the airborne horsewomen of death) as being a prominent Death allegory in Norse mythology. Also, from this part of the world, we get the name Kalma, a death goddess of Finnish origins, where we also find the name Nga, "God of Death". In certain ancient Finnish folklore, Tuonela was the "Domain of Death", and is surrounded by "Death's river". The dead are carried across the waters by "Death's Maiden" at the darkest moment of night.

In many Slavic and Baltic lands, Death appeared simply as a woman dressed in white who carried souls to "Vela", a world shrouded in grey mist and cold. Folklore, particularly that of the Black Forest region, is rife with "Grim Reaper" type images, and/or Death generally personified as a withered farmer with scythe in hand who doubled as Lord of the Harvest. This concept still remains with us throughout many Pagan traditions where deities are heavily tied into the seasons, and nature in general.

Another, similar image is derived from ancient Celtic and Gaul; Sucellos, the "Harvester of Souls", who was described as a "mighty striker with scythe in hand". This entity was also called Silvanus in southern Gaul. We get much of the origin of our current Grim Reaper imagery from this part of the world. In certain Celtic pantheons, Death is again, given aspects. One of the more well known is the female triplicity known as The Morrigan, "the Queen of Shades". Consisting of actually three spirits, it was personified as a large, black crow or raven, much like the Roman Mors, sweeping down to catch its prey. Another, lesser known Celtic personification was Ankou, known in Brittany and rural Ireland by the sound of his creaking cart traveling the roads at night, picking up his latest victims. He need only open his cart door, or touch his intended, and life would flee. This, too, is a similar mythos, alikened to modern Greek folklore mentioned earlier, even though they were culturally, worlds apart.

In certain early Welsh folklore, the name Gwyn Ab Nuud is mentioned as "god of the hunt who gathers lost souls and escorts them to the land of the dead on a white horse."

Quetzalcoatl was the god of the west and of magic in ancient Central America. Depicted as a plumed serpent with two faces, one of life, and one of death. He was both creator, and destroyer. Lord of Life and Death, and the embodiment of the Death energy whose personified aspect was called Miquiztli, literally meaning "death". If we go further north, into Mexico, we find the name Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec "God of Death" whose function was to guide the souls of the dead safely to the next world. The name Kukulcan is also briefly mentioned as a "manifest Death", but this appears to be more of a latter corruption of Quetzalcoatl.

In present day Mexican folk art, the personified Death is called Santa Muerte, "Saint Death" and is depicted as a white-robed skeleton. In one hand He holds the scales of balance, and in the other, either the earth, or the more traditional scythe. During Mexico's "Day of the Dead" celebrations on November 2nd, one can find depictions of Death throughout Mexican culture, from its local shops, to churches and elaborate home altars, to candy and children's toys.

Baron Samedi is Death personified in the Haitian Voudon pantheon, and is described quite vividly, as a tall, black man sporting a tail coat and top-hat. He has a long, white beard and eyeless sockets in his head. When invoked, he acknowledges by flapping his coat tails and tipping his hat. He is said to be a very educated speaker, yet his comments and mannerisms can be quite lewd. Offerings of rum are sure to get one into his good graces. Here, as well, we find that Death has other aspects; Baron Cimitere, who is literally, "Ruler of the Cemetery", and his counterpart, Baron LaCrosse, who is the "spirit of the Shadow of the Cross". These grand loa (or great spirits) are often accompanied by petra loa (demi-gods) called the Gede Loa, or "Spirits of the Cemetery".

The Haitian feminine form of the Loa of Death is the pale, thin and wraithlike Madam Brigette, who serves very much the same function as Baron Samedi, but with a few more Kali-like attributes of "whirlwind-like change and balance". If we trace Voudon tradition back to its African source, we find the name Oya, whose name translates to mean "she who tears". Goddess of storms, hurricanes, radical change and Death, she is portrayed as a whirlwind who literally rips away the veil between this world and the next. Wearing grass skirts or costumes of multi-coloured rags, she is a fierce and steadfast guardian of the cemetery, particularly over the souls of women. She has also found her way into the Santeria religion where she fills a similar role as Baron Cimitere; as one who watches over the dead and guides their passage.

African culture is particularly rife will archetypal Death images. The Egungun, of West Africa are a group of "spirits of Death" who appear only as cloth draped entities and are known to dance at various festival and tribal functions. Gaunab is another of the many African personifications of Death. Referred to primarily as "Chief of the Dead", his function and images are very similar to that of a counterpart found in the Congo, who is not mentioned by any specific name, but simply as "one of the sons of the great god Ngai. (This is not the only culture where Death is referred to as "the son of" someone. In Polynesia, for example, Hine-Nui-Te-Po, or "The Great Lady of Night" is mentioned as being the "mother of Death").

There are numerous, oral tribal legends telling of human interaction with Death in African culture. For instance, in Baganda legend, "Kintu, the first man, was permitted, after many trials and tests, to marry one of the daughters of heaven. God sends the pair to live on earth and gives them gifts, including a hen. He told them to hurry lest they meet Death (the bride's brother), and not to come back if they had forgotten anything. The woman forgets the hen's feed and goes back for it despite the warning, at which God, in His displeasure, grants Death's request to accompany them. Kintu appeals to God, who relents and sends another of His "sons" (called Digger) to take Death back to heaven. Silence was ordained during the pursuit as Digger chases Death who has hidden in the ground, but the cries of children break the spell of silence and Death is allowed to remain on earth and strike down all living things."

There is another, very odd African story, told by folks living on the shores of Lake Kivu, which shows God trying to save men from death but giving up in exasperation. According to this tale, God made man to be immortal and kept a close watch on Death who was always trying to pick quarrels with men and provoke them to a fight which He knew He would win. One day God was away and Death killed and old woman. She was buried. But, after a few days, her grave began to heave as if she were coming back to life. Her daughter-in-law poured boiling water on the grave and beat it with a pestle saying "Die: what is dead should stay dead!" The grave was then quiet and the old woman was really dead. God returned, and seeing that the old woman was not there, asked what happened. When he was told, he said he would hunt Death down. Death fled...and met another old woman to whom he said, "Hide me and I shall reward you." She let him hide under her skirt and he entered her body. God caught them and decided that, since she was so old, it would be best to kill her and tear Death from her body and kill him as well. But Death slipped through God's fingers, and this time, persuaded a young girl to hide him in her belly. God despaired: if human beings kept on thwarting his efforts to save them, he might as well give it up as a bad job. So, he let Death do as he pleased.

One of the strangest stories of all comes from the Ewe-speakers of West Africa. Yiyi the spider (a panthaic demiurge) cadged meat from Death during a famine. Death had plenty of meat because he had made a great clearing in the forest and set traps in it. In return for continual supplies, Yiyi gave Death his daughter in marriage. Death told his new wife not to go through the clearing when she went to fetch water. But, one rainy day she did and was caught in a trap. Her husband chopped her up for the larder! When Yiyi discovered what had happened, he attacked Death with a knife and ran away in terror to the village with Death in pursuit. Death had never been to the village before, and as he lay in wait for Yiyi, he amused himself by shooting at the women as they went down to the river for water. He then realized that here was game enough, and he had no need to set traps for animals.

The Chippewa Indians have a unique legend about Death. It is said that once there was a great magician who came to the Chippewa nation wanting to make them immortal. He advised them to give "amicable greeting to the first stranger who would come to visit them". Unfortunately, for them, the Indians turned aside from a man carrying a basketful of rotting flesh, taking him for Death, but gave affectionate welcome to Death, Himself, in the guise of a pleasing young man.

Tales like these, are as abundant as the tribes of mortals that have walked the earth. Another example, from the Aborigines of New South Wales tells how, in the beginning, the Godsoul forbade the people to go near a certain hollow tree in which bees had made their nest. The men obeyed, but the women wanted the honey. Finally, one of the women hit the tree with an axe, and out flew Death in the form of a bat which now claims all living things by touching them with its wings.

There are numerous other "names" of Death and stories like these to be found. Although, as mentioned earlier, to include them all in this volume, would make it a task of encyclopedic proportions. Nearly every culture on earth, and no doubt beyond, has had its version of an anthropomorphic Death. A few others we thought merited mention, include one from Melanesia, where Death is called Marawa, the "Giver of Death" and is said to work hand in hand with Qat, "The Giver of Life".

In Iranian mythology, death was closely associated with time, so that Zurvan, the deification of Time, was regarded as the god of Death. Murdad is another name that we find in the Persian pantheon. And, if we look into Zoroastrianism, we find Murdad's androgynous counterpart, Mairya.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the Babylonians named the death god Uggae; but he does not figure notably in their mythology under this name. More well known was Mot, whose name, again, means death. Here, as earlier seen, he is aligned to the harvest. He was personified in a rather horrific manner, similar to that mentioned in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, in which is written, that Enkidu, the unfortunate friend of Gilgamesh dreams of his coming death as seizure by an awful being; "He transformed me, that mine arms were covered with feathers like a bird. He looks at me and leads me to the house of darkness, to the dwelling of Irkalia; To the house from which he who enters never goes forth."

Another name found in Sumerian-Babylonian mythology is Ereshkigal (Ereshigal), the Sumerian "goddess of Death and the under-world". She was known as the dark sister to Inanna, fertility queen of heaven and earth, and ruler of the "land from which there is no return".

Haida, the Canadian Indians of Queen Charlotte Island have a death god duality called Ta'xet and Tia. One is god of violent death, and its counterpart, that of a peaceful passing.

In Falasha lore, the Angel of Death is Surial, "the trumpeter". It is said that Moses received all his knowledge from Suriel. This "angel" is also mentioned in The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans as "Sauriel the Releaser".

In Christian theology, Death is not graced with a name, but is referred to by description as an "intelligent being" in Job XXVII-22, and in Revelations VI-8, as "sitting on a pale horse and His name was Death". This is echoed in earlier, Gnostic texts, particularly The Book of Enoch; "And I looked and saw a pale horse and the one seated upon it had the name Death." In Christianity, the archangel Michael was once considered the original incarnation of the Angel of Death in earlier texts.

To bring encounters such as these into a more contemporary forum, I'd be amiss not to mention one of the more publicised modern day accounts which appeared in Newsday, a well respected New York daily newspaper. The encounter experienced by a well known and respected Long Island doctor is today, a documented case history. Following, is an extraction from Dr. Julian Kirchick's partially published journal: "It was an apparition, a frightening thing that at first scared me witless! I don't know whether it was real or not, but I knew it was Death! I was sitting at my picturesque backyard pool, which was surrounded by rose bushes. I was startled by a rustling in the bushes about twenty feet away. I rose to investigate. After taking about two steps, I suddenly stopped short. There was a ghastly intruder, the face of Death! He was dressed in a monk-like robe with a large hood and large sleeves which hung low. The tissue-like skin drawn tightly against the skull...eyes which seemed absent from the hollow eye-sockets seemed to pierce my very soul. His bony hand beckoned to me in a benign gesture. 'Come to me,' he seemed to say..." Dr. Kirchick died shortly after this encounter of a illness he was unaware of at the time the experience happened.

Despite enormous cultural differences, the basic countenance of Death is uniquely universal. Often described, as we have seen, as a tall, often winged, dark enshrouded (skeletal or emaciated) being surrounded either by darkness, or by a blue or purplish radiance. His "eyes" are striking, if not mesmeric "pools of black water", as described in Midrashic legend where awesome depictions of Death's appearance are rich!

It is curious to note, that in many of these cultural pantheons, Mors (Death) and Amor (Love) are inextricably entwined. The Greek Thanatos and Eros are said to be nearly twins. In many cases Death has been known to appear as a handsome youth, and Love, as the withered corpse. In Hinduism, Yama (Death) and Kama (Love) are said to be in eternal union, much like Shiva and Shakti (his bride) are locked in eternal embrace to keep the universe in balance. This concept is echoed in numerous instances where a personified Death and a personified Love are present.

The power of the archetypal Death entity lies not in the many names given It. These are, of course, man-made, not divinely assigned. The power of the presence of a personified Death lies in the resident and residual energies attached thereto, which have become "energized" over time with psionic vibrations of the thoughts, meditations, evocations, prayers and faith via the millions of impressions directed at, and attributed to the Spirit of Death throughout history. The collective energy of so much focused thought has literally made the formless manifest and accessible.

Considering the way modern society treats D/death as something "evil" or "malevolent", it is interesting to note that in nearly every one of the preceding examples, Death remains at all times, a legate of the Divine Consciousness. Death is, in principal, the personification of a particular divine aspect of will, developed from a functional expression of the Godsoul that has evolved into a relatively independent personality with a distinct character of Its own. Dion Fortune stated an excellent observation on modern mans view of Death in her 1942 book, Through the Gates of Death; "We must get out of the way of thinking that death is the ultimate tragedy...It is only the man sunk in matter who calls the Angel of Death the great enemy. His esoteric name is the Opener of the gates of Life."

Romani gypsy
18:26:23 - Jun 17 2006
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The English Gypsies call themselves Romany Chals and Romany Chies, that is, Sons and Daughters of Rome. When speaking to each other, they say "Pal" and "Pen"; that is, brother and sister. All people not of their own blood they call "Gorgios," or Gentiles. Gypsies first made their appearance in England about the year 1480. They probably came from France, where tribes of the race had long been wandering about under the names of Bohemians and Egyptians. In England they pursued the same kind of merripen {3} which they and their ancestors had pursued on the Continent. They roamed about in bands, consisting of thirty, sixty, or ninety families, with light, creaking carts, drawn by horses and donkeys, encamping at night in the spots they deemed convenient. The women told fortunes at the castle of the baron and the cottage of the yeoman; filched gold and silver coins from the counters of money-changers; caused the death of hogs in farmyards, by means of a stuff called drab or drao, which affects the brain, but does not corrupt the blood; and subsequently begged, and generally obtained, the carcases. The men plied tinkering and brasiery, now and then stole horses, and occasionally ventured upon highway robbery. The writer has here placed the Chies before the Chals, because, as he has frequently had occasion to observe, the Gypsy women are by far more remarkable beings than the men. It is the Chi and not the Chal who has caused the name of Gypsy to be a sound awaking wonder, awe, and curiosity in every part of the civilised world. Not that there have never been remarkable men of the Gypsy race both abroad and at home. Duke Michael, as he was called, the leader of the great Gypsy horde which suddenly made its appearance in Germany at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was no doubt a remarkable man; the Gitano Condre, whom Martin del Rio met at Toledo a hundred years afterwards, who seemed to speak all languages, and to be perfectly acquainted with the politics of all the Courts of Europe, must certainly have been a remarkable man; so, no doubt, here at home was Boswell; so undoubtedly was Cooper, called by the gentlemen of the Fives Court - poor fellows! they are all gone now - the "wonderful little Gypsy"; - but upon the whole the poetry, the sorcery, the devilry, if you please to call it so, are vastly on the side of the women. How blank and inanimate is the countenance of the Gypsy man, even when trying to pass off a foundered donkey as a flying dromedary, in comparison with that of the female Romany, peering over the wall of a par-yard at a jolly hog!

Sar shin Sinfye? Sinfye, Sinfye! how do you do?

Koshto divvus, Romany Chi! Daughter of Rome, good day to you!

So shan tute kairing acoi? What are you thinking here to do?

After a time the evil practices of the Gypsies began to be noised about, and terrible laws were enacted against people "using the manner of Egyptians" - Chies were scourged by dozens, Chals hung by scores. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth there was a terrible persecution of the Gypsy race; far less, however, on account of the crimes which they actually committed, than from a suspicion which was entertained that they harboured amidst their companies priests and emissaries of Rome, who had come to England for the purpose of sowing sedition and inducing the people to embrace again the old discarded superstition. This suspicion, however, was entirely without foundation. The Gypsies call each other brother and sister, and are not in the habit of admitting to their fellowship people of a different blood and with whom they have no sympathy. There was, however, a description of wandering people at that time, even as there is at present, with whom the priests, who are described as going about, sometimes disguised as serving-men, sometimes as broken soldiers, sometimes as shipwrecked mariners, would experience no difficulty in associating, and with whom, in all probability, they occasionally did associate - the people called in Acts of Parliament sturdy beggars and vagrants, in the old cant language Abraham men, and in the modern Pikers. These people have frequently been confounded with the Gypsies, but are in reality a distinct race, though they resemble the latter in some points. They roam about like the Gypsies, and, like them, have a kind of secret language. But the Gypsies are a people of Oriental origin, whilst the Abrahamites are the scurf of the English body corporate. The language of the Gypsies is a real language, more like the Sanscrit than any other language in the world; whereas the speech of the Abrahamites is a horrid jargon, composed for the most part of low English words used in an allegorical sense - a jargon in which a stick is called a crack; a hostess, a rum necklace; a bar-maid, a dolly-mort; brandy, rum booze; a constable, a horny. But enough of these Pikers, these Abrahamites. Sufficient to observe that if the disguised priests associated with wandering companies it must have been with these people, who admit anybody to their society, and not with the highly exclusive race the Gypsies.

For nearly a century and a half after the death of Elizabeth the Gypsies seem to have been left tolerably to themselves, for the laws are almost silent respecting them. Chies, no doubt, were occasionally scourged for cauring, that is filching gold and silver coins, and Chals hung for grychoring, that is horse-stealing; but those are little incidents not much regarded in Gypsy merripen. They probably lived a life during the above period tolerably satisfactory to themselves - they are not an ambitious people, and there is no word for glory in their language - but next to nothing is known respecting them. A people called Gypsies are mentioned, and to a certain extent treated of, in two remarkable works - one a production of the seventeenth, the other of the eighteenth century - the first entitled the 'English Rogue, or the Adventures of Merriton Latroon,' the other the 'Life of Bamfield Moore Carew'; but those works, though clever and entertaining, and written in the raciest English, are to those who seek for information respecting Gypsies entirely valueless, the writers having evidently mistaken for Gypsies the Pikers or Abrahamites, as the vocabularies appended to the histories, and which are professedly vocabularies of the Gypsy language, are nothing of the kind, but collections of words and phrases belonging to the Abrahamite or Piker jargon. At the commencement of the last century, and for a considerable time afterwards, there was a loud cry raised against the Gypsy women for stealing children. This cry, however, was quite as devoid of reason as the suspicion entertained of old against the Gypsy communities of harbouring disguised priests. Gypsy women, as the writer had occasion to remark many a long year ago, have plenty of children of their own, and have no wish to encumber themselves with those of other people. A yet more extraordinary charge was, likewise, brought against them - that of running away with wenches. Now, the idea of Gypsy women running away with wenches! Where were they to stow them in the event of running away with them? and what were they to do with them in the event of being able to stow them? Nevertheless, two Gypsy women were burnt in the hand in the most cruel and frightful manner, somewhat about the middle of the last century, and two Gypsy men, their relations, sentenced to be hanged, for running away with a certain horrible wench of the name of Elizabeth Canning, who, to get rid of a disgraceful burden, had left her service and gone into concealment for a month, and on her return, in order to account for her absence, said that she had been run away with by Gypsies. The men, however, did not undergo their sentence; for, ere the day appointed for their execution arrived, suspicions beginning to be entertained with respect to the truth of the wench's story, they were reprieved, and, after a little time, the atrocious creature, who had charged people with doing what they neither did nor dreamt of doing, was tried for perjury, convicted, and sentenced to transportation. Yet so great is English infatuation that this Canning, this Elizabeth, had a host of friends, who stood by her, and swore by her to the last, and almost freighted the ship which carried her away with goods, the sale of which enabled her to purchase her freedom of the planter to whom she was consigned, to establish herself in business, and to live in comfort, and almost in luxury, in the New World during the remainder of her life.

But though Gypsies have occasionally experienced injustice; though Patricos and Sherengroes were hanged by dozens in Elizabeth's time on suspicion of harbouring disguised priests; though Gypsy women in the time of the Second George, accused of running away with wenches, were scorched and branded, there can be no doubt that they live in almost continual violation of the laws intended for the protection of society; and it may be added, that in this illegal way of life the women have invariably played a more important part than the men. Of them, amongst other things, it may be said that they are the most accomplished swindlers in the world, their principal victims being people of their own sex, on whose credulity and superstition they practise. Mary Caumlo, or Lovel, was convicted a few years ago at Cardiff of having swindled a surgeon's wife of eighty pounds, under pretence of propitiating certain planets by showing them the money. Not a penny of the booty was ever recovered by the deluded victim; and the Caumli, on leaving the dock, after receiving sentence of a year's imprisonment, turned round and winked to some brother or sister in court, as much as to say: "Mande has gared the luvvu; mande is kek atugni for the besh's starripen" - "I have hid the money, and care nothing for the year's imprisonment." Young Rawnie P. of N., the daughter of old Rawnie P., suddenly disappeared with the whole capital of an aged and bedridden gentlewoman, amounting to nearly three hundred pounds, whom she had assured that if she were intrusted with it for a short time she should be able to gather certain herbs, from which she could make decoctions, which would restore to the afflicted gentlewoman all her youthful vigour. Mrs. Townsley of the Border was some time ago in trouble at Wick, only twenty-five miles distant from Johnny Groat's House, on a charge of fraudulently obtaining from a fisherman's wife one shilling, two half-crowns, and a five-pound note by promising to untie certain witch-locks, which she had induced her to believe were entwined in the meshes of the fisherman's net, and would, if suffered to remain, prevent him from catching a single herring in the Firth. These events occurred within the last few years, and are sufficiently notorious. They form a triad out of dozens of a similar kind, in some of which there are features so odd, so strangely droll, that indignation against the offence is dispelled by an irresistible desire to laugh.

But Gypsyism is declining, and its days are numbered. There is a force abroad which is doomed to destroy it, a force which never sleepeth either by day or night, and which will not allow the Roman people rest for the soles of their feet. That force is the Rural Police, which, had it been established at the commencement instead of towards the middle of the present century, would have put down Gypsyism long ago. But, recent as its establishment has been, observe what it has produced. Walk from London to Carlisle, but neither by the road's side, nor on heath or common, will you see a single Gypsy tent. True Gypsyism consists in wandering about, in preying upon the Gentiles, but not living amongst them. But such a life is impossible in these days; the Rural Force will not permit it. "It is a hard thing, brother," said old Agamemnon Caumlo to the writer, several years ago; "it is a hard thing, after one has pitched one's little tent, lighted one's little fire, and hung one's kettle by the kettle-iron over it to boil, to have an inspector or constable come up, and say, 'What are you doing here? Take yourself off, you Gypsy dog!'" A hard thing, indeed, old Agamemnon; but there is no help for it. You must e'en live amongst the Gorgios. And for years past the Gypsies have lived amongst the Gorgios, and what has been the result? They do not seem to have improved the Gentiles, and have certainly not been improved by them. By living amongst the Gentiles they have, to a certain extent, lost the only two virtues they possessed. Whilst they lived apart on heaths and commons, and in shadowy lanes, the Gypsy women were paragons of chastity, and the men, if not exactly patterns of sobriety, were, upon the whole, very sober fellows. Such terms, however, are by no means applicable to them at the present day. Sects and castes, even of thieves and murderers, can exist as long as they have certain virtues, which give them a kind of respect in their own eyes; but, losing those virtues, they soon become extinct. When the salt loses its savour, what becomes of it? The Gypsy salt has not altogether lost its savour, but that essential quality is every day becoming fainter, so that there is every reason to suppose that within a few years the English Gypsy caste will have disappeared, merged in the dregs of the English population.

GYPSY NAMES

There are many curious things connected with the Gypsies, but perhaps nothing more so than what pertains to their names. They have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and a private name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to themselves alone. Their public names are quite English; their private ones attempts, some of them highly singular and uncouth, to render those names by Gypsy equivalents. Gypsy names may be divided into two classes, names connected with trades, and surnames or family names. First of all, something about trade names.

There are only two names of trades which have been adopted by English Gypsies as proper names, Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English Gypsy dialect by Vardo-mescro and Petulengro. The first of these renderings is by no means a satisfactory one, as Vardo-mescro means a cartwright, or rather a carter. To speak the truth, it would be next to impossible to render the word 'cooper' into English Gypsy, or indeed into Gypsy of any kind; a cooper, according to the common acceptation of the word, is one who makes pails, tubs, and barrels, but there are no words in Gypsy for such vessels. The Transylvanian Gypsies call a cooper a bedra-kero or pail-maker, but bedra is not Gypsy, but Hungarian, and the English Gypsies might with equal propriety call a cooper a pail-engro. On the whole the English Gypsies did their best when they rendered 'cooper' into their language by the word for 'cartwright.'

Petulengro, the other trade name, is borne by the Gypsies who are known to the public by the English appellation of Smith. It is not very easy to say what is the exact meaning of Petulengro: it must signify, however, either horseshoe-fellow or tinker: petali or petala signifies in Gypsy a horseshoe, and is probably derived from the Modern Greek [Greek: ]; engro is an affix, and is either derived from or connected with the Sanscrit kara, to make, so that with great feasibility Petulengro may be translated horseshoe-maker. But bedel in Hebrew means 'tin,' and as there is little more difference between petul and bedel than between petul and petalon, Petulengro may be translated with almost equal feasibility by tinker or tin-worker, more especially as tinkering is a principal pursuit of Gypsies, and to jal petulengring signifies to go a-tinkering in English Gypsy. Taken, however, in either sense, whether as horseshoe-maker or tin-worker (and, as has been already observed, it must mean one or the other), Petulengro may be considered as a tolerably fair rendering of the English Smith.

So much for the names of the Gypsies which the writer has ventured to call the trade names; now for those of the other class. These are English surnames, and for the most part of a highly aristocratic character, and it seems at first surprising that people so poor and despised as Gypsies should be found bearing names so time-honoured and imposing. There is, however, a tolerable explanation of the matter in the supposition that on their first arrival in England the different tribes sought the protection of certain grand powerful families, and were permitted by them to locate themselves on their heaths and amid their woodlands, and that they eventually adopted the names of their patrons. Here follow the English names of some of the principal tribes, with the Romany translations or equivalents:-

BOSWELL. - The proper meaning of this word is the town of Bui. The initial Bo or Bui is an old Northern name, signifying a colonist or settler, one who tills and builds. It was the name of a great many celebrated Northern kempions, who won land and a home by hard blows. The last syllable, well, is the French ville: Boswell, Boston, and Busby all signify one and the same thing - the town of Bui - the well being French, the ton Saxon, and the by Danish; they are half-brothers of Bovil and Belville, both signifying fair town, and which ought to be written Beauville and Belville. The Gypsies, who know and care nothing about etymologies, confounding bos with buss, a vulgar English verb not to be found in dictionaries, which signifies to kiss, rendered the name Boswell by Chumomisto, that is, Kisswell, or one who kisses well - choom in their language signifying to kiss, and misto well - likewise by choomomescro, a kisser. Vulgar as the word buss may sound at present, it is by no means of vulgar origin, being connected with the Latin basio and the Persian bousè.

GREY. - This is the name of a family celebrated in English history. The Gypsies who adopted it, rendered it into their language by Gry, a word very much resembling it in sound, though not in sense, for gry, which is allied to the Sanscrit ghora, signifies a horse. They had no better choice, however, for in Romany there is no word for grey, any more than there is for green or blue. In several languages there is a difficulty in expressing the colour which in English is called grey. In Celtic, for instance, there is no definite word for it; glas, it is true, is used to express it, but glas is as frequently used to express green as it is to express grey.

HEARNE, HERNE. - This is the name of a family which bears the heron for its crest, the name being either derived from the crest, or the crest from the name. There are two Gypsy renderings of the word - Rossar-mescro or Ratzie-mescro, and Balorengre. Rossar-mescro signifies duck-fellow, the duck being substituted for the heron, for which there is no word in Romany. The meaning of Balor-engre is hairy people; the translator or translators seeming to have confounded Hearne with 'haaren,' old English for hairs. The latter rendering has never been much in use.

LEE. - The Gypsy name of this tribe is Purrum, sometimes pronounced Purrun. The meaning of Purrurn is an onion, and it may be asked what connection can there be between Lee and onion? None whatever: but there is some resemblance in sound between Lee and leek, and it is probable that the Gypsies thought so, and on that account rendered the name by Purrum, which, if not exactly a leek, at any rate signifies something which is cousin-german to a leek. It must be borne in mind that in some parts of England the name Lee is spelt Legh and Leigh, which would hardly be the case if at one time it had not terminated in something like a guttural, so that when the Gypsies rendered the name, perhaps nearly four hundred years ago, it sounded very much like 'leek,' and perhaps was Leek, a name derived from the family crest. At first the writer was of opinion that the name was Purrun, a modification of pooro, which in the Gypsy language signifies old, but speedily came to the conclusion that it must be Purrum, a leek or onion; for what possible reason could the Gypsies have for rendering Lee by a word which signifies old or ancient? whereas by rendering it by Purrum, they gave themselves a Gypsy name, which, if it did not signify Lee, must to their untutored minds have seemed a very good substitute for Lee. The Gypsy word pooro, old, belongs to Hindostan, and is connected with the Sanscrit pura, which signifies the same. Purrum is a modification of the Wallachian pur, a word derived from the Latin porrum, an onion, and picked up by the Gypsies in Roumania or Wallachia, the natives of which region speak a highly curious mixture of Latin and Sclavonian.

LOVEL. - This is the name or title of an old and powerful English family. The meaning of it is Leo's town, Lowe's town, or Louis' town. The Gypsies, who adopted it, seem to have imagined that it had something to do with love, for they translated it by Camlo or Caumlo, that which is lovely or amiable, and also by Camomescro, a lover, an amorous person, sometimes used for 'friend.' Camlo is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, which signifies love, and is the appellation of the Hindoo god of love. A name of the same root as the one borne by that divinity was not altogether inapplicable to the Gypsy tribe who adopted it: Cama, if all tales be true, was black, black though comely, a Beltenebros, and the Lovel tribe is decidedly the most comely and at the same time the darkest of all the Anglo-Egyptian families. The faces of many of them, male and female, are perfect specimens of black beauty. They are generally called by the race the Kaulo Camloes, the Black Comelies. And here, though at the risk of being thought digressive, the writer cannot forbear saying that the darkest and at one time the comeliest of all the Caumlies, a celebrated fortune-teller, and an old friend of his, lately expired in a certain old town, after attaining an age which was something wonderful. She had twenty-one brothers and sisters, and was the eldest of the family, on which account she was called "Rawnie P., pooroest of bis ta dui," Lady P. - she had married out of the family - eldest of twenty-two.

MARSHALL. - The name Marshall has either to do with marshal, the title of a high military personage, or marches, the borders of contiguous countries. In the early Norman period it was the name of an Earl of Pembroke. The Gypsies who adopted the name seem in translating it to have been of opinion that it was connected with marshes, for they rendered it by mokkado tan engre, fellows of the wet or miry place, an appellation which at one time certainly became them well, for they are a northern tribe belonging to the Border, a country not very long ago full of mosses and miry places. Though calling themselves English, they are in reality quite as much Scotch as English, and as often to be found in Scotland as the other country, especially in Dumfriesshire and Galloway, in which latter region, in Saint Cuthbert's churchyard, lies buried 'the old man' of the race, - Marshall, who died at the age of 107. They sometimes call themselves Bungyoror and Chikkeneymengre, cork-fellows and china people, which names have reference to the occupations severally followed by the males and females, the former being cutters of bungs and corks, and the latter menders of china.

STANLEY. - This is the name or title of an ancient English family celebrated in history. It is probably descriptive of their original place of residence, for it signifies the stony lea, which is also the meaning of the Gaelic Auchinlech, the place of abode of the Scottish Boswells. It was adopted by an English Gypsy tribe, at one time very numerous, but at present much diminished. Of this name there are two renderings into Romany; one is Baryor or Baremescre, stone-folks or stonemasons, the other is Beshaley. The first requires no comment, but the second is well worthy of analysis, as it is an example of the strange blunders which the Gypsies sometimes make in their attempts at translation. When they rendered Stanley by Beshaley or Beshley, they mistook the first syllable stan for 'stand,' but for a very good reason rendered it by besh, which signifies 'to sit, and the second for a word in their own language, for ley or aley in Gypsy signifies 'down,' so they rendered Stanley by Beshley or Beshaley, which signifies 'sit down.' Here, of course, it will be asked what reason could have induced them, if they mistook stan for 'stand,' not to have rendered it by the Gypsy word for 'stand'? The reason was a very cogent one, the want of a word in the Gypsy language to express 'stand'; but they had heard in courts of justice witnesses told to stand down, so they supposed that to stand down was much the same as to sit down, whence their odd rendering of Stanley. In no dialect of the Gypsy, from the Indus to the Severn, is there any word for 'stand,' though in every one there is a word for 'sit,' and that is besh, and in every Gypsy encampment all along the vast distance, Beshley or Beshaley would be considered an invitation to sit down.

So much for the double-name system in use among the Gypsies of England. There is something in connection with the Gypsies of Spain which strangely coincides with one part of it - the translation of names. Among the relics of the language of the Gitanos or Spanish Gypsies are words, some simple and some compound, which are evidently attempts to translate names in a manner corresponding to the plan employed by the English Romany. In illustration of the matter, the writer will give an analysis of Brono Aljenicato, the rendering into Gitano of the name of one frequently mentioned in the New Testament, and once in the Apostles' Creed, the highly respectable, but much traduced individual known to the English public as Pontius Pilate, to the Spanish as Poncio Pilato. The manner in which the rendering has been accomplished is as follows: Poncio bears some resemblance to the Spanish puente, which signifies a bridge, and is a modification of the Latin pons, and Pilato to the Spanish pila, a fountain, or rather a stone pillar, from the top of which the waters of a fountain springing eventually fall into a stone basin below, the two words - the Brono Aljenicato - signifying bridge-fountain, or that which is connected with such a thing. Now this is the identical, or all but the identical, way in which the names Lee, Lovel, and Stanley have been done into English Romany. A remarkable instance is afforded in this Gitano Scripture name, this Brono Aljenicato, of the heterogeneous materials of which Gypsy dialects are composed: Brono is a modification of a Hindoo or Sanscrit, Aljenicato of an Arabic root. Brono is connected with the Sanscrit pindala, which signifies a bridge, and Aljenicato is a modification of the Gypsy aljenique, derived from the Arabic alain, which signifies the fountain. But of whatever materials composed, a fine-sounding name is this same Brono Aljenicato, perhaps the finest sounding specimen of Spanish Gypsy extant, much finer than a translation of Pontius Pilate would be, provided the name served to express the same things, in English, which Poncio Pilato serves to express in Spanish, for then it would be Pudjico Pani or Bridgewater; for though in English Gypsy there is the word for a bridge, namely pudge, a modification of the Persian pul, or the Wallachian podul, there is none for a fountain, which can be only vaguely paraphrased

FORTUNE-TELLING

Gypsy women, as long as we have known anything of Gypsy history, have been arrant fortune-tellers. They plied fortune-telling about France and Germany as early as 1414, the year when the dusky bands were first observed in Europe, and they have never relinquished the practice. There are two words for fortune-telling in Gypsy, bocht and dukkering. Bocht is a Persian word, a modification of, or connected with, the Sanscrit bagya, which signifies 'fate.' Dukkering is the modification of a Wallaco-Sclavonian word signifying something spiritual or ghostly. In Eastern European Gypsy, the Holy Ghost is called Swentuno Ducos.

Gypsy fortune-telling is much the same everywhere, much the same in Russia as it is in Spain and in England. Everywhere there are three styles - the lofty, the familiar, and the homely; and every Gypsy woman is mistress of all three and uses each according to the rank of the person whose vast she dukkers, whose hand she reads, and adapts the luck she promises. There is a ballad of some antiquity in the Spanish language about the Buena Ventura, a few stanzas of which translated will convey a tolerable idea of the first of these styles to the reader, who will probably with no great reluctance dispense with any illustrations of the other two:-

Late rather one morningIn summer's sweet tide,

Goes forth to the Prado Jacinta the bride:

There meets her a Gypsy So fluent of talk,

And jauntily dressed, On the principal walk.

"O welcome, thrice welcome,Of beauty thou flower!

Believe me, believe me,Thou com'st in good hour."

Surprised was Jacinta;She fain would have fled;

But the Gypsy to cheer her Such honeyed words said:

"O cheek like the rose-leaf!O lady high-born!

Turn thine eyes on thy servant,But ah, not in scorn.

"O pride of the Prado!O joy of our clime!

Thou twice shalt be married,And happily each time.

"Of two noble sons Thou shalt be the glad mother,

One a Lord Judge,A Field-Marshal the other."

Gypsy females have told fortunes to higher people than the young Countess Jacinta: Modor - of the Gypsy quire of Moscow - told the fortune of Ekatarina, Empress of all the Russias. The writer does not know what the Ziganka told that exalted personage, but it appears that she gave perfect satisfaction to the Empress, who not only presented her with a diamond ring - a Russian diamond ring is not generally of much value - but also her hand to kiss. The writer's old friend, Pepíta, the Gitana of Madrid, told the bahi of Christina, the Regentess of Spain, in which she assured her that she would marry the son of the King of France, and received from the fair Italian a golden ounce, the most magnificent of coins, a guerdon which she richly merited, for she nearly hit the mark, for though Christina did not marry the son of the King of France, her second daughter was married to a son of the King of France, the Duke of M-, one of the three claimants of the crown of Spain, and the best of the lot; and Britannia, the Caumli, told the good luck to the Regent George on Newmarket Heath, and received 'foive guineas' and a hearty smack from him who eventually became George the Fourth - no bad fellow by the by, either as regent or king, though as much abused as Pontius Pilate, whom he much resembled in one point, unwillingness to take life - the sonkaypè or gold-gift being, no doubt, more acceptable than the choomapé or kiss-gift to the Beltenebrosa, who, if a certain song be true, had no respect for gorgios, however much she liked their money:-

Britannia is my nav;I am a Kaulo Camlo;

The gorgios pen I be A bori chovahaunie;

And tatchipen they pens, The dinneleskie gorgies,

For mande chovahans The luvvu from their putsies.

Britannia is my name; I am a swarthy Lovel;

The Gorgios say I be A witch of wondrous power;

And faith they speak the truth, The silly, foolish fellows,

For often I bewitch The money from their pockets.

` Fortune-telling in all countries where the Gypsies are found is frequently the prelude to a kind of trick called in all Gypsy dialects by something more or less resembling the Sanscrit kuhana; for instance, it is called in Spain jojana, hokano, and in English hukni. It is practised in various ways, all very similar; the defrauding of some simple person of money or property being the object in view. Females are generally the victims of the trick, especially those of the middle class, who are more accessible to the poor woman than those of the upper. One of the ways, perhaps the most artful, will be found described in another chapter.

THE HUKNI

The Gypsy makes some poor simpleton of a lady believe that if the latter puts her gold into her hands, and she makes it up into a parcel, and puts it between the lady's feather-bed and mattress, it will at the end of a month be multiplied a hundredfold, provided the lady does not look at it during all that time. On receiving the money she makes it up into a brown paper parcel, which she seals with wax, turns herself repeatedly round, squints, and spits, and then puts between the feather-bed and mattress - not the parcel of gold, but one exactly like it, which she has prepared beforehand, containing old halfpence, farthings, and the like; then, after cautioning the lady by no means to undo the parcel before the stated time, she takes her departure singing to herself:-

O dear me! O dear me! What dinnelies these gorgies be.

The above artifice is called by the English Gypsies the hukni, and by the Spanish hokhano baro, or the great lie. Hukni and hokano were originally one and the same word; the root seems to be the Sanscrit huhanã, lie, trick, deceit.

CAURING

The Gypsy has some queer, old-fashioned gold piece; this she takes to some goldsmith's shop, at the window of which she has observed a basin full of old gold coins, and shows it to the goldsmith, asking him if he will purchase it. He looks at it attentively, and sees that it is of very pure gold; whereupon he says that he has no particular objection to buy it; but that as it is very old it is not of much value, and that he has several like it. "Have you indeed, Master?" says the Gypsy; "then pray show them to me, and I will buy them; for, to tell you the truth, I would rather buy than sell pieces like this, for I have a great respect for them, and know their value: give me back my coin, and I will compare any you have with it." The goldsmith gives her back her coin, takes his basin of gold from the window, and places it on the counter. The Gypsy puts down her head, and pries into the basin. "Ah, I see nothing here like my coin," says she. "Now, Master, to oblige me, take out a handful of the coins and lay them on the counter; I am a poor, honest woman, Master, and do not wish to put my hand into your basin. Oh! if I could find one coin like my own, I would give much money for it; barributer than it is worth." The goldsmith, to oblige the poor, simple, foreign creature (for such he believes her to be), and, with a considerable hope of profit, takes a handful of coins from the basin and puts them upon the counter. "I fear there is none here like mine, Master," says the Gypsy, moving the coins rapidly with the tips of her fingers. "No, no, there is not one here like mine - kek yeck, kek yeck - notone, not one. Stay, stay! What's this, what's this? So se cavo, so se cavo? Oh, here is one like mine; or if not quite like, like enough to suit me. Now, Master, what will you take for this coin?" The goldsmith looks at it, and names a price considerably above the value; whereupon she says: "Now, Master, I will deal fairly with you: you have not asked me the full value of the coin by three three-groats, three-groats, three-groats; by trin tringurushis, tringurushis, tringurushis. So here's the money you asked, Master, and three three-groats, three shillings, besides. God bless you, Master! You would have cheated yourself, but the poor woman would not let you; for though she is poor she is honest": and thus she takes her leave, leaving the goldsmith very well satisfied with his customer - with little reason, however, for out of about twenty coins which he laid on the counter she had filched at least three, which her brown nimble fingers, though they seemingly scarcely touched the gold, contrived to convey up her sleeves. This kind of pilfering is called by the English Gypsies cauring, and by the Spanish ustilar pastesas, or stealing with the fingers. The word caur seems to be connected with the English cower, and the Hebrew kãra, a word of frequent occurrence in the historical part of the Old Testament, and signifying to bend, stoop down, incurvare.

METROPOLITAN GYPSYRIES - WANDSWORTH, 1864

What may be called the grand Metropolitan Gypsyry is on the Surrey side of the Thames. Near the borders of Wandsworth and Battersea, about a quarter of a mile from the river, is an open piece of ground which may measure about two acres. To the south is a hill, at the foot of which is a railway, and it is skirted on the north by the Wandsworth and Battersea Road. This place is what the Gypsies call a kekkeno mushes puv, a no man's ground; a place which has either no proprietor, or which the proprietor, for some reason, makes no use of for the present. The houses in the neighbourhood are mean and squalid, and are principally inhabited by artisans of the lowest description. This spot, during a considerable portion of the year, is the principal place of residence of the Metropolitan Gypsies, and of other people whose manner of life more or less resembles theirs. During the summer and autumn the little plain, for such it is, is quite deserted, except that now and then a wretched tent or two may be seen upon it, belonging to some tinker family, who have put up there for a few hours on their way through the metropolis; for the Gypsies are absent during summer, some at fairs and races, the men with their cocoa-nuts and the women busy at fortune-telling, or at suburban places of pleasure - the former with their donkeys for the young cockneys to ride upon, and the latter as usual dukkering and hokkering, and the other travellers, as they are called, roaming about the country following their particular avocations, whilst in the autumn the greater part of them all are away in Kent, getting money by picking hops. As soon, however, as the rains, the precursors of winter, descend, the place begins to be occupied, and about a week or two before Christmas it is almost crammed with the tents and caravans of the wanderers; and then it is a place well worthy to be explored, notwithstanding the inconvenience of being up to one's ankles in mud, and the rather appalling risk of being bitten by the Gypsy and travelling dogs tied to the tents and caravans, in whose teeth there is always venom and sometimes that which can bring on the water-horror, for which no European knows a remedy. The following is an attempt to describe the odd people and things to be met with here; the true Gypsies, and what to them pertaineth, being of course noticed first.

On this plain there may be some fifteen or twenty Gypsy tents and caravans. Some of the tents are large, as indeed it is highly necessary that they should be, being inhabited by large families - a man and his wife, a grandmother a sister or two and half a dozen children, being, occasionally found in one; some of them are very small, belonging to poor old females who have lost their husbands, and whose families have separated themselves from them, and allow them to shift for themselves. During the day the men are generally busy at their several avocations, chinning the cost, that is, cutting the stick for skewers, making pegs for linen-lines, kipsimengring or basket-making, tinkering or braziering; the children are playing about, or begging halfpence by the road of passengers; whilst the women are strolling about, either in London or the neighbourhood, engaged in fortune-telling or swindling. Of the trades of the men, the one by far the most practised is chinning the cost, and as they sit at the door of the tents, cutting and whittling away, they occasionally sweeten their toil by raising their voices and singing the Gypsy stanza in which the art is mentioned, and which for terseness and expressiveness is quite equal to anything in the whole circle of Gentile poetry:

Can you rokra Romany? Can you speak the Roman tongue?

Can you play the bosh? Can you play the fiddle?

Can you jal adrey the staripen? Can you eat the prison-loaf?

Can you chin the cost? Can you cut and whittle?

These Gypsies are of various tribes, but chiefly Purruns, Chumomescroes and Vardomescroes, or Lees, Boswells and Coopers, and Lees being by far the most numerous. The men are well made, active fellows, somewhat below the middle height. Their complexions are dark, and their eyes are full of intelligence; their habiliments are rather ragged. The women are mostly wild-looking creatures, some poorly clad, others exhibiting not a little strange finery. There are some truly singular beings amongst those women, which is more than can be said with respect to the men, who are much on a level, and amongst whom there is none whom it is possible to bring prominently out, and about whom much can be said. The women, as has been already observed, are generally out during the day, being engaged in their avocations abroad. There is a very small tent about the middle of the place; it belongs to a lone female, whom one frequently meets wandering about Wandsworth or Battersea, seeking an opportunity to dukker some credulous servant-girl. It is hard that she should have to do so, as she is more than seventy-five years of age, but if she did not she would probably starve. She is very short of statue, being little more than five feet and an inch high, but she is wonderfully strongly built. Her head is very large, and seems to have been placed at once upon her shoulders without any interposition of neck. Her face is broad, with a good-humoured _expression upon it, and in general with very little vivacity; at times, however, it lights up, and then all the Gypsy beams forth. Old as she is, her hair, which is very long, is as black as the plumage of a crow, and she walks sturdily, though with not much elasticity, on her short, thick legs, and, if requested, would take up the heaviest man in Wandsworth or Battersea and walk away with him. She is, upon the whole, the oddest Gypsy woman ever seen; see her once and you will never forget her. Who is she? you ask. Who is she? Why, Mrs. Cooper, the wife of Jack Cooper, the fighting Gypsy, once the terror of all the Light Weights of the English Ring; who knocked West Country Dick to pieces, and killed Paddy O'Leary, the fighting pot-boy, Jack Randall's pet. Ah, it would have been well for Jack if he had always stuck to his true, lawful Romany wife, whom at one time he was very fond of, and whom he used to dress in silks and satins, and best scarlet cloth, purchased with the money gained in his fair, gallant battles in the Ring! But he did not stick to her, deserting her for a painted Jezebel, to support whom he sold his battles, by doing which he lost his friends and backers; then took from his poor wife all he had given her, and even plundered her of her own property, down to the very blankets which she lay upon; and who finally was so infatuated with love for his paramour that he bore the blame of a crime which she had committed, and in which he had no share, suffering ignominy and transportation in order to save her. Better had he never deserted his tatchie romadie, his own true Charlotte, who, when all deserted him, the painted Jezebel being the first to do so, stood by him, supporting him with money in prison, and feeing counsel on his trial from the scanty proceeds of her dukkering. All that happened many years ago; Jack's term of transportation, a lengthy one, has long, long been expired, but he has not come back, though every year since the expiration of his servitude he has written her a letter, or caused one to be written to her, to say that he is coming, that he is coming; so that she is always expecting him, and is at all times willing, as she says, to re-invest him with all the privileges of a husband, and to beg and dukker to support him if necessary. A true wife she has been to him, a tatchie romadie, and has never taken up with any man since he left her, though many have been the tempting offers that she has had, connubial offers, notwithstanding the oddity of her appearance. Only one wish she has now in this world, the wish that he may return; but her wish, it is to be feared, is a vain one, for Jack lingers and lingers in the Sonnakye Tem, golden Australia, teaching, it is said, the young Australians to box, tempted by certain shining nuggets, the produce of the golden region. It is pleasant, though there is something mournful in it, to visit Mrs. Cooper after nightfall, to sit with her in her little tent after she has taken her cup of tea, and is warming her tired limbs at her little coke fire, and hear her talk of old times and things: how Jack courted her 'neath the trees of Loughton Forest, and how, when tired of courting, they would get up and box, and how he occasionally gave her a black eye, and how she invariably flung him at a close; and how they were lawfully married at church, and what a nice man the clergyman was, and what funny things he said both before and after he had united them; how stoutly West Country Dick contended against Jack, though always losing; how in Jack's battle with Paddy O'Leary the Irishman's head in the last round was truly frightful, not a feature being distinguishable, and one of his ears hanging down by a bit of skin; how Jack vanquished Hardy Scroggins, whom Jack Randall himself never dared fight. Then, again, her anecdotes of Alec Reed, cool, swift-hitting Alec, who was always smiling, and whose father was a Scotchman, his mother an Irishwoman, and who was born in Guernsey; and of Oliver, old Tom Oliver, who seconded Jack in all his winning battles, and after whom he named his son, his only child, Oliver, begotten of her in lawful wedlock, a good and affectionate son enough, but unable to assist her, on account of his numerous family. Farewell, Mrs. Cooper, true old Charlotte! here's a little bit of silver for you, and a little bit of a gillie to sing:

Charlotta is my nav, Old Charlotte I am called,

I am a puro Purrun; Of Lee I am a daughter;

My romado was Jack, I married Fighting Jack,

The couring Vardomescro. The famous Gypsy Cooper.

He muk'd me for a lubbeny, He left me for a harlot,

Who chor'd a rawnie's kissi; Who pick'd a lady's pocket;

He penn'd 'twas he who lell'd it, He bore the blame to save her,

And so was bitched pawdel. And so was sent to Bot'ny.

Just within the bounds of the plain, and close by the road, may occasionally be seen a small caravan of rather a neat appearance. It comes and goes suddenly, and is seldom seen there for more than three days at a time. It belongs to a Gypsy female who, like Mrs. Cooper, is a remarkable person, but is widely different from Mrs. Cooper in many respects. Mrs. Cooper certainly does not represent the beau ideal of a Gypsy female, this does - a dark, mysterious, beautiful, terrible creature! She is considerably above the middle height, powerfully but gracefully made, and about thirty-seven years of age. Her face is oval, and of a dark olive. The nose is Grecian, the cheek-bones rather high; the eyes somewhat sunk, but of a lustrous black; the mouth small, and the teeth exactly like ivory. Upon the whole the face is exceedingly beautiful, but the _expression is evil - evil to a degree. Who she is no one exactly knows, nor what is her name, nor whether she is single woman, wife, or widow. Some say she is a foreign Gypsy, others from Scotland, but she is neither - her accent is genuine English. What strikes one as most singular is the power she possesses of appearing in various characters - all Romany ones it is true, but so different as seemingly to require three distinct females of the race to represent them: sometimes she is the staid, quiet, respectable Gypsy; sometimes the forward and impudent; at others the awful and sublime. Occasionally you may see her walking the streets dressed in a black silk gown, with a black silk bonnet on her head; over her left arm is flung a small carpet, a sample of the merchandise which is in her caravan, which is close at hand, driven by a brown boy; her address to her customers is highly polite; the tones of her voice are musical, though somewhat deep. At Fairlop, on the first Friday of July, in the evening, she may be found near the Bald-faced Hind, dressed in a red cloak and a large beaver; her appearance is bold and reckless - she is dukkering low tradesmen and servant girls behind the trees at sixpence a head, or is bandying with the voice of a raven slang and obscenity with country boors, or with the blackguard butcher-boys who throng in from Whitechapel and Shoreditch to the Gypsy Fair. At Goodwood, a few weeks after, you may see her in a beautiful half-riding dress, her hair fantastically plaited and adorned with pearls, standing beside the carriage of a Countess, telling the fortune of her ladyship with the voice and look of a pythoness. She is a thing of incongruities; an incomprehensible being! nobody can make her out; the writer himself has tried to make her out but could not, though he has spoken to her in his deepest Romany. It is true there is a certain old Gypsy, a friend of his, who thinks he has made her out. "Brother," said he one day, "why you should be always going after that woman I can't conceive, unless indeed you have lost your wits. If you go after her for her Romany you will find yourself in the wrong box: she may have a crumb or two of Romany, but for every crumb that she has I am quite sure you have a quartern loaf. Then as for her beauty, of which it is true she has plenty, and for which half a dozen Gorgios that I knows of are running mad, it's of no use going after her for that, for her beauty she keeps for her own use and that of her master the Devil; not but that she will sell it - she's sold it a dozen times to my certain knowledge - but what's the use of buying a thing, when the fool who buys it never gets it, never has the 'joyment of it, brother? She is kek tatcho, and that's what I like least in her; there's no trusting her, neither Gorgio nor Romano can trust her: she sells her truppos to a Rye-gorgio for five bars, and when she has got them, and the Gorgio, as he has a right to do, begins to kelna lasa, she laughs and asks him if he knows whom he has to deal with; then if he lels bonnek of lati, as he is quite justified in doing, she whips out a churi, and swears if he doesn't leave off she will stick it in his gorlo. Oh! she's an evil mare, a wafodu grasni, though a handsome one, and I never looks at her, brother, without saying to myself the old words:

"Rinkeno mui and wafodu zee Kitzi's the cheeros we dicks cattanē." A beautiful face and a black wicked mind Often, full often together we find.

Some more particular account than what has been already given of the habitations of these Wandsworth Gypsies, and likewise of their way of life, will perhaps not be unacceptable here.To begin with the tents. They are oblong in shape and of very simple construction, whether small or great. Sticks or rods, called in the Gypsy language ranior, between four and five feet in length, and croming or bending towards the top, are stuck in the ground at about twenty inches from each other, a rod or two being omitted in that part where the entrance is intended to be. The cromes or bends serve as supporters of a roof, and those of the side rods which stand over against one another are generally tied together by strings. These rods are covered over with coarse brown cloths, pinned or skewered together; those at the bottom being fastened to the ground by pegs. Around the tent is generally a slight embankment, about two or three inches high, or a little trench about the same depth, to prevent water from running into the tent in time of rain. Such is the tent, which would be exactly like the Indian wigwam but for the cloth which forms the covering: the Indians in lieu of cloth using bark, which they carry about with them in all their migrations, though they leave the sticks standing in the ground.

The furniture is scanty. Like the Arabs, the Gypsies have neither chairs nor tables, but sit cross-legged, a posture which is perfectly easy to them, though insufferable to a Gorgio, unless he happens to be a tailor. When they eat, the ground serves them for a board, though they occasionally spread a cloth upon it. Singularly enough, though they have neither chairs nor tables, they have words for both. Of pots, pans, plates, and trenchers, they have a tolerable quantity. Each grown-up person has a churi, or knife, with which to cut food. Eating-forks they have none, and for an eating-fork they have no word, the term pasengri signifying a straw- or pitch-fork. Spoons are used by them generally of horn, and are called royis. They have but two culinary articles, the kekkauvi and pirry, kettle and boiler, which are generally of copper, to which, however, may perhaps be added the kekkauviskey saster, or kettle-iron, by which the kettle and boiler are hung over the fire. As a fireplace they have a large iron pan on three legs, with holes or eyes in the sides, in order that the heat of the fire may be cast around. Instead of coals they use coke, which emits no flame and little smoke, and casts a considerable heat. Every tent has a pail or two, and perhaps a small cask or barrel, the proper name for which is bedra, though it is generally called pāni-mengri, or thing for water. At the farther end of the tent is a mattress, with a green cloth, or perhaps a sheet spread upon it, forming a kind of couch, on which visitors are generally asked to sit down:- Av adrey, Romany Rye, av adrey ta besh aley pawdle odoy! Come in, Gypsy gentleman (said a polite Gypsy one day to the writer); come in and sit down over yonder! They have a box or two in which they stow away their breakable articles and whatever things they set any particular value upon. Some of them have small feather-beds, and they are generally tolerably well provided with blankets.

The caravans are not numerous, and have only been used of late years by any of the English Gypsy race. The caravan called by the Gypsies keir vardo, or waggon-house, is on four wheels, and is drawn by a horse or perhaps a couple of donkeys. It is about twelve feet long by six broad and six high. At the farther end are a couple of transverse berths, one above the other, like those in the cabin of a ship; and a little way from these is a curtain hanging by rings from an iron rod running across, which, when drawn, forms a partition. On either side is a small glazed window. The most remarkable object is a stove just inside the door, on the left hand, with a metal chimney which goes through the roof. This stove, the Gypsy term for which is bo, casts, when lighted, a great heat, and in some cases is made in a very handsome fashion. Some caravans have mirrors against the sides, and exhibit other indications of an aiming at luxury, though in general they are dirty, squalid places, quite as much as or perhaps more than the tents, which seem to be the proper and congenial homes of the Gypsies.

The mode of life of these people may be briefly described. They have two regular meals - breakfast and supper. The breakfast consists of tea, generally of the best quality, bread, butter, and cheese; the supper, of tea and a stew. In spring time they occasionally make a kind of tea or soup of the tender leaves of a certain description of nettle. This preparation, which they call dandrimengreskie zimmen, or the broth of the stinging-thing, is highly relished by them. They get up early, and go to bed betimes. After breakfast the men sit down to chin the cost, to mend chairs or make baskets; the women go forth to hok and dukker, and the children to beg, or to go with the donkeys to lanes and commons to watch them, whilst they try to fill their poor bellies with grass and thistles. These children sometimes bring home hotchiwitches, or hedgehogs, the flesh of which is very sweet and tender, and which their mothers are adepts at cooking.

The Gypsies, as has been already observed, are not the sole occupiers of Wandsworth grounds. Strange, wild guests are to be found there, who, without being Gypsies, have much of Gypsyism in their habits, and who far exceed the Gypsies in number. To pass them by without notice would be unpardonable. They may be divided into three classes: Chorodies, Kora-mengre, and Hindity-mengre. Something about each:-

The Chorodies are the legitimate descendants of the rogues and outcasts who roamed about England long before its soil was trodden by a Gypsy foot. They are a truly detestable set of beings; both men and women being ferocious in their appearance, and in their conversation horrible and disgusting. They have coarse, vulgar features, and hair which puts one wonderfully in mind of refuse flax, or the material of which mops are composed. Their complexions, when not obscured with grime, are rather fair than dark, evidencing that their origin is low, swinish Saxon, and not gentle Romany. Their language is the frowsiest English, interlarded with cant expressions and a few words of bastard Romany. They live in the vilest tents, with the exception of two or three families, who have their abode in broken and filthy caravans. They have none of the comforts and elegancies of the Gypsies. They are utterly destitute of civility and good manners, and are generally squalid in their dress, though the women sometimes exhibit not a little dirty tawdriness. The trades of the men are tinkering and basket-making, and some few "peel the stick." The women go about with the articles made by their husbands, or rather partners, and sometimes do a little in the fortune-telling line - pretty prophetesses! The fellows will occasionally knock a man down in the dark, and rob him; the women will steal anything they can conveniently lay their hands on. Singular as it may seem to those not deeply acquainted with human nature, these wretches are not without a kind of pride. "We are no Gypsies - not we! no, nor Irish either. We are English, and decent folks - none of your rubbish!" The Gypsies hold them, and with reason, in supreme contempt, and it is from them that they got their name of Chorodies, not a little applicable to them. Choredo, in Gypsy, signifies a poor, miserable person, and differs very little in sound from two words, one Sanscrit and the other Hebrew, both signifying, like the Gypsy term, something low, mean, and contemptible.

Kora-mengre are the lowest of those hawkers who go about the country villages and the streets of London, with caravans hung about with various common articles, such as mats, brooms, mops, tin pans and kettles. These low hawkers seem to be of much the same origin as the Chorodies, and are almost equally brutal and repulsive in their manners. The name Kora-mengre is Gypsy, and signifies fellows who cry out and shout, from their practice of shouting out the names of their goods. The word kora, or karra, is by no means bad Hebrew: kora, in the Holy Language, signifies he cried out, called, or proclaimed: and a partridge is called in Hebrew kora, from its continually crying out to its young, when leading them about to feed. Koran, the name of the sacred book of the Mahomedans, is of the same root.

Lastly come the Hindity-mengre, or Filthy People. This term has been bestowed upon the vagrant Irish by the Gypsies, from the dirty ways attributed to them, though it is a question whether the lowest Irish are a bit more dirty in their ways than the English Chorodies, or indeed so much, and are certainly immeasurably superior to them in many respects. There are not many of them here, seldom more than two families, and sometimes, even during the winter, not a single Irish tent or cart is to be seen. The trade they ostensibly drive is tinkering, repairing old kettles, and making little pots and pans of tin. The one, however, on which they principally depend, is not tinkering, but one far more lucrative, and requiring more cleverness and dexterity; they make false rings, like the Gypsy smiths, the fashiono vangustengre of old, and whilst speaking Celtic to one whom they deem their countryman, have no hesitation in acknowledging themselves to be "Cairdean droich oir," workers of false gold. The rings are principally made out of old brass buttons; those worn by old Chelsea pensioners being considered the very best for the purpose. Many an ancient Corporal Trim, alter having spent all his money at the public-house, and only become three-parts boozy, has been induced by the Hindity-mengro to sell all his buttons at the rate of three-halfpence a-piece, in order to have wherewithal to make himself thoroughly royal. Each of these Hindity-mengre has his blow-pipe, and some of them can execute their work in a style little inferior to that of a first-rate working goldsmith. The rings, after being made, are rubbed with a certain stuff out of a phial, which gives them all the appearance of gold. This appearance, however, does not long endure, for after having been worn two or three months, the ring loses its false appearance entirely, and any one can see that it is worthless metal. A good many of these rings are disposed of at good prices by the Hindity women, the wives of these false-gold workers, to servant girls and the wives of small shopkeepers, and not a few, at a lower rate, to certain gentry who get their livelihood by the honourable profession of ring-dropping.

What is ring-dropping?

Ring-dropping is this. A gentleman overtakes you as you are walking in some quiet street, passes by you, and at the distance of some fifteen yards stops, and stooping down, seemingly picks up something, which he inspects, and then uttering a "Dear me!" he turns to you, and says, "Sir, we have been fortunate to-day. See! I have picked up this valuable!" He then shows you a small case, in which is a large ring, seemingly of the finest gold, with a little label attached to it, on which is marked £2 15s. "Now, sir," he continues, "I said we were fortunate, because as we were close to each other, I consider you as much entitled to gain by this windfall as myself. I'll tell you how it shall be: the price of the ring, which was probably dropped by some goldsmith's man, is, as you see, two pound fifteen; however, as I am in a hurry, you shall only give me a quid, a pound, and then the valuable shall be all your own; it shall indeed, sir!" And then he stares you in the face. Such is ring-dropping, to which many silly but greedy individuals, fall victims; giving a pound for a fine-looking ring, which, however, with its scarlet case - for the case is always of a scarlet colour - is not worth sixpence. The best thing you can do in such a case is to put your thumb to your nose, flattening your hand and sticking out your fingers far apart, moving on at the same time, or to utter the cabalistic word "hookey"; in either case the ring-dropper will at once drop astern, with a half-stifled curse, for he knows that he has to do with "no flat," and that you are "awake to his little game." Doing so is much better than moving rapidly on, and affecting to take no notice of him, for then he will infallibly follow you to the end of the street, offering you the ring on more reasonable terms at every step, perhaps concluding at last, as a ring-dropper once did to the writer, "I'll tell you what, sir; as I am in a hurry, and rather hard up, you shall have the valuable for a bull, for a crown; you shall indeed, sir, so help me - "

Three of the most famous of the Hindity smiths have been immortalised by the Gypsies in the following bit of verse:

Mickie, Huwie and Larry, Mickie, Huwie and Larry bold,

Trin Hindity-mengre fashiono vangust-engre. Three Irish brothers, as I am told, Who make false rings, that pass for gold.

Of these fashiono-vangust brothers, the most remarkable is Mike - Old Mike, as he is generally called. He was born in the county Kerry, and educated at a hedge-school, where he learned to read and write English, after a fashion, and acquired the seventeen letters of the Irish alphabet, each of which is named after a particular tree. Leaving school he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, from whom he ran away, and enlisted into the service of that illustrious monarch, George the Third, some of whose battles he had the honour of fighting in the Peninsula and France. Discharged from the army at the Peace, with the noble donation of thirty shillings, or one month's pay, he returned to Ireland, took to himself a wife, and commenced tinker. Becoming dissatisfied with his native soil he passed over to England, and settling for some time at "Brummagem," took lessons from certain cunning smiths in the art of making fashiono vangusties. The next forty years of his life he spent in wandering about Britain, attended by his faithful partner, who not only disposed of his tin articles and false rings, but also bore him seventeen children, all of whom are alive, somewhere or other, and thriving too, one of them indeed having attained to the dignity of American senator. Some of his adventures, during his wanderings, were in the highest degree extraordinary. Of late years he has chiefly resided in the vicinity of London, spending his winters at Wandsworth, and his summers on the Flats, near Epping Forest; in one or the other of which places you may see Old Mike on a Sunday evening, provided the weather is tolerably fine, seated near his little caravan, with his wife by his side - not the wife who bore him the seventeen children, who has been dead for some years, but his second wife, a nice, elderly Irish ban from the county of Cork, who can tell fortunes, say her prayers in Irish, and is nearly as good a hand at selling her lord and master's tin articles and false rings as her predecessor. Lucky for Mike that he got such a second partner! and luckier still that at his age of seventy-nine he retains all his faculties, and is able to work for his daily bread, with at least the skill and cunning of his two brothers, both of whom are much younger men than himself, whose adventures have been somewhat similar to his own, and who, singularly enough, have come to live near him in his latter days. Both these brothers are highly remarkable men. Huwie is the most civil-spoken person in or about London, and Larry a man of the most terrible tongue, and perhaps the most desperate fighter ever seen; always willing to attack half a dozen men, if necessary, and afraid of no one in the world, save one - Mike, old Mike, who can tame him in his fiercest moods by merely holding up his finger. Oh, a truly remarkable man is old Mike! and a pleasure and an advantage it is to any one of a philosophical mind to be acquainted with him, and to listen to him. He is much more than a fashiono-vangust-engro. Amongst other things he is a theologian - Irish theologian - and quite competent to fill the chair of theology at the University of Maynooth. He can tell you a great many things connected with a certain person, which, with all your research, you would never find in Scripture. He can tell you how the Saviour, when hanging on the cross, became athirst, and told St. Peter, who stood at the foot of it, to fetch Him a cup of water from a dirty puddle in the neighbourhood, and how St. Peter - however, better not relate the legend, though a highly curious one. Then he can repeat to you blessed verses, as he calls them, by dozens; not of David, but of one quite as good, as he will tell you, namely, Timothy O'Sullivan; and who, you will say, was Timothy O'Sullivan? Why, Ty Gaelach, to be sure. And who was Ty Gaelach? An Irish peasant-poet of the last century, who wrote spiritual songs, some of them by no means bad ones, and who was called Gaelach, or Gael, from his abhorrence of the English race and of the English language, of which he scarcely understood a word. Then is Ty Irish for Timothy? Why, no! though very stupidly supposed to be so. Ty is Teague, which is neither Greek nor Irish, but a glorious old Northern name, carried into Ireland by the brave old heathen Danes. Ty or Teague is the same as Tycho. Ty or Teague Gaelach is as much as to say Tycho Gaelach; and Tycho Brahe is as much as to say Teague Brahe.

THE MOUNT

Before quitting the subject of Metropolitan Gypsies there is another place to which it will be necessary to devote a few words, though it is less entitled to the appelation of Gypsyry than rookery. It is situated in the East of London, a region far more interesting to the ethnologist and the philologist than the West, for there he will find people of all kinds of strange races, - the wildest Irish; Greeks, both Orthodox and Papistical; Jews, not only Ashkenazim and Sephardim, but even Karaite; the worst, and consequently the most interesting, description of Germans, the sugar-bakers; lots of Malays; plenty of Chinamen; two or three dozen Hottentots, and about the same number of Gypsies, reckoning men, women, and children. Of the latter, and their place of abode, we have now only to do, leaving the other strange, odd people to be disposed of on some other occasion.

Not far from Shoreditch Church, and at a short distance from the street called Church Street, on the left hand, is a locality called Friars' Mount, but generally for shortness called The Mount. It derives its name from a friary built upon a small hillock in the time of Popery, where a set of fellows lived in laziness and luxury on the offerings of foolish and superstitious people, who resorted thither to kiss and worship an ugly wooden image of the Virgin, said to be a first-rate stick at performing miraculous cures. The neighbourhood, of course, soon became a resort for vagabonds of every description, for wherever friars are found rogues and thieves are sure to abound; and about Friars' Mount, highwaymen, coiners, and Gypsies dwelt in safety under the protection of the ministers of the miraculous image. The friary has long since disappeared, the Mount has been levelled, and the locality built over. The vice and villainy, however, which the friary called forth still cling to the district. It is one of the vilest dens of London, a grand resort for housebreakers, garotters, passers of bad money, and other disreputable people, though not for Gypsies; for however favourite a place it may have been for the Romany in the old time, it no longer finds much favour in their sight, from its not affording open spaces where they can pitch their tents. One very small street, however, is certainly entitled to the name of a Gypsy street, in which a few Gypsy families have always found it convenient to reside, and who are in the habit of receiving and lodging their brethren passing through London to and from Essex and other counties east of the metropolis. There is something peculiar in the aspect of this street, not observable in that of any of the others, which one who visits it, should he have been in Triana of Seville, would at once recognise as having seen in the aspect of the lanes and courts of that grand location of the Gypsies of the Andalusian capital.

The Gypsies of the Mount live much in the same manner as their brethren in the other Gypsyries of London. They chin the cost, make skewers, baskets, and let out donkeys for hire. The chief difference consists in their living in squalid houses, whilst the others inhabit dirty tents and caravans. The last Gypsy of any note who resided in this quarter was Joseph Lee; here he lived for a great many years, and here he died, having attained the age of ninety. During his latter years he was generally called Old Joe Lee, from his great age. His wife or partner, who was also exceedingly old, only survived him a few days. They were buried in the same grave, with much Gypsy pomp, in the neighbouring churchyard. They were both of pure Gypsy blood, and were generally known as the Gypsy king and queen of Shoreditch. They left a numerous family of children and grandchildren, some of whom are still to be found at the Mount. This old Joe Lee in his day was a celebrated horse and donkey witch - that is, he professed secrets which enabled him to make any wretched animal of either species exhibit for a little time the spirit and speed of "a flying drummedary." He was illustriously related, and was very proud on that account, especially in being the brother's son of old James, the cauring mush, whose exploits in the filching line will be remembered as long as the venerable tribe of Purrum, or Lee, continues in existence.

RYLEY BOSVIL

Ryley Bosvil was a native of Yorkshire, a country where, as the Gypsies say, "there's a deadly sight of Bosvils." He was above the middle height, exceedingly strong and active, and one of the best riders in Yorkshire, which is saying a great deal. He was a thorough Gypsy, versed in all the arts of the old race, had two wives, never went to church, and considered that when a man died he was cast into the earth, and there was an end of him. He frequently used to say that if any of his people became Gorgios he would kill them. He had a sister of the name of Clara, a nice, delicate, interesting girl, about fourteen years younger than himself, who travelled about with an aunt; this girl was noticed by a respectable Christian family, who, taking a great interest in her, persuaded her to come and live with them. She was instructed by them in the rudiments of the Christian religion, appeared delighted with her new friends, and promised never to leave them. After the lapse of about six weeks there was a knock at the door; a dark man stood before it who said he wanted Clara. Clara went out trembling, had some discourse with the man in an unknown tongue, and shortly returned in tears, and said that she must go. "What for?" said her friends. "Did you not promise to stay with us?" "I did so," said the girl, weeping more bitterly; "but that man is my brother, who says I must go with him, and what he says must be." So with her brother she departed, and her Christian friends never saw her again. What became of her? Was she made away with? Many thought she was, but she was not. Ryley put her into a light cart, drawn by "a flying pony," and hurried her across England, even to distant Norfolk, where he left her, after threatening her, with three Gypsy women who were devoted to him. With these women the writer found her one night encamped in a dark wood, and had much discourse with her, both on Christian and Egyptian matters. She was very melancholy, bitterly regretted having been compelled to quit her Christian friends, and said that she wished she had never been a Gypsy. The writer, after exhorting her to keep a firm grip of her Christianity, departed, and did not see her again for nearly a quarter of a century, when he met her on Epsom Downs, on the Derby day when the terrible horse Gladiateur beat all the English steeds. She was then very much changed, very much changed indeed, appearing as a full-blown Egyptian matron, with two very handsome daughters flaringly dressed in genuine Gypsy fashion, to whom she was giving motherly counsels as to the best means to hok and dukker the gentlefolks. All her Christianity she appeared to have flung to the dogs, for when the writer spoke to her on that very important subject, she made no answer save by an indescribable Gypsy look. On other matters she was communicative enough, telling the writer, amongst other things, that since he saw her she had been twice married, and both times very well, for that her first husband, by whom she had the two daughters whom the writer "kept staring at," was a man every inch of him, and her second, who was then on the Downs grinding knives with a machine he had, though he had not much manhood, being nearly eighty years old, had something much better, namely a mint of money, which she hoped shortly to have in her own possession.

Ryley, like most of the Bosvils, was a tinker by profession; but, though a tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of heart. His grand ambition was to be a great man among his people, a Gypsy King. To this end he furnished himself with clothes made after the costliest Gypsy fashion: the two hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were broad gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the fore-buttons were English "spaded guineas"; the buttons of the waistcoat were half-guineas, and those of the collar and the wrists of his shirt were seven-shilling gold pieces. In this coat he would frequently make his appearance on a magnificent horse, whose hoofs, like those of the steed of a Turkish sultan, were cased in shoes of silver. How did he support such expense? it may be asked. Partly by driving a trade in wafodu luvvu, counterfeit coin, with which he was supplied by certain honest tradespeople of Brummagem; partly and principally by large sums of money which he received from his two wives, and which they obtained by the practice of certain arts peculiar to Gypsy females. One of his wives was a truly remarkable woman: she was of the Petulengro or Smith tribe; her Christian name, if Christian name it can be called, was Xuri or Shuri, and from her exceeding smartness and cleverness she was generally called by the Gypsies Yocky Shuri, - that is, smart or clever Shuri, yocky being a Gypsy word, signifying 'clever.' She could dukker - that is, tell fortunes - to perfection, by which alone during the racing season she could make a hundred pounds a month. She was good at the big hok, that is, at inducing people to put money into her hands, in the hope of its being multiplied; and, oh dear! how she could caur - that is, filch gold rings and trinkets from jewellers' cases; the kind of thing which the Spanish Gypsy women call ustilar pastesas, filching with the hands. Frequently she would disappear, and travel about England, and Scotland too, dukkering, hokking, and cauring, and after the lapse of a month return and deliver to her husband, like a true and faithful wife, the proceeds of her industry. So no wonder that the Flying Tinker, as he was called, was enabled to cut a grand appearance. He was very fond of hunting, and would frequently join the field in regular hunting costume, save and except that, instead of the leather hunting-cap, he wore one of fur with a gold band around it, to denote that though he mixed with Gorgios he was still a Romany-chal. Thus equipped and mounted on a capital hunter, whenever he encountered a Gypsy encampment he would invariably dash through it, doing all the harm he could, in order, as he said, to let the juggals know that he was their king and had a right to do what he pleased with his own. Things went on swimmingly for a great many years, but, as prosperity does not continue for ever, his dark hour came at last. His wives got into trouble in one or two expeditions, and his dealings in wafodu luvvu began to be noised about. Moreover, by his grand airs and violent proceedings he had incurred the hatred of both Gorgios and Gypsies, particularly of the latter, some of whom he had ridden over and lamed for life. One day he addressed his two wives:-

"The Gorgios seek to hang me, The Gypsies seek to kill me: This country we must leave."

Shuri. I'll jaw with you to heaven, I'll jaw with you to Yaudors - But not if Lura goes."

Lura. "I'll jaw with you to heaven, And to the wicked country, Though Shuri goeth too."

Ryley. "Since I must choose betwixt ye,My choice is Yocky Shuri,Though Lura loves me best."

Lura. "My blackest curse on Shuri!Oh, Ryley, I'll not curse you,But you will never thrive."

She then took her departure with her cart and donkey,and Ryley remained with Shuri.

Ryley. "I've chosen now betwixt ye;Your wish you now have gotten,But for it you shall smart."

He then struck her with his fist on the cheek, and broke her jawbone. Shuri uttered no cry or complaint, only mumbled:

"Although with broken jawbone,I'll follow thee, my Ryley,Since Lura doesn't jal."

Thereupon Ryley and Yocky Shuri left Yorkshire, and wended their way to London, where they took up their abode in the Gypsyry near the Shepherd's Bush. Shuri went about dukkering and hokking, but not with the spirit of former times, for she was not quite so young as she had been, and her jaw, which was never properly cured, pained her much. Ryley went about tinkering, but he was unacquainted with London and its neighbourhood, and did not get much to do. An old Gypsy-man, who was driving about a little cart filled with skewers, saw him standing in a state of perplexity at a place where four roads met.

Old Gypsy. "Methinks I see a brother! Who's your father? Who's your mother?And what may be your name?"

Ryley. "A Bosvil was my father; A Bosvil was my mother; And Ryley is my name."

Old Gypsy. "I'm glad to see you, brother! I am a Kaulo Camlo. {4} What service can I do?"

Ryley. "I'm jawing petulengring, {5} But do not know the country; Perhaps you'll show me round."

Old Gypsy. "I'll sikker tute, prala! I'm bikkening esconyor; {6} Av, av along with me!"

The old Gypsy showed Ryley about the country for a week or two, and Ryley formed a kind of connection, and did a little business. He, however, displayed little or no energy, was gloomy and dissatisfied, and frequently said that his heart was broken since he had left Yorkshire.

Shuri did her best to cheer him, but without effect. Once, when she bade him get up and exert himself, he said that if he did it would be of little use, and asked her whether she did not remember the parting prophecy of his other wife that he would never thrive. At the end of about two years he ceased going his rounds, and did nothing but smoke under the arches of the railroad, and loiter about beershops. At length he became very weak, and took to his bed; doctors were called in by his faithful Shuri, but there is no remedy for a bruised spirit. A Methodist came and asked him, "What was his hope?" "My hope," said he, "is that when I am dead I shall be put into the ground, and my wife and children will weep over me." And such, it may be observed, is the last hope of every genuine Gypsy. His hope was gratified. Shuri and his children, of whom he had three - two stout young fellows and a girl - gave him a magnificent funeral, and screamed, shouted, and wept over his grave. They then returned to the "Arches," not to divide his property amongst them, and to quarrel about the division, according to Christian practice, but to destroy it. They killed his swift pony - still swift, though twenty-seven years of age - and buried it deep in the ground, without depriving it of its skin. They then broke the caravan and cart to pieces, making of the fragments a fire, on which they threw his bedding, carpets, curtains, blankets, and everything which would burn. Finally, they dashed his mirrors, china, and crockery to pieces, hacked his metal pots, dishes and what-not to bits, and flung the whole on the blazing pile. Such was the life, such the death, and such were the funeral obsequies of Ryley Bosvil, a Gypsy who will be long remembered amongst the English Romany for his buttons, his two wives, his grand airs, and last, and not least, for having been the composer of various stanzas in the Gypsy tongue, which have plenty of force, if nothing else, to recommend them. One of these, addressed to Yocky Shuri, runs as follows:

Tuley the Can I kokkeney cam Beneath the bright sun, there is none, there is none,

Like my rinkeny Yocky Shuri: I love like my Yocky Shuri:

Oprey the chongor in ratti I'd cour With the greatest delight, in blood I would fight

For my rinkeny Yocky Shuri! To the knees for my Yocky Shuri!

Gypsy language
18:25:55 - Jun 17 2006
Times Read: 40

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THE ENGLISH GYPSY LANGUAGE

The Gypsies of England call their language, as the Gypsies of many other countries call theirs, Romany or Romanes, a word either derived from the Indian Ram or Rama, which signifies a husband, or from the town Rome, which took its name either from the Indian Ram, or from the Gaulic word, Rom, which is nearly tantamount to husband or man, for as the Indian Ram means a husband or man, so does the Gaulic Pom signify that which constitutes a man and enables him to become a husband.

Before entering on the subject of the English Gypsy, I may perhaps be expected to say something about the original Gypsy tongue. It is, however, very difficult to say with certainty anything on the subject. There can be no doubt that a veritable Gypsy tongue at one time existed, but that it at present exists there is great doubt indeed. The probability is that the Gypsy at present exists only in dialects more or less like the language originally spoken by the Gypsy or Zingaro race. Several dialects of the Gypsy are to be found which still preserve along with a considerable number of seemingly original words certain curious grammatical forms, quite distinct from those of any other speech. Others are little more than jargons, in which a certain number of Gypsy words are accommodated to the grammatical forms of the languages of particular countries. In the foremost class of the purer Gypsy dialects, I have no hesitation in placing those of Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Transylvania. They are so alike, that he who speaks one of them can make himself very well understood by those who speak any of the rest; from whence it may reasonably be inferred that none of them can differ much from the original Gypsy speech; so that when speaking of Gypsy language, any one of these may be taken as a standard. One of them - I shall not mention which - I have selected for that purpose, more from fancy than any particular reason.

The Gypsy language, then, or what with some qualification I may call such, may consist of some three thousand words, the greater part of which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East. It has two genders, masculine and feminine; o represents the masculine and i the feminine: for example, boro rye, a great gentleman; bori rani, a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: gajo or gorgio, a man or gentile; o gajo, the man. The noun has two numbers, the singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions, but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the postposition: for example, cad o gav, from the town; chungale mannochendar, evil men from, i.e. from evil men. The verb has no infinitive; in lieu thereof, the conjunction 'that' is placed before some person of some tense. 'I wish to go' is expressed in Gypsy by camov te jaw, literally, I wish that I go; thou wishest to go, caumes te jas, thou wishest that thou goest; caumen te jallan, they wish that they go. Necessity is expressed by the impersonal verb and the conjunction 'that': hom te jay, I must go; lit. I am that I go; shan te jallan, they are that they go; and so on. There are words to denote the numbers from one up to a thousand. For the number nine there are two words, nu and ennyo. Almost all the Gypsy numbers are decidedly connected with the Sanscrit.

After these observations on what may be called the best preserved kind of Gypsy, I proceed to a lower kind, that of England. The English Gypsy speech is very scanty, amounting probably to not more than fourteen hundred words, the greater part of which seem to be of Indian origin. The rest form a strange medley taken by the Gypsies from various Eastern and Western languages: some few are Arabic, many are Persian; some are Sclavo-Wallachian, others genuine Sclavonian. Here and there a Modern Greek or Hungarian word is discoverable; but in the whole English Gypsy tongue I have never noted but one French word - namely, tass or dass, by which some of the very old Gypsies occasionally call a cup.

Their vocabulary being so limited, the Gypsies have of course words of their own only for the most common objects and ideas; as soon as they wish to express something beyond these they must have recourse to English, and even to express some very common objects, ideas, and feelings, they are quite at a loss in their own tongue, and must either employ English words or very vague terms indeed. They have words for the sun and the moon, but they have no word for the stars, and when they wish to name them in Gypsy, they use a word answering to 'lights.' They have a word for a horse and for a mare, but they have no word for a colt, which in some other dialects of the Gypsy is called kuro; and to express a colt they make use of the words tawno gry, a little horse, which after all may mean a pony. They have words for black, white, and red, but none for the less positive colours - none for grey, green, and yellow. They have no definite word either for hare or rabbit; shoshoi, by which they generally designate a rabbit, signifies a hare as well, and kaun-engro, a word invented to distinguish a hare, and which signifies ear-fellow, is no more applicable to a hare than to a rabbit, as both have long ears. They have no certain word either for to-morrow or yesterday, collico signifying both indifferently. A remarkable coincidence must here be mentioned, as it serves to show how closely related are Sanscrit and Gypsy. Shoshoi and collico are nearly of the same sound as the Sanscrit sasa and kalya, and exactly of the same import; for as the Gypsy shoshoi signifies both hare and rabbit, and collico to-morrow as well as yesterday, so does the Sanscrit sasa signify both hare and rabbit, and kalya tomorrow as well as yesterday.

The poverty of their language in nouns the Gypsies endeavour to remedy by the frequent use of the word engro. This word affixed to a noun or verb turns it into something figurative, by which they designate, seldom very appropriately, some object for which they have no positive name. Engro properly means a fellow, and engri, which is the feminine or neuter modification, a thing. When the noun or verb terminates in a vowel, engro is turned into mengro, and engri into mengri. I have already shown how, by affixing engro to kaun, the Gypsies have invented a word to express a hare. In like manner, by affixing engro to pov, earth, they have coined a word for a potato, which they call pov-engro or pov-engri, earth-fellow or thing; and by adding engro to rukh, or mengro to rooko, they have really a very pretty figurative name for a squirrel, which they call rukh-engro or rooko-mengro, literally a fellow of the tree. Poggra-mengri, a breaking thing, and pea-mengri, a drinking thing, by which they express, respectively, a mill and a teapot, will serve as examples of the manner by which they turn verbs into substantives. This method of finding names for objects, for which there are properly no terms in Gypsy, might be carried to a great length - much farther, indeed, than the Gypsies are in the habit of carrying it: a slack-rope dancer might be termed bittitardranoshellokellimengro, or slightly-drawn-rope-dancing fellow; a drum, duicoshtcurenomengri, or a thing beaten by two sticks; a tambourine, angustrecurenimengri, or a thing beaten by the fingers; and a fife, muipudenimengri, or thing blown by the mouth. All these compound words, however, would be more or less indefinite, and far beyond the comprehension of the Gypsies in general.

The verbs are very few, and with two or three exceptions expressive only of that which springs from what is physical and bodily, totally unconnected with the mind, for which, indeed, the English Gypsy has no word; the term used for mind, zi - which is a modification of the Hungarian sziv - meaning heart. There are such verbs in this dialect as to eat, drink, walk, run, hear, see, live, die; but there are no such verbs as to hope, mean, hinder, prove, forbid, teaze, soothe. There is the verb apasavello, I believe; but that word, which is Wallachian, properly means being trusted, and was incorporated in the Gypsy language from the Gypsies obtaining goods on trust from the Wallachians, which they never intended to pay for. There is the verb for love, camova; but that word is expressive of physical desire, and is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, or Cupid. Here, however, the English must not triumph over the Gypsies, as their own verb 'love' is connected with a Sanscrit word signifying 'lust.' One pure and abstract metaphysical verb the English Gypsy must be allowed to possess - namely, penchava, I think, a word of illustrious origin, being derived from the Persian pendashtan.

The English Gypsies can count up to six, and have the numerals for ten and twenty, but with those for seven, eight, and nine, perhaps not three Gypsies in England are acquainted. When they wish to express those numerals in their own language, they have recourse to very uncouth and roundabout methods, saying for seven, dui trins ta yeck, two threes and one; for eight, dui stors, or two fours; and for nine, desh sore but yeck, or ten all but one. Yet at one time the English Gypsies possessed all the numerals as their Transylvanian, Wallachian, and Russian brethren still do; even within the last fifty years there were Gypsies who could count up to a hundred. These were tatchey Romany, real Gypsies, of the old sacred black race, who never slept in a house, never entered a church, and who, on their death-beds, used to threaten their children with a curse, provided they buried them in a churchyard. The two last of them rest, it is believed, some six feet deep beneath the moss of a wild, hilly heath, - called in Gypsy the Heviskey Tan, or place of holes; in English, Mousehold, - near an ancient city, which the Gentiles call Norwich, and the Romans the Chong Gav, or the town of the hill.

With respect to Grammar, the English Gypsy is perhaps in a worse condition than with respect to words. Attention is seldom paid to gender; boro rye and boro rawnie being said, though as rawnie is feminine, bori and not boro should be employed. The proper Gypsy plural terminations are retained in nouns, but in declension prepositions are generally substituted for postpositions, and those prepositions English. The proper way of conjugating verbs is seldom or never observed, and the English method is followed. They say, I dick, I see, instead of dico; I dick'd, I saw, instead of dikiom; if I had dick'd, instead of dikiomis. Some of the peculiar features of Gypsy grammar yet retained by the English Gypsies will be found noted in the Dictionary.

I have dwelt at some length on the deficiencies and shattered condition of the English Gypsy tongue; justice, however, compels me to say that it is far purer and less deficient than several of the continental Gypsy dialects. It preserves far more of original Gypsy peculiarities than the French, Italian, and Spanish dialects, and its words retain more of the original Gypsy form than the words of those three; moreover, however scanty it may be, it is far more copious than the French or the Italian Gypsy, though it must be owned that in respect to copiousness it is inferior to the Spanish Gypsy, which is probably the richest in words of all the Gypsy dialects in the world, having names for very many of the various beasts, birds, and creeping things, for most of the plants and fruits, for all the days of the week, and all the months in the year; whereas most other Gypsy dialects, the English amongst them, have names for only a few common animals and insects, for a few common fruits and natural productions, none for the months, and only a name for a single day - the Sabbath - which name is a modification of the Modern Greek [Greek text: ].

Though the English Gypsy is generally spoken with a considerable alloy of English words and English grammatical forms, enough of its proper words and features remain to form genuine Gypsy sentences, which shall be understood not only by the Gypsies of England, but by those of Russia, Hungary, Wallachia, and even of Turkey; for example:-

Kek man camov te jib bolli-mengreskoenaes, Man camov te jib weshenjugalogonaes.

I do not wish to live like a baptized person. {1} I wish to live like a dog of the wood. {2}

It is clear-sounding and melodious, and well adapted to the purposes of poetry. Let him who doubts peruse attentively the following lines:-

Coin si deya, coin se dado? Pukker mande drey Romanes, Ta mande pukkeravava tute.

Rossar-mescri minri deya! Wardo-mescro minro dado! Coin se dado, coin si deya? Mande's pukker'd tute drey Romanes;

Knau pukker tute mande.

Petulengro minro dado, Purana minri deya! Tatchey Romany si men - Mande's pukker'd tute drey Romanes,

Ta tute's pukker'd mande.

The first three lines of the above ballad are perhaps the oldest specimen of English Gypsy at present extant, and perhaps the purest. They are at least as old as the time of Elizabeth, and can pass among the Zigany in the heart of Russia for Ziganskie. The other lines are not so ancient. The piece is composed in a metre something like that of the ancient Sclavonian songs, and contains the questions which two strange Gypsies, who suddenly meet, put to each other, and the answers which they return.In using the following Vocabulary the Continental manner of pronouncing certain vowels will have to be observed: thus ava must be pronounced like auva, according to the English style; ker like kare, miro like meero, zi like zee, and puro as if it were written pooro.

Contraversal debate
18:24:06 - Jun 17 2006
Times Read: 41

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Jesus Could Have Walked on Ice, Scientist Says

Sara Goudarzi

LiveScience Staff Writer

LiveScience.com Tue Apr 4, 2:00 PM ET

Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist said today.

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The study, which examines a combination of favorable water and environmental conditions, proposes that Jesus could have walked on an isolated patch of floating ice on what is now known as Lake Kinneret in northern Israel .

Looking at temperature records of the Mediterranean Sea surface and using analytical ice and statistical models, scientists considered a small section of the cold freshwater surface of the lake. The area studied, about 10,000 square feet, was near salty springs that empty into it.

The results suggest temperatures dropped to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 degrees Celsius) during one of the two cold periods 2,500 –1,500 years ago for up to two days, the same decades during which Jesus lived.

With such conditions, a floating patch of ice could develop above the plumes resulting from the salty springs along the lake's western shore in Tabgha. Tabgha is the town where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been found.

"We simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years," said Doron Nof, a Florida State University Professor of Oceanography. "We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."

Nof figures that in the last 120 centuries, the odds of such conditions on the low latitude Lake Kinneret are most likely 1-in-1,000. But during the time period when Jesus lived, such “spring ice” may have formed once every 30 to 60 years.

Such floating ice in the unfrozen waters of the lake would be hard to spot, especially if rain had smoothed its surface.

"In today's climate, the chance of springs ice forming in northern Israel is effectively zero, or about once in more than 10,000 years," Nof said.

The findings are detailed in the April 2006 Journal of Paleolimnology

Project
18:21:53 - Jun 17 2006
Times Read: 42

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Since one such as myself is not yet able to post informational project upon the board I offer this.
Punishment, Torture and atonement in Mideavil Times

A Intro

1)Quotes:

“A harsh whipping with a cane is the worst kind of torture practiced in our country. Though it may seem impossible, five hundred lashes, even just four hundred, it is all it takes to kill a man"

"The right to corporal punishment exercised by one man over another is one of the evils that afflicts society, it is a sure means to smother any seed of civilization and to cause it to decompose"F. Dostoyevsky

"And the killing of children that never stopped, the children who were sold and betrayed by the million, the victims of torture hanging from the gallows, wicked banners of a wicked power".

"There is no event that has no effect on me and there is no event that I cannot affect in some way"

"Everyone of us, in our time and in our space, whether it be large or small, is always responsible for everything that happens in the world" Father D.M. Turoldo

“Let us pray that each one of us, looking to the Lord Jesus, meek and humble of heart, will recognize that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.” – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Jubilee Request for Forgiveness, March 12, 2000

“The Inquisition resulted in the torture and murder of millions of Christians whose only crime was a rejection of Catholic heresy and a commitment to follow the Bible as their sole authority for faith and practice. John Paul II has not confessed the Inquisition; he has failed to label his fellow popes the murderers they were.” – Jerry Kaifetz

“Before.... Before we are.... Before we were.... Before our ancestors could be called "human," then did it begin, and through ages untold have the Old Ways shaped humanity. They were not a thing apart, nor something added later, but part of the very creation of our race.”

2)Events:

A)The mideavil inquisition

The inquisition was established by the papacy in during the Middle Ages. Their mission was to seek out, try, and sentence persons guilty of heresy. In the early church the usual penalty for heresy was excommunication. But as the need for the church to eliminate heretics increased so did the penalty. This routed three main inquisitions,

The Medieval Inquisition

B)The Spanish Inquisition

Most of the myths surrounding the inquisition have come to us wrapped in the cloak of the Spanish Inquisition. Traditional anti-Catholic presentations will discuss the papal decretal of 1184, Pope Innocent III and the Albigensian crusade beginning in 1208, then leap ahead to the Spanish Inquisition in the mid 16th Century. It is with the Spanish Inquisition that the lurid myth of the inquisition truly developed. It is the world of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, with vivid descriptions of burning heretics in auto-de-fes, ghastly engines of torture, innocent Bible-believers martyred for their faith, and a once vibrant economic and social power hurled back into a papal-dominated “dark ages” from which it has yet to truly emerge. In many ways, the reality of the Spanish Inquisition has its own human tragedies, but it is not the tragedy presented in the common caricatures.

It is a curiosity of history that the medieval inquisition of the 13th and 14th centuries was little utilized in Spain or Portugal. It was only after the mid-fifteenth century that the Spanish Inquisition would develop, and its target would not be heretics in the traditional sense, but rather Jews who had converted to Christianity and were accused of secretly practicing their old faith. To many contemporary historians of the Spanish Inquisition, the story unfolds not as a “religious” persecution, but rather a racial pogrom. Additionally, the Spanish Inquisition had very little involvement with trials and punishments of Protestants, even with centuries of propaganda to the contrary.

C) Roman inquisition

After the breakdown of Roman imperial authority in the Fifth Century, heresy, perhaps a luxury of wealth and leisure, lessened within the more vital concern of the evangelization of non-Roman Western Europe. While theological disputes rose from the Sixth through the 10th Century, the Church struggled to establish independence from the interference of the Eastern emperors and domination of petty local rulers while at the same time developing ecclesial structures and clerical discipline.9 With the renewal of the papacy and the conversion of Europe accomplished, powerful reform movements began in the 11th Century that reaffirmed the need for unity of belief and the means to address doctrinal dissent that threatened both Church and society.

D) Reformation response

Under Charles V, successor to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition became an established part of Spanish justice. With the outbreak of Luther’s Reformation in Europe and the spread of its ideas in the 1520s, it was entrenched as a means to both protect the faith in Spain from infiltration of this new heresy, and as a further means to buttress royal power.

The Reformation would have little impact in Spain. One on the one hand, the existence of an active State-sponsored inquisition can be viewed as one reason it never took hold. On the other hand, however, Spain’s traditional Catholicism so identified with the Reconquista of the late 15th Century surely played a strong role. “Unlike England, France and Germany, Spain had not since the early Middle Ages experienced a single significant popular heresy. All its ideological struggles since the Reconquest had been directed against the minority religions, Judaism and Islam. There were consequently no native heresies (like Wycliffism in England) on which German ideas could build.”32 Humanism itself also had a rather weak impact in Spain. Scholars and essayists such as Erasmus had only a minimal following.33 The small number of humanists with an understanding of Erasmus were viewed suspiciously, however, and Erasmus would eventually become equated with Luther in Spain.

E)The Inquisition in Italy

Unlike the inquisition in Spain, the inquisition in the Papal States and in various Italian cities had no conversos to be targeted. (Many Spanish conversos would find refuge in Rome and other Italian cities where they were never bothered.) By the mid-sixteenth century and the publishing of the reforms of the Council of Trent (1563), the inquisition in Rome focused on keeping out Protestant thought. “Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition and its subordinate tribunals appear to have been generally successful in keeping any substantial Protestant influence from spreading widely in the peninsula…once the immediate problem of Protestantism was reduced, (the inquisition) turned the bulk of its operation to the question of internal ecclesiastical discipline and to offenses other than Protestantism.”44

The inquisitions as they existed in the Papal States and the cities and kingdoms throughout Italy were never viewed with the same approbation as the Spanish Inquisition. For the most part, these inquisitions focused on clerical abuses and, outside the Papal States, had a strong mix of political intrigue. However, three famous cases that contributed to the myth of the Inquisition took place in Italy. They were the trials of Savonarola (1498), Giordano Bruno (1593-1599) and Galileo (1633).

F)Buddist Dispute

Throughout the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre heretics, infidels, and other sinners.

Some people have argued that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. But a glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations throughout the centuries have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of other religious groups.

G) Flagellants

"In this sombre Italian street with its ghastly procession we have indeed an epitome of the Dark Ages. The fanatical madness of the Flagellants broke out at intervals during three centuries - from the thirteenth to the sixteenth - and extended over all civilized Europe. The tyranny and corruption of the times, the fear of the wrath of God, the terror of the plague, the general unrest of men's souls, all combined to set afoot these bands of enthusiasts, scourging themselves as atonement for sin and as substitute for all sacrements of the church and for all the ministrations of the clergy. The painter has reproduced all the characteristics of this terrible march with great artistic intelligence, - the half-naked, white-draped scourgers, filling the street like an army of the sheeted dead and mounting tumultuously the high steps of the cathedral to the terror of the clergy, the gloomy penitents and fanatical monks who carry the banners and the great crucifix and direct the procession, the curiosity and the fear of the populace, the awful doubt of the age. The photogravure plate reproduces with an exactitude that no other method of engraving permits the infinite detail that combines to make the character of this great historical work."

B)Torture devices: Torture was used during the Middle Ages for three reasons:

1) To Force confessions or secret information from those accused

2) To discorage dessent and intellectual freedom

3) To Persuade Jews, Muslims, and other non-believers to accept Christianity

The most common means of torture included burning, beating and suffocating, however the techniques below are some of the most extravigant. Torture can include anything used to bring upon physical or mental pain but these below are some of the most common.

Toe wedge , Tongue Slicer, Copper Boot, Lead Sprinkler, Water Torture, The Garrotte

1) Wooden wedges

Wooded wedges were forced underneath the toenails to help urge a confession from the criminal. The toenails often became infected and other tortures were applied if this was not enough for confession.

2) This scissor type instrument was used to slice the tongue up after the victims mouth was forced open.

3)The copper boot was placed around the foot of the victim and filled to the brim with molten lead causing first degree burns.

4) The sprinkler was filled with molten metal and dripped on the stomach, back, and other body parts of the victim.

5 )During the water torture, the victims nostrils were pinched shut and fluid was poured down his throat. Intstead of water, sometimes vinegar, urine, or urine and a combination of diarrhea were forced down the throat.

6) The Garrotte

This instrument bears a Spanish name because it was "improved" in Spain, where it became the official instrument of capital punishment. It remained in use until 1975, when the last person to be executed was a young student who was later found to be innocent. This incident was one of the arguments used for the abolition of death penalty in that country.

This instrument has very ancient origins. Simply put, a pole was driven into the ground and a rope was tied around the victim's neck. But if the pole was not very thick and the rope was tightened behind the pole, the neck of the victim could be tightened more gradually and easily released.

This sort of torture was used all over the world as testified by etchings.The string tying the victim's neck to the pole could be made of a material that would shrink once wetted, so that the victim would slowly suffocate as it dried.The "improved" Spanish version of this instrument was used for executions. It had a steel collar, larger in size than the victim's neck to prevent strangulation, but, at the same time, tight enough to immobilize the head and the neck.Preventing neck and head movement was necessary because it allowed the victim's cervical vertebrae to be penetrated by a steel tip, moved by a screw mechanism positioned in the rear of the pole. In theory, such penetration was to be quick and precise, thus, able to administer a rapid and certain death.Actually, though, the possibility of error and failure is so high that I leave it to the imagination of the reader to consider the suffering it actually inflicted

Thumb screw, Toothed Squeezers, Spanish Donkey, Foot Press, Scottish Boot, bugs

1) The thumbscrew was simple placed on the thumb and tighten until it crushed the thumb. The tool was also used on toes.

2) These toothed bars squeezed the victim's testicles til they were destroyed.

3) The victim was placed on the Spanish donkey and then had extremely heavy weights tied to his or her legs until the force was so great that it destroyed the are between the legs.

4) The Foot Press slowly squeezed the naked foot between the iron plates lined with sharp spikes to crush the bones of the foot.

5) The Scottish Boot was placed around the ankle of the victim and then wedges were forced into the ankle.

6) Bugs

Another way of torturing someone was to tie them down to a table or hang them on a wall,drop bugs in their ears and put a helmet on them so that the bugs can not escape.The bug would buzz around,sting the victim,bite or pinch whatever else bugs do until the person went insane.

Breast Ripper, Pear, Rack, The Branks, The Juda Cradle, Iron Maiden, The Wheel

1)The Breast Ripper

Cold or red-hot, the four claws slowly ripped to formless masses the breasts of countless women condemned for heresy, blasphemy, adultery and many other “libidinous acts”, self-induced abortion, erotic white magic and other crimes. In various places at various times –in some regions of France and Germany until the early nineteenth century– a “bite” with a red-hot ripper was inflicted upon one breast of unmarried mothers, often whilst their creatures, splattered with maternal blood, writhed on the ground at their feet. Besides the punitive function, breast-ripping also served as an interrogational and juridical procedure.

2)The Oral, Rectal, and Vaginal Pear.

The pear was a metal object that is shoved inside the mouth anal cavity and vagina. Once in place the screw at the end was turned and the pear opened up inside the cavity. This caused much damage and lead to death. "They are forced into the mouth, rectum or vagina of the victim and there expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture of their segments. The inside of the cavity in question is irremediably mutilated, nearly always fatally so. The pointed prongs at the end of the seqments serve better to rip into the throat, the intestines or the cervix."

3) The Rack

Perhaps the rack is so familiar because it was so commonly employed, variations existing as far back as Egypt and Babylonia. This one is Italian, 1500. 2 It is equipped with spiked rollers on which the stretched victim would lay, feet tied at one end, hands at the other. Tied to the rack and stretched gradually (or quickly) for days, elongation of bodies was reported by various sources to cases of twelve inches, a result of systematic dislocation of every joint in the body, loud popping sounds mixing with shrieks of agony, futile cries for pity. With the prisoner tied to this horrific device, the inquisitor would then employ a variety of more subtle tortures. Red hot pincers would tear off nipples, tongues, ears, noses, and genitals. Intestines were slowly wound onto pulleys before the dying victim's eyes. Crosses branded into the flesh of the shrieking wretch brought him/her closer to God and his Infinite Mercy.

The victim was bound on an oblong wooden frame with a roller at each end. If the victim refused to answer questions, the rollers were turned until the victim's joints were pulled out of their sockets.

4) Branks

These devices had two main features: They exposed the victims to ridicule by forcing them to wear a ridiculous likeness, and, at the same time, they inflicted mortification and physical torture by occluding the victims' mouth or nose and covering their eyes. As we can see in the picture number 3, the victim's mouth was stopped up with a ball to prevent her from screaming and moaning.

The long ears represented the ears of an ass. In Europe, many negative characteristics were attributed to this animal. Even today, donkeys are considered to be the stupid version of horses and the epithet "ass" is still used, in Italy, France and Spain, to define a stupid person.The version with a pig nose or even a pig head, symbolizes someone dirty. The word pig, when referred to a person, is considered offensive in all European languages.The branks were a mask that had a metal piece that goes in your mouth. The mouth piece has spikes on it, which unables you to talk.

5)The Juda Cradle is a horrible torture. The victim is hung above a cone pyramid type object and then is lowered upon it. The sharp tip of the cone or pyramid is forced into the area between the legs.

6) The maiden of Nuremberg

The name of this instrument seems to have originated from a prototype that was built in the town of Nuremberg. It is also said that this sort of sarcophagus had the face of a maiden carved on its front door, probably with the aim of making this horrible container look more refined. This instrument has four main features, whose wickedness, I think, deserve to be analyzed. The inside of the sarcophagus was fitted with spikes designed to pierce different parts of the body, but miss the vital organs, so that the victim was kept alive, in an upright position. Its second feature is that the victims were kept in an extremely confined space to increase their suffering. Its third feature was that the device could be opened and closed without letting the victim, who had been pierced from the front and the back, get away. Its fourth feature was that the container was so thick that no shrieks and moaning could be heard from outside unless the doors were opened. When the sarcophagus doors were shut again, the spikes pierced exactly the same parts of the body as before, and thus no relief was ever possible. This instrument can be defined both a torture and a death instrument.

7) The Wheel

Being broken or "braided" on the wheel was one of the most insidiously painful methods of torure and execution practised in Europe.

After hanging, “breaking with the wheel” was the most common means of execution throughout Germanic Europe from the early Middle Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth century; in Gallic and Latin Europe the breaking was done with massive iron bars and with maces instead of wheels.The victim, naked, was stretched out supine on the ground or on the execution dock, with his or her limbs spread, and tied to stakes or iron rings. Stout wooden crosspieces were placed under the wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and hips. The executioner then smashed limb after limb and joint after joint, including the shoulders and hips, with the iron-tyred edge of the wheel, but avoiding fatal blows. The victim was transformed, according to the observations of a seventeenth-century German chronicler, “into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood, a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh (rohw, schleymig und formlos Fleisch wie di Schleuch eines Tündenfischs) mixed up with splinters of smashed bones”. Thereafter the shattered limbs were “braided” into the spokes of the large wheel, and the victim hoisted up horizontally to the top of a pole, where the crows ripped away bits of flesh and pecked out eyes. Death came after what was probably the longest and most atrocious agony that the ingenuousness of the power structure could inflict.

Together with burning at the stake and drawing-and-quartering, this was one of the most popular spectacles among the many similar ones that took place in all the squares of Europe more or less every day. Hundreds of depictions from the span 1450-1750 show throngs of plebeians and the well-born lost in rapt delight around a good wheeling, better if of a woman, best of all if of several women in a row.

Head crusher, Whirligig, Cat's Paw, Heretic Fork, The Chair of Spikes,

1) The Head Crusher

Recorded in sources dating as early as the Middle Ages, head crushers enjoy the esteem of the authorities in many parts of the world today. The victim’s chin is placed on the lower bar, and the cap forced down by the screw. All comment seems superfluous. First the teeth are crushed into their sockets and smash the surrounding bone, then the eyes are forced out of their sockets, and finally the brain squirts through the fragmented skull. Although nowadays no longer a means of capital punishment, head crushers are still used for interrogation. The modern caps and chin rests are padded with soft materials so as to leave no mark on the victim. Examples of headcrushers can be seen in the Tower of London and at the Tijuana, Mexico Cultural Center.

2)The whirligig

The whirligig was not that bad of a torture. The whirligig was a device used as a military punishment. The offender was put in a cage which was spun rapidly, resulting in nausea and vomiting. Then coupled with another tactic as this was more of a form of degrading the victim and humiliating them.

3)The cat's paw was a short pole with a pitch fork at one end. It was used to tear the the flesh of the victim.

4) The heretics fork

This instrument consisted of two little forks one set against the other, with the four prongs rammed into the flesh, under the chin and above the chest. A small collar supported the instrument in such a manner that the victims were forced to hold their head erect, thus preventing any movement.The forks did not penetrate any vital points, and thus suffering was prolonged and death avoided. Obviously the victims' hands were tied behind their back.

5) The chair of spikes

The inquisitional chairs:

This instrument of torture comes in different versions. We are first going to examine their common features and, then, their differences. All of them have common features, in that they are covered with spikes on the back, on the arm-rests, on the seat, on the leg-rests and on the foot-rests. The chair exhibited at the museum of San Gimignano has 1300 spikes, a real "carpet" of spikes . One version has a bar screwed on the lower portion of the chair, by the victim's feet, which by a screw mechanism forced the back of the legs against the spikes, thus penetrating the flesh of the victim. Another version had two bars immobilising the victim's wrists forcing his forearms against the arm-rests resulting in the flesh being penetrated by the spikes. The victim would sit in the chair and weights would be applied onto the victim forcing his body into the metal spikes.Another version had a bar at chest height, to immobilize the victim's bust, while the spiked seat had holes to allow the victim's bottom to be 'heated" by hot coals placed under the seat, causing painful burns, but still keeping the victim conscious.

The strength of this instrument lies mainly in the psychological terror it causes and the threat that the torture will get increasingly worse, conforming to a model where the pain starts off easy and then gets progressively worse. The idea is that the Inquisitors can interrupt it at any stage, upon visual inspection of the damages that have been inflicted.

This instrument was used in Germany up to the 1800s, in Italy and in Spain up to the end of the 1700s, in France, in Great Britain and in the other central European countries, according to certain sources, up until the end of 1800s.

C) Methods, results and variation:

Isolation, Monopolisation of Perception, Induced Debility, Threats, Occasional indulgences, Demonstrating, Degradation Enforcing Trivial Demands, sensory deprivation.

1. Isolation.

Deprives victim of all social support of his ability to resist. Develops and intense concern with self.

Makes victim dependent upon interrogator.

Complete solitary confinement. Complete isolations. Semi isolation. Group isolation.

2. Monopolisation of Perception.

Fixes attention upon immediate predicament. Fosters introspection. Eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor. Frustrates all action not consistent with compliance.

Physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.

3. Induced Debility

Exhaustion weakens mental and physical ability to resist.

Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged constraint. Prolonged interrogation. Forced writing. Over- exertion.

4. Threats.

Cultivates anxiety and despair.

Threats of death. Threats of non return. Threats of endless interrogation and isolation. Threats against family. Vague threats. mysterious changes of treatment.

5. Occasional indulgences.

Provides positive motivation for compliance.

Hinders adjustment to deprivation.

Occasional favors. Fluctuations of interrogators's attitudes. Promises. Rewards for partial compliance. Tantalising.

6. Demonstrating

'Omnipotence'. Suggests futility of resistance.

Confrontation. Pretending co-operation taken for granted.

Demonstrating complete control over victim's fate.

7. Degradation.

Makes cost of resistance more damaging to self esteem than capitulation.

Reduces prisoner to 'animal level' concerns.

Personal hygiene prevented. Filthy infested surrounds. Demeaning punishments. Insults and taunts. Denial of privacy.

8. Enforcing Trivial Demands.

Develops habits of compliance.

Forced writing.

Enforcement of minute rules

9) Sensory Deprivivation

I'm not sure but I actually think they STILL use this but not as torture..as a way to cure some mental problems.But as for torture...how would you like to be put into a tiny cell...so dark light can not get through.Tucked away in a deep forest away from anyone and anything.No sounds from outside and no light from above.Left to starve to death. Hot wax was sometimes poured into the victim ears until they went deaf.

D) Places:

1) tower of London

The Tower of London is located in the city of London, on the north bank of the Thames River. The original tower, known as the White Tower or Keep, was built by William the Conquerer shortly after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The tower has served as a royal residence, a state prison, a zoo, a mint, and a armory. But perhaps its most infamous use was as a torture center. Hundreds of people died here, most of them by judicial murder rather than the due process of law.

Many parts of the tower have recieved names from the horrible events that took place there. For instance, the Bloody Tower was so called from the tradition that the English child king Edward V and his brother Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, were murdered there in 1483. And then there is Devereux Tower, named for its most famous prisoner, Rober Devereux. He was held there before his execution for treason in 1601, and where, in 1478, George Plantagenet supposedly was drowned in a barrel of wine.

The most notorious prisoners were kept in "Little Ease," a small cell impossible in which to stand upright or lay down. They may stay crouched for a week before their torture began. Some of those tortures practiced at the Tower of London include the rack, the thumbscrew, and the boot.

The tower has been the last resting stop for many famous people before their death. In 1305 William Wallace, (the guy played by Mel Gibson in BraveHeart), was taken to the tower where he was tied to horses tails and and hanged till nearly dead, then his bowels torn out and his head cut off. The tower was also the host of the suspicous disappearance of Edward V and Richard Duke of York as mentioned earlier. Another theory is that they smothered the children in their beds and the bodies were buried in the precincts. However in 1674, when workmen were demolishing a stone staircase on the south side of the White Tower, they found a chest containing two childsize skeletons. None doubted that these were the bodies of the two princes.

Today, the tower is a museum and one of the country's greatest tourist attractions. It is home to many many legends of ghost stories and strange occurences.

2) The Konstantino-Yeleninskaya Tower served as the Kremlin torture chamber in medieval times and stands on the site of the white-stone Timofeyev Tower, through whose gates Dmitry Donskoy led his troops in 1380 to the historic battle of Kulikovo against the Mongol and Tartar armies.

3) The Lobnoye Mesto, a circular stone platform on Red Square not far from St. Basil's Cathedral, was built in the early 16th century and used primarily as a platform from which the Tsar's edicts were read out, special church sermons were given and the sentences of convicted criminals were aired. The platform's name derives from its location, on a steep slope or "uzlobie" in Russian. In Orthodox Moscow this place symbolized the hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem, on which Christ was crucified. In translation from the ancient Hebrew Golgotha means "lob", head or forehead, hence the connection.

4) York Dungeon 12 Clifford Street

Wander through a modern day Dante’s Inferno with a bloodcurdling visit to the York Dungeon, an animated medieval horror museum. Pain, superstition, torture and death haunt Britain’s past - and are recreated here.

Visitors have the opportunity to step into the dark, musty, atmospheric chambers and meet characters like York’s most infamous son, Guy Fawkes. Scenes show Fawkes being tortured to reveal the other conspirators behind the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. There is also a very realistic reproduction of that most notorious of British torture instruments, the rack.

There is also a scene depicting the punishment of Margaret Clitherow, who lived in Shambles. She was crushed to death beneath a pile of stones after being charged with harbouring Catholic priests during the Elizabethan period when Catholic Europe was attempting to topple the Queen. The Dick Turpin Story tells of the demise of one of the countries most famous highwaymen.

E) Events: History and Myth: The Inquisition

The mideavil inquisition

The inquisition was established by the papacy in during the Middle Ages. Their mission was to seek out, try, and sentence persons guilty of heresy. In the early church the usual penalty for heresy was excommunication. But as the need for the church to eliminate heretics increased so did the penalty. This routed three main inquisitions,

The Medieval Inquisition

“Through the early Middle Ages belief had been taught through the use of simple creeds, and behavior had been regulated by a series of penitential regulations and by the rich liturgy performed by trained specialists. These rules had achieved the conversion of most of northern Europe to Christianity by the year 1000. They had depicted the world as a place of temptation and the prospects of salvation in it as slender. But during the course of the eleventh century a spirit of religious reform argued that the prospect of salvation in the world would be greatly increased if the world were reformed. With the reform of the papacy itself at the end of the eleventh century the Latin Church began to devise its grand program of sanctifying the world.”10 The reform of the papacy involved the freedom from its domination by Italian aristocrats that had taken place in the tenth century.11 Led by a stronger papacy, the “grand program of sanctifying the world” was a combination of the Church’s need to reform its institutional life, free itself from control by secular lords, and to build a Christian society. This required a clearer understanding of the essentials of the faith among believers and a more incessant demand to proper Christian behavior. There was also the growing fear that “Those who dissented from belief or behaved in a manner that was explicitly defined as un-Christian appeared no longer as erring souls in a temptation-filled world, but as subverters of the world’s new course….”12

Christian rulers and the common people themselves shared the same perspective. The “Inquisition” as a formal process of the Church would not be codified until the 13th Century. But in the two centuries prior, there was a strong movement to forcefully address religious dissent. To be a “heretic” meant facing possible mob justice and certain trial by secular courts.

The two heresies of the 12th and early 13th centuries that gave birth to the medieval inquisition were that of the Cathars (or Albigensians) and the Waldensians. The Cathars essentially held that the “evil god” of the Old Testament created the material world and saw the Church as the instrument of that material world. The Waldensians preached against wealth, clericalism and rejected the sacramental nature of the Church. Both these movements coalesced to a certain degree, and would become somewhat popular in Southern France, Northern Italy and parts of Germany.13 (Protestant reformers in the 16th Century would often point to these movements as part of an alleged “silent” Church that existed since the Apostolic Age, as Kaifetz suggests. In reality, the Cathars and the Waldensians had a decidedly non-Christian “dualistic” perception of God, the source of which was essentially pagan philosophy. Their views were unique to the times and would have horrified the 16th century Protestant Reformers.)

Up to the late 12th Century, such heresies were considered the responsibility of the local bishop. It was assumed that secular rulers (as well as the mob) would take action. The Church response had remained primarily an attempt to persuade and, if necessary, excommunicate heretics. But an evolution was taking place. “The Third Lateran Council of 1179 produced several canons condemning heretics – chiefly to excommunication and denial of Christian burial – and several widely circulated condemnations of heresy, with specific descriptions of heretical beliefs and practices, as well as privileges comparable to those of crusaders for those who fight against heretics and their defenders. In 1184 Pope Lucius III issued the decretal Ad abolendam … called ‘the founding charter of the inquisition.’”14 Pope Lucius’ decree called for those found by the local church to be heretical to be turned over to the secular courts. In 1199, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) identified heresy with treason. As part of his singularly strong reform movement, including encouraging of popular devotions, increased emphasis on catechesis, and the eradication of clerical abuses, Pope Innocent III viewed heresy as a destroyer of souls. When Albigensians in Southern France killed a papal representative in 1208, Innocent called for a “crusade” against the heretical sect. The violence of the subsequent “Albigensian Crusade” was not in keeping with the reforms and plans of Innocent, who stressed education, confession, clerical reform and preaching to counteract heresy.15 Yet, under the control of mobs, petty rulers and vindictive local bishops who cared little for Innocent’s interventionist reforms, armies from northern France swept through the heretical strongholds for over 20 years. The Albigensian heresy effectively disappeared.

The uncontrollable fanaticism of local mobs of heresy hunters, the indifference of certain ecclesiastics, the violence of secular courts and the bloodshed of the Albigensian crusade led to a determined effort by the papacy to exercise greater control over the determination and prosecution of heresy. This would allow for some measure of persuasion and conversion, rather than simply prosecution by secular courts that emphasized punishment rather than salvation. Beginning a trend started earlier in the century, papal legates from the curia, or local judges appointed by the popes began to exercise courts of inquisition. The papacy also began to use the Mendicant Religious Orders, especially the Dominicans (founded 1220) and, later the Franciscans (founded 1209) to combat heresy by serving as confessors, preachers and judges.16 In 1231, Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) specifically commissioned the Dominicans as papal judges of heresy.17

Over the next 20 years there grew up a very specific state of canonical legislation for dealing with heresy. Though not as severe as the secular courts of Europe at the time, the penalties for heresy – including confiscation of property and the formality of turning persistent heretics over to the secular courts for punishment – became codified within ecclesial courts.18 This was, then, the formal establishment of the medieval inquisition. It consisted of a mix of local episcopal courts, as well as papal-designated judges and legates. It had close ties to the secular rulers who, in effect, enforced the judgments of ecclesial courts as heresy had become equated with treason. There was no central office in the medieval inquisition, no overarching authority. Local bishops, or members of the Mendicant orders assigned over a period to a certain area, established ecclesial courts for the investigation of heresy. They used procedures common to contemporary European legal procedures. By the late fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries, the work of such ecclesial courts was “intermittent and occasionally non-existent.”19

The medieval inquisition courts often functioned like circuit courts of the more recent past. Codes and manuals were developed that detailed how an inquisition was to function. It began with the arrival in an area of the inquisitors, possibly members of the Dominican order. They would preach a sermon to the clergy and laity of an area on the dangers of heresy. A “period of grace” would them be extended to allow for confessions of dissenting practices without subsequent trial. Trials were held for those who refused to confess under the period of grace. For those who returned to the Church, forgiveness was granted and some form of penance imposed. Those that did not reject their heresies were excommunicated and turned over to the secular authorities.

For the most part, these courts functioned similarly to their secular counterparts at that time though generally, their sentences and penances were far less harsh. The investigations were held in secret and names of witnesses were not given to the accused, generally out of fear of retaliation. (The names of witnesses were known to the inquisitors and were kept in the written records. Judges were given detailed instructions in the manuals on how to detect false witness. Those accused were also allowed to list their known enemies and witnesses appearing on such a list were often discounted.) At the conclusion, the decrees of the trial were made public.20

A number of questions arise concerning these medieval inquisitions. First and most important to the myth of the inquisition, concerns the use of torture in obtaining confessions. Proof was necessary in order to convict and in the absence of such, confession was necessary. As Peters explains at length:

“The tradition of Roman and medieval criminal law had made torture an element in the testimony of otherwise dubious witnesses, and a procedure could be triggered by enough partial proofs to indicate that a full proof – a confession – was likely, and no other full proofs were available. The procedure of torture itself was guarded by a number of protocols and protections for the defendant, and the jurists rigorously defined its place in due process. A confession made after or under torture had to be freely repeated the next day without torture or it would have been considered invalid. Technically, therefore, torture was strictly a means of obtaining the only full proof available…Their tasks were not only – or even primarily – to convict the contumacious heretic, but to save his soul if possible and to preserve the unity of the Church. In this their interest often ran counter to those of lay people (who simply wanted the heretic destroyed before the whole community suffered), and of judicial officers of temporal powers, who sought only to punish.”21

The guidelines from the manuals were extremely strict and torture was not used to punish, as was common in the secular courts. The gruesome lists such as Kaifetz’ were an invention of post-Reformation propaganda in regard to the Spanish Inquisition rather than the reality of the medieval inquisitions. Such actions cannot be justified in our own age, but they can at least be understood as part of accepted judicial procedure at that time. In any case, the use of torture in inquisition courts was far less extensive, and far less violent, than the norms of secular courts.22

The question also arises concerning the beliefs that were prosecuted. The general accusation made by 16th Century reformers were that alleged “heretics” were simple bible-believing Christians, precursors of the Protestant revolt. As will also be seen in the Spanish Inquisition, this was usually not the case. The Albigensian heresy was the most extensive religious dissent in the period of the medieval inquisitions. Albigensianism was an essential denial of a Christian understanding of God that led to a host of strange beliefs and practices (such as the non-sinfulness of fornication). But for the most part, “heretical views” were hardly organized in a systematic theology, particularly prior to the 16th Century. Those prosecuted were usually the ignorant, the troublemaker, the braggart and, at times surely, the drunkard in his cups professing blasphemy. Those prosecuted rarely held a deeply contrary belief system. (While those alleged to be witches would become a major concern of the Reformers, this was far less so in the inquisition trials. Sporadic trials for witchcraft by inquisition judges would take place in different areas at different times, though it was generally considered the business of the secular courts and such activities the product of a deluded mind rather than a heretic.)

Additionally, actions contrary to the faith where commonly prosecuted, rather than beliefs as such. Common fornication, refusal to attend to the Sacraments, disregard of religious practice and devotion were often prosecuted by inquisition trials. Clergy living a dissolute lifestyle or speaking out in ignorance against commonly accepted moral teachings were a major focus of the inquisitions, as well as those who spoke out against the inquisitions. The concept of a rigid thought police searching out a reformed “underground church” was the wishful thinking – and propaganda – of later centuries.

The final question concerns the extensiveness of the inquisition prior to the 16th century, as well as its uniformity and its continuity through the centuries and in different regions. After the suppression of the Albigensian heresy in Southern France in the 13th century, inquisitorial trials waxed and waned in the face of local needs. In France itself, trials were primarily in the hands of secular authorities. In some areas – such as England – heresy was a smaller problem, and ecclesial courts to judge heresy were utilized intermittently. While there were inquisitorial courts, they were under the supervision of local Church authorities and worked closely with the secular arm. The most notable example of its use in England prior to Luther’s revolt in the 16th Century was aimed at the Lolled followers of John Wycliff in the last quarter of the 14th Century and beginning of the 15th Century.

John Wycliff was a priest and instructor at Oxford where he developed his theology of predestination – that people were “predestined” to be saved or lost and the good works they do are signs of their election, not a means toward salvation. Inevitably, this theology led to the conclusion that sacraments, the priesthood and the Church were unnecessary. Wycliff’s views became popular, particularly as they meant that the English Parliament – cash-strapped and preparing for war with France – need not forward a tribute to the pope. Wycliff was summoned before a council of bishops to explain his position, but the meeting ended when a fight broke out between his armed retinue and members of the audience. Wycliff’s views were forwarded to Pope Gregory XI who issued a condemnation and ordered the bishops to hold an inquisition. If Wycliff still maintained those views, he was to be excommunicated and turned over to the secular authorities. As his trial by the bishops was about to begin, royal intervention – and a mob outside – convinced the bishops to call a halt to the proceedings. Pope Gregory XI then died and a resulting papal schism let Wycliff proceed in his studies. However, when he launched an attack on the Eucharist, many of his previous supporters abandoned him. A revolutionary uprising by peasants and workers was seen as a result of his work, and his royal support ebbed as well. He was summoned to appear in Rome, but died on New Year’s Eve, 1384.23 His remaining followers, called Lollards, would face local inquisitions.

In the German states, inquisition trials were few and far between. Additionally, those that were conducted fell under the authority of the local bishops who were often identified with the secular authority. As in many cases, the secular authorities often conducted trials as well. A notable exception was the case of John Hus in Bohemia. Hus had absorbed elements of Wycliff’s teachings, as well as a rising Bohemian nationalism. Attacking a host of Church teaching – and the pope as the Anti-Christ – Hus was ordered to appear at the Council of Constance in 1414, where the Church was attempting to resolve disputed claims to the papacy and enact ecclesiastical reform. Hus was condemned by the Council and turned over to the civil authorities who executed him in 1415.24 Pope John Paul II would state that the execution of Hus was a mistake.

B)The Spanish Inquisition

Spain was unique in Western Europe for the diversity of its population. In addition to a large segment of Muslims, medieval Spain had the single largest Jewish community in the world, numbering some one hundred thousand souls in the 13th Century27 For centuries Jews and Christians had lived and worked together in a rather peaceful though generally segregated co-existence. In the 14th Century, anti-Jewish attitudes were on the rise throughout Europe. In 1290, England expelled its Jews and France followed in 1306. Spain began to experience an increasing anti-Jewish sentiment. It exploded in the summer of 1391 with angry anti-Jewish riots. More religious than racial – though this has been disputed28 – these riots led to major forced conversions of Jews to Christianity. These Jewish converts would be called conversos or New Chistians, to distinguish them from traditional Christian families. The converso (or the more scornful term, marrano) identity would remain with such families for generations.

To the converso families, such conversions were not without benefit (not including the benefit of saving their lives in the 1391 riots). They were welcomed into a full participation in Spanish society not available to Jews and they would soon become leaders in government, science, business and the Church. Though it was legislated in certain areas that those forced to convert could return to their own religion, many did not. These converso families obviously faced the scorn of those who remained Jews. At the same time, however, over the years the Old Christians saw them as opportunists who secretly maintained the faith of their forefathers. It was a strong mixture of racial and religious prejudice against the conversos that would stir-up the Spanish Inquisition.

Spain in the 15th century was in the process of unifying the two traditional kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, while engaging in the final defeat of the Muslim stronghold of Granada. Isabella of Castile had married Frederick of Aragon in 1469. She came to the throne in 1474. When Ferdinand became king of Aragon in 1479, the two kingdoms were effectively united. War was waged with Granada beginning in 1482, with its final defeat coming 10 years later.

Isabella succeeded to the Castilian throne upon the death of her stepbrother, Henry IV. Henry had long protected both the Jews and the conversos. Upon his death, there was a widespread outbreak of anti-Jewish and anti-converso protest and violence. “From the mid-Fifteenth Century on, religious anti-Semitism changed into ethnic anti-Semitism, with little difference seen between Jews and conversos except for the fact that conversos were regarded as worse than Jews because, as ostensible Christians, they had acquired privileges and positions that were denied to Jews. The result of this new ethnic anti-Semitism was the invocation of an inquisition to ferret out the false conversos who had, by becoming formal Christians, placed themselves under its authority.”29 In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition, a bull granted by Pope Sixtus IV. In 1482 the size of the inquisition was expanded and included the Dominican Friar Tomas de Torquemada, though Pope Sixtus IV protested against the activities of the inquisition in Aragon and its treatment of the conversos. The next year, Ferdinand and Isabella established a state council to administer the inquisition with Torquemada as its president. He would later assume the title of Inquisitor-General. This was a major development as it would allow the inquisition to persist well beyond its initial intention, and to be extended to wherever Spanish power existed, including the New World.30 The papacy would continue to complain about the treatment of the conversos, but the unity of the Spanish Inquisition with the State would remain a distinguishing characteristic, and a primary source of post-Reformation European hatred.

Why did Ferdinand and Isabella establish the Inquisition in Spain? Ostensibly, the reason was to investigate the allegations of Judaizing among the conversos. Historians have pointed to other reasons: as a means to consolidate power, as a source of revenue from the confiscation of converso wealth, as a means to eliminate the conversos from public life, and as part of the Reconquista of a united Spain to the faith. The stated reason for the inquisition was to root out “false” conversos. There seems to have been an allure to the claim that many conversos secretly practiced their old Jewish faith and, as such, were undermining the Faith. For centuries, such legends would persist in Spain, though most evidence shows that there were few “secret” Judaizers and that most conversos, particularly after the first generation of forced conversions, were faithful Catholics. This is why many historians have concluded that at the center of the inquisitorial storm was a racial, rather than a religious prejudice at work.

In March, 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand ordered the expulsion – or conversion – of all remaining Jews in their joint kingdoms. The intent of the declaration was more religious than racial, as Jewish conversion rather than expulsion was certainly the intent. While many Jews fled, a large number converted, thus aggravating the popular picture of secret Judaizers within the Christian community of Spain. Up through 1530, the primary activity of the inquisition in Spain would be aimed at pursuing conversos. The same would be true from 1650 to 1720. While its activities declined thereafter, the inquisition continued to exist until its final abolition in 1824.

The Spanish Inquisition had been universally established in Spain a few years prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Records show that virtually the only “heresy” prosecuted at that time was the alleged secret practice of the Jewish faith. In all, between the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain through 1530, it is estimated that approximately 2,000 “heretics” were turned over to the secular authorities for execution.31 Many of those convicted of heresy were conversos who had fled. These were burned in effigy.

The most famous period of the Spanish Inquisition, under the legendary Torquemada, had little to do with the common caricature of simple “bible-believing” Protestants torn apart by ruthless churchmen. The true picture is unsettling enough: it was a government-controlled inquisition aimed at faithful Catholics of Jewish ancestry. The motivations seemed far more racial than religious, if not in Ferdinand and Isabella, then certainly among those who carried it out. The papacy, under Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and Innocent VIII (1484-1492), rather than controlling the Spanish Inquisition, protested its unfair treatment of the conversos with little result.

c) Roman Inquisition Prelude

In its simplest summary, the Church after the death of the Apostles had a faith that “united scattered congregations: that Christ was the Son of God, that He would return to establish his Kingdom on earth, and that all who believed in him would at the Last Judgment be rewarded with eternal bliss.”5 However, very soon the Christian community needed to give better definition to its beliefs as conflicts and disputes arose. From very early (as noted in Scripture6) the Christian community was forced to confront how to deal with those people who persisted in teachings contrary to the Apostolic Faith. For the most part, the early Church settled on admonishment, avoidance and, if a person persisted in error, expulsion from the community. This also led the early Church to an increased understanding of the universal authority of the See of St. Peter at Rome as the defender of the “deposit of the faith.” As the Christian faith grew throughout the Roman Empire and Church authorities settled controversies over essential teachings, statements of faith were developed. These Creeds (statements of fundamental beliefs) came in response to various teachings that were seen by Christian leaders as fundamentally erroneous.

With the victory of Constantine in the second decade of the Fourth Century, followed by the conversion of most of the Roman Empire by the end of the century, Christianity became the faith of the Empire. While this ended the age of martyrdom under intermittent Roman persecution, it created its own difficulties. Most prominent was the relationship of the Church – particularly Church authority – to the Christian emperors. It was a problem that, in certain respects, would plague Church relationships with government until the dramatic changes of the late nineteenth century and early 20th centuries. Government wanted to control the Church within its borders, seeing the faith as inextricably linked to societal stability, identity, and as foundational to royal power. At the same time, the Church wanted to be seen as separate and above this “City of Man,” while also seeing in the secular arm the means to assure orthodox belief.

It was a troubled period of confusing – and at times obscure – doctrinal controversies after the legalization of Christianity and as the faith became the official religion of the Roman Empire by the end of the Fourth Century. Roman imperial power would insert itself into doctrinal controversies, at times with the support of Church leadership, at other times with the Church standing in opposition. With the disastrous effect of doctrinal heresies on both Church and social unity, however, there was a growing consensus that use of the “secular arm” was necessary, with even St. Augustine arguing in favor of it.7 With Christian emperors occupying the imperial throne, heretical views came to be seen as not only a violation of Christian unity, but as an act of treason against the State. This is essential to an understanding of how heresy came to be viewed, particularly in Western civilization. It was not a matter of arbitrary enforcement of ecclesial discipline, or doctrinal conformity. Heresy was seen as an evil that threatened the unity of the community, as well as threatening the salvation of souls. Heresy was not merely an individual act – it was an attack on the state itself. This would become an ingrained part of European thinking, inherited by royal authority and the Church ecclesiastical leadership, as well as by the 16th Century Protestant reformers.8 It was during this early period that both canon and civil law were developed dealing with heresy that would become the sources for addressing religious dissent in the Second Millenium.

After the breakdown of Roman imperial authority in the Fifth Century, heresy, perhaps a luxury of wealth and leisure, lessened within the more vital concern of the evangelization of non-Roman Western Europe. While theological disputes rose from the Sixth through the 10th Century, the Church struggled to establish independence from the interference of the Eastern emperors and domination of petty local rulers while at the same time developing ecclesial structures and clerical discipline.9 With the renewal of the papacy and the conversion of Europe accomplished, powerful reform movements began in the 11th Century that reaffirmed the need for unity of belief and the means to address doctrinal dissent that threatened both Church and society.

D) Reformation Response

Under Charles V, successor to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition became an established part of Spanish justice. With the outbreak of Luther’s Reformation in Europe and the spread of its ideas in the 1520s, it was entrenched as a means to both protect the faith in Spain from infiltration of this new heresy, and as a further means to buttress royal power.

The Reformation would have little impact in Spain. One on the one hand, the existence of an active State-sponsored inquisition can be viewed as one reason it never took hold. On the other hand, however, Spain’s traditional Catholicism so identified with the Reconquista of the late 15th Century surely played a strong role. “Unlike England, France and Germany, Spain had not since the early Middle Ages experienced a single significant popular heresy. All its ideological struggles since the Reconquest had been directed against the minority religions, Judaism and Islam. There were consequently no native heresies (like Wycliffism in England) on which German ideas could build.”32 Humanism itself also had a rather weak impact in Spain. Scholars and essayists such as Erasmus had only a minimal following.33 The small number of humanists with an understanding of Erasmus were viewed suspiciously, however, and Erasmus would eventually become equated with Luther in Spain.

The image of a Spanish Inquisition burning hundreds of thousands of Protestant heretics has no basis in historical fact. There were so few Protestants in Spain that there could be no such prosecution, no matter how strong the inquisition and no matter how much anti-Catholic propagandists tried to create such an image in the 16th Century and thereafter. During the Reformation period, the inquisition in Spain certainly searched for evidence of Protestantism, particularly among the educated classes. Contemporary trends were viewed suspiciously, even though those involved were clearly Catholic in practice. Mystical spiritual movements were investigated, leading to persecution of a small group of illuminists, or alumbrados. This was an interior spiritual movement based on a passive union of the soul with God. While its condemnation in Spain affected only a few, it did impact on a generation of spiritual writers, including St. Theresa of Avila who would be questioned for alleged illuminist leanings.34 “The Lutheran threat, however, took a long time to develop. In 1520, Luther had probably not been heard of in Spain…However, a full generation went by and Lutheranism failed to take root in Spain. There was, in those years, no atmosphere of restriction or repression. Before 1558 possibly less than 50 cases of alleged Lutheranism among Spaniards came to the notice of the inquisitors.”35

The discovery of a small cell of Protestants in Seville and Valladolid in the late 1550s, however, generated concern in the highest quarters in Spain. The Seville group “totaled around one hundred and twenty persons, including the prior and members of the Jeronimite convent of Santa Paula. The group managed to exist in security until the 1550s, when some monks from San Isidro opportunely fled. The exiles…played little part in Spanish history but were glories of the European Reformation.”36 The Seville Protestants were discovered in 1557, which led to the arrest of the Valladoid group as well in 1558. Spain reacted in horror to the discovery, and Charles V from his monastery retirement wrote in an infamous letter to his regent daughter Juana in Spain that so “great an evil” must be “suppressed and remedied without distinction of persons from the very beginning.”37 Though Spain braced for a tidal wave of revelations and discoveries – with finger-pointing and accusations of pseudo-Protestants everywhere – in all, just over 100 persons in Spain were found to be Protestants and turned over to the secular authorities for execution in the 1560s. In the last decades of the century, an additional 200 Spaniards were accused of being followers of Luther. “Most of them were in no sense Protestants...Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as ‘Lutheran.’ Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy.”38

One aspect of the Spanish Inquisition that played into the hands of the Reformation propagandists was when it claimed jurisdiction over foreigners on its soil. Sailors and traders from foreign countries made up the bulk of the accusations of “Lutheranism” in Spain, leading to clashes with these governments. (Well into the 20th Century, all nations outside of Spain were referred to as tierras de herejes, or the “heretical countries.”) Tales from these people who had faced the Spanish Inquisition were a favorite form of anti-Catholic literature and provided an unreliable source for the whole “black legend” that surrounded it.

In many ways, the inquisition in Spain mirrored the structures of the medieval inquisitions. An inquisition began with the arrival in a community of its officers who would announce it at a Mass with all the community assembled. As in the medieval inquisition, an “edict of grace” was usually given to self-confess offenses without serious penalty. An “edict of faith,” was often read that listed the heresies under investigation. By the 16th Century, inquisition trials were not public. The names of accusers were kept secret from the accused. Evidence was collected and presented to theologians for assessment. If proof were deemed sufficient, an arrest would take place (a rule often violated, as some arrests seemed to take place before any proof was established). Arrest was followed by immediate seizure of the property of the accused, which would be held until the case was settled.

As in the medieval Inquisition, torture was used to elicit confessions when there was insufficient proof. Torture was common throughout Europe in judicial actions and Spain was no exception. Torture could only be used in cases of heresy, which meant that it was not used for the minor offenses that made up the majority on inquisitorial activity. After 1530, however, torture appeared more frequently when the inquisition was specifically investigating alleged Judaizers and Protestants. However, the “scenes of sadism conjured up by popular writers on the inquisition have little basis in reality, though the whole procedure was unpleasant enough to arouse periodic protests from Spaniards.”39 Those conducting the tortures were not clergy, as often portrayed in artistic representations, but were professionals normally used in the secular courts. The torture could not cause bloodletting or result in loss of life or mutilation. The purpose of the torture, unlike in secular tribunals, was to gain either information or confession, not punishment. It was used only in a minority of cases, and normally as a last resort.40

Since evidence and witnesses were gathered before the arrest, the inquisition did not see its function as a trial to determine guilt or innocence. The accused was arrested with the goal of gaining a confession. The accused was usually given three opportunities to admit to the wrongs after which, the prosecutor would read the charges and the accused had to respond immediately. Unlike the medieval inquisition, the accused was allowed legal counsel, though these counselors were officers of the inquisition and not terribly helpful or trusted. The accused could then muster a defense based on witness testimony, or pleas of extenuating circumstances, such as drunkenness. A body called the consulta de fe, made up of inquisitors, a representative of the local bishop and theological consultors would then issue a ruling.

Those found guilty were sentenced to varying degrees of penances that could go from donning the sanbenito, a yellow penitential garb to be worn at all times in public, to servitude on a Spanish galley. As in the medieval inquisition, most cases did not involve heresy. Charges such as bigamy, adultery, lewd living and blasphemy were the majority of cases. Only unrepentant heretics or relapsed heretics could be “relaxed” – turned over – to the secular authorities to be burned at the stake. After the bitter persecution of the conversos in the first 20 years of the inquisition, in the 17th and 18th centuries fewer than three people a year were executed throughout Spain.41 In fact, most condemned were burnt only in effigy, having previously died or fled the country.

The auto de fe that followed trials is the most infamous, and misunderstood, part of the Spanish Inquisition. An auto de fe was a unique aspect of the Spanish Inquisition, a public, liturgical “act of faith.” Usually held in a public square, an auto de fe involved prayer, a Mass, public procession of those found guilty and a reading of their sentences. The event could certainly take the entire day and the public was encouraged to witness it. Artistic representations of the auto de fe by propagandists usually involved images of torture and the burning of the accused. As such, they became a major source for creating the image in the popular mind of the Spanish Inquisition. However, no such activities took place during what was essential a religious act stressing the “reconciliation” of those accused with the Church. There was no torture as trials had been concluded, and if executions were to take place, they were separate from the auto de fe and conducted less publicly after the fact.42

The Spanish Inquisition was unique. Wrestled early from the papacy, it was controlled by the Spanish monarchy. Its aim, certainly, was to maintain a Catholic Spain, but its use was primarily centered on Catholic conversos of Jewish and, later, Muslim ancestry. It was certainly a force that kept Protestant – and, to a degree, Enlightenment – thought out of Spain, though the number of those actually prosecuted for such activity was very small. It would persist with various flare-ups in activities through the 17th and 18th centuries, though the auto de fe became less frequent. The last major outburst in activity was aimed once again at alleged Judaizing among conversos in the 1720s. It was formally ended by the monarchy in 1834, though it had effectively come to an end years prior.43

E)The Inquisition in Italy

Unlike the inquisition in Spain, the inquisition in the Papal States and in various Italian cities had no conversos to be targeted. (Many Spanish conversos would find refuge in Rome and other Italian cities where they were never bothered.) By the mid-sixteenth century and the publishing of the reforms of the Council of Trent (1563), the inquisition in Rome focused on keeping out Protestant thought. “Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition and its subordinate tribunals appear to have been generally successful in keeping any substantial Protestant influence from spreading widely in the peninsula…once the immediate problem of Protestantism was reduced, (the inquisition) turned the bulk of its operation to the question of internal ecclesiastical discipline and to offenses other than Protestantism.”44

The early inquisition in Rome also focused on the so-called “popular religion,” the superstitious practices, including witchcraft, that were survived in the fifteenth and 16th centuries. The Spanish Inquisition would also flirt at times with these practices. Unlike the Protestant reformers, however, the inquisitions in both Italy and Spain eventually began to see these difficulties as the result of poor catechesis, rather than active heresy and took less interest in its prosecution. After early rather intense prosecution, the inquisitions generally turned skeptical toward accusations of witchcraft and sorcery and established rigorous rules of prosecution and evidence. In most cases in Catholic countries in the 17th century and beyond, the inquisitions had less and less to do with prosecution of superstition.45

The inquisitions as they existed in the Papal States and the cities and kingdoms throughout Italy were never viewed with the same approbation as the Spanish Inquisition. For the most part, these inquisitions focused on clerical abuses and, outside the Papal States, had a strong mix of political intrigue. However, three famous cases that contributed to the myth of the Inquisition took place in Italy. They were the trials of Savonarola (1498), Giordano Bruno (1593-1599) and Galileo (1633).

“Savonarola was the Middle Ages surviving into the Renaissance, and the Renaissance destroyed him.”46 A Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola was a firebrand speaker who denounced the immorality of his time, and did not spare Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503). Preaching in Florence, he formed his own renewed monastic order, as well as becoming an influential leader in the new Florentine Republic proclaimed in June 1495. Poor statesmanship – as well as a populace that grew tired of his puritanical reformation as seen in the “bonfire of the vanities” where worldly items were burned – led to his downfall. Pope Alexander VI was little concerned about Savonarola’s personal criticism. But when his friends proclaimed him a prophet from God, and he attempted to convince the French king to call a general council and depose the pope as “an infidel and a heretic,” he was summoned to Rome to explain himself. Savonarola claimed ill health and Alexander ordered an investigation of his sermons. A Dominican reviewed them favorably and convinced the pope that not only should he not be tried, but that he should be named a cardinal. The offer was made and was rejected in a thunderous series of Lenten sermons denouncing the Church and the papacy. He issued letters to the kings of Europe demanding a council to overthrow what he saw as a corrupt papacy.

Florence was being torn apart by the controversial friar. He was soon abandoned by Florentine leadership and arrested along with two others from his order. The pope asked that they be sent to Rome for an ecclesial trial, but Florentine authorities, tired of the meddlesome friar, wanted him killed. He was tried under the local inquisition on charges of schism, heresy, revealing confessional secrets, false prophecies and visions, as well as causing civil disorder. He was found guilty and executed on May 23, 1498. Though seen by some as a pre-Reformation martyr, his meddling in Florentine politics, rather than his call for moral reforms and his attacks on Pope Alexander VI caused Savonarola’s downfall. Though certainly tried with the approbation of the pope, his death was more a civil act than an inquisitorial judgment.47

Giordano Bruno was born near Naples in 1548. He was ordained a Dominican in 1572, but he quickly came to doubt most fundamental Christian belief. Unlike the Protestant reformers, Bruno saw himself as a philosopher. He left the monastery, ending up for a time in Geneva where he was tried for citing heresy by a Calvinist theologian. He apologized and was freed. Bruno wandered Europe, where he was recognized in various courts as a masterful philosopher as well as a common nuisance. Vain, arrogant and a misogynist, he would be denounced a heretic by the reformed churches as well as the inquisition. His philosophy, as disorganized as it was, identified God with an infinite universe.48 After 16 years of wandering, Bruno decided to return to Italy thinking “should be questioned by the Inquisition, he could (as well he might) quote enough orthodox passages from his works to deceive the Church into thinking him her loving son.”49 In 1592, the Venetian inquisition had him arrested. He was arrested not only for his heretical views, but also as a priest who had abandoned his vocation. In 1593, he was sent to Rome. After years of imprisonment and questioning, he was condemned in 1599 for his writings on the Trinity and the Incarnation. He was ordered to recant. He appealed to the pope who judged the propositions heretical. Bruno refused to recant and he was turned over to the secular authorities. He was burned on February 19, 1600.50 Bruno was an excessive character – and a bit of a charlatan – who rejected fundamental beliefs of Catholicism and was condemned by the reformers as well. A man who abandoned the priesthood, in the difficult days of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation, he was certain to be prosecuted and seemed to court his own martyrdom.

The Galileo affair entered the mythological corpus of Western secularism as symbolizing the Church as anti-science. Galileo was tried by the papal inquisition in 1633 for publishing in defiance of a mandate he was allegedly given in 1616. Galileo taught as fact that the earth rotated on its axis and orbited the sun. Both views appeared to violate Scripture. His 1633 trial is most often portrayed as Galileo the scientist arguing the supremacy of reason and the tribunal judges demanding that reason abjure to faith. The trial was neither. Galileo, a firm and orthodox Catholic, and the tribunal judges shared a common view that science and the Bible could not stand in contradiction. If there appeared to be a contradiction, such a contradiction resulted from either weak science, or poor interpretation of Scripture. In context, the trial exhibited both faults. Galileo’s technology was far too limited at the time to scientifically prove his assertion of the earth’s double rotation. At the same time, the tribunal judges were at fault for a literal interpretation of biblical passages and making scientific judgments never intended by the Scriptural authors. Galileo was sentenced to a comfortable house arrest after he recanted his views. He died in 1642.51

F)Buddist dispute

The Dalai Lama himself lent support to this idealized image of Tibet with statements such as: "Tibetan civilization has a long and rich history. The pervasive influence of Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment." (5) In fact, Tibet's history reads a little differently. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.Dre pung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families, while most of the lower clergy were as poor as the peasant class from which they sprang. This class-determined economic inequality within the Tibetan clergy closely parallels that of the Christian clergy in medieval Europe.

Thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order---reputedly devoted to a meditative search for spiritual enlightenment---fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, writing erotic poetry, and acting in other ways that might seem unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was "disappeared" by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their enlightened nonviolent Buddhist courtiers. Along with the upper clergy, secular leaders did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet. Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma." In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and catch runaway serfs.

In addition to being under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land -- or the monastery's land -- without pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. "It was an efficient system of economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market context." Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common practice for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated childhood rape not long after he was taken into the monastery at age nine. The monastic estates also conscripted peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.

A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf: "All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights." (15) Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all. He tells of his attempts to flee “The first time [the landlord's men] caught me running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said: "This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring some blood from the brain." They beat then with heavier sticks and poured alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I passed out for two hours.”

G) Witchcraft trials

Elsewhere in Europe Paganism continued to flourish more or less openly and in high places for several centuries. The English King William Rufus was a High Priest of the Old Religion and probably died as a sacrificial victim in 1100. As late as 1347, when Joan, countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter, then as now the emblem of a Witch High Priestess, King Edward III picked it up saying, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." -- Shame to them that think evil of it. To this day the phrase is the motto of the Order of the Garter, which Edward founded the following year.But the darkness of the Inquisition was descending all over Europe. In 1199 Pope Innocent III declared that "heresy is the most unpardonable of treasons because it is a crime against God." Even loyal christians whose ideas differed ever so slightly from the monolithic dogma of the Roman church were included in the ban against heresy. The 13th century saw the persecution and destruction of the Albigensians and the Waldensians as heretics. The Jews fared equally badly. In 1290 King Edward I of England expelled the Jews from England. This event had the unexpected result of enriching the Old Religion. For the Jews, having nowhere to go, fled into the countryside where the Witches sheltered many. With them the Jews brought the Book of Zohar, written in the early 13th century. It contains the mystical teachings of the Cabbala, which found great favor among many Witches.

In 1318 a papal bull of John XXII declared Witchcraft a form of heresy. The terminology is significant, for Witchcraft or Wicca was the only viable form of Paganism left in Europe. Paganism arose in an age when it didn't need a name, since it was the only religion there was. As christianity spread, the urban population was the first to accept it, while the country people held fast to their old ways. When the words Pagan and Heathen arose, they meant merely "dwellers in the countryside," the Latin Pagus and the English Heath. Most of the country people were willing to join the new faith as long as they could continue those traditions which they were fondest. And this the christian church willingly did. Pagan Gods became saints, Pagan circles became christian churches, and Pagan holidays became christian holy days. The christian church converted the Pagans by incorporating Paganism into itself. By then, prosecution of heretics was beginning in earnest. In 1307 the Roman church declared war on the Knights Templar. They were a semi-religious, semi-military order of the Crusader Knights. Founded in 1118 their order contained elements of ancient mysteries, such as the lofty concept of divinity and a code of personal conduct. In these they were the spiritual ancestors of Freemasons. But the 14th century was not ready for such ideas, and by 1313 the order had been completely destroyed.

A century later Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen for Witchcraft. The charge was probably valid. She heard voices; she refused to accept the medieval status of women. She was constantly referred to as La Pucelle, the Maiden, a title meaningful only in a coven. She commanded such respect from the common soldiers that in 1429 she was able to raise the siege of Orleans. An ordinary peasant girl could not easily command such allegiance, but a Priestess of the Old Religion could, for in the 15the century many of the common people still clung to the old faith. And when Joan was tried for Witchcraft in 1431 she refused to recant, crying out that she was responsible only to "our God" -- not "God," but "Our God." In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal Bull loosing the forces of the Inquisition specifically against Witches. This was the beginning of the terrible age when the world went mad and millions of people were sent to the stake because they loved the old faith, or because they were rich and someone desired their property, or simply because one of their neighbors didn't like them.

In those unenlightened times an accusation was as good as a conviction, for in 1486 the inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger of the University of Cologne wrote a book called the Malleus Malificarum or Witch Hammer which outlined the procedures for determining whether the accused person was indeed a Witch, prescribed many torture methods to extract confessions, and prescribed the punishments to be inflicted once the accused was condemned. The method was foolproof, and very few were ever acquitted. Even these few were too many for Matthew Hopkins, the infamous Witchfinder General from 1644 to 1646. He wrote a similar treatise entitled The Discovery of Witches in 1647 in which he described the famous swimming test, which he invented. Witches, he claimed, were lighter than water. Thus if an accused, bound hand and foot, floated when thrown into a river, he was surely guilty; if he sank he was innocent.

There were, of course, a few bright lights in all this darkness, a few gallant men who defended Witches and dared to speak the truth even though it cost them the terrible price extracted of heretics.

H) THE FLAGELLANTS

“Violently they grabbed His arms, as they tightly strapped each wrist. There, the hellish look of a strong-armed soldier, whip clenched in his fist. Laced with chips of bone, they beat Him hard, from His shoulders to His feet. It sliced right through His olive skin, just like razors through a sheet. Countless times the blood splattered, as each inhuman lash was given. Several times His knees gave way, as His flesh just hung like ribbons. Then surprisingly He turned His head, though the words He used were few. The soldier's face turned pale when He said, "This blood is for you". Uncaringly they tossed a garment across His weakened form. And His blood pressure fell deathly low, as the crowds began to swarm. They forced Him to carry His cross uphill, as His face they punched and smacked. And the splinters from the crisscrossed beam dug deep into His back. Through lack of sleep and dehydration His tongue began to swell. Weakened by His loss of blood, this prophet, teacher fell. When He did some blood splattered on a man named Simon's shoe. And as He bent to wipe it off, the prophet said, "Simon, this blood is for you". They pounded a spike through the bones in His wrist, bursting arteries and veins.As they dropped the cross in the hole they dug, His body convulsed with pain. Through an agony and torment that never a soul shall find.He tilts His face toward heaven, with full control of His mind. With more love than any human heard, before that time or since.He made a statement that to this day makes the strongest skeptic wince. He cried, "Father God forgive them for they know not what they do".And as He gave His life for those lost in sin, He was saying, "This blood is for you".

These means were the cathartic virtues--(i.e., the virtues by which sin is removed), by the exercise of which a corporeal life was to be vanquished. Accordingly the Mysteries were termed Teletae, 'perfections,' because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled Teloumenoi and Tetelesmenoi, that is, 'brought...to perfection,' which depended on the exertions of the individual."

The Roman soldier trained in administering scourging was called a lictor. His tool was a leather whip called a flagellum. Unlike an ordinary whip, the flagellum had strips of leather attached to a wooden handle. Each leather strip had pieces of sharp bone and metal sewn into it. The art of flagallation comes for the attonement for sins in such the manner as chirst had suffered, Below is an excerpt of such.

“Just about 2000 years ago, our Lord allowed himself to be stripped naked and tied to a post. The lictor began his masterful work of beating Jesus to within an inch of death. The lictor struck Him from His head to His feet. Blow after blow he struck Him, while carefully monitoring the damage he was inflicting as to not kill Jesus. The crucifixion would accomplish that task. Repeatedly the leather strips wrapped around our Lord causing chips of metal and bone to dig into His flesh. Each time they were snapped back, the sharp pieces tore through His skin sending bits of flesh and muscle flying through the air! He was beaten so badly, even His bones were exposed! The lictor saw that another blow from the flagellum could very well kill Jesus, so he gave orders for Him to be untied. Disoriented, confused and in shock, our Lord slumped to the ground. His flesh, covered with blood, and now hanging like ribbons, spreading across the dusty earth. Since Jesus was covered in blood and dirt, the order was given to douse Him with water and scrub Him clean. He cried out in agony as He regained His state of consciousness. To complete the humiliation, a crown of thorns was made for Him, and jammed on His head as they mockingly coronated Him- "King of the Jews".

Now, looking simply at the Scripture, this perverse demand for self-torture on the part of those for whom Christ has made a complete and perfect atonement, might seem exceedingly strange; but, looking at the real character of the god whom the Papacy has set up for the worship of its deluded devotees, there is nothing in the least strange about it. That god is Moloch, the god of barbarity and blood. Moloch signifies "king"; and Nimrod was the first after the flood that violated the patriarchal system, and set up as "king" over his fellows. At first he was worshipped as the "revealer of goodness and truth," but by-and-by his worship was made to correspond with his dark and forbidding countenance and complexion. The name Moloch originally suggested nothing of cruelty or terror; but now the well known rites associated with that name have made it for ages a synonym for all that is most revolting to the heart of humanity, and amply justify the description of Milton (Paradise Lost):

"First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears,

Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol."

In almost every land the bloody worship prevailed; "horrid cruelty," hand in hand with abject superstition, filled not only "the dark places of the earth," but also regions that boasted of their enlightenment. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Phoenicia, Assyria, and our own land under the savage Druids, at one period or other in their history, worshipped the same god and in the same way. Human victims were his most acceptable offerings; human groans and wailings were the sweetest music in his ears; human tortures were believed to delight his heart. His image bore, as the symbol of "majesty," a whip, and with whips his worshippers, at some of his festivals, were required unmercifully to scourge themselves. "After the ceremonies of sacrifice," says Herodotus, speaking of the feast of Isis at Busiris, "the whole assembly, to the amount of many thousands, scourge themselves; but in whose honour they do this I am not at liberty to disclose." This reserve Herodotus generally uses, out of respect to his oath as an initiated man; but subsequent researches leave no doubt as to the god "in whose honour" the scourgings took place. In Pagan Rome the worshippers of Isis observed the same practice in honour of Osiris. In Greece, Apollo, the Delian god, who was identical with Osiris, * was propitiated with similar penances by the sailors who visited his shrine, as we learn from the following lines of Callimachus in his hymn to Delos:

"Soon as they reach thy soundings, down at once

They drop slack sails and all the naval gear.

The ship is moored; nor do the crew presume

To quit thy sacred limits, till they've passed

A fearful penance; with the galling whip

Lashed thrice around thine altar."

* We have seen already, that the Egyptian Horus was just a new incarnation of Osiris or Nimrod. Now, Herodotus calls Horus by the name of Apollo. Diodorus Siculus, also, says that "Horus, the son of Isis, is interpreted to be Apollo." Wilkinson seems, on one occasion, to call this identity of Horus and Apollo in question; but he elsewhere admits that the story of Apollo's "combat with the serpent Pytho is evidently derived from the Egyptian mythology," where the allusion is to the representation of Horus piercing the snake with a spear. From divers considerations, it may be shown that this conclusion is correct: 1. Horus, or Osiris, was the sun-god, so was Apollo. 2. Osiris, whom Horus represented, was the great Revealer; the Pythian Apollo was the god of oracles. 3. Osiris, in the character of Horus, was born when his mother was said to be persecuted by the malice of her enemies. Latona, the mother of Apollo, was a fugitive for a similar reason when Apollo was born. 4. Horus, according to one version of the myth, was said, like Osiris, to have been cut in pieces (PLUTARCH, De Iside). In the classic story of Greece, this part of the myth of Apollo was generally kept in the background; and he was represented as victor in the conflict with the serpent; but even there it was sometimes admitted that he had suffered a violent death, for by Porphyry he is said to have been slain by the serpent, and Pythagoras affirmed that he had seen his tomb at Tripos in Delphi (BRYANT). 5. Horus was the war-god. Apollo was represented in the same way as the great god represented in Layard, with the bow and arrow, who was evidently the Babylonian war-god, Apollo's well known title of "Arcitenens,"--"the bearer of the bow," having evidently been borrowed from that source. Fuss tells us that Apollo was regarded as the inventor of the art of shooting with the bow, which identifies him with Sagittarius, whose origin we have already seen. 6. Lastly, from Ovid (Metam.) we learn that, before engaging with Python, Apollo had used his arrows only on fallow-deer, stags, &c. All which sufficiently proves his substantial identification with the mighty Hunter of Babel.

Over and above the scourgings, there were also slashings and cuttings of the flesh required as propitiatory rites on the part of his worshippers. "In the solemn celebration of the Mysteries," says Julius Firmicus, "all things in order had to be done, which the youth either did or suffered at his death." Osiris was cut in pieces; therefore, to imitate his fate, so far as living men might do so, they were required to cut and wound their own bodies. Therefore, when the priests of Baal contended with Elijah, to gain the favour of their god, and induce him to work the desired miracle in their behalf, "they cried aloud and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and with lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them" (1 Kings 18:28). In Egypt, the natives in general, though liberal in the use of the whip, seem to have been sparing of the knife; but even there, there were men also who mimicked on their own persons the dismemberment of Osiris. "The Carians of Egypt," says Herodotus, in the place already quoted, "treat themselves at this solemnity with still more severity, for they cut themselves in the face with swords" (HERODOTUS). To this practice, there can be no doubt, there is a direct allusion in the command in the Mosaic law, "Ye shall make no cuttings in your flesh for the dead" (Lev 19:28). * These cuttings in the flesh are largely practised in the worship of the Hindoo divinities, as propitiatory rites or meritorious penances. They are well known to have been practised in the rites of Bellona, ** the "sister" or "wife of the Roman war-god Mars," whose name, "The lamenter of Bel," clearly proves the original of her husband to whom the Romans were so fond of tracing back their pedigree.

Now, the flagellations which form an important part of the penances that take place at Rome on the evening of Good Friday, formed an equally important part in the rites of that fire-god, from which, as we have seen, the Papacy has borrowed so much. These flagellations, then, of "Passion Week," taken in connection with the other ceremonies of that period, bear their additional testimony to the real character of that god whose death and resurrection Rome then celebrates. Wonderful it is to consider that, in the very high place of what is called Catholic Christendom, the essential rites at this day are seen to be the very rites of the old Chaldean fire-worshippers.

F) Conclusion and summery

Historical studies of the archives of the inquisitions in the 20th Century have created a different picture beyond the steamy rhetoric of Reformation polemics. At the beginning, a number of common assumptions concerning the inquisition were outlined. In conclusion, they should be briefly revisited:

The inquisition as a singly, unified court system directly responsible to the pope and controlled solely by the papacy. Even within the Papal States in the 16th century, the papacy had difficulty maintaining effective control over local inquisitions. Inquisitorial courts were usually controlled by the local church in alliance with local secular authority. Though it began in the 13th century as a papal-designated juridical system to remove “heresy-hunting” from control of the mob or secular authorities, it evolved rather quickly as a device of the local church and secular authorities to address local, and later national or dynastic goals. There were many inquisitions, rather than a singular “Inquisition.” The inquisition existed throughout Europe for nearly 700 years and focused its efforts on a “secret” and “hidden” church, similar to that of the Reformation churches. The many inquisitions that took place existed sporadically in different regions, at different times, and to meet different local needs. The medieval inquisition barely existed, for example, in Spain and Portugal. For hundreds of years, the inquisition in many places existed only sporadically, if at all. In the 16th century, it existed primarily in Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and other Italian cities. It existed – dominated by the State – in France and, early in the century, in England. It did not exist as a single continuous entity, nor did it prosecute a “secret” church that was a precursor of Protestantism. Early heresies – such as the Albigensians – held doctrinal positions that were essentially unchristian that would have horrified the Protestant reformers.

It was primarily aimed at the early Protestant reformers of the 16th century and the Spanish Inquisition alone killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of Protestant reformers. The Spanish Inquisition was aimed primarily at Catholics of Jewish ancestry. In total, it is unlikely that even a thousand, let alone hundreds of thousands, Protestants suffered at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. While those alleged to be Protestants were inquisitorial victims in England and Europe, there numbers were small and most were protected by Protestant or sympathetic rulers. Much of the focus of the various inquisitions were clerical abuses and what was considered

Of the many historical myths about Catholics and Catholicism perhaps the most pervasive are those centered on the inquisition in general and the Spanish Inquisition in particular. From the 16th through the early 20th Century, the legend of the Inquisition grew larger than its history. This legend of the inquisition persists today in the imagination, well after its debunking by historians. Inquisitions were ecclesial investigations, meaning that investigations were conducted either directly by, or under the auspices of, the Church. The investigations were undertaken at certain times in certain regions under the authority of the local bishop and his designates, or under the auspices of papal-appointed legates, or representatives from Religious Orders delegated the task from the papacy. The inquisition existed and it remains an unsettling part of Catholic history. However, the caricature of the inquisition that most of us have come to know and that is often utilized in anti-Catholic polemics has little to do with the reality of the inquisition.

From very early (as noted in Scripture) the Christian community was forced to confront how to deal with those people who persisted in teachings contrary to the Apostolic Faith. For the most part, the early Church settled on admonishment, avoidance and, if a person persisted in error, expulsion from the community.With the disastrous effect of doctrinal heresies on both Church and social unity there was a growing consensus that use of the “secular arm” was necessary, with even St. Augustine arguing in favor of it. With Christian emperors occupying the imperial throne, heretical views came to be seen as not only a violation of Christian unity, but as an act of treason against the State.

With the renewal of the papacy and the conversion of Europe accomplished, powerful reform movements began in the 11th Century that reaffirmed the need for unity of belief and the means to address doctrinal dissent that threatened both Church and society.

The “Inquisition” as a formal process of the Church would not be codified until the 13th Century. But in the two centuries prior, there was a strong movement to forcefully address religious dissent. To be a “heretic” meant facing possible mob justice and certain trial by secular courts. The two heresies of the 12th and early 13th centuries that gave birth to the medieval inquisition were that of the Cathars (or Albigensians) and the Waldensians. They had a decidedly non-Christian “dualistic” perception of God, the source of which was essentially pagan philosophy. Their views were unique to the times and would have horrified the 16th century Protestant Reformers.

The uncontrollable fanaticism of local mobs of heresy hunters, the indifference of certain ecclesiastics, the violence of secular courts and the bloodshed of the Albigensian crusade led to a determined effort by the papacy to exercise greater control over the determination and prosecution of heresy in the 13th century. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) specifically commissioned the Dominicans as papal judges of heresy. Over the next 20 years there grew up a very specific state of canonical legislation for dealing with heresy. Though not as severe as the secular courts of Europe at the time, the penalties for heresy – including confiscation of property and the formality of turning persistent heretics over to the secular courts for punishment – became codified within ecclesial courts. This was the formal establishment of the medieval inquisition.

By the late fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries, the work of such ecclesial courts was intermittent and occasionally non-existent. Torture was not used to punish, as was common in the secular courts. The gruesome lists of instruments of torture were an invention of post-Reformation propaganda in regard to the Spanish Inquisition rather than the reality of the medieval inquisitions. Such actions cannot be justified in our own age, but they can at least be understood as part of accepted judicial procedure at that time. In any case, the use of torture in inquisition courts was far less extensive, and far less violent, than the norms of secular courts.

For the most part, those prosecuted for “heretical views” in the medieval inquisition were hardly organized in a systematic theology, or could be considered a “hidden church.” Those prosecuted were usually the ignorant, the troublemaker, the braggart and, at times surely, the drunkard in his cups professing blasphemy. Those prosecuted rarely held a deeply contrary belief system. By the mid to late 14th century, papal commissioned inquisitors had disappeared from many parts of Europe. Inquisitorial courts, such as they were, were conducted under local episcopacies working closely with local temporal authorities and dealing with local circumstances. Regional control of the inquisition process – and regional concerns – would become dominant. A vast, papal-controlled, grand and singular inquisition never really existed in Europe.

It was only after the mid-fifteenth century that the Spanish Inquisition would develop, and its target would not be heretics in the traditional sense, but rather Jews who had converted to Christianity and were accused of secretly practicing their old faith. To many contemporary historians of the Spanish Inquisition, the story unfolds not as a “religious” persecution, but rather a racial pogrom.

There seems to have been an allure to the claim that many conversos secretly practiced their old Jewish faith. For centuries, such legends would persist in Spain, though most evidence shows that there were few “secret” Judaizers and that most conversos were faithful Catholics. Up through 1530, the primary activity of the inquisition in Spain would be aimed at pursuing conversos. The same would be true from 1650 to 1720. While its activities declined thereafter, the inquisition continued to exist in Spain until its final abolition in 1824.

Under Charles V, successor to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition became an established part of Spanish justice. With the outbreak of Luther’s Reformation in Europe and the spread of its ideas in the 1520s, it was entrenched as a means to both protect the faith in Spain from infiltration of this new heresy, and as a further means to buttress royal power. The image of a Spanish Inquisition burning hundreds of thousands of Protestant heretics has no basis in historical fact. There were so few Protestants in Spain that there could be no such prosecution, no matter how strong the inquisition and no matter how much anti-Catholic propagandists tried to create such an image in the 16th Century and thereafter.

As in the medieval Inquisition, torture was used to elicit confessions when there was insufficient proof. Torture was common throughout Europe in judicial actions and Spain was no exception. Torture could only be used in cases of heresy, which meant that it was not used for the minor offenses that made up the majority on inquisitorial activity. The scenes of sadism conjured up by popular writers on the inquisition have little basis in reality. In all, just over 100 persons in Spain were found to be Protestants and turned over to the secular authorities for execution in the 1560s. In the last decades of the century, an additional 200 Spaniards were accused of being followers of Luther. Most of them were not actually Protestants. Any anti-religious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions were all classified by the inquisitors as “Lutheran.” Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy.

Only unrepentant heretics or relapsed heretics could be “relaxed” – turned over – to the secular authorities to be burned at the stake. After the bitter persecution of the conversos in the first 20 years of the inquisition, in the 17th and 18th centuries fewer than three people a year were executed throughout Spain. In fact, most condemned were burnt only in effigy, having previously died or fled the country. The Spanish Inquisition was unique. Wrestled early from the papacy, it was controlled by the Spanish monarchy. Its aim, certainly, was to maintain a Catholic Spain, but its use was primarily centered on Catholic conversos of Jewish and, later, Muslim ancestry. It was certainly a force that kept Protestant – and, to a degree, Enlightenment – thought out of Spain, though the number of those actually prosecuted for such activity was very small.

Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition and its subordinate tribunals appear to have been generally successful in keeping any substantial Protestant influence from spreading widely in the peninsula. Once the immediate problem of Protestantism was reduced, (the inquisition) turned the bulk of its operation to the question of internal ecclesiastical discipline and to offenses other than Protestantism. Though seen by some as a pre-Reformation martyr, his meddling in Florentine politics, rather than his call for moral reforms and his attacks on Pope Alexander VI caused Savonarola’s downfall. Though certainly tried with the approbation of the pope, his death in 1498 was more a civil act than an inquisitorial judgment.

Giordano Bruno refused to recant his strange views and he was turned over to the secular authorities. He was burned on February 19, 1600. Bruno was an excessive character – and a bit of a charlatan – who rejected fundamental beliefs of Catholicism and was condemned by the Protestant reformers as well. A man who abandoned the priesthood, in the difficult days of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation he was certain to be prosecuted and seemed to court his own martyrdom.

Galileo’s 1633 trial is most often portrayed as Galileo the scientist arguing the supremacy of reason and the tribunal judges demanding that reason abjure to faith. The trial was neither. Galileo, a firm and orthodox Catholic, and the tribunal judges shared a common view that science and the Bible could not stand in contradiction. If there appeared to be a contradiction, such a contradiction resulted from either weak science, or poor interpretation of Scripture. In context, the trial exhibited both faults. Galileo’s technology was far too limited at the time to scientifically prove his assertion of the earth’s double rotation. At the same time, the tribunal judges were at fault for a literal interpretation of biblical passages and making scientific judgments never intended by the Scriptural authors.

“The Inquisition was an image assembled from a body of legends and myths which, between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, established the perceived character of inquisitorial tribunals and influenced all ensuing efforts to recover their historical reality. That body took shape in the context of intensified religious persecution as a consequence of the Reformation of the sixteenth century and of the central role of Spain, the greatest power in Europe, in assuming the role of defender of Roman Catholicism.” “An image of Spain circulated through late sixteenth-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries. Spaniards and Hispanophiles have termed this process and the image that resulted from it as ‘The Black Legend,’ la leyenda negra.” Another source for the myth of the inquisition was Catholic Italy. Italian Catholics – the papal representatives included – had a dislike for the Spanish whom they considered rural racist bumpkins. The attacks in Spain on the conversos were viewed as despicable in Rome. Italians felt that Spanish hypocrisy in religion, together with the existence of the Inquisition, proved that the tribunal was created not for religious purity, but simply to rob the Jews. Similar views were certainly held by the prelates of the Holy See whenever they intervened in favor of the conversos.

The true explosion in inquisition rhetoric was in the period just prior to and through the revolt in the Netherlands from Spanish control. That revolt involved a fragile alliance of Catholic and Calvinist leaders against Catholic Spain. Beginning in 1548, the printing press and propaganda turned to the service of political reform, with the inquisition as a major focus, on such a wide scale and with comparatively devastating effects.

When the English under Elizabeth I prepared to defend themselves against the Spanish armada, and the pope called for an English crusade, nationalistic fervor was fueled in England by anti-Catholic propaganda. Central to the propaganda campaign are a series of books and pamphlets detailing the horror of the Spanish Inquisition. The inquisition would become a hallmark of English anti-Catholic literature for 200 years, and be passed on to the popular anti-Catholic mythology in the United States.

Religious dissent was punished in all Protestant lands throughout the Reformation period, whether of Catholics or Protestants dissenting from the majority Protestant viewpoint. The difference was that this was considered solely a judicial activity of the state, rather than involving an ecclesial court.

G) RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Two books cited extensively within this paper provide excellent overviews of the inquisition based on modern historical studies. Edward Peters, Inquisition (1988) is available in paperback from University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 94720. Peters book is a fascinating account of the development of the myth of the inquisition and how polemics, art and literature enhanced this myth. Peters is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (Yale University Press) by Henry Kamen is the best available study on the origins, methods and history of the Spanish Inquisition. Kamen is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a professor of the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona, Spain.

The Terrorism Trap (City Lights); and The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (New Press).

http://www.oldways.org/history.htm

Some History of The Old Ways

Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.

Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 113.

Gere quoted in "Our Little Secret," Counter Punch, 1-15 November 1997

Points of Truth Newsletter Crusade Church of God

P.O. Box 102, Russellville, Arkansas 72811 USA Ph. 501-498-4524

Volume III, Number 2 March 2000

THE FLAGELLANTS After the Painting by Carl Marr

The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop

\Planetary energy influence
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Did you know that each hour of the day has a planetary influence?

William Lilly was one of the most mysterious and influential astrologers of all time and infamous for his early prediction of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Lilly was so accurate in foretelling this catastrophe (down to the hour) that he was accused of setting the fire to make his predictions manifest!

Author of many books and almanacs, Lilly is most recognized for his 1647 text, Christian Astrology which has proven timeless for modern day astrologers. In this book, Lilly describes a method for determining exactly what planet rules the moment one is in. His system is based on the number of daylight hours in each day. Because each day of the year has sunlight for a different amount of time (there are more daylight in the summer than winter) , he deemed this theory - UNEQUAL HOURS.

According to Lilly's thinking, each day begins at sunrise and ends at the next sunrise - creating 24 planetary hours. The first hour of the day is ruled by the planet of that day, and the entire day carries that influence. However, there are seven planets who are given rulership over the Zodiac and these planets also have influence over their respective hours of the day. The order in which they are lined is: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon.

Magically speaking, one may choose to use the planetary hours for added influence in their workings. In order to determine which hour is ruled by which planet, one must first find the time of sunrise or sunset off the news, from an almanac or newspaper or on the Internet.

Calculating Planetary Hours
Let's say you want to calculate the planetary hours for a given Sunday. You have determined that sun rises at 5 AM and sets at 7 PM.

Next, find the difference. In this example it's 14 hours. Multiply that number by 60 (the number of modern day minutes in an hour). You need to know how many minutes exist between sunrise and sunset. In this instance, the result is 840 minutes.

Now divide the number of minutes (840 ) by 12 (1/2 the number of hours in a modern day) to determine the daytime hours. In our example the result is 70 minutes or 1 hour and 10 minutes.

We know that Sunday is ruled by the Sun. So the first hour of the day is owned by the Sun. In our example, 5 AM until 6:10 AM is the "sun hour". As you can see, using planetary hours does not mean working within modern day 60 minute intervals. From 6:11 AM until 7:21 AM, one experiences the influence of Venus on this day. You would continue calculating the hours using the 70 minutes intervals and the above mentioned planetary order from sunrise to sunset.

To determine nighttime hours, one would make the same calculations from sunset to the next sunrise on Monday.

In this example we have 10 hours between sunset at 7PM and sunrise at 5 AM. When we multiply 10 hours with 60 minutes we see there are 600 minutes between sunset and sunrise the following day. By dividing 600 minutes by 12 hours we can then determine that every 50 minutes the planetary influence will shift this particular Sunday. Therefore, from 7:00 PM until 7:50 PM, the influence of Jupiter is felt (Saturn was the last daylight hour - so continue naming hours in the proper sequence)

A Timing Example
Say you need to do a love work. Love is ruled by Planet Venus (see Day of Week Page). You know you want to DRAW love, so you do it when both hands are moving UP THE CLOCK . You can do it from either 6 AM to Noon or 6 PM to Midnight. You see it is best to do this work on Friday but you can’t do it because of your job. So, you select Sunday (a day for Success work) evening as the best time for you to conduct your prayers or spell. For this exercise we will use the calculations from the "Sunday" worked on above to determine our timing.

Go to the NIGHT chart listed below and see what hours on this Sunday evening are ruled by Planet Venus. It's the fourth hour and the eleventh hours. These are the BEST time to do your work. But the eleventh hour will be at the crack of dawn! So you must do your spell in the 4th night time hour.

From our above calculations, we know on this particular Sunday evening, every 50 minutes the planetary hour changes. The 4th night time hour of Sunday is 200 minutes past sunset (4 x 50). You now know to begin your work 200 minutes or 3.33 hours past sunset.(200 minutes divided by 60 modern minutes in an hour). That's three hours and twenty minutes past sunset - or at 10:20 PM

Check to make sure it is the WAXING MOON to better your outcome!

Daytime Hours
Hour Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn
2 Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter
3 Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars
4 Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun
5 Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus
6 Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury
7 Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon
8 Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn
9 Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter
10 Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars
11 Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun
12 Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus

Nighttime Hours
Hours Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury
2 Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon
3 Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn
4 Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter
5 Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars
6 Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun
7 Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus
8 Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury
9 Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon
10 Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn
11 Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter
12 Mercury Jupiter Venus Saturn Sun Moon Mars

Days of the Week - Magical Correspondences

Astrologers, magicians, occultists and spiritualists have long considered planetary influences to be an important consideration when determining the time to cast a spell. Each day of the week is ruled by a planet that possess specific magical influences.

Daily Magical Correspondences - Occult School
The following table illustrates the planetary influences and color associations of the early occult philosopher Agrippa von Nettesheim.

Day Planet Color Purpose
Sunday Sun Gold, Yellow Success; Achievement; Goals; Purification
Monday Moon Silver, White Emotional Healing; Nurturing; Calming; Fertility
Tuesday Mars Red Protection; Conflict; War
Wednesday Mercury Orange Communications; Speed
Wednesday Mercury Red and Black Reversing Spells
Wednesday Mercury Purple Artistic; Creativity
Thursday Jupiter Blue Healing; Protection; Money
Friday Venus Pink Love
Friday Venus Green Drawing
Saturday Saturn Black, Gray Crossing, Cursing, Money, Debauchery

Daily Magical Correspondences in Wicca, Neo-Paganism
Day of Week Planet Purpose Energy Type
SUNDAY Sun Health; Prosperity; Leadership; Joy, Male Fertility; Protection - Do spellcrafting that involves Fathers & Husbands, Peace, Harmony, Influence people in High Places - Court Work. Male
MONDAY Moon Emotions; Women's Mysteries; Dreams; Reconciliation; Receptivity; Voyages; Female Fertility - Do spells involving the subconscious, healing emotional wounds, children, small animals, mothers, sisters, female partners, wives, instincts Female
TUESDAY Mars Conquest; Commanding: Controlling; Power over Enemies - Craft spells that involve Courage, Immediate Action, Victory or Break Negative Spells Male
WEDNESDAY Mercury Aid Spiritual and Psychic Awareness; Divination; Communication - Do spells for Mental Issues, Learning, Addictions, Perception, Artistry, Creativity. Male
THURSDAY Jupiter Growth; Expansion; Generosity - Do spells for Prosperity, Money, Business, Ambition, Male Fertility Male
FRIDAY Venus Love; Pleasure; Friendship; Beauty - Do spells for attracting sex, increasing romance. Female
SATURDAY Saturn Rid Obstacles; Overcomes Blockages; Clear One's Path - Do spells to remove bindings, Purification. Female

Tips on working with Moon Phases in Spellcasting
For centuries Occultists, Spiritualists and Magicians have recognized that the Moon's phase is important to what type of Magic you will be performing. From New Moon to Dark Moon, each period in the moon's development brings with it a special energy for that lunar cycle.

From scientific study, we know the Moon affects the ocean tides, animals, plant development and even human behavior. It is also accepted within the magical community that the Moon can and does create fluctuations on the psychic energies within each of us. So, it only makes sense that the Moon would have a direct influence on our magical and spiritual workings.

Simply put, there are two cycles and three phases during each cycle. Below are descriptions of these phases and standard recommendations for the type of magic to be performed within each. The moon is known by many names, myths and legends. Respective schools, sects and orders have varying interpretations of Moon magic according to their own beliefs.

SIMPLE MOON MAGIC
There are two general phases of the moon. In working moon magic on its most basic level, one can look solely at the WAXING and WANING of the moon.

A simple rule of thumb you may choose to follow states that DRAWING is conducted during the WAXING MOON and REMOVING is conducted during the WANING MOON. If you never get more involved in lunar cycles, you still take advantage of the moon's power by adhering to these simple principles.

WAXING MOON
To Draw Something to you like Money or Love you make prayers or set work during the WAXING MOON. Plant leaf crops in this moon phase.

Appearance - The moon is growing into a FULL MOON. A waxing moon shows a LIGHT colored crescent on the RIGHT side of the Moon.
Magical Qualities - Used for attraction magic, love spells, protection and healing . The perfect time for abundance, wishes, new projects, growth, expansion and increasing knowledge, spirituality and fertility.
WANING MOON
To Send Away Trouble or Remove Evil you make prayers or set work during the WANING MOON. This is also when one plants root crops.

Appearance - The moon is getting smaller after being a FULL MOON. A waning moon shows a DARK colored crescent on the RIGHT side of the Moon. In other words, the left of the moon is LIGHT and the RIGHT is DARK.
Magical Qualities - Used for banishing and rejecting those things that influence us in a negative way. Negative emotions, diseases, ailments, and bad habits can all be dealt with during this moon phase. Purification and House Cleansings should be performed at this time.

MORE ADVANCED MOON MAGIC
A complete lunar phase takes about 29 1/2 days to complete. Beginning at the NEW MOON, we see the total absence of the Moon in the night sky. The WAXING or the increasing of the moon follows as it grows into a FULL MOON. From this point, the moon decreases in size during the WANING phase of the moon. The cycle is complete with the DARK MOON or when no moon is visible.

Many books and spells recommend you perform certain work during the exact time of a moon event - like the hour the moon becomes FULL. This information is easy to find on the Internet. Moon phase information can be found at Googol.com or from the US Naval Observatory.

Remember that the Moon rises about 48 minutes later than the day before as it works itself through the lunar cycle. Moon rises can and do occur in the day - so never think Moon magic is always conducted at night! If you are serious about doing work or conducting ritual in conjunction with the Moon, put this old rule to memory.

The NEW MOON always rises at sunrise
And the FIRST QUARTER at noon.
The FULL MOON always rises at sunset
And the LAST QUARTER at midnight.
The NEW MOON, FULL MOON and DARK MOON are all important stops in the Moon's monthly cycle. Many people use these days for special workings, believing they are more powerful.

NEW MOON
Appearance - The new moon appears to be totally dark or that there is no moon out at night.
Magical Qualities - The NEW MOON introduces the WAXING MOON phase of the lunar cycle. Some say not to begin work until the actual WAXING CRESCENT is visible. Used for personal growth, healing and blessing of new projects or ventures. It's also a good time to cleanse and consecrate ritual tools.
FULL MOON
Appearance - The full moon appears totally light.
Magical Qualities - The FULL MOON is the culmination of the WAXING MOON (increasing) phase. After the FULL MOON the WANING MOON (decreasing) phase begins Some say you may perform FULL MOON magic three days prior to and after the actual full moon. Others believe rituals must be started or in process during the actual hour of the full moon. Any spells may be cast during the Full Moon - especially protection and divination.
DARK MOON
Appearance - The dark moon appears totally dark or that there is no moon out at night. It occurs 3 days prior to the New Moon.
Magical Qualities - Typically no work is performed during this time. Some feel the Dark Moon phase continues until the actual WAXING MOON crescent is visible in the sky. Others believe this period officially ends at the hour of the NEW MOON.

POWER OF NUMBERS: A UNIVERSAL TRUTH
Numbers are an important component of most magical and spiritual undertakings. There are many cross-cultural similarities in historical folklore regarding the power of numbers. From Africa to Asia to Europe and the Middle East, religious and magical texts have documented the credence given to numbers by magicians and mystics over the centuries. Numerology is a self-contained divination system based on the study of numbers, their hidden meaning and symbolism . Because there is such a consistent belief in the power of numbers to create fluctuations in psychic energies, we can deem their use in Magick as a Universal Truth.

NUMBERS: HOW CONSISTENT BELIEFS DEVELOP
If we take one number and look at the historical development of its magickal associations, we can see the process of Universal Truth unfold. For this exercise, we will look at how number five (5) gained magickal significance.

THE NUMBER FIVE?
Yes! If questioning my judgment here, most folks can look down and their hands and feet to see the significance of Five. It allows us to carry our bodies to other places and pick up or manipulate what is not our own.

The Number Five (5) has always held mystical associations. Most are aware of the lore attached to seven and thirteen - even the powerful number three. However, Five has much respect in magical traditions as a doorway to the other side and a symbol of spiritual communication and completion. Five is the Fifth Element - or Spirit. Let's look at it more closely.

THE QUINCUNX and COSMOGRAM PATTERNS

Early Coin marked with Quincunx Pattern - Greece
Mystical Number Five (5) is represented geometrically in the Quincunx Pattern. This design is arranged by marking four corners and a central axis through a series of dots or objects - as seen on dice or dominos.

The symbol was made popular with Pythagorean Mystics in Early Greece (586 - 506 BC). According to poet and novelist Robert Graves,

To the Pythagoreans Five represented the color and variety which nature gives to three-dimensional space, and which are apprehended by the five senses, technically called 'the wood' - a quincunx of five trees; this colored various world was held to be formed by five elements - earth, air, water, fire and the quintessence or soul.
Coincidentally( or not!) most modern day computer graphic cards render images (or reality) by using tiny quincunx dot patterns. Perhaps the reason is that it speaks a universal, mathematical truth. The Quincunx, however was not only appreciated in Ancient Greece, it can be seen time and time again throughout history:

This pattern was used by the Early Olmec (pre-Columbian Indians) to delineate, in shorthand notation, a map for sacred space.
Philosopher Carl Jung acknowledged that 'The quinarius or Quinio (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx ) does occur as a symbol of wholeness in China. '
Hoodoo researcher Catherine Yronwode notes that many southern root workers 'generally give no special name for it, but describe it functionally' when referring to its use as an artificial crossroads and means to seal a "trick" or work in a space.
Alchemist Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) identified the Quincunx pattern as none other than 'a symbol of the quinta essentia which is identical with the Philosopher's Stone. '
Knowing or unknowingly, many spell books (especially Anna Riva's) call for an altar to be arranged in a Quincunx Pattern - with four candles in the four corners and incense in the center.
When turned on its axis by forty-five degrees, the Quincunx Pattern becomes what is known as the Cosmogram by archaeologists.

The cosmogram was a common symbol found in early Kongo, or Bakongo African culture. Kongo-based folk magic is the root of Hoodoo and Southern Root work in the Americas. It is described and illustrated in detail in Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy by Robert Farris Thompson. In his book, Thompson shares information gleaned on the importance of the Cosomogram from Kongo scholar Wyatt MacGaffey.

The simplest ritual space is a Greek cross [+] marked on the ground, as for oath-taking. One line represents the boundary; the other is ambivalently both the path leading across the boundary, as to the cemetery; and the vertical path of power linking "the above" with "the below". This relationship, in turn, is polyvalent, since it refers to God and man, God and the dead, and the living and the dead. The person taking the oath stands upon the cross, situating himself between life and death, and invokes the judgment of God and the dead upon himself.
Through slavery, the use of the Cosmogram as an element of magick was brought from Africa to destinations all over Latin America and the Caribbean. It can be seen in the firmas of Palo Mayombe and the Veves of Vodou - both ritual drawings used to establish spiritual contact.

THE PENTAGRAM
Humans have always looked to nature to derive truth. For instance, when you cut an apple through its equator (not from the stem), you will find an almost perfect five-pointed star or pentagram in each half. In ancient Greece, this star was the symbol of the Goddess Kore - daughter of Demeter and owner of vegetables and fruits of the field. Since these ancient times the pentagram has held significant mystical meaning across generations and cultures.

The pentagram (or five-pointed star) is actually a unicursal figure, a pattern that can be with a single stroke of a writing instrument which doesn’t leave the surface at any time during drawing it. Each line in a pentagram is dependent on the whole. In other words, the lines are irrevocably connected to all the others, where no one line is more important than any other line and leaving out one, would destroy the whole.

When a pentagram is enclosed in a circle it becomes a pentacle - commonly seen as a symbol of Wicca and Paganism.
In the very early Middle Ages, Christian mystics adopted it as representation of the five wounds Jesus Christ suffered during his crucifixion at the hands of Romans. In some of the great cathedrals of Europe, the pentacle is a featured part of the architecture. For example, in England's Exeter Cathedral in Devon, pentacles can still be seen where they were carved into the elaborate stone and metalwork around the chancery more than 600 years ago.
It was used to symbolize the star which led Three Kings to the Infant Jesus.
Among the Hebrews, the symbol was attributed to truth and to the five books of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament or the Torah).
Each point of the Pentagram traditionally represents one of the five metaphysical elements of the ancients. The topmost point represents Spirit, The upper left point represents Air, the upper right point represents Water, the lower left point represents Earth, and the lower right point represents Fire. In this fashion, the pentagram represents Spirit ruling over the four elements.
UNDERSTANDING FIVE
We have taken a very brief sampling of concepts that surround the power of Five. So, what does it all mean? How do we apply it to ritual?

Five marks sacred space and a connection to the otherworld. Whether seen as the center point of the crossroads ( X ) or the top point on the hub of a wheel (pentagram), it indicates a place or space that is outside the boundaries of the earthly plane. Even though Five typically indicates a hurdle or difficulty in Tarot, we can also view it as a center point of our journey - from the Ace to the ten - a stop on the way to our full potential. Five challenges us to rise above personal issues that tie us to the physical realm, and reminds us that it is possible to command the elements.

In practical magick, we can then find countless ways to incorporate the power of Five. When performing ritual to enhance or rebalance our Spirit, we can use five objects or ingredients. We can draw a pentacle or pentagram on our altar or workspace to strengthen our spiritual power and provide spiritual protection. We can also use the quincunx or cosmogram patterns to create sacred space.

USING OTHER NUMBERS
Without delving deeply into the history and symbolism of other numbers, I want to leave the reader with some practical uses for other digits. These are associations and uses that you hear most often at the Mistic.

NUMBER THREE (3)
Number Three was considered a magickal number by many ancient cultures, especially the Celts. Many of their deities appeared in triple-form. One belief is that doing something thrice makes it so. In numerology, three represents creative power and gheshtalt (when two things become more than the sum of their parts).

Old Adages include: Third Time's a Charm. We often give three cheers or hope to be granted three wishes. Well known triangles(the geometric equivalent of three) include "Body,Mind,and sSpirit", "Earth,Air,and Water", "Faith,Hope and Charity",and even Animals,Vegetables and Minerals.

At the Mistic, Three is the minimum number we recommend in ritual: Perform the task for three days; use three items; recite the prayer three times. When time and or money is of the essence we break things down into their simplest yet most effective from - Three.

"LUCKY" NUMBER SEVEN (7)
Regardless of age or culture, most people are aware of Seven's reputation as a Lucky Number. The Pythagoreans viewed it as a representation of perfection, 3 and 4, the triangle and the square, the perfect figures.

Look for references to Seven and we find: Seven days of the week, the seven arts and sciences, the seven dwarfs, the seventh son of the seventh son and even New Orleans' infamous Seven Sisters.

At the Mistic, Seven is used to attract luck in money or love. We recommend gambling, new employment/opportunity, new love or money drawing work be performed for Seven days; using Seven items; reciting prayers Seven times.

NUMBER NINE (9)
Nine is the square of Three. Not many spend much time delving on the ritual use of Nine however at the Mistic it is indeed a frequently used digit.

The number 9 represents the great harmony of the universe, ages before history began. Its significance was known and recognized beyond a time of reckoning. There are nine major planets in the solar system, Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, and a cat is said to have nine lives. The expression to the nines means to the highest degree. On cloud nine means happy, euphoric or `high'.

If 9 is multiplied by any other number, from 2 to 9, the resulting number, when reduced to a digit, will always equal 9. To Illustrate:

2 x 9 = 18: 1 + 8 = 9
3 x 9 = 27: 2 + 7 = 9
4 x 9 = 36: 3 + 6 = 9
5 x 9 = 45: 4 + 5 = 9
6 x 9 = 54: 5 + 4 = 9
7 x 9 = 63: 6 + 3 = 9
8 x 9 = 72: 7 + 2 = 9
9 x 9 = 81: 8 + 1 = 9
396: 3 + 9 + 6 = 18: 1 + 8 = 9
Nine is considered a number of Wisdom, Spiritual Power and Mastery. We use it when we want to command, compel, bend another's will or in any way impose our power over that of another. No matter if the issue is business or love related, financial or social, we recommend "power" work be performed for Nine days; using Nine ingredients or Items; reciting prayers Nine times.

"UNLUCKY" NUMBER THIRTEEN (13)
The number 13 conjures up images of witches, black cats and even death. It stimulates unexplained fears .The dread of 13, or, triskadictaphobia, is so widespread in American culture, that laborious efforts have been made to avoid any association with it whatsoever. Floors of buildings are spared the curse of 13. The number is skipped altogether.

Thirteen became "unlucky" around the Middle Ages. The probable cause being that Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, was the " 13th" apostle at the Last Supper. It is often pointed out that the Jews murmured 13 times against God in the exodus from Egypt, that the thirteenth psalm concerns wickedness and corruption, that the circumcision of Israel occurred in the thirteenth year, and so on.

In antiquity, even before Christianity, 12 was a perfect, complete number, so 13 indicated the beginning of a new cycle; from this it became a symbol of death. To death was added the idea of renewal - the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

At the Mistic, Thirteen is used to end one cycle and begin another. We perform Uncrossing, Protection and Purification rituals for Thirteen days; using Thirteen items; reciting prayers Thirteen times.

Blessings!

Magick vs prayer

Praying for results than working towards results.

Every day I hear myself explaining to someone that Spiritual products are just that - products and nothing more. They are a means of focusing one's energy on the task at hand.

This statement doesn't mean that I do not believe (or rather know) that certain herbs, roots, minerals and scents are extraordinarily helpful in harnessing the powers of the mind and universe. Creating 'magic' takes vision, time and dedication. Yes, people do dab a few drops of gambling oil on themselves and walk into casinos and win big. But in all honesty, this is the exception more than the rule. Getting consistent results in your spiritual undertakings requires effort, which is why they call it spiritual "work".

Two means through which one may attempt to change their circumstances are Magic and Prayer. Both refuse to accept weakness as a limit of endeavor or to accept the status quo as normal. Both require belief or faith in "the process" in order to be successful. But, this is where the comparisons end. In order to determine which way of tackling a situation is best suited to the individual, it is helpful to discern what each is in its own terms.

What is Prayer?
Prayer is not a power, but a request. It is not so much a technique as a conversation. To pray is to say 'No' to despair and 'Amen' to the 'Yes' of the Divine. So, it is the means to end problems and open the door to joy.

We cannot guarantee what Spirit will do with our prayers. This is good because it means prayer cannot make bad things happen.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (James 5:16).
By the same token, we do not know how our requests will be addressed, if at all.

Prayer is also deeper than words.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (Romans 8:26-27).
Than, if our agony is more than we can begin to articulate, the Divine hears that agony which has no words. [This isn't an escape clause. If we can articulate our prayers, we must.]

If we use Prayer as the basis of our Spiritual undertakings we must understand that it is not our will which becomes manifest - but that of the Divine. We may not get exactly what we ask for. We may get more or less. The belief that the Spirit works in our best interest implies it does not matter. If you do not ask, you do not receive. If you do not receive, it was not meant to be.

What is Magic(k)?
For our purposes we shall define Magic(k) as: The belief that supernatural forces can be controlled, influenced and manipulated by executing a ritualistic formula, either physical or verbal.

The two key components of this definition are A.) Ritual and B.) Manipulation. In order for Magic(k) to be effective, it MUST manipulate energy. This may be God energy, an herbal energy, a spiritual force (such as the Vodou Lwa or Lucumi Orisha), an elemental or planetary energy, etc.

It must also adhere to the Webster's Dictionary definition of "ritual":

A prescribed procedure for conducting religious ceremonies.
When one attempts to manipulate or coerce any energy into performing his/her own will, magic has been performed. This is what takes Magic above and beyond Prayer. The magician, not the Divine decides upon the desired outcome.

Magical rituals do incorporate prayer-like incantations or spoken requests. However, in this context the magician understands he can constrain, coerce, and force the divinity to do his will. Many religions use sacrifices and elaborate doxologies to induce God to favor requests, grant wishes and perform miracles upon demand. Is this magic? Yes. Religion and magic are not mutually exclusive. While often unspoken, they frequently walk hand in hand.

Magic Versus Prayer
So which technique is the preferred method? This question is not so easily answered. There are a few things you can ask yourself which may be helpful in guiding you to your best source for success.

A. What Do I Believe?:

If you truly believe that the Divine answers prayers and cannot be influenced by intercessions from Saints, Spirits, Ancestors, Alignments or Energies than stick with Prayer and hope for the best. Don't let me come across as negative here. The Divine answers Prayers! We know this. It is fine to use candles, incense or whatever means necessary to set your mind and heart into the most prayerful state. However, the belief that your Prayers will be answered in accordance to a preselected path already laying before you, requires you not ritualize. Pray and hope for the best. In my book, you cannot ask for more than the best.

B. What Is My Skill Level?:

When considering ritual and magic as a means of influencing the outcome of any situation, this is probably the most important question one can ask herself. At the least, magical rituals require three basic components:

1. Statement of Intention ~ What do you want? What is the goal you plan to achieve? Is it attainable? What will you do on the physical or mundane plane to back up the work? What is your time frame? How will you convey these goals to your Spirit or source of power?
2. Raising Energy ~ How will you connect with your Spiritual Alignments or tap into Universal Energy? Invocation? Evocation? Chanting? Drumming? Dancing? Harnessing an Element? Incantation? Meditation? Prayer?
3. Projecting Energy Towards Goal ~ Once you have raised the energy or called the Spirit how will you convey your will and target? How do you get the energy to where it needs to go?

If you do not know what you want and/or do not understand the method or means of raising and projecting Energy than you probably are not ready for much spell work. These three simple steps are the heart of every ritual. The planning and preparation required to conduct a successful spell nor the topics of protection, releasing/grounding and disposal of ritual items (necessary components of ritual work) are touched on by this list.

You do not have to be a skilled magus to cast a successful spell. But, you must have a procedure in place for the three steps above.

C. Do I Need an Exact Outcome?:

God, Spirit, Ancestors, Totems, Angels, Saints, Elementals and whoever or whatever else people serve in a religious fashion may be propitiated out of love and duty. However, they are also expected to provide. With that in mind, one should assess their situation on the basis of what they need - a specific outcome or a general resolution of issues.

For instance, if you want to start a new business but have no means to do so, prayer may be your best bet for success. Using this method, one offers the issue to the Divine and lets them select the best possible resolution.

By the same token, if you are filling out paperwork for a business loan and want to increase your chances of approval, magic ritual provides more guarantees that you will at least affect the target with your energy.
Magic + Prayer = Success
The technique I use for most problems that require ritual also includes Prayer. Prior to and following my work, I pray to the Divine for assistance with my work and for an answer to my Prayer. I follow this up with daily prayer for a predetermined amount of time.

To someone watching me engage in spiritual work, it might seem as one flowing set of prayers, movements & incantations. However, I am in fact performing two completely separate works.

The Five Phases of Personal Evolution
13:12:05 - Jul 20 2006
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The Five Phases of Personal Evolution

No species or idea survives for long unless it is fundamentally sound and able to adapt to its ever-changing environment.
The 5,000 year-old concepts of the Chinese Five Elemental Phases (Wu Xing) continue their usefulness to this day.
The Five Phases of Personal Evolution is a model for human evolution based the structure and processes of the ancient Five Elemental Phases. It combines with these concepts aspects of the Native American Warrior's Path, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and Qi Gong energy cultivation movements. This synthesis, originally refined during a three-year period through an advanced Taoist Nei Gong exercise called the Five Dragons, represents a further evolution of the classical Five Phases. Below is a skeletal representation of the Five-Phase Personal Evolution Model. Each phase as well as each interaction in this model matches major aspects of the traditional Five Phases
PHASE CORRESPONDENCES Each phase correspondence can be understood in positive, process- oriented terms reflecting the "ideal" attributes of each. These ideal states are guidelines or objectives for balanced and integrated functioning. They also reflect the relationships and interactions between phases
FIRE: Representing the heart as well as the Shen (Spirit), Fire corresponds with Opening - unconditional giving, responding to events with spontaneous resiliency and adaptability. Our ability to show compassion, experience joy, and share with others resides here, as does the aliveness in our eyes. Fire pathology shows as being too open-hearted (to the point of self- detriment), little or no sense of limits or boundaries in interpersonal relations, inability to give emotionally or to be spontaneous.
EARTH: Corresponding with the spleen and Yi (Mind), Earth is associated with Connecting - patience, being in the moment, focusing thoughtful attention and making useful mental associations. It is also the ability to be clearly in the moment. Patience, stability, home, service and tasting Life belong here. Earth pathology manifests as obsessiveness, inability to be in the moment, acting in a scattered or distracted way (not present), lack of awareness of surroundings, or difficulty moving (stuckness).
METAL: Metal (Gold), lungs and P'o (Corporeal Soul), reflects Releasing - stepping back from an experience to evaluate and sort it out, refining goals and directions and the ability to let go of excessive emotional attachments to people and events. Inspiration, acknowledging self and others and refining one's character all show up here. Metal pathology is characterized by, chronic grieving & saddness, aloofness, obsessiveness, living in the past or extreme attachments.
WATER:Kidneys and Zhi (Will). Water relates to Aligning - setting foundations, maintaining integrity & balance, gathering energies, and storing reserves. It is the ability to keep rooted even in the face of chaos. It may be thought of as a rudder in the flow of life. There are times where we enter the Unknown and must allow Life to guide us without preconceptions, judgements or panic - Aligning is our optimal response. Water pathology might show up as lack of direction, not completing things, extremism, fear, or fixation on only one way of doing things.
WOOD:Wood, liver and Hun (Heavenly Soul), is expressed in the idea of Trusting. Specifically this means trusting in God/Universal Flow/Great Spirit. Focusing intent, doing your best and transcending limitations, both inwardly and outwardly, all correspond to this phase. This is where we reach out into new territory, express creativity and focus our intention. Wood pathology might show up as timidness, depression, being overly cautious, lack of focus, "running on empty," impulsiveness, etc
THE PROCESS INTERACTIONS The Phase interactions can be simply expressed thus:
Opening: is supported by Trusting is controlled by Aligning (prevents excess) controls Releasing (limits detachment) supports Connecting
Connecting: is supported by Opening is controlled by Trusting (reaching beyond limits) controls Aligning (prevents stagnation) supports Releasing (being present to release past
Releasing: is supported by Connecting (releasing the past) is controlled by Opening controls Trusting (tempers impulsiveness) supports Aligning (with Will)
Aligning: is supported by Releasing is controlled by Connecting (keeps it current) controls Opening (keeps balance) supports Trusting (foundation for further growth)
Trusting: is supported by Aligning (foundation) is controlled by Releasing (allows for focus) controls Connecting (allows for going beyond limits) supports Opening
APPLICATIONS OF THE FIVE PHASES Any comprehensive, self-contained, homeostatic system has so many possible permutations that it is difficult to fully describe them. Here are a number of illustrative examples of these ideas:
Example 1:An aspect of Releasing is the quality of detachment. Healthy detachment is prevented from becoming excessive by keeping a sense of openness and adaptability (Releasing controlled by Opening). Similarly, since attachments are typically a function of past/future associations, a healthy releasing of such attachments is supported by being in the present (Connecting).
Example 2: Aligning is also to a large extent the act of balancing and harmonizing all aspects of a situation. Since life is a flow of energy, a static balance is not healthy. Therefore balance must be an on-going process and is prevented from stagnating by: 1) Providing the basis for new expansion (Aligning supports Trusting); and 2) Staying in the ever-changing flow of the present moment (Aligning controlled by Connecting).
Example 3:Just as each Phase is healthiest when supporting the following Phase in the nourishing cycle, it is also healthiest when applying limits to the following Phase on the controlling cycle. Trusting, as aspect of which is going beyond limitations, functions best when it can temper the tendency of Connecting to stay exclusively in the moment. When done appropriately, planning (another aspect of Trusting, i.e., going beyond the limited perception of the immediate here and now) tempers any tendency for imbalanced indulgence by Connecting to be only in the here & now, and stimulates the energy to move-on to Releasing where it can evaluate what is most important in the experience
EFFECTIVE USE The most important question regarding this or any model is, "How can this information be put to effective use?" Most essentially it is a tool for self- examination and personal evolution. The concepts are exceptional as a basis for meditation or incorporation into other yogic, meditative and/or affirmation practices. The Qi Gong exercises accompanying these concepts integrate them at a deep cellular / energy level, aiding in fuller understanding Working with others the Five Phases may be used as a basis for evaluating personality traits and tendencies and, in the context of a complete holistic treatment, appropriate counterbalancing and supporting affirmations might be assigned, or suggestions given to the patient to enhance, at the level of the patient's beliefs, the idea of total balance, thus contributing to the overall effectiveness of treatment In the world at large these concepts have historically been used for everything from planting crops and family interactions to running governments and businesses. Embodying the Five Phases as a tool for personal evolution is limited only by your imagination.

problem with intelligence
23:54:52 - Jul 19 2006
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I know they use intelligence tests routinely but you know someone
just out of University or even High School for that matter if they
studied and paid attention *grins* will most likely do better on
those tests than say someone my age. It's fresh on the mind. I didn't
finish college but chose to get married as I'm from that "Mona Lisa
Smile" generation. Even though in hindsight I wish I had finished I
read and studied all the time as that is actually the environment I
grew up in. My Dad is one of the smartest men I know but now at 83
doesn't remember a lot of details of what he learned although he has
no dementia or alzheimers. He just hasn't used what he learned in
awhile and neither have I. I never had to use algebra. I look at
those problems in IQ tests now and go "say what" ...I simply never
had a need to use it in any capacity. Many other things too and if
you don't use it...you most assuredly lose it. I had two years of
Latin and I got straight A s in it but I was 14 and 15 so I remember
how to say it as most don't pronounce Latin words properly and how to
conjugate "love". Wonder if that is significant? Still I score from
mid 120s up to high 130s depending on the test. Big deal. I really
don't know how good my common sense is. Thats really what gets you
through, your common sense because that enables one to apply what one
knows to any given circumstance you encounter. Your personality
affects this as well. Are you emotional and impulsive ...a day
dreamer? I worked with developmentally disabled children for ten
years and I can bet that most did not score highly on an IQ test but
you sit with someone who has Aspergers Syndrome and its like talking
in many cases to a walking encyclopedia. One of the kids I watched
could read almost middle school level at 5. Their social skills were
completely lacking and they could spout all this stuff and talk and
converse on many things if all you wanted to do is talk about things.
Otherwise applying all this to the world at large was not always
that easy. Some couldnt tie their own shoes. I think all this is
relative really and if someone wants to have a group based on IQ, so
be it because thats their prerogative to do so. Doesn't make anyone
else any less viable because they may not qualify. You don't need a
superman IQ to function and be who you are. Here is some more
information on IQ and common sense...I don't think this is an issue
to worry about or get too heated. I qualified for Mensa but I
wouldn't qualify for this group I don't think now, so...heh...it
doesn't bother me why does it bother anyone else? I would suspect
they may have some awesome conversations. Maybe they will share some
of them here.
----------------------------------------------------------
Are Common-sense and Intelligence the same thing? Can a person with
an IQ over 130 lack common-sense? The questions that determine one's
IQ after all test only analytical and logical ability (both
theoretical in nature). None of them cite any pratical situations. So
I guess including common-sense as a part of IQ is partially incorrect.

Common-sense is the ability to think on your feet - practical
application of any knowledge you might have acquired either through
experience or observation. Right? If the water flow in your faucet
stops, what do you do first? Common sense dictates you check if the
valve is open. And some people get out their plumbing tools :)

Who is the smartest person you know? and what is smart?

My husband is a brilliant business man, mathematician, engineer,
designer but he could not find something in his closet if his life
depended on it.

"Honey, where is my brown sweater?

"It's in your closet"

"I don't see it ~ it's not here"

I go look and it is right there.... how can someone so intelligent
not be able to locate a sweater in plain view?

Some of the wisest people I know, do not have degrees or any higher
education. Common sense, and great insight outweighs a masters degree
in my opinion.

Some of the most educated people I know are totally screwed up
relationship wise, they cannot communicate and fail time and again
with their partners, they have no social skills and just can't handle
the give and take of a relationship.

Highly intelligent people are often obnoxious and find others beneath
them.

How do you feel about this?

I think a well rounded person with some knowledge of the world,
tolerence for others, common sense and compassion is much better off
than a brilliant, highly educated person with no social skills.

· Under 70 [mentally retarded] -- 2.2%
· 70-80 [borderline retarded] -- 6.7%
· 80-90 [low average] -- 16.1%
· 90-110 [average] -- 50%
· 110-120 [high average] -- 16.1%
· 120-130 [superior] -- 6.7%
· Over 130 [very superior] -- 2.2%

So intelligence clearly has a powerful genetic component. But we can
also see a number of environmental aids and hindrances: A
stimulating environment, parental encouragement, good schooling,
specific reasoning skills, continued practice, and so on, certainly
help a person become more intelligent. Likewise, there are certain
biological factors that are nevertheless environmental: prenatal
care, nutrition (especially in early childhood), freedom from disease
and physical trauma, and so on.

All of these are important and cannot be ignored -- especially when
these are the things we can most easily do something about! But I do
believe that something better than half of intelligence is accounted
for by genetics. And this is, to put it simply, a matter of brain
efficiency. If your brain is well-developed, free from genetic
defects, free from neurochemical imbalances, then it will work well,
given a decent environment. But no matter how good your environment,
if you are forced to rely on "bad equipment," it will be much more
difficult to attain high intelligence.

Most of the normal curve of intelligence, I believe, is due to a
variety of physiological impairments of brain efficiency, such as
that resulting from malnourishment, prenatal trauma, chromosomal
damage, and, most often, simple inheritance of certain neurochemical
makeups. These stretch what would otherwise be a much "tighter"
curve out to the low end.

The great majority of us have fairly healthy brains. A very few have
particularly healthy brains. It would seem that having particularly
healthy brains would be a fantastic aid to one's "fitness," so I can
only guess that not being too bright must be even better!
The most important of all the confusing variables, I believe, is the
problem of disembedded thought. Disembedded thought is Margaret
Donaldson's term for thought that takes place in a contextual
vacuum: It takes years of practice to get to a point where one is
comfortable with abstract questions. Answering what appear to be
meaningless questions is rejected by people of many cultures, by most
young children, and by many people with different "cognitive
styles." It is, in fact, a talent peculiar to us (i.e. educated
western adults, and a few others). Many others will spend their
creative energies not at solving the problem, but at trying to figure
out why you would ask such a strange question to begin with.

History of feng shui
23:52:25 - Jul 19 2006
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This is about energy centers and some folklore is within it but its not about that but these energy points. Do you think due to the changes on the earth...axis shifts, pollution that this may affect these energy pathways? Do you think Vampyrics tap into them and if they do, do you think this can be harmful if a shift happens for
whatever reasons?

Path of the Dragon
by Darrell K. Sweet
The ancient Chinese found lines of energy running across the earth, and they called these lung mei, the paths of the Dragon. The Dragon's heart can be found at a lonely knoll standing in a small valley among the hills. From here the veins of the Dragon current run over surrounding ridges and hills.

Near the heart its force is strong and active. At this center the Dragon and the Tiger, the female and male curents, meet
harmoniously. The yang of the White Tiger rules sharp rocks, steep
mountains and high ridges, while the yin of the Blue Dragon rules lower hills and the gently undulating countryside.

The ancient Chinese believed that these paths of the Dragon covered the entire earth. Seasonal rituals were performed to mark the running of the Dragon current through the earth in accordance with astronomical influences overhead, and mounds were used for astronomical sightings to predict the correct time, while standing stones were erected to mark the path of the Dragon.

When the path of the Dragon runs in straight lines for any distance, the energy builds up and becomes dangerous for living things. By erecting a barrier such as a stone circle, burial mound or building on such a line, the energy is diffused into the barrier. Since the benign influence of the energy was needed for the welfare of man,
only royal personages were allowed to be buried on a Dragon path.

The breaking up of straight lines of the energy is the reason
Chinese buildings have eaves and roofs of varying heights along a
street. A class of men arose called the "direction men," who mapped
out the lines of the Dragon path at any particular place and decided
where things had to be placed within rooms and the landscape to keep
the good influences of the energy and dispel the bad.

Today this practice is known as Feng Shui.

Whenever the landscape was found to not be in harmony with the path
of the Dragon, earthworks were undertaken, with mountain tops being
flattened or sharpened, whole mountains being cut down or new mounds
being put up.

On one such artificial mound outside of Peking known as Coal Hill is
on a major path that divides China north and south; the Emperor
would ascend this hill each year to perform a ritual to invoke the
power of the Dragon for his land.

Several lung mei converge in Shensi Province in northern China,
where a field of over 100 pyramids was discovered by a western pilot
in 1947.

The pyramids are believed to have been constructed between 10,000
and 5,000 BC, but their position in the Forbidden Zone has prevented
further research. At least one of the pyramids appears to be as
large as the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

While pyramids and megalithic structures around the world are
thought to diffuse the Dragon current into the surrounding area with
fertilizing and harmonizing energies, inner chambers discovered in
many of these structures are believed to act as accumulators of the
Dragon power to stimulate physical regeneration, development of
psychic abilities and attainment of spiritual illumination.

Several lung mei lines run across the water from China to cross
Japan. Along one of these lines, researchers discovered an
underwater city near Okinawa in 1997. The city appears to have been
carved out of a mountain and contains broad avenues and a pyramid.
Scientists from the Ryukyu (Okinawa's old name) University have
estimated the date of the city at around 10,000 BC.

In ancient Britain, the paths of the Dragon were also mapped out,
and today they are called ley lines. These lines of energy run
absolutely straight, going through lakes and over steep mountains.
Most of the megalithic monuments and Bronze Age structures in
Britain, including stone circles, standing stones, barrows, tumulii,
wells, moats, hill forts and earthworks, are aligned along leys.

Many of the cup and ring designs carved on these monuments mirror
the constellations overhead as well as show the way to the next
standing stone or circle.

In ancient times, the dragon power that flowed through the leys was
known to wax in the Spring and wane in the Fall; thus, fertility
rites were observed, when at summer's end (Samhain to the Celts,
though these rites considerably predated the Celts in Britain) a
festival and ritual was held that ended with "killing" the dragon.
Usually an important local person had the honor of leading the
festival, and this was continued throughout the occupation by the
Celts and into the Middle Ages. Many British families have coats-of-
arms commemorating an ancestor who "killed" a dragon.

The Celts continued these rites, and made many references to the
great men of the past who constructed the monuments the Celts had
taken over. In Wales, the Goddess Elen of the Ways, who ruled
sunrise and sunset, was the guardian of the old paths.

When the Romans arrived in Britain, they cemented their reputation
for building straight roads by building on top of the old straight
tracks of the leys they found there. This is why so many roads
attributed to the Romans seem to link ancient stone monuments. The
Romans found these straight tracks in all of the countries they
conquered, and often built on top of them because they were so
convenient. These old straight tracks are generally dated from
10,000 to 4,000 BC.

When the Christian church arrived in Britain, many churches were
built at places of ancient sanctity; thus, today most old churches
are also on ley lines. The dragon killer St. Michael took over the
high ridges (thus most of St Michael's churches are on hill tops),
while the dragon killer St. George took over the lowlands.

According to the old tales of how Michael took over from the Dragon,
they fought for seven days and found that they were an even match.
Michael received the magick of the Dragon, whose mark was now upon
him. On St. Michael's feast day, originally on the Fall Equinox, but
now the 29th of September, everyone stays up all night.

The whole family makes a circuit on horseback of the nearest St.
Michael's church, and a dance is performed between a man and a woman
called the Cailleach an Dudain; the man "kills" the woman with the
touch of a Druid's wand and then resurrects her by touching each
part of her body with the wand and breathing into her mouth.

Modern dowsers have mapped many of these lines and found that they
double in width at sunrise and sunset, and fluctuate during the
phases of the moon and at the turning of the seasons. At the full
moon the energy is most intense at noon and quiets down just before
sunset. At certain times, the energy reverses direction.

The largest such line found is called the E-line; this line circles
the globe and is 70 to 100 paces wide.

The path of the Dragon is not only an old knowledge, it also was
known throughout the ancient world. Old straight tracks, marked with
standing stones and stone circles, can be found all over the earth.

In Australia, the old straight paths of the serpent run across the
deserts, where the aborigines have divided the job of maintaining
the rock paintings made by their ancestors at points where the lines
cross.

Today, each tribe settled in an area takes care of its portion of
the lines of power, going out at the right season to repaint the
rocks and sing songs of the creation to release the power of the
serpent to fertilize the land.

Ayers rock, called Uluru by the aborigines, is the largest monolith
in Australia. Aborigines who oversee the rock consider it the center
of life in Australia and say that it marks the spot where two
serpents come together.

The absolutely straight roads of ancient Persia, which run for miles
across the land, as well as the straight paths connecting standing
stones in Ethiopia, are well known to modern day travelers. The
mystic Gurdjieff wrote that while traveling in Turkestan, the only
way he could navigate across the countryside was by following the
straight paths from standing stone to standing stone; he also states
that in ancient times, these stones were associated with the dragon.

Tales of the ancient paths turn up in old literature everywhere. For
example, in the Bible's 'Book of Samuel' we read how the Philistines
captured the Ark of the Covenant but decided to get rid of it after
a run of bad luck. They put it in a cart pulled by oxen and sent the
oxen off on their own. The oxen "took the straight way of Beth-
Shemesh... turned not right nor left,' and ended at a standing
stone.

In ancient Greece, the energy of Dragon Python, worshipped at Delphias the creator of the earth, connected all of the ancient holy sitesand was ruled over by the twins Castor and Pollux of the constellation Gemini -- ruled by Hermes (Mercury), who oversees bothenergy and paths.

Many myths of the ancient world reflect the "killing" of the Dragonor Serpent, which later became a symbol of newer religions supplanting the old. From the Babylonian Dragon Tiamat (the first creator) being killed by her children, to Apollo killing the DragonPython (father of the earth) to the relatively modern St. Patrick driving the serpents out of Ireland (there never were any snakes there), the old knowledge remains embedded in myth, symbolism and tradition.

quantum p1
15:54:48 - Jul 19 2006
Times Read: 14

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Broadly speaking, there are two alternative ways to introduce non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Most physics students and instructors are familiar with the approach centered on the mathematically complex Schrödinger equation. But more than fifty years ago Richard P. Feynman showed us an easier and more fundamental way.
Quantum Mechanics is remarkable for two seemingly contradictory reasons. On the one hand, it is so fundamental to our understanding of the workings of our world that it lies at the very heart of most of the technological advances made in the past half century.
On the other hand, no one seems to know exactly what it means!
If only people knew how frustratingly and yet wonderfully un-mundane the quantum world really is, how our familiar and solid reality ultimately rests so tenuously on the unfathomable ghostly reality beneath. No need any longer for tales of Bermuda Triangle or poltergeist activities; quantum phenomena are much stranger.
I must make it clear from the outset that it is not the theory of Quantum Mechanics that is weird or illogical. On the contrary, it is a beautifully accurate and logical mathematical construction that describes Nature superbly well. In fact, without Quantum Mechanics we would not be able to understand the basics of modern chemistry, or electronics, or material science.

Jim Al-Khalili

The year is 1900.

There are problems with some experiments in physics. Scientists are not able to explain Blackbody Radiation. Their inability to find a physical interpretation results in the
Ultraviolet Catastrophe!

Max Planck is forced to create the quantum.

Light is made of small Particles! Max Planck does not like this idea.

1) Einstein's photoelectric theory is based on the fact that electrons are ejected from a metal surface with an energy proportional to the frequency of the incident wave.
2) Maxwell's electromagetic theory states that the intensity (amplitude) of the wave is proportional to the energy. These are quite different ideas.
3) According to Planck, the energy of the light quantum is given by E=hv, and so the kinetic energy of the ejected electron is expected to increase with increasing frequency. Increasing the intensity of the incident radiation increases the number of light quanta on the surface, increasing the number, but not the kinetic energies, of the ejected electrons.
4) The fact that increasing the intensity (energy) substanially will not release any electrons at all, unless the frequency of the wave is above the work function is quite problematic for the classical wave theory of light.
5) Photoelectrons are emitted from the surface almost instantaneously, even at low intensities. Classically, we expect the photoelectrons to require some time to absorb the incident radiation before they acquire enough kinetic energy to escape from the metal.

The Photoelectric Effect is demonstrated in a Digital Camera. A charged-coupled device replaces the age-old film camera. Incident photons of visible light strike the silicon pixel and generate electrons via the photoelectric effect. One electron is released from the silicon for every photon striking it. The electrons are trapped within the pixel because of a positive voltage applied to the electrodes. The number of electrons that are trapped is proportional to the number of photons striking the pixel. Each pixel in the CCD array accumulates an accurate representation of the light intensity at that point in the picture.

The Failure of Classical Physics
Bohr saw quantum mechanics as a generalization of classical physics although it violates some of the basic ontological principles on which classical physics rests. These principles are:

1) The principle of space and time, i.e., physical objects (systems) exist separately in space and time in such a way that they are localizable and countable, and physical processes (the evolution of systems) take place in space and time. Gone

2) The principle of causality, i.e., every event has a cause. Gone

3) The principle of determination, i.e., every later state of a system is uniquely determined by any earlier state. Gone

4) The principle of continuity, i.e., all processes exhibiting a difference between the initial and the final state have to go through every intervening state. Gone

5) The principle of the conservation of energy, i.e., the energy of a closed system can be transformed into various forms but is never gained, lost or destroyed. Gone

Quantum Physics-vs-Classical Physics
While the predictions of classical mechanics are very accurate for heavy or energetic objects, like planets or baseballs, they disagree with experimental results for atoms and molecules. Instead, a different set of rules for predicting the dynamics of particles, quantum mechanics, is successful at describing atomic and molecular behavior.

The nature of motion predicted by quantum mechanics is very different from our ordinary experience. At first you will have trouble accepting that the motion of electrons could be so much different than the motion of much heavier objects like baseballs.

Moreover, quantum mechanics does not predict precise trajectories. In fact, knowing the precise position of a particle is generally impossible in quantum mechanics. Instead, quantum mechanics only predicts the relative likelihood that a particle will be found in a variety of locations -- much different from classical mechanics! Despite these differences, the predictions of quantum mechanics coincide with those of classical mechanics for heavy particles, even though they are quite difference for electrons.

Quantum Mechanics divides the world into two parts, commonly called the [system and the observer]. Except at specified times the system and the observer do not interact. An interaction at those specified times is called a measurement. Quantum Mechanics predicts all the information that the observer can possibly obtain about the system. This information can be represented in different ways. It is often represented in terms of a wave function. A measurement changes the information an observer has about the system and therefore changes the wave function of the system.

In quantum theory, all events are possible (because the initial state of the system is indeterminate), but some are more likely than others. While the quantum physicist can say very little about the likelihood of any single event's happening, quantum physics works as a science that can make predictions because patterns of probability emerge in large numbers of events. It is more likely that some events will happen than others, and over an average of many events, a given pattern of outcome is predictable. Thus, to make their science work for them, quantum physicists assign a probability to each of the possibilities represented in the wave function.

The Uncertainty Principle

The position and momentum of a particle cannot be simultaneously measured with arbitrarily high precision. There is a minimum for the product of the uncertainties of these two measurements. There is likewise a minimum for the product of the uncertainties of the energy and time.

This is not a statement about the inaccuracy of measurement instruments, nor a reflection on the quality of experimental methods; it arises from the wave properties inherent in the quantum mechanical description of nature. Even with perfect instruments and technique, the uncertainty is inherent in the nature of things.
Uncertainty Principle

Important steps on the way to understanding the uncertainty principle are wave-particle duality and the DeBroglie hypothesis. As you proceed downward in size to atomic dimensions, it is no longer valid to consider a particle like a hard sphere, because the smaller the dimension, the more wave-like it becomes. It no longer makes sense to say that you have precisely determined both the position and momentum of such a particle.

Confinement calculation

The observer becomes part of the observed system.
The notion of the observer becoming a part of the observed system is fundamentally new in physics. In quantum physics, the observer is no longer external and neutral, but through the act of measurement he becomes himself a part of observed reality. This marks the end of the neutrality of the experimenter. It also has huge implications on the epistemology of science: certain facts are no longer objectifiable in quantum theory. If in an exact science, such as physics, the outcome of an experiment depends on the view of the observer, then what does this imply for other fields of human knowledge? It would seem that in any faculty of science, there are different interpretations of the same phenomena. More often than occasionally, these interpretations are in conflict with each other. Does this mean that ultimate truth is unknowable?

The Principle of Causality

The concept of causality, determinism. All certainty in our relationships with the world rests on acknowledgement of causality. Causality is a genetic connection of phenomena through which one thing (the cause) under certain conditions gives rise to, causes something else (the effect). The essence of causality is the generation and determination of one phenomenon by another. In this respect causality differs from various other kinds of connection, for example, the simple temporal sequence of phenomena, of the regularities of accompanying processes. For example, a pinprick causes pain. Brain damage causes mental illness. Causality is an active relationship, a relationship which brings to life some thing new, which turns possibility into actuality. A cause is an active and primary thing in relation to the effect. But "after this" does not always mean "because of this". It would be a parody of justice if we were to say that where there is punishment there must have been a crime.

Causality is universal. Nowhere in the world can there be any phenomena that do not give rise to certain consequences and have not been caused by other phenomena. Ours is a world of cause and effect or, figuratively speaking, of progenitors and their progeny. Whenever we seek to retrace the steps of cause and effect and find the first cause, it disappears into the infinite distances of universal interaction. But the concept of cause is not confined to interaction. Causality is only a part of universal connection. The universality of causality is often denied on the grounds of the limited nature of human experience, which prevents us from judging the character of connections beyond what is known to science and practice. And yet we know that no scientist restricts his reasoning to what he can immediately perceive. The whole history of humanity, of all scientific experiment knows no exception to the principle of determinism.

The connection between cause and effect takes place in time. This temporary relation may be defined in various ways. Some people believe that cause always precedes effect, that there is a certain interval between the time when the cause begins to act (for example, the interaction of two systems) and the time the effect appears. For a certain time cause and effect coexist, then the cause dies out and the consequence ultimately becomes the cause of something else. And so on to infinity.

Other thinkers believe that these intervals partially overlap. It is also maintained that cause and effect are always strictly simultaneous. Still others maintain that it is pointless to speak of a cause already existing and therefore taking effect while the effect has not yet entered the sphere of existence. How can there be a "non-effective cause"?

The concepts of "cause" and "effect" are used both for defining simultaneous events, events that are contiguous in time, and events whose effect is born with the cause. In addition, cause and effect are sometimes qualified as phenomena divided by a time interval and connected by means of several intermediate links. For example, a solar flare causes magnetic storms on Earth and a consequent temporary interruption of radio communication. The mediate connection between cause and effect may be expressed in the formula: if A is the cause of B and B is the cause of C, then A may also be regarded as the cause of C. Though it may change, the cause of a phenomenon survives in its result. An effect may have several causes, some of which are necessary and others accidental.

An important feature of causality is the continuity of the cause-effect connection. The chain of causal connections has neither beginning nor end. It is never broken, it extends eternally from one link to another. And no one can say where this chain began or where it ends. It is as infinite as the universe itself. There can be neither any first (that is to say, causeless) cause nor any final (i.e., inconsequential) effect. If we were to admit the existence of a first cause we should break the law of the conservation of matter and motion. And any attempt to find an "absolutely first" or "absolutely final" cause is a futile occupation, which psychologically assumes a belief in miracles.

The internal mechanism of causality is associated with the transference of matter, motion and information.

Effect spreads its "tentacles" not only forwards (as a new cause giving rise to a new effect) but also backwards, to the cause which gave rise to it, thus modifying, exhausting or intensifying its force. This interaction of cause and effect is known as the principle of feedback. It operates everywhere, particularly in all self-organising systems where perception, storing, processing and use of information take place, as for example, in the organism, in a cybernetic device, and in society. The stability, control and progress of a system are inconceivable without feedback.

Any effect is evoked by the interaction of at least two phenomena. Therefore the interaction phenomenon is the true cause of the effect phenomenon. In other words, the effect phenomenon is determined by the nature and state of both interacting elements. A word conveying tragically bad news may cause a condition of stress in a sensitive person, whereas it will bounce off an insensitive or phlegmatic individual like "water off a duck's back", leaving only a slight emotional trace. The cause of stress in this case was not the word itself but its information-bearing impact on vulnerable personality.

The cause-effect connection can be conceived as a one-way, one-directional action only in the simplest and most limited cases. The idea of causality as the influence of one thing on another is applied in fields of knowledge where it is possible and necessary to ignore feedback and actually measure the quantitative effect achieved by the cause. Such a situation is mostly characteristic of mechanical causality. For example, the cause of a stone falling to the ground is mutual gravitation, which obeys the law of universal gravitation, and the actual fall of the stone to the ground results from gravitational interaction. However, since the mass of the stone is infinitely small compared with the mass of the earth, one can ignore the stone's effect on the earth. So ultimately we come to the notion of a one-way effect with only one body (the earth) operating as the active element, while the other (the stone) is passive. In most cases, however, such an approach does not work because things are not inert, but charged with internal activity. Therefore, in experiencing effect they in their turn act on their cause and the resulting action is not one-way but an interaction.

In complex cases one cannot ignore the feedback of the vehicle of the action on other interacting bodies. For example, in the chemical interaction of two substances it is impossible to separate the active and passive sides. This is even more true of the transformation of elementary particles. Thus the formation of molecules of water cannot be conceived as the result of a one-way effect of oxygen on hydrogen or vice versa. It results from the interaction of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Mental processes are also a result of the interaction of the environment and the cortex.

To sum up, all processes in the world are evoked not by a one-way or one-sided action but are based on the relationship of at least two interacting objects.

Just as various paths may lead to one and the same place, so various causes lead to one and the same effect. And one and the same cause may have different consequences. A cause does not always operate in the same way, because its result depends not only on its own essence but also on the character of the phenomenon it influences. Thus, the heat of the sun dries out canvas, evokes extremely complex processes of biosynthesis in plants, etc. Intense heat melts wax but tempers steel. At the same time an effect in the form of heat may be the result of various causes: sun rays, friction, a mechanical blow, chemical reaction, electricity, disintegration of an atom, and so on. He would be a bad doctor who did not know that the same diseases may be due to different causes. Headache, for instance, has more than one hundred.

The rule of only one cause for one effect holds good only in elementary cases with causes and effects that cannot be further analysed. In real life there are no phenomena that have only one cause and have not been affected by secondary causes. Otherwise we should be living in a world of pure necessity, ruled by destiny alone.

To understand the cause that engenders a change in the state of an object we should, strictly speaking, analyse the interaction of the object with all other objects surrounding it. But experience shows that not all these interactions are equally significant in changing the state of the object. Some are decisive while others are insignificant. So, in practice, we are able to single out a finite number of decisive interactions and distinguish them from those that are secondary.

In the sciences, particularly the natural sciences, one distinguishes general from specific causes, the main from the secondary, the internal from the external, the material from the spiritual, and the immediate from the mediate, with varying numbers of intervening stages. The general cause is the sum-total of all the events leading up to a certain effect. It is a kind of knot of events with some very tangled threads that stretch far back or forward in space and time. The establishing of a general cause is possible only in very simple events with a relatively small number of elements. Investigation usually aims at revealing the specific causes of an event.

The specific cause is the sum-total of the circumstances whose interaction gives rise to a certain effect. Moreover, specific causes evoke an effect in the presence of many other circumstances that have existed in the given situation even before the effect occurs. These circumstances constitute the conditions for the operation of the cause. The specific cause is made up of those elements of the general cause that are most significant in the given situation. Its other elements are only conditions. Sometimes an event is caused by several circumstances, each of which is necessary but insufficient to bring about the phenomenon in question.

Sometimes we can clearly perceive the phenomenon that gives rise to this or that effect. But more often than not a virtually infinite number of interlocking causes give rise to the consequences we are concerned with. In such cases we have to single out the main cause—the one which plays the decisive role in the whole set of circumstances.

Objective causes operate independently of people's will and consciousness. Subjective causes are rooted in psychological factors, in consciousness, in the actions of man or a social group, in their determination, organisation, experience, know ledge, and so on.

Immediate causes should be distinguished from mediate causes, that is to say, those that evoke and determine an effect through a number of intervening stages. For example, a person gets badly hurt psychologically, but the damage does not take effect at once. Several years may elapse and then in certain circumstances, among which the person's condition at the time has a certain significance, the effect begins to make itself felt in the symptoms of illness. When analysing causality we sometimes speak of a "minor" cause giving rise to major effects. This so-called "minor cause of a major effect" is the cause not of the whole long and ramified chain of phenomena that produces the final result, but only the cause of the first link in the chain. Sometimes the "minor cause" is merely a factor that starts up quite different causal factors. These are "triggering" factors, factors relating to the initial stage of avalanche processes and to a whole system's loss of labile equilibrium.

Any phenomenon depends on a definite diversity of conditions to bring it into existence. While it is only one of the circumstances conducive to a certain effect, the cause is the most active and effective element in this process, it is an interaction that converts necessary and sufficient conditions into a result. We sometimes treat the absence of something as a cause. For example, some illnesses are attributed to lack of resistance in an organism or a lack of vitamins. However, absence should not be regarded as a cause but merely as a condition for disease. For a cause to actually take effect there must be certain conditions, that is to say, phenomena essential for the occurrence of the given event but not in themselves causing it. Conditions cannot in themselves give rise to the effect, but the cause is also powerless without them. No cause can give rise to illness if the organism is not susceptible to it. We know that when a person's organism is infected with certain microbes he may fall ill or he may not. The way a cause takes effect and the nature of the consequence depend on the character of the conditions. Sometimes there is only one direct and immediate cause of death or injury—a bullet. But more often the causes and conditions are intricately combined, some of them being only secondary circumstances.

When discussing the relationship of cause and condition one must remember that the term "condition" is used in two senses, the narrow and the broad. Apart from what we mean by condition in the narrow sense, conditions in the broad sense comprise such factors as "background" and "environment" and various factors of a causal nature. But there is no strict and consistent dividing line between the two basic senses of the term, just as there is no dividing line between condition and cause. This fact often leads to an incorrect use of the two terms and to wrong definition of the various conditioning factors. Avoidance of incorrect usage is made all the more difficult by the overlapping of the accepted meanings of the two terms "cause" and "condition" and also the term "foundation".

Science is gradually evolving special concepts relating to the categories of "foundation", "condition" and "cause", which, when used together with these categories, make it possible to define genetic links more exactly.

In various fields of knowledge the problem of the relationship between cause and condition is solved in different ways, depending mainly on the complexity of the relationships that are being studied, their uniformity or, on the contrary, the distinctness and comparative importance of separate factors. But the degree of abstraction usually employed in the given science also affects the treatment of this question. So the meaning of the cause and condition categories in the system of concepts of various sciences may also differ considerably. One could scarcely apply the relation of cause and condition that is revealed in studying, for example, physical phenomena, to physiological processes, or vice versa.

Every phenomenon is related to other phenomena by connections of more than one value. It is the result both of certain conditions and certain basic factors that act as its cause. That is why the cause-effect connection has to be artificially isolated from the rest of conditions so that we can see this connection in its "pure form". But this is achieved only by abstraction. In reality we cannot isolate this connection from the whole set of conditions. There is always a closely interwoven mass of extremely diverse secondary conditions, which leave their mark on the form in which the general connection emerges. This means that there can never be two exactly identical phenomena, even if they are generated by the same causes. They have always developed in empirically different conditions. So there can be no absolute identity in the world.

One and the same cause operating in similar conditions gives rise to similar effects. When we change the conditions we may also change the way the cause operates and the character of the effect. But this principle becomes far more complex when it is applied to such unique events as those of geology and social science. While stressing the close connection between cause and condition, we should never confuse the two. The dividing line between them is mobile but significant.

By creating new conditions we can even preclude the earlier possible causes of a certain event, that is, we can "veto" the manifestation of one cause and allow free play to another. This explains the fact that by no means every cause unfailingly produces the expected effect.

A distinction should be made between cause and occasion, that is to say, the external push or circumstance that sets in motion a train of underlying interconnections. For instance, a head cold may be the occasion for the onset of various diseases. One should never exaggerate the significance of occasions, they are not the cause of events. Nor should one underestimate them because they are a kind of triggering mechanism.

One way of discovering causal connections is to study functional connections. The causes of illness may be revealed by uncovering certain breakdowns in the functioning of the organism. A functional connection is a dependence of phenomena in which a change in one phenomenon is accompanied by a change in another. Whereas, for example, a sociologist may be interested in population growth over a period of time and a physicist may be investigating changes in gas pressure in relation to changes of temperature, a mathematician sees here only a functional dependence of X on Y.

The functional approach is particularly useful when we are studying processes whose intrinsic causal mechanism is unknown to us. But when we wish to explain a phenomenon we have to ask what caused it.

The concept of cause is identical not to the general concept of regularity but to the concept of causal regularity, which expresses the fact that a regular sequence of phenomena and conditions always takes the form of realisation of causal connections.

In science the deterministic approach seeks to explain a process as being determined by certain causes and therefore predictable. Thus determinism is not a mere synonym for causality. It involves the recognition of objective necessity, which in turn implies objective accidentality. Hence there is a close connection between the category of determinism and that of probability. The relationship between determinism and probability is one of the crucial philosophical problems of modern science. In quantum mechanics it is associated with the indeterminacy relation, and in living nature with that of cause and aim. Determinism should not be contrasted to probability. There is no special "probabilistic causality". But there do exist probability, statistical laws, which are one of the forms of manifestation of determinism.

Determinism proceeds from recognition of the diversity of causal connections, depending on the character of the regularities operating in a given sphere. Every level of the structural organisation of being has its own specific form of interaction of things, including its specific causal relation ships. Higher forms of causal relationships should never be reduced to lower forms. From a methodological point of view it is essential to take into account the qualitative peculiarities and level of the structural organisation of being.

The dialectical approach is incompatible with mechanistic determinism, which interprets all the diversity of causes only as mechanical interaction, ignoring the unique qualities of the regularities of various forms of the motion of matter. Determinism was given its classical expression by Laplace, who formulated it as follows: if a mind could exist that knew at any given moment about all the forces of nature and the points of application of those forces, there would be nothing of which it was uncertain and both future and past would be revealed to its mental vision.

Mechanistic determinism identifies cause with necessity and accident is completely ruled out. Such determinism leads to fatalism, to faith in an overruling destiny. The development of science has gradually ousted mechanistic determinism from the study of social life, organic nature, and the sphere of physics. It is applicable only in certain engineering calculations involving machines, bridges and other structures. But this kind of determinism cannot explain biological phenomena, mental activity, or the life of society.

The character of causality is conditioned by the levels of the structural organisation of matter. In nature causality manifests itself in a different way from its manifestation in society. And in human behaviour causality emerges in the form of motivation. In nature determination acts in only one direction, from the present, which is a result of the past, to the future. Because of people's knowledge of the world, human activity is determined not only by present things but also by things, objects, events that are absent, not only by what surrounds man but also by that which may be far away from him in time and space, not only by the present and the past, but also by the future, which is viewed as an aim and becomes a motivation for men's activity. Determination may thus have a two-way direction. Knowledge introduces the future into the determining principle of the present.

The animal's active relationship with the environment is associated with a new type of determination: the conditioning of its behaviour by the task with which it is confronted. For example, birds build their nests in order to breed their young and protect them.

The principle of determinism involves recognition of the objectivity, the universality of causal connections and has always played a vastly important methodological and heuristic role in scientific cognition. The primary assumption for any scientific research has always been that all events of the natural and intellectual world obey a firm regular connection, known as the law of causality. Any field of knowledge would cease to be scientific if it abandoned the principle of causality.

Causality and purpose. When observing the astonishing adaptation and "rational" organisation of plants and animals, or the "harmony" of the celestial spheres, people even in ancient times asked themselves where this harmonious organisation of all that exists had come from. Thinkers have proceeded from various principles in trying to explain this phenomenon. The teleologists assume that there is an underlying purpose in everything, that at bottom nature has some intrinsic expectation and intention and is full of hidden meaning.

The idea of teleology arises when a spontaneously operating cause comes to be regarded as a consciously acting cause, and even one that acts in a predetermined direction, that is to say, a goal-oriented cause. This implies that the ultimate cause or aim is the future, which determines the process taking place in the present. The doctrine that the universe as a whole is proceeding according to a certain plan cannot be proved empirically. The existence of an ultimate goal assumes that someone must have put it. Teleology therefore leads to theology. Instead of giving a causal explanation of why this or that phenomenon occurred in nature, teleology asks for what purpose it occurred. And to prove his case the teleologist usually refers to the purposeful structure of organisms in nature. One has only to observe the structure of the wing of a butterfly, the behaviour of an ant, a mole, a fish, in order to realise how purposefully everything is constructed. The crudest form of teleology is the claim that nature provides some living creatures for the sake of others, for example, cats are provided in order to eat mice and mice are there to provide food for cats. The goal of the whole process of evolution of the animal world is man and all the other animals were created to make things comfortable for man.

Heinrich Heine tells the story of the contented bourgeois with a "foolishly knowing" face who tried to teach him the principles of such teleology. He drew my attention, says Heine, "to the purpose and usefulness of everything in nature. The trees were green because the green colour was good for the eyes. I agreed with him and added that God had created cattle because beef tea was good for man's health, that He had created the donkey so that people could make comparisons, and that He had created man himself so that man could eat beef tea and not be a donkey. My companion was delighted at finding a fellow thinker in me, he beamed with joy and was quite sorry to leave me."[1]

Heine took the humorous view, but the scientific argument against teleology in nature was provided by Darwin, who not only struck a blow at teleology in the natural sciences but also gave an empirical explanation of its rational meaning. Teleology feeds on the belief that everything revolves around us and has us in mind. Instead of giving a causal explanation why this or that natural phenomenon occurred, teleology offers conjectures about the purpose served by its appearance. But can one ask nature, as though it were a rational being, why it created such a strange world of forms and colours? Can one accuse it of malicious intent when it produces ugliness? Nature is indifferent, it does not care whether it creates a lion or a fly. The relative perfection that allows its creatures to orient themselves in the environment, the adaptation to conditions and the adequacy of their reactions to external stimuli, which is found in all animals and plants, are real facts. The structure, for example, of the stem of a plant can serve as a model for an architect who sets himself the task of designing the strongest possible structure with the smallest quantity of materials and the greatest economy in weight. Spinoza, who provided a splendid criticism of teleology in his day, did not deny purpose in the structure of the human body. He urged us not to gape at it "like a fool" but to seek the true causes of the miracles and consider natural things with the eyes of a scientist. This was exactly what Darwin did, and he revealed the natural mechanism of this amazing adaptiveness of the organism to the conditions of its existence. His theories on natural selection showed that delightful blossoms exist not to please our aesthetic feelings or to demonstrate the refinement of the Almighty's taste, but to satisfy the extremely earthly needs of vegetable organisms, i.e., the normal process of pollination and perpetuation of the species.

Changes in the world of animals and plants come about through interaction with their conditions of life. If these changes benefit the organism, that is to say, help it to adapt to the environment and survive, they are preserved by natural selection, become established by heredity and are passed on from generation to generation, thus building up the purposeful structure of organisms, the adaptiveness to the environment that strike our imagination so forcibly. Brightly coloured flowers attract the insects by means of which pollination takes place. The beautiful plumage of male birds was developed by means of sexual selection. But adaptation is never absolute. It always has a relative character and turns into its opposite when a radical change in conditions occurs, as can be seen, for example, from the existence of rudimentary organs.

To sum up, then, what we have is selection without a selector, self-operating, blind and ruthless, working tirelessly and ceaselessly for countless centuries, choosing vivid external forms and colours and the minutest details of internal structure, but only on one condition, that all these changes should benefit the organism. The cause of the perfection of the organic world is natural selection! Time and death are the regulators of its harmony.

Quantum Mechanics: 1925-1927
Implications of Uncertainty

I believe that the existence of the classical "path" can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it.

--Heisenberg, in uncertainty principle paper, 1927

Many people sought deeper meanings in Heisenberg's discovery, feeling that it cast doubt on knowledge itself. Others held that outside the realm of atomic measurements, human understanding remained as certain (or doubtful) as ever.

Cartoon by John Richardson
for Physics World, March 1998

Heisenberg realized that the uncertainty relations had profound implications. First, if we accept Heisenberg's argument that every concept has a meaning only in terms of the experiments used to measure it, we must agree that things that cannot be measured really have no meaning in physics. Thus, for instance, the path of a particle has no meaning beyond the precision with which it is observed. But a basic assumption of physics since Newton has been that a "real world" exists independently of us, regardless of whether or not we observe it. (This assumption did not go unchallenged, however, by some philsophers.) Heisenberg now argued that such concepts as orbits of electrons do not exist in nature unless and until we observe them.

There were also far-reaching implications for the concept of causality and the determinacy of past and future events. These are discussed on the page about the origins of uncertainty. Because the uncertainty relations are more than just mathematical relations, but have profound scientific and philosophical implications, physicists sometimes speak of the "uncertainty principle."

In the sharp formulation of the law of causality-- "if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future"-it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.

--Heisenberg, in uncertainty principle paper, 1927

Heisenberg also drew profound implications for the concept of causality, or the determinacy of future events. Schrödinger had earlier attempted to offer an interpretation of his formalism in which the electron waves represent the density of charge of the electron in the orbit around the nucleus. Max Born, however, showed that the "wave function" of Schrödinger's equation does not represent the density of charge or matter. It describes only the probability of finding the electron at a certain point. In other words, quantum mechanics cannot give exact results, but only the probabilities for the occurrence of a variety of possible results.

Heisenberg took this one step further: he challenged the notion of simple causality in nature, that every determinate cause in nature is followed by the resulting effect. Translated into "classical physics," this had meant that the future motion of a particle could be exactly predicted, or "determined," from a knowledge of its present position and momentum and all of the forces acting upon it. The uncertainty principle denies this, Heisenberg declared, because one cannot know the precise position and momentum of a particle at a given instant, so its future cannot be determined. One cannot calculate the precise future motion of a particle, but only a range of possibilities for the future motion of the particle. (However, the probabilities of each motion, and the distribution of many particles following these motions, could be calculated exactly from Schrödinger's wave equation.)

What Good Is It? Click here for the practical value of quantum uncertainty.

Although Einstein and others objected to Heisenberg's and Bohr's views, even Einstein had to admit that they are indeed a logical consequence of quantum mechanics. For Einstein, this showed that quantum mechanics is "incomplete." Research has continued to the present on these and proposed alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics.

One should note that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not say "everything is uncertain." Rather, it tells us very exactly where the limits of uncertainty lie when we make measurements of sub-atomic events.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle constituted an essential component of the broader interpretation of quantum mechanics known as the Copenhagen Interpretation.

buddhist alchemy
16:49:15 - Jul 14 2006
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http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/library/alchemy/
Has information on alchemy. The next piece is the buddhist philosphy on alchemy practices and the illusions of reality.

BUDDHIST RASAYANA
Suffering is complete ignorance is knowledge
and
Wisdom shines internally eternally
Sit and be still Be and be still
in silence hear the Unsung Song
For the Dharma shows how the inside is outside
and the outside in

Once upon a NOW
A royal person became holy and learnt to sing
The song of the BUDDHA is ever heard
It is as the laughter of children
and the beauty of a wisdom too sacred to worship
For the Buddha sings from the heart of knowledge
and the song is heard in the silence of meditation
For in the Song of the Hear

We are the thoughts and being
of our experience

So let the Light of Truth be our goal
The Song of Compassion our desire made manifest

The Joy of Giving our action made pure
Let the eight fold path be our life and the expression
of our hearts traveling

That which is right - do
That which needs correcting - correct
If you need to know - find instruction
When you know - express
When there is need - help

Be courteous, be kind

Let all the precepts be your guards
but not your guardians

For this following is through CHOICE
The goal of Buddhism is enlightenment
In this is freedom and naturalness
This goal is achievable in this moment
from this moment
Realise
when the Buddha looked around he saw
that everyone was enlightened
Why do you cover your nature?
You are the pure Bodhi Mind
SING

Have confidence in your own spiritual potentiality, your ability to find your own unique way. Learn from others certainly, and use what you find useful, but also learn to trust your own inner wisdom. Have courage. Be awake and aware. Remember too that Buddhism is not about being Buddhist; that is, obtaining a new identity tag. Nor is it about collecting head-knowledge, practices and techniques. It is ultimately about letting go of all forms and concepts and becoming free.
John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism

Just as in Western Alchemy
the esoteric tradition was embodied into points of spiritual focus and building.

The Stupa or Chorten

Nothing come to beings -- nor does anything disappear. Nothing is eternal -- nor has anything an end. Nothing is identical -- nor is anything differentiated. Nothing moves here -- nor does anything move there.
Nagarjuna

15 SILENCE

All words have meaning when so invested. Do not mistake the vessel for the contents. It is wisdom that should be respected. As all contains wisdom, why any imbalance?
The heart that is silent may hear. Truth is that which includes its own opposite. I was not and therefore I thought. Form can exist in emptiness but the void does not exist. The dissolution of form into nothing continues as something causes its own effect from the void.
This cosmic breath is independent of time. There is no first emptiness. The next emptiness will be the only emptiness, the first, last and eternal. It will be the only one. It will not contain past, present or future.
Existence comes from its absence. Something does exist. The emptiness of nothing is unaltered by containing something. We can not limit infinity by infinitely extending our limitations.
Remove the emptiness of the empty vessel. At the beginning end the adding of everything. Remove each part to add. Kill the undead to birth the already dead. The dragon regurgitates as he consumes.
We will make what we worship. You may only proceed by failure. Our vessel is rounded. It is empty, yet contains. It is perfect in speculative form. All limbs must be intact and healthy. The blind alchemist may see more. Those without legs may travel further. We worship the world as if god until this is true.
The whole of Our Art is in each part. In attaining perfection we have become imperfect. In each consumption the dragon is reborn. The highest substance is brought to the lowest process. Our process has made light from darkness and returned to the source which is darkness.
Alchemy is a lie but not untrue. By splitting it has made whole, by combining; separated. It will not be resolved by death and understood by incomprehension. We have reveiled nothing by revealing all. Attention concentrated is the first distiling of wisdom.
Will you begin by taking the last step and finish with the first. Through profound wisdom we reveal our ignorance. The reflection below is as empty above. Reality is a fantasy and alchemy the truth.

FAllen angels and fey
23:06:09 - Jul 11 2006
Times Read: 17

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FALLEN ANGELS

Look at Information on:
Introduction
Watchers
Nephillim
Fairies
Fate of Fallen Angels
Evil

INTRODUCTION
There are two definitions of fallen angels:

(1) An angel who has lost God's favour because of disobedience.
(2) An angel who opposed God and is a follower of Satan the Devil.

Some refer to these fallen angels as Demons, although the actual definition of what a demon covers more than just, fallen angels, and some distinguish the two terms entirely.

Some of them fell from grace when they chose to come to earth and have sexual relations with women. The Book 1 if Enoch and the Book of Genesis both tell stories of angels who forsook their places in Heaven to come to the earth to take wives for themselves from amongst the daughters of men. (See Watchers).

Other angels fell when they rebelled against God and followed Satan. Satan and one-third of the angels were thrown out of Heaven and cast down to Earth.

An interesting excerpt from Arnold Fruchtenbaum's radio series on the subject of demons, information for which can be found at "www-ariel.org/ff00082c.html" states that some of Satan's fallen angels (based on the concept that fallen angels and demons are the same) married human women to try to corrupt the Seed of Woman in an attempt at thwarting the messianic prophecy of Genesis 3:15. These angels and other demons who were initially free are now permanently confined in Tartarus (a section of Sheol or Hades). Other demons are temporarily confined to the Abyss (another section of Sheol or Hades) before they are released to roam free again. In the Book of Revelation the abyss "the bottomless pit" is where the archangel Michael will lock Satan away for a thousand years. Revelation 20:1-3 tells "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the abyss and a heavy chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent - that is, the Devil, or Satan - and chained him up for a thousand years. The angel threw him into the abyss, locked it, and sealed it, so that he could not deceive the nations anymore."

In Islam, demons are called Shaitans, and are sometimes referred to as black angels. Some of the angels became resistant to the position of mankind, so Allah sent Harut and Marut as tutelary spirits to Earth in themselves. As a result of this they were cast out forever from Heaven to join other Fallen Angels, such as Iblis and undertook to initial humans into the black arts.

In the Hebrew tradition, the Fallen Angels were identified as demons and devils in Satan's entourage of Hell and were responsible for inflicting misery and suffering on humans in the form of disease, conflict, and disasters. Their character and activities are traceable to the ancient patheism of surrounding nations, especially to such as Lilith and Canaanite deities known as Shedim.

The fallen angels are said to dwell in the lower realms, near the vicinity of the earth. The Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum in the thirteenth century predicted the number of fallen angels to be at 133,306,668. (Back to Top)

WATCHERS
An order of angels also called the Grigori. The Watchers were given the responsibility of being the teachers of humanity, also working with the archangels in creating Paradise.

They fell from grace when they were attracted to the women of earth and about twelve thousand years ago, two hundred of the Watchers left their positions in Heaven to come to the earth to have sexual relations with women.

Out of fear of God they made a pact amongst themselves that they would commit themselves to the act.

"And Semyaza, being their leader said unto them, `I fear that perhaps you will not consent that this deed should be done, and I alone will become [responsible] for this great sin.' But they all responded to him, `Let us all swear an oath and bind the deed.' Then they all swore together and bound one another by [the curse]." (Book of 1 Enoch 6:3-4)

They descended upon Mount Sinai (The mountain in the Old Testament where Moses first encountered the Angel of the Lord in a burning bush. It is also the place where Moses received the tablets that held the Ten Commandments from God) taking on fleshly bodies.

Genesis 6:2 says "When people begain to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose."

The Book of 1 Enoch 6:1-2 states, "In those days when all the children of man had multiplied, it happened that there were born unto them beautiful daughters. And the angels, the children of Heaven, saw them and desired them; and they said to one another, `Come, let us choose wives for ourselves from among the daughters of man and beget us children.'"

From their union with women, they produced children called the Nephillim who turned out to be evil giants.

It is because of the Nephilim that God sent out the deluge (the great downpour/flood) and according to one account, the Watchers shed their bodies and returned to the spiritual realm once the flood came.

The leaders of the Watchers who came to the earth were named Azaz'el (their chief), Arakeb, Rame'el, Tam'el, Ram'el, Dan'el, Ezeqel, Baraqiyal, Asel, Armaros, Batar'el, Anan'el, Zaqe'el, Sasomaspe'el, Kestar'el, Tur'el, Yamayol, and Arazyal.

The leader of the leaders was named Shemyaza.

While on earth the Watchers taught their wives many things. Much of this was knowledge forbidden to humans. The Book of 1 Enoch details much about this saying, "And they took wives unto themselves, and everyone chose one woman for himself, and they began to go unto them. And they taught them magical medicine, incantations, the cutting of roots, and taught them about plants. (l Enoch 7:1-2)

After their descent to earth the Watchers were never allowed to enter Heaven again.(Back to Top)

THE NEPHILLIM
The offspring of the group of angels known as Watchers (see above) who came to earth to have sexual relations with women. Their children, the Nephillim, became fierce, evil, giant mutants, who were hated by the people. They were said to have consumed so much food that the people grew tired of feeding them. They then began to eat birds, large and small animals, reptiles, fish, and they drank blood. They eventually turned on the people and began to eat them as well. In 1 Enoch, God referred to them as "evil spirits". The Book of Genesis 6:4 also speaks of Nephillim: "In those days, there were giants on the earth who were descendants of human women and the heavenly beings." The First Book Enoch 15:8 tells us, "But now the giants who are born from the [union of the ] spirits and the flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth." The Nephillim are also said to be responsible for the building of the Tower of Babel. Four hundred and nine thousand of them were destroyed during the great flood. Once their physical bodies were destroyed, their spiritual bodies continued to dwell on earth. They are thought to be some of the evil spirits that roam the earth. They are also called the Anakim. A variation of the name Nephillim is Nephilim. (Back to Top)

THE LITTLE PEOPLE/FAERIES AND ELVES
In one concept of Fallen Angels, the disgraced spirits, when they fell from Heaven, scattered into the provinces of the Earth - the air, the land, the waters, and the mountains - as well as into Hell.

Those that fell into the realms of earth became the Little People, the elves, the fairies, and other spirits who were too malicious for Heaven, but too good for Hell. The most malevolent of them fell as demons.

Little People constantly attests to remorse at their demise and desire for a soul in order to regain their place in Heaven. The demon traditions detail only the Fallen Angel's allegiance to Satan and their place in Hell, even when being moderately benevolent towards humans eg; Asmodee or Angel Oliver.

On the Isle of Man, the Manx Fairies were called the Adhene and known as Cloan ny moyrn, which means the Children of Pride/Ambition, because they were regarded as being Fallen Angels cast from Heaven but too good for Hell. They could be benevolent but were mostly mischievous in association with humans, taking babies or wives when they wished (parallels to the Watchers perhaps) although it was believed that their powers were not effective over any human on an errand of mercy.

Other views on fairies places them as small, beautiful, angelic beings with wings and supernatural powers belonging to the familiy of nature spirits and sometimes called "little angels". They are guardians of animals and vegetation.

In Persian mythology, the Peri are beautiful fairies residing in heaven. In Arabic lore, the jinn were considered a type of fairy - regarded as guardian angels who could grant wishes and who would protect their charges, portrayed in art as winged or un-winged. In Islam jinn are considered demons. (Back to Top)

THE FATE OF FALLEN ANGELS

Matthew 25:

"When the Son of man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory" (25:31)

He will say to those who are condemned:

"Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (25:41)

Two significant things can be obtained from this verse:

1."The everlasting fire" has already been prepared for the devil and his angels. Their future is fixed and certain. They run loose today, but at history's end God will condemn them to everlasting fire.

2. The everlasting fire is prepared for the devil and his angels. God did not design hell with human beings in mind. What God has had in mind from the beginning is made clear in Christ, who sacrificed Himself that we might be given eternal life (John 3:16)

God in Christ has done everything necessary to save human beings from suffering the fate. He determined for Satan and the fallen angels, those who chose to disregard God's revelation of Himself, who fail to respond to God's trust, have chosen to be independent from God, the very independence which Satan craved. Tragically, they have chosen Satan's fate - doom, for certain.(Back to Top)

THE TYPES OF EVIL

This section deviates slightly from the topic of angels, yet it is good background information in understanding some of the subject matter presented on this web site. For that reason it's included here.

Philosophers have traditionally identified three kinds of evil:

1.Moral Evil
Evil that occurs when an intelligent being knowingly and deliberately inflicts suffering upon another sentient being (excluding things such as a surgeon's inflicting necessary pain on a patient) This does not have to be physical pain, but suffering which involves a conscious knowledge, anticipation, and dread of pain without an understanding of any good reason why one should be hurt.

2.Natural Evil
Suffering resulting from processes of nature such as cancers and tornadoes. Some argue that natural processes should not really be called evil though.

3.Metaphysical Evil
An abstract concept. It is the necessary lack of perfection that exists in any created cosmos, since no cosmos can be perfect as God is perfect.

Evil also comes on different orders of magnitude.
Some are personal, such as when an individual murders a child.
Some is transpersonal, such as when a mob lynches a victim, or a government bombs a city.
There are no limits to transpersonal evil eg; nukes
There may also be transgeneric evil if there were intelligent and morally flawed beings existing on other planets.
Evil may extend beyond transgeneric to the cosmic, where the evil occuring in the world may be
the will of the Devil himself who conciously chooses to destroy and ruin the cosmos to the extend
that he is able. Inflicting suffering for the sake of suffering, doing evil for evil's sake.

The fallen angels fell because of some evils they performed many of this evil committed on a cosmic scale.

(Resource: The Prince of Darkness - radical evil and the power of good in history by Jeffery Burton Russell, published by Cornell University Press, 198 (Back to Top)

astrology 10/10
20:28:10 - Jul 07 2006
Times Read: 23

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The Swirling Storms of Saturn
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Storms larger than hurricanes continually dot the upper atmosphere of the planet Saturn. A view of many storms occurring simultaneously was captured in July by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. An image of unusually high detail was made possible at that time when Cassini isolated a very specific color of polarized infrared light. The numerous white and dark spots visible above are the swirling storm systems. On Saturn, storms like these typically last for months and have even been seen merging. Bands of clouds that circle the entire planet are also clearly visible. Saturn's complex and majestic ring system is seen both in the foreground and the background. The above image has been digitally shortened along the vertical.

Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
Credit: TRACE Project, NASA

Explanation: It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

Peculiar Arp 295
Credit: Arne Henden (US Naval Observatory, Flagstaff)
Image Processed by Al Kelly

Explanation: A spectacular bridge of stars and gas stretches for nearly 250,000 light-years and joins this famous peculiar pair of galaxies cataloged as Arp 295. The cosmic bridge between the galaxies and the long tail extending below and right of picture center are strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other in the past, allowing violent tides induced by mutual gravity to create the eye-catching plumes of stellar material. While such interactions are drawn out over billions of years, repeated close passages should ultimately result in the merger of this pair of galaxies into a larger single galaxy of stars. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galactic mergers are thought to be common, with Arp 295 representing an early stage of this inevitable process. The Arp 295 pair are the largest of a loose grouping of galaxies about 270 million light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius. This deep color image of the region was recorded in September using the USNO 1 meter telescope near Flagstaff, Arizona.

Dusty Environs of Eta Carinae
Credit: MSX, IPAC, NASA

Explanation: Eta Car is a massive star, but it's not as bright as it used to be. Now only easily visible in binoculars or a small telescope, Eta Carinae has a history of spectacular flaring and fading behavior. In fact, in April of 1843 Eta Car briefly became second only to Sirius as the brightest star in planet Earth's night sky, even though at a distance of about 7,500 light-years, it is about 800 times farther away. Surrounded by a complex and evolving nebula, Eta Carinae is seen near the center of this false-color infrared image, constructed using data from the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX). The MSX satellite mapped the galactic plane in 1996. In the picture, wispy, convoluted filaments are clouds of dust glowing at infrared wavelengths. Astronomers hypothesize that Eta Car itself will explode as a supernova in the next million years or so. Massive Eta Car has even been considered a candidate for a hypernova explosion and the potential source of a future gamma-ray burst.

The Center of Globular Cluster Omega Centauri
Credit: Adrienne Cool (SFSU) et al., Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), NASA

Explanation: What is left over after stars collide? To help answer this question, astronomers have been studying the center of the most massive ball of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. In the center of globular cluster Omega Centauri, stars are packed in 10,000 times more densely than near our Sun. Pictured above, the Hubble Space Telescope has resolved the very center of Omega Centauri into individual stars. Visible are many faint yellow-white stars that are smaller than our Sun, several yellow-orange stars that are Red Giants, and an occasional blue star. When two stars collide they likely either combine to form one more massive star, or they stick, forming a new binary star system. Close binary stars interact, sometimes emitting ultraviolet or X-ray light when gas falls from one star onto the surface of a compact companion such as a white dwarf or neutron star. Two such binaries have now been located in Omega Centauri's center. The star cluster lies about 15,000 light-years away and is visible toward the constellation of Centaurus.

The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens
Credit & Copyright: J. Rhoads (STScI) et al., WIYN, AURA, NOAO, NSF

Explanation: Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted from a background quasar. The gravitational field of the visible foreground galaxy breaks light from this distant quasar into four distinct images. The quasar must be properly aligned behind the center of a massive galaxy for a mirage like this to be evident. The general effect is known as gravitational lensing, and this specific case is known as the Einstein Cross. Stranger still, the images of the Einstein Cross vary in relative brightness, enhanced occasionally by the additional gravitational microlensing effect of specific stars in the foreground galaxy.

Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
Credit: Voyager 2, NASA

Explanation: One hundred and fifty three years ago, on October 10th, 1846, William Lassell was observing the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was attempting to confirm his observation, made just the previous week, that Neptune had a ring. But this time he discovered that Neptune had a satellite as well. Lassell soon proved that the ring was a product of his new telescope's distortion, but the satellite Triton remained. The above picture of Triton was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton: Voyager 2. Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain, a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune - but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!

Maria Mitchell Inspires a Generation
Credit and Copyright: Helen Wright

Explanation: "Do not look at stars as bright spots only - try to take in the vastness of the universe." October 1st was the 151st anniversary of the day Maria Mitchell swept the sky with her telescope and discovered the comet of 1847 (comet Mitchell 1847VI). Honored and recognized internationally for her discovery, Mitchell, who lived from 1818 to 1889, became one of the most famous American scientists of her day. Vassar College appointed Mitchell the first woman Professor of Astronomy and she remained the only woman ever elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences until 1943. Mitchell mentored a generation of scientists, and is fondly remembered for her ability to motivate. "We especially need imagination in science," Maria Mitchell said, "Question everything."

Mars Pathfinder Super Pan
Credit: USGS IMP Team, JPL, NASA

Explanation: Spectacular details of rover tracks, wind-driven soil, and textured rocks on the Martian surface fill this color mosaic. The view is north-northeast from the Sagan Memorial Station at the Pathfinder landing site on Mars. These images are just part of the "Super Panorama" - a detailed color and stereo imaging data set being compiled by Pathfinder's IMP camera. The data set will be used to derive detailed topographic maps of the landing site and to further explore the mineralogy of the martian rocks and soil. The forward rover deployment ramp and the rock named Barnacle Bill, appear in the foreground at the left while the larger Yogi rock is partly visible at the upper right. Criss-crossing tracks were made by the cruising Sojourner robot rover's spiked wheels. With three wheels on each side, the two foot long rover makes tracks about 1.5 feet apart.

Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
Credit: Voyager 2, NASA

Explanation: Today marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Triton. On October 10 1846, William Lassell was observing the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was attempting to confirm his observation, made just the previous week, that Neptune had a ring. But this time he discovered that Neptune had a satellite as well. Lassell soon proved the ring was product of his new telescope's distortion, but the satellite Triton remained. The above picture of Triton was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton: Voyager 2. Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain, a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune - but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!

Dione's Lagrange Moon Helene
Credit: NASA, Voyager 2
Explanation: Saturn's moon Helene is very unusual in that it circles Saturn near the orbit of a bigger moon: Dione. Helene is situated in what is called a "Lagrange point" of Dione - a place of stability created by Dione's gravity. Were Helene to stray slightly from its orbit 1/6 ahead of Dione, the larger moon's gravity would cause Helene to move back toward the Lagrange point. Many massive orbital bodies have stable Lagrange points, including the Earth and Moon. Helene was discovered from the ground by P. Laques & J. Lecacheux in 1980. The photograph above was taken by Voyager 2 as it passed Saturn in 1981. NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn is currently scheduled for launch in October 1997.

Bright Galaxy M81
Credit & Copyright: Giovanni Benintende

Explanation: Big and beautiful spiral galaxy M81 lies in the northern constellation Ursa Major. One of the brightest galaxies in planet Earth's sky, M81 is also home to the second brightest supernova seen in modern times. This superbly detailed view reveals M81's bright yellow nucleus, blue spiral arms, and sweeping cosmic dust lanes with a scale comparable to the Milky Way. Hinting at a disorderly past, a remarkable dust lane actually runs straight through the disk, below and right of the galactic center, contrary to M81's other prominent spiral features. The errant dust lane may be the lingering result of a close encounter between M81 and its smaller companion galaxy, M82. Scrutiny of variable stars in M81 (aka NGC 3031) has yielded one of the best determined distances for an external galaxy -- 11.8 million light-years.

M81 is one of the easiest and most rewarding galaxies to observe for the amateur astronomer on the northern hemisphere, because with its total visual brightness of about 6.8 magnitudes it can be found with small instruments. Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory reports that he could see M81 with the unaided naked eye under exceptionally good viewing conditions (i.e., clear dark skies), and is at least the fourth observer who reported to have done so !

The pronounced grand-design spiral galaxy M81 forms a most conspicuous physical pair with its neighbor, M82, and is the brightest and probably dominant galaxy of a nearby group called M81 group. A few tens of million years ago, which is semi-recently on the cosmic time scale, a close encounter occurred between the galaxies M81 and M82. During this event, larger and more massive M81 has dramatically deformed M82 by gravitational interaction. The encounter has also left traces in the spiral pattern of the brighter and larger galaxy M81, first making it overall more pronounced, and second in the form of the dark linear feature in the lower left of the nuclear region. The galaxies are still close together, their centers separated by a linear distance of only about 150,000 light years.

M81 is the first of the four objects originally discovered by Johann Elert Bode, who found it, together with its neighbor M82, on December 31, 1774. Bode described it as a "nebulous patch", about 0.75 deg away from M82, which "appears mostly round and has a dense nucleus in the middle," and included it as No. 17 in his list. Pierre Méchain independently rediscovered both galaxies as nebulous patches in August 1779 and reported them to Charles Messier, who added them to his catalog after his position measurement on February 9, 1781.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a team under Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Institution of Washington has investigated 32 Cepheid variables in M81 and determined the distance to be 11.0 million light years, in 1993 well before the HST was refurbished. Together with the new distance scale correction implied by the results of ESA's Hipparcos satellite, the true distance of M81 is probably closer to 12.0 million light years. See the H0 Key Project Team's work on M81 (paper 1 and 2, 1994).

On Sunday, March 28, 1993, a type II supernova (1993J) occured in M81, which was discovered by the Spanish amateur astronomer Francisco Garcia Diaz from Lugo (Spain), and reached a brightness of about mag 10.5 in its maximum. The remnant of this supernova was imaged in the radio light at 3.6 cm wavelength from roughly six to 18 months after the explosion, with a global Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) array of radio telescopes in Europe and North America.

Investigations performed in 1994 have indicated that M81 has probably only little dark matter, as its rotation curve was found to fall off in the outer regions; this is in contrast to many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, for which the rotation curve increases outward. To explain the velocity of the stars in these regions, the galaxy must have a certain amount of mass. However, the total mass observed in luminous matter - stars and nebulae - is typically insufficient to explain this behaviour; thus it is assumed that there is a significant portion of mass in galaxies is non-luminous, dark matter (or at least low-luminosity matter). For M81, the percentage of dark matter is now estimated to be lower than average.

In 1995, Perelmuter and Racine investigated the region around M81 for globular clusters, and found about 70 candidate objects for the globular cluster system of M81 (Perelmuter and Racine, 1995). They estimate the total population at 210 +/- 30 globulars.

In December 1990, the ASTRO-1 Space Shuttle mission (STS-35) transported telescopes into the Earth's orbit, including the UIT (Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope) which obtained images of M81 (in the ultraviolet light; these were compared with the visible light image, and combined to an interesting and informative overlay; an animation [433 k MPG] showing a morphing from the UV to visual image of M81 is available). Previously, M81's UV radiation had been investigated by the Soviet Astron orbital observatory. Bill Keel has assembled a series of images of M81 in the different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum from the radio part to the X-rays region.

M82: Galaxy with a Supergalactic Wind
Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI / AURA)
Acknowledgement: M. Mountain (STScI), P. Puxley (NSF), J. Gallagher (U. Wisconsin)

Explanation: What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas, however. Recent evidence indicates that this gas is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic "superwind." The above photographic mosaic, released yesterday to commemorate the sixteenth anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, highlights a specific color of red light strongly emitted by ionized hydrogen gas, showing detailed filaments of this gas. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light years. The 12-million light-year distant Cigar Galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared light, and can be seen in visible light with a small telescope towards the constellation of Ursa Major.

Satanism pt1
01:08:54 - Jul 07 2006
Times Read: 24

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The 21 Satanic Points
During my studies of Paganism, I learned a fair deal about the acceptance of Pagans for other Pagans, except for one Pagan group; Satanism. Satanists are Pagans, by definition. So why do so many 'Wiccan' and 'Pagan' sites always proclaim that they just 'are not Satanists'? I have researched Satanism for a while now and have found nothing wrong with it.

Anyhoo, that's the start of another page, I think. >:) Anyhoo, here I present to you The 21 Satanic Points.

I Respect not pity or weakness, for they are a disease which makes sick the strong.
II Test always your strength, for therein lies success.
III Seek hapiness in victory - but never in peace.
IV Enjoy a short rest, better than a long.
V Come as a reaper, for thus you will sow.
VI Never love anything so much you cannot see it die.
VII Build not upon sand but upon rock and build not for today or yesterday but for all time.
VII Strive ever for more, for conquest is never done.
IX Die rather than submit.
X Forge not works of art but swords of death, for therein lies great art.
XI Learn to raise yourself above yourself so you can triumph over all.
XII The blood of the living makes good fertilizer for the seeds of the new.
XIII He who stands atop the highest pyramid of skulls can see the furthest.
XIV Discard not love but treat it as an imposter, but ever be just.
XV All that is great is built upon sorrow.
XVI Strive not only forwards, but upwards for greatness lies in the highest.
XVII Come as a fresh strong wind that breaks yet also creates.
XVIII Let love of life be a goal but let your highest goal be greatness.
XIX Nothing is beautiful except man: but most beautiful of all is woman.
XX Reject all illusion and lies, for they hinder the strong.
XXI What does not kill, makes stronger.

The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth

Here are the basic rules of Satanism. Again, I see absolutely nothing 'wrong' or 'cruel' in any of this. I mean, look at rule number 9. I guess that shocks the typical person's mind. I just think that Satanists are totally misunderstood and the persecution they're getting from the general public is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it was the Christians who burned Witches at the stake, not Satanists. What do Wiccan Witches have against these people?

1 Do not give opinion or advice unless you are asked.
2 Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3 When in another's lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4 If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5 Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6 Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7 Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8 Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9 Do not harm little children.
10 Do not kill non-human animals unless attacked or for your food.
11 When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

9 satanic sins

1 - Stupidity
The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.

2 - Pretentiousness
Empty posturing can be most irritating and isn't applying the cardinal rules of Lesser Magic. On equal footing with stupidity for what keeps the money in circulation these days. Everyone's made to feel like a big shot, whether they can come up with the goods or not.
3 - Solipsism
This can be very dangerous for Satanists. Projecting your reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto someone else who is probably far less attuned than you are. It is the mistake of expecting people to give you the same consideration, courtesy, and respect that you naturally give them. They won't. Instead, Satanists must strive to apply the dictum of "Do unto others as they do unto you." It's worked for most of us and requires constant vigilance lest you slip into a comfortable illusion of everyone being like you. As has been said, certain utopias would be ideal in a nation of philosophers, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, from a Machiavellian viewpoint) we are far from that point.

4 - Self-Deciet
It's in the Nine Satanic Statements but deserves to be repeated here. Another cardinal sin. We must not pay homage in any of the sacred cows presented to us, including the roles we are expected to play ourselves. The only time self-deceit should be entered into is when it's fun, and with an awareness. But then, it's not self-deceit!

5 - Herd Conformity
That's obvious from a Satanic stance. It's all right to conform to a person's wishes, if it ultimately benefits you. But only fools follow along with the herd, letting an impersonal entity dictate to you. The key is to choose a master wisely instead of being enslaved by the whims of the many.

6 - Lack of Perspective
Again, this one can lead to a lot of pain for a Satanist. You must never lose sight of who and what you are, and what a threat you can be, by your very existence. We are making history right now, everyday. Always keep the wider historical and social picture in mind. That is an important key to both Lesser and Greater Magic. See the patterns and fit things together as you want the pieces to fall into place. Do not be swayed by herd constraints--know that you are working on another level entirely from the rest of the world.

7 - Forgetfulness of Past OrthodoxIes
Be aware that this is one of the keys to brainwashing people into accepting something "new" and "different," when in reality it's something that was once wisely accepted but is now presented in a new package. We are expected to rave about the genius of the "creator" and forget the original. This makes for a disposable society.

8 - Counterproductive Pride
The first word is important. Pride is great up to the point you begin to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The rule of Satanism: If it works, great. When it stops working for you, when you've painted yourself into a corner and the only way out is to say, "I'm sorry. I made a mistake, I wish we could compromise somehow," then do it.

9 - Lack of Aesthetics
This is the physical application of the Balance Factor. It is important in Lesser Magic and should be cultivated. It is obvious that no one can collect money off it most of the time so it is discouraged in a consumer society, but it is an essential Satanic tool and must be applied for magical effectiveness. It's not what's supposed to be pleasing--it's what is. Aesthetics is a highly personal thing, reflective of one's own nature, and there are universally pleasing and harmonious configurations that should not be denied.
9 satanic statements
I think that the Satanic view is quite logical. I mean, why believe in something that you haven't seen and/or experienced with the absolute certainty of what it actually was?

1 Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!
2 Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3 Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4 Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5 Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!
6 Satan represents responsibility for the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7 Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his "divine and intellectual development" has become the most vicious animal of them all!
8 Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9 Satan has been the best friend that the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all of these years!

Emerald Tablet of Hermes and Alchemy
21:49:11 - Jul 06 2006
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Many years ago, a group of people decided to publish different translations of the Emerald Tablet and various commentaries upon it. The group broke up, the work was never finished.... Here is some of what remained. Verses have been numbered for comparison. - Jon Marshall.
Back to pieces on Emerald Tablet.

History of the Tablet (largely summarised from Needham 1980, & Holmyard 1957)

The Tablet probably first appeared in the West in editions of the psuedo-Aristotlean Secretum Secretorum which was actually a translation of the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar, a book of advice to kings which was translated into latin by Johannes Hispalensis c. 1140 and by Philip of Tripoli c.1243. Other translations of the Tablet may have been made during the same period by Plato of Tivoli and Hugh of Santalla, perhaps from different sources.
The date of the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar is uncertain, though c.800 has been suggested and it is not clear when the tablet became part of this work.
Holmyard was the first to find another early arabic version (Ruska found a 12th centruy recension claiming to have been dictated by Sergius of Nablus) in the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of Foundation) attributed to Jabir. Shortly after Ruska found another version appended to the Kitab Sirr al-Khaliqa wa San`at al-Tabi`a (Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature), which is also known as the Kitab Balaniyus al-Hakim fi'l-`Ilal (book of Balinas the wise on the Causes). It has been proposed that this book was written may have been written as early as 650, and was definitely finished by the Caliphate of al-Ma'mun (813-33).
Scholars have seen similarities between this book and the Syriac Book of Treasures written by Job of Odessa (9th century) and more interestingly the Greek writings of the bishop Nemesius of Emesa in Syria from the mid fourth century. However though this suggests a possible Syriac source, non of these writings contain the tablet.
Balinas is usually identified with Apollonius of Tyna, but there is little evidence to connect him with the Kitab Balabiyus, and even if there was,the story implies that Balinas found the tablet rather than wrote it, and the recent discoveries of the dead sea scrolls and the nag hamamdi texts suggest that hiding texts in caves is not impossible, even if we did not have the pyramids before us.
Ruska has suggested an origin further east, and Needham has proposed an origin in China.
Holmyard, Davis and Anon all consider that this Tablet may be one of the earliest of all alchemical works we have that survives.
It should be remarked that apparantly the Greeks and Egyptians used the termtranslated as `emerald' for emeralds, green granites, "and perhaps green jasper". In medieval times the emerald table of the Gothic kings of Spain, and the Sacro catino- a dish said to have belonged to the Queen of Sheba, to have been used at the last supper, and to be made of emerald, were made of green glass [Steele and Singer: 488].

Translations

From Jabir ibn Hayyan.

0) Balinas mentions the engraving on the table in the hand of Hermes, which says:
1) Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
2) That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one.
3) As all things were from one.
4) Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.
5) The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,
7) as Earth which shall become Fire.
7a) Feed the Earth from that which is subtle, with the greatest power.
8) It ascends from the earth to the heaven and becomes ruler over that which is above and that which is below.
14) And I have already explained the meaning of the whole of this in two of these books of mine.
[Holmyard 1923: 562.]

Another Arabic Version (from the German of Ruska, translated by ‘Anonymous').

0) Here is that which the priest Sagijus of Nabulus has dictated concerning the entrance of Balinas into the hidden chamber... After my entrance into the chamber, where the talisman was set up, I came up to an old man sitting on a golden throne, who was holding an emerald table in one hand. And behold the following - in Syriac, the primordial language- was written thereon:
1) Here (is) a true explanation, concerning which there can be no doubt.
2) It attests: The above from the below, and the below from the above -the work of the miracle of the One.
3) And things have been from this primal substance through a single act. How wonderful is this work! It is the main (principle) of the world and is its maintainer.
4) Its father is the sun and its mother the moon; the
5) wind has borne it in its body, and the earth has nourished it.
6) the father of talismen and the protector of miracles
6a) whose powers are perfect, and whose lights are confirmed (?),
7) a fire that becomes earth.
7a) Separate the earth from the fire, so you will attain the subtle as more inherent than the gross, with care and sagacity.
8) It rises from earth to heaven, so as to draw the lights of the heights to itself, and descends to the earth; thus within it are the forces of the above and the below;
9) because the light of lights within it, thus does the darkness flee before it.
10) The force of forces, which overcomes every subtle thing and penetrates into everything gross.
11) The structure of the microcosm is in accordance with the structure of the macrocosm.
12) And accordingly proceed the knowledgeable.
13) And to this aspired Hermes, who was threefold graced with wisdom.
14) And this is his last book, which he concealed in the chamber.
[Anon 1985: 24-5]

Twelfth Century Latin

0) When I entered into the cave, I received the tablet zaradi, which was inscribed, from between the hands of Hermes, in which I discovered these words:
1) True, without falsehood, certain, most certain.
2) What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like that which is above. To make the miracle of the one thing.
3) And as all things were made from contemplation of one, so all things were born from one adaptation.
4) Its father is the Sun, its mother is the Moon.
5) The wind carried it in its womb, the earth breast fed it.
6) It is the father of all ‘works of wonder' (Telesmi) in the world.
6a) Its power is complete (integra).
7) If cast to (turned towards- versa fuerit) earth,
7a) it will separate earth from fire, the subtile from the gross.
8) With great capacity it ascends from earth to heaven. Again it descends to earth, and takes back the power of the above and the below.
9) Thus you will receive the glory of the distinctiveness of the world. All obscurity will flee from you.
10) This is the whole most strong strength of all strength, for it overcomes all subtle things, and penetrates all solid things.
11a) Thus was the world created.
12) From this comes marvelous adaptions of which this is the proceedure.
13) Therefore I am called Hermes, because I have three parts of the wisdom of the whole world.
14) And complete is what I had to say about the work of the Sun, from the book of Galieni Alfachimi.
[From Latin in Steele and Singer 1928: 492.]

Translation from Aurelium Occultae Philosophorum..Georgio Beato

1) This is true and remote from all cover of falsehood
2) Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.
3) Also, as all things are made from one, by the condsideration of one, so all things were made from this one, by conjunction.
4) The father of it is the sun, the mother the moon.
5) The wind bore it in the womb. Its nurse is the earth, the mother of all perfection.
6a)Its power is perfected.
7) If it is turned into earth,
7a) separate the earth from the fire, the subtle and thin from the crude and course, prudently, with modesty and wisdom.
8) This ascends from the earth into the sky and again descends from the sky to the earth, and receives the power and efficacy of things above and of things below.
9) By this means you will acquire the glory of the whole world, and so you will drive away all shadows and blindness.
10) For this by its fortitude snatches the palm from all other fortitude and power. For it is able to penetrate and subdue everything subtle and everything crude and hard.
11a) By this means the world was founded
12) and hence the marvelous cojunctions of it and admirable effects, since this is the way by which these marvels may be brought about.
13) And because of this they have called me Hermes Tristmegistus since I have the three parts of the wisdom and Philsosphy of the whole universe.
14) My speech is finished which i have spoken concerning the solar work
[Davis 1926: 874.]

Translation of Issac Newton c. 1680.

1) Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
2) That wch is below is like that wch is above & that wch is above is like yt wch is below to do ye miracles of one only thing.
3) And as all things have been & arose from one by ye mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
4) The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
5) the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nourse.
6) The father of all perfection in ye whole world is here.
7) Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
7a) Seperate thou ye earth from ye fire, ye subtile from the gross sweetly wth great indoustry.
8) It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven & again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior & inferior.
9) By this means you shall have ye glory of ye whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
10) Its force is above all force. ffor it vanquishes every subtile thing & penetrates every solid thing.
11a) So was ye world created.
12) From this are & do come admirable adaptaions whereof ye means (Or process) is here in this.
13) Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of ye philosophy of ye whole world.
14) That wch I have said of ye operation of ye Sun is accomplished & ended.
[Dobbs 1988: 183-4.]

Translation from Kriegsmann (?) alledgedly from the Phoenician

1) I speak truly, not falsely, certainly and most truly
2) These things below with those above and those with these join forces again so that they produce a single thing the most wonderful of all.
3)And as the whole universe was brought forth from one by the word of one GOD, so also all things are regenerated perpetually from this one according to the disposition of Nature.
4) It has the Sun for father and the Moon for mother:
5) it is carried by the air as if in a womb, it is nursed by the earth.
6) It is the cause, this, of all perfection of all things throughout the universe.
6a) This will attain the highest perfection of powers
7) if it shall be reduced into earth
7a) Distribute here the earth and there the fire, thin out the density of this the suavest (suavissima) thing of all.
8)Ascend with the greatest sagacity of genius from the earth into the sky, and thence descend again to the earth, and recognise that the forces of things above and of things below are one,
9) so as to posses the glory of the whole world- and beyond this man of abject fate may have nothing further.
10)This thing itself presently comes forth stronger by reasons of this fortitude: it subdues all bodies surely, whether tenuous or solid, by penetrating them.
11a) And so everything whatsoever that the world contains was created.
12) Hence admirable works are accomplished which are instituted (carried out- instituuntur) according to the same mode.
13) To me therefor the name of Hermes Trismegistus has been awarded because I am discovered as the Teacher of the three parts of the wisdom of the world.
14) These then are the considerations which I have concluded ought to be written down concerning the readiest operations of the Chymic art.
[Davis 1926: 875 slightly modified.]

From Sigismund Bacstrom (allegedly translated from Chaldean).

0) The Secret Works of CHIRAM ONE in essence, but three in aspect.
1) It is true, no lie, certain and to be depended upon,
2) the superior agrees with the inferior, and the inferior agrees with the superior, to effect that one truly wonderful work.
3) As all things owe their existence to the will of the only one, so all things owe their origin to the one only thing, the most hidden by the arrangement of the only God.
4) The father of that one only thing is the sun its mother is the moon,
5) the wind carries it in its belly; but its nourse is a spirituous earth.
6) That one only thing is the father of all things in the Universe.
6a) Its power is perfect,
7) after it has been united with a spirituous earth.
7a) Separate that spirituous earth from the dense or crude by means of a gentle heat, with much attention.
8) In great measure it ascends from the earth up to heaven, and descends again, newborn, on the earth, and the superior and the inferior are increased in power.
9) By this wilt thou partake of the honours of the whole world. And Darkness will fly from thee.
10) This is the strength of all powers. With this thou wilt be able to overcome all things and transmute all what is fine and what is coarse.
11a) In this manner the world was created;
12) the arrangements to follow this road are hidden.
13) For this reason I am called Chiram Telat Mechasot, one in essence, but three in aspect. In this trinity is hidden the wisdom of the whole world.
14) It is ended now, what I have said concerning the effects of the sun. Finish of the Tabula Smaragdina.
[See Hall 1977: CLVIII,]

From Madame Blavatsky

2) What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of the one thing.
3) As all things were produced by the mediation of one being, so all things were produced from this one by adaption.
4) Its father is the sun, its mother the moon.
6a) It is the cause of all perfection throughout the whole earth.
7) Its power is perfect if it is changed into earth.
7a) Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross, acting prudently and with judgement.
8 ) Ascend with the greatest sagacity from earth to heaven, and unite together the power of things inferior and superior;
9) thus you will possess the light of the whole world, and all obscurity will fly away from you.
10) This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because it will overcome every subtile thing and penetrate every solid thing.
11a) By it the world was formed.
[Blavatsky 1972: 507.]

From Fulcanelli (translated from the French by Sieveking)

1) This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:-
2) As below, so above; and as above so below. With this knowledge alone you may work miracles.
3) And since all things exist in and eminate from the ONE Who is the ultimate Cause, so all things are born after their kind from this ONE.
4) The Sun is the father, the Moon the mother;
5) the wind carried it in his belly. Earth is its nurse and its guardian.
6) It is the Father of all things,
6a) the eternal Will is contained in it.
7) Here, on earth, its strength, its power remain one and undivded.
7a) Earth must be separated from fire, the subtle from the dense, gently with unremitting care.
8) It arises from the earth and descends from heaven; it gathers to itself the strength of things above and things below.
9) By means of this one thing all the glory of the world shall be yours and all obscurity flee from you.
10) It is power, strong with the strength of all power, for it will penetrate all mysteries and dispel all ignorance.
11a) By it the world was created.
12) From it are born manifold wonders, the means to achieving which are here given
13) It is for this reason that I am called Hermes Trismegistus; for I possess the three essentials of the philosophy of the universe.
14) This is is the sum total of the work of the Sun.
[Sadoul 1972: 25-6.]

From Fulcanelli, new translation

1) It is true without untruth, certain and most true:
2) that which is below is like that which is on high, and that which is on high is like that which is below; by these things are made the miracles of one thing.
3) And as all things are, and come from One, by the mediation of One, So all things are born from this unique thing by adaption.
4) The Sun is the father and the Moon the mother.
5) The wind carries it in its stomach. The earth is its nourisher and its receptacle.
6 The Father of all the Theleme of the universal world is here.
6a) Its force, or power, remains entire,
7) if it is converted into earth.
7a) You separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently with great industry.
8) It climbs from the earth and descends from the sky, and receives the force of things superior and things inferior.
9) You will have by this way, the glory of the world and all obscurity will flee from you.
10) It is the power strong with all power, for it will defeat every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing
11a) In this way the world was created.
12) From it are born wonderful adaptations, of which the way here is given.
13) That is why I have been called Hermes Tristmegistus, having the three parts of the universal philosophy.
14) This, that I have called the solar Work, is complete.
[Translated from Fulcanelli 1964: 312.]

From Idres Shah

1) The truth, certainty, truest, without untruth.
2 )What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above. The miracle of unity is to be attained.
3) Everything is formed from the contemplation of unity, and all things come about from unity, by means of adaptation.
4) Its parents are the Sun and Moon.
5) It was borne by the wind and nurtured by the Earth.
6) Every wonder is from it
6a) and its power is complete.
7) Throw it upon earth,
7a) and earth will separate from fire. The impalbable separated from the palpable.
8) Through wisdom it rises slowly from the world to heaven. Then it descends to the world combining the power of the upper and the lower.
9 )Thus you will have the illumination of all the world, and darkness will disappear.
10) This is the power of all strength- it overcomes that which is delicate and penetrates through solids.
11a) This was the means of the creation of the world.
12) And in the future wonderful developements will be made, and this is the way.
13) I am Hermes the Threefold Sage, so named because I hold the three elements of all wisdom.
14) And thus ends the revelation of the work of the Sun.
(Shah 1964: 198).

Hypothetical Chinese Original

1) True, true, with no room for doubt, certain, worthy of all trust.
2) See, the highest comes from the lowest, and the lowest from the highest; indeed a marvelous work of the tao.
3) See how all things originated from It by a single process.
4) The father of it (the elixir) is the sun (Yang), its mother the moon (Yin).
5) The wind bore it in its belly, and the earth nourished it.
6 )This is the father of wondrous works (changes and transformations), the guardian of mysteries,
6a) perfect in its powers, the animator of lights.
7) This fire will be poured upon the earth...
7a) So separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, acting prudently and with art.
8) It ascends from the earth to the heavens (and orders the lights above), then descends again to the earth; and in it is the power of the highest and the lowest.
9) Thus when you have the light of lights darkness will flee away from you.
10) With this power of powers (the elixir) you shall be able to get the mastery of every subtle thing, and be able to penetrate everything that is gross.
11a) In this way was the great world itself formed.
12) Hence thus and thus marvellous operations will be acheived.
[Slightly altered from Needham 1980: 371.]

TEXTUAL REMARKS

On #3 Some Latin texts have meditatione (contemplation), others mediatione (mediation). Some texts have adaptatione (by adaptation), some have adoptionis (by adoption).

On #6 ‘Telesmi' is a greek word, some texts have ‘thelesmi'.

On #6, 7 In some texts ‘Its Power is Complete' is a separate line. In the generally accepted reading, this runs into #7 producing ‘Its Power is complete if versa fuerit to earth'. Where possible this has been indicated by diving these lines in 6, 6a, 7, & 7a

On #7, 8 In some texts the ‘Wisdom, capacity' (magno ingenio) is read as referring to #7, and hence the operation of Separation is to be carried out ‘carefully', in other readings the ‘wisdom' is held to refer to #8 and the product of the Separation which thus ascends with ‘wisdom'.

Needham quotes Ruska to the effect that sections 3, 12 and 14 are probably late additions (op. cit)

COMMENTARIES

On #1
Hortulanus: "... the most true Sun is procreated by art. And he says most true in the superlative degree because the Sun generated by this art exceeds all natural Sun in all of its properties, medicinal and otherwise" (Davis modified by `Linden')

On #2
Albertus Magnus: Hermes says "the powers of all things below originate in the stars and constellations of the heavens: and that all these powers are poured down into all things below by the circle called Alaur, which is, they said, the first circle of the constellations". This descent is "noble when the materials receiving these powers are more like things above in their brightness and transparency; ignoble when the materials are confused and foul, so that the heavenly power is, as it were oppressed. Therefore they say that this is the reason why precious stones more than anything else have wonderful powers" (60 -61). While the "seven kinds of metals have their forms from the seven planets of the lower spheres" (168).

Hortulanus: "the stone is divided into two principle parts by the magistry, into a superior part which ascends above and into an inferior part which remains below fixed and clear. And these two parts moreover are concordant in their virtue since the inferior part is earth which is called nurse and ferment, and the superior part is the spirit which quickens the whole stone and raises it up. Wherfore separation made, and conjunction celebrated, many miracles are effected."

Burckhardt: "This refers to the reciprocal dependence of the active and the passive... essential form cannot be manifested without passive materia.. the efficacy of the spiritual power depends on the preparedness of the human ‘container' and vice versa.... ‘Above' and ‘below' are thus related to this one thing and complement one another in its regard".

Schumaker: "There are corresponding planes in various levels of creation, hence it is safe to draw analogies between macrocosm and microcosm, the mineral kingdom and the human, animal and vegetable kingdoms etc".

Needham: "the whole affirmation looks remarkably like the doctrine that extreme of Yang generates Yin, and vice versa".

On #3
Hortulanus: "our stone, which was created by God, was born and came forth from a confused mass, containing in itself all the elements- and hence our stone was born by this single miracle".

Trithemius: "Is it not true that all things flow from one thing, from the goodness of the One, and that whatever is joined to Unity cannot be diverse, but rather fructifies by means of the simplicity and adaptability of the One" "What is born from Unity? Is it not the ternary? Take note: Unity is unmixed, the binary is compounded, and the ternary is reduced to the simplicity of Unity. I, Trithemius, am not of three minds, but persist in a single integrated mind taking pleasure in the ternary, which gives birth to a marvelous offspring" (Bran)

Burckhardt: "the undivided, invisible Light of the unconditioned One is refracted into multiplicity by the prism of the Spirit". As the Spirit contemplates the Unity without full comprehension "it manifests the ‘many-sided' All, just as a lens transmits the light it receives as a bundle of rays".

Schumaker: As God is one, all created objects come from one thing, an undifferentiated primal matter.

On #4
Hortulanus: " As one animal naturally generates more animals similar to itself, so the Sun artificially generates Sun by the power of multiplication of...the stone.... in this artificial generation it is necessary that the Sun have a suitable receptacle, consonant with itself, for its sperm and its tincture, and this is the Luna of the philosophers"

Redgrove: Sun and Moon "probably stand for Spirit and Matter respectively, not gold and silver".

Burckhardt: Sun "is the spirit (nous), while the moon is the soul (psyche)".

Schumaker: "If the moon is associated with water, as because of its ‘moisture' [as] was usual, and the sun with fire, the prima materia is understood to have been generated by fire, born of water, brought down from the sky by wind, and nourished by earth".

On #5
Albertus Magnus: by this Hermes "means the levigatio [making light weight] of the material, raising it to the properties of Air. And why he says the wind carries the material [of the stone] in its belly is that, when the material is placed in an alembic- which is a vessel made like those in which rosewater is prepared- then by evapouration it is rendered subtle and is raised towards the properties of Air... And there distills and issues from the mouth of the alembic a watery or oily liquor with all the powers of the elements" (17). In metals the moisture is not separated from the dryness, but is dissolved in it; and being so dissolved, it moves about there as if it had been swallowed by the Earth and were moving about in its bowels. And on this account Hermes said ‘The mother of metal is Earth that carries it in her belly'".

Hortulanus: "It is plain that wind is air, and air is life, and life is spirit... And thus it is necessary that the wind should bear the whole stone.... [However] our stone without the ferment of the earth will never come to the effect, which ferment is called food"

Trithemius: "the wind carries its seed in her belly".

Maier: By "the wind carried him in its belly" Hermes means " ‘He, whose father is the Sun, and whose mother is the Moon, will be carried before he is born, by wind and vapour, just as a flying bird is carried by air'. From the vapours of winds, which are nothing else but wind in motion, water proceeds, when condensed, and from that water, mixed with earth, all minerals and metals arise". The substance carried by the wind is "in chemical respect.. the sulphur, which is carried in mercury". Lull says "‘The stone is the fire, carried in the belly of the air'. In physical respect it is the unborn child that will soon be born". To be clearer, "‘All mercury is composed of vapours, that is to say of water, which the earth raises along with it into the thin air, and of earth, which the air compels to return into watery earth or earthy water" As the elements contained within are each reduced to a watery condition, they either follow the volatile elements upward as in common mercury, or they stay below with the solid elements as in philosophical Mercury "and in the solid metals". So "Mercury is the wind which receives the sulphur... as the unripe fruit from the mothers womb, or from the ashes of the burnt mother's body and takes it to a place where it may ripen". Ripley says "our child shall be born in the air, that is the belly of the wind" [de Jong 1969: 55- 7.]

Maier (2nd Comment) on "The earth is its nurse": Food changes into the substance of the eater and is then assimilated. "This harmony dominates the whole of nature, for the like enjoys the like". The same happens in the Work and Nature "just as is the growth of the child in the mother's womb. So also a father, a mother and a nurse have been attributed to the philosophical child... it comes into being from the twofold seed and then grows as an embryo does". As a woman must moderate her diet to avoid miscarriage, "in the same way one must set about philosophical work with moderation". The Seeds also have to be united. "Philosophers say that the one comes from the East and the other from the West and become one; what does this mean but combining in a retort, a moderate temperature and nourishment?". "One may wonder why the earth is referred to as the nurse of the philosophic child, since barreness and dryness are the main properties of the element earth". The answer is that not the element, but the whole Earth is meant. "It is the nurse of Heaven not because it resolves, washes and moistens the foetus, but because it coagulates, fastens and colours the latter and changes it into sap and blood... The Earth contains a wonderful juice which changes the nature of the one who feeds on it, as Romulus is believed to have been changed by the wolf's milk into a bellicose individual" [de Jong 1969: 63 -5.]

Burckhardt: "The wind which carries the spiritual germ in its body, is the vital breath". Vital breath is the substance of the realm between heaven and earth, it "is also Quicksilver which contains the germ of gold in a liquid state". The earth is "the body, as an inward reality".

On #6
Burckhardt: the word talisman is derived from Telesma. Talismans work by corresponding to their prototype, and by making a "‘condensation', on the subtle plane, of a spiritual state. This explains the similarity between the talisman, as the bearer of an invisible influence, and the alchemical elixir, as the ‘ferment' of metallic transformation".

On #7
Hortulanus: The stone is perfect and complete if it is turned into earth "that is if the soul of the stone itself.... is turned into earth, namely of the stone and is fixed so that the whole substance of the stone becomes one with its nurse, namely the earth, and the whole stone is converted to ferment"

Trithemius: it is the seed from #5 that must be cast upon the earth.

Bacstrom: "Process- First Distillation".

Burckhardt: "when the Spirit is ‘embodied', the volatile becomes fixed".

Schumaker: if the prime matter is to be used it must be fixed into a substance "capable of being handled".

On #7a
Hortulanus: "You will separate, that is, you will dissolve, because solution is separation of parts.."

Burkhardt: The separation "means the ‘extraction' of the soul from the body".

Schumaker "Since the volatile principle is fire -or sometimes, air- stability is produced by its removal. Or, alternatively but less probably, the earth is impurity (‘the gross') and a purified fire (‘the subtle') is
what is wanted.

On #8
Albertus Magnus: In intending to teach the operations of alchemy Hermes says the stone "‘ascends to heaven' when by roasting and calcination it takes on the properties of Fire; for alchemists mean by calcinatio the reduction of material to to powder by burning and roasting. And the material ‘again descends from heaven to earth' when it takes on the properties of Earth by inhumatio, for inhumation revives and nourishes what was previously killed by calcination".

Hortulanus: "And now he deals with multiplication [of the stone]." "Although our stone is divided in the first operation into four parts... there are really two principle parts". The ascending, non fixed, and the earth or ferment. "It is necessary to have a large quantity of this non fixed part and to give it to the stone which has been made thoroughly clean from dirt.... until the entire stone is borne above by the virtue of the spirit"
"Afterwards it is necessary to incerate the same stone,..with the oil that was extracted in the first operation, which oil is called the water of the stone" Roast or boil by sublimation until the "entire stone descends... and remains fixed and fluent". "That which is coporeal is made spiritual by sublimation, and that which is spiritual is made corporeal by descension".

Trithemius: "When the ternary has at last returned to itself it may, by an inner disposition and great delight, ascend from the earth to heaven, thereby receiving both superior and inferior power; thus will it be made powerful and glorious in the clarity of Unity, demonstrate its ability to bring forth every number, and put to flight all obscurity".

Bacstrom: "Last Digestion". "The Azoth ascends from the Earth, from the bottom of the Glass, and redescends in Veins and drops into the Earth and by this continual circulation the Azoth is more and more subtilised, Volatilizes Sol and carries the volatilized Solar atoms along with it and thereby becomes a Solar Azoth, i.e. our third and genuine Sophic Mercury". The circulation must continue until "it ceases of itself, and the Earth has sucked it all in, when it becomes the black pitchy matter, the Toad [the substances in the alchemical retort and also the lower elements in the body of man -Hall], which denotes complete putrifaction or Death of the compound".

Read, suggests this section describes the use of a kerotakis, in which metals are suspended and subject to the action of gasses released from substances heated in the base, and from their condensation and circulation.

Burckhardt: "dissolution of consciousness from all formal ‘coagulations' is
followed by the ‘crystalisation' of the Spirit, so that active and passive are perfectly united."

Schumaker: "Separate the volatile part of the substance by vaporization but continue heating until the vapour reunites with the parent body, whereupon you will have obtained the Stone".

On #9
Trithemius: When the ternary has returned to Unity cleansed of all impurities "the mind understands without contradiction all the mysteries of the excellently arranged arcanum".

Bacstrom: the black matter becomes White and Red. The Red "having been carried to perfection, medicinaly and for Metals" is capable of supporting complete mental and physical health, and provides "ample means, in finitum multiplicable to be benevolent and charitable, without any dimunation of our inexhaustable resources, therefore well may it be called the Glory of the whole World". Contemplation and study of the Philosopher's Stone ("L. P.") elevates the mind to God. "The Philosophers say with great Truth, that the L.P. either finds a good man or makes one". "By invigorating the Organs the Soul makes use of for communicating with exterior objects, the Soul must aquire greater powers, not only for conception but also for retention". If we pray and have faith "all Obscurity must vanish of course".

Burckhardt: "Thus the light of the Spirit becomes constant..[and] ignorance, deception, uncertainty, doubt and foolishness will be removed from consciousness".

On #10
Trithemius: The Philosopher's Stone is another name for the ‘one thing', and is able to "conquer every subtile thing and to penetrate every solid". "This very noble virtue... consists of maximal fortitude, touching everything with its desirable excellence".

Bacstrom: "The L.P. does possess all the Powers concealed in Nature, not for destruction but for exhaltation and regeneration of matter, in the three Departments of Nature". "It refixes the most subtil Oxygen into its own firey Nature". The power increases "in a tenfold ratio, at every multiplication". So it can penetrate Gold and Silver, and fix mercury, Crystals and Glass Fluxes.

Burckhardt: "Alchemical fixation is nevertheless more inward... Through its union with the spirit bodily consciousness itself becomes a fine and penetrating power". He quotes Jabir "The body becomes a spirit, and takes on... fineness, lightness, extensibility, coloration... The spirit... becomes a body and aquires the latter's resistance to fire, immobility and duration. From both bodies a light substance is born , which.. precisely takes up a middle position between the two extremes".

Schumaker: The product of the distillation and reunion will "dominate less solid substances, but because of its own subtlety it will ‘penetrate' and hence dominate, other solid things less pure and quasi-spiritual than itself".

On #11
Burckhardt: "the little world is created according to the prototype of the great world", when the human realises their original nature is the image of God.

Schumaker: "The alchemical operation is a paradigm of the creative process. We may note the sexual overtones of what has preceeded"

On #12
Burckhardt: "In the Arabic text this is: "This way is traversed by the sages".

On #13
Hortulanus: "He here teaches in an occult manner the things from which the stone is made." "the stone is called perfect because it has in itself the nature of minerals, ofvegetables and of animals. For the stone is three and one, tripple and single, having four natures.... and three colours, namely black, white and red. It is also called the grain of corn because unless it shall have died, it remains itself alone. And if it shall have died... it bears much fruit when it is in conjunction..."

Newton: "on account of this art Mercurius is called thrice greatest, having three parts of the philosophy of the whole world, since he signifies the Mercury of the philosophers.... and has dominion in the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom".

Bacstrom: the wisdom of the world (?) is hidden in "Chiram and its Use". Hermes "signifies a Serpent, and the Serpent used to be an Emblem of Knowledge or Wisdom."

Burckhardt: "The three parts of wisdom correspond to the three great divisions of the universe, namely, the spiritual, psychic and corporeal realms, whose symbols are heaven, air and earth".

Schumaker: "The usual explanation of Tristmegistus.. is that Hermes was the greatest philosopher, the greatest priest, and the greatest king".

General

Trithemius: "our philosophy is celestial, not worldly, in order that we may faithfuly behold, by means of a direct intuition of the mind through faith and knowledge, that principle which we call God...."

Trithemius: "Study generates knowledge; knowledge prepares love; love, similarity; similarity, communion; communion, virtue; virtue, dignity; dignity, power; and power performs the miracle".

Newton "Inferior and superior, fixed and volatile, sulphur and quicksilver have a similar nature and are one thing, like man and wife. For they differ from one another only by degree of digestion and maturity. Sulphur is mature quicksilver, and quicksilver is immature sulphur: and on account of this affinity they unite like male and female, and they act on each other, and through that action they are mutually transmuted into each other and procreate a more noble offspring to accomplish the miracles of this one thing". "And just as all things were created from one Chaos by the design of one God, so in our art all things... are born from this one thing which is our Chaos, by the design of the Artificer and the skilful adaptation of things. And the generation of this is similar to the human, truly from a father and mother".

Blavatsky: the mysterious thing "is the universal, magical agent, the astral light, which in the correlations of its forces furnishes the alkahest, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. Hermetic philosophy names it Azoth, the soul of the world, the celestial virgin, the great Magnes, etc" It appears to be that which gives organisation ("the maze of force-correlations"), and form i.e. the perfect geometry of snowflakes.

Sherwood Taylor: "the operation of the Sun.. was carried out by a ‘spirit', universal, the source of all things, having the power of perfecting them. Its virtue is integral [# 6a] (ie having the power to convert the diverse into a single substance), if it be turned into earth (ie. solidified). This conveyed that the Stone was to be a solidified pneuma. Pneuma was the link between earth and heaven, having the virtue of the celestial and subterranean regions- the power of the whole cosmos from the fixed stars to the centre of the earth. It overcomes every nature and penetrates every solid. It is the source of the whole world and so it can be the means of changing things in a wonderful way. The three parts of the philosophy of the whole world are presumably of the celestial, terrestrial, and subterranean regions".

Shah: The table is "the same as the Sufi dictum... ‘Man is the microcosm, creation the macrocosm - the unity. All comes from One. By the joining of the power of contemplation all can be attained. This essence must be separated from the body first, then combined with the body. This is the Work. Start with yourself, end with all. Before man, beyond man, transformation'".

A COMMENTARY OF IBN UMAIL

HERMUS said the secret of everything and the life of everything is Water.... This water becomes in wheat, ferment; in the vine, wine; in the olive, olive oil.... The begining of the child is from water.... Regarding this spiritual water and the sanctified and thirsty earth, HERMUS the great, crowned with the glorious wisdom and the sublime sciences, said [#1] Truth it is, indubtible, certain and correct, [#2] that the High is from the Low and the Low is from the High. They bring about wonders through the one, just as things are produced from that one essence by a single preparation. Later by his statement [#4] Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon he meant their male and their female. They are the two birds which are linked together in the pictures given regarding the beginning of the operation, and from them the spiritual tinctures are produced. And similarly they are at the end of the operation. Later in his statement [#7 ?] the subtle is more honourable than the gross, he means by the subtle the divine spiritual water; and by the gross the earthly body. As for his later statement [#8] with gentleness and wisdom it will ascend from the earth to the sky, and will take fire from the higher lights, he means by this the distillation and the raising of the water into the air. As for his later statement [#8a] It will descend to the earth, containing the strength of the high and the low, he means by this the breathing in (istinshaq) of the air, and the taking of the spirit from it, and its subsequent elevation to the highest degree of heat, and it is the Fire, and the low is the body, and its content of the controlling earthly power which imparts the colours. For there lie in it those higher powers, as well as the earthly powers which were submerged in it.

The natural operation and decay causes it to be manifest, and hence the strength of the earth, and of the air, and of the higher fire passed in to it. Later he said [#9] it will overcome the high and the low because it in it is found the light of lights: and consequently the darkness will flee
from it. [See Stapleton et al. p 74, 81.]

APPENDIX

Translation from Roger Bacon's edition of Secretum Secretorum made c 1445

1)Trouth hath hym so, and it is no doubt,
2) that the lover is to the heigher, and the heigher to the lower aunsweren.
The worcher forsoth of all myracles is the one and sool God, of and fro Whom Cometh all meruelous operacions.
3) So all thynges were created of o soole substance, and of o soole disposicion,
4 ) the fader wherof is the sone, and the moone moder,
5) that brought hym forth by blast or aier in the wombe, the erthe taken fro it,
6) to whom is seid the increat fader, tresour of myracles, and yever of vertues.
7) Of fire is made erthe.
7a) Depart the erthe fro the fire, for the sotiller is worthier than the more grosse, and the thynne thynge than the thik. This most be do wisely and discretly.
8) It ascendith fro the erth into the heven, and falleth fro heven to the erthe, and therof sleith the higher and the lower vertue.
9)And yf it lordship in the lower and in the heigher, and thow shalt lordship aboue and beneth, which forsoth is the light of lightes, and therfor fro the wolle fle all derknesse.
10) The higher vertue ouer-cometh all, for sothe all thynne thyng doth in dense thynges.
11a) After the disposicion of the more world rynneth this worchyng.
13) And for this prophetisyng of the trynyte of God Hermogenes it called Triplex, trebil in philosophie, as Aristotle seith.

[See Manzalaoui 1977: 65 -6.]

Translation of same source, made c. 1485.

1) The trwthe is so, and that it is no dowght,
2) that lower thyngis to hyer thyng, and hyer to lower be correspondent. But the Werker of myraclis is on Godde alone, fro Home descendyth euiry meruulus werk.
3)And so alle thyngis be creat of one only substauns, be an only dysposicion,
4) of home the fadyr is the sonne, and the mone the modyr,
5 ) qwyche bar her be the wedyr in the wombe. The erthe is priuyd fro her-to.
6 )This is clepyd or seyd the fadyr of enchauntmentis, tresur of myracclys, the
yessuer of vertuys.
7) Be a lytil it is made erthe.
7a) Depart that qwyche is erthly fro that qwyche is fi Fry, for that qwyche is sotel is mor wurthy han that qwyche is grose, and that rar, porous, or lyght, is mor bettyr than qwiche is thyk of substauns. This is done wyseli or dyscretly.
8) It ascendyth fro the erth in-to heuyn and fallyth fro heuyn in-to erth, and ther-of it sleth the ouyr vertu and the nedyr vertu, so it hath lorchyp in the lowe thyngis and hye thingis,
9) and thu lordschyppist vppeward and downward, and with the is the lyght of lyghtys. And for that alle derkness schal fle fro the.
10) The ovyr vetu ouircomyth alle, for euiry rar rhyng werkyth in to euiry thyk thyng.
11a) And aftyr the dysposicion of the mor world rennyth thys werking.
13) And for that Hermogines is clepyd threfold in filosophye, and of the meruellys of he world.
[See Manzalaoui 1977: 174-5]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans D. Wyckoff, OUP, 1967.
Anon Meditations on the Tarot. Amity House, 1985 pp21-6
Brann, N.L. "George Ripley and the Abbot Trithemius", Ambix, vol 26, no 3, pp 212- 220, 1979.
Blavatsky, H.P. Isis Unveiled. Theosophical University Press, 1972. pp 507-14.
Burckhardt, T. Alchemy. Stuart and Watkins, London 1967 pp 196 -201.
Davis, Tenny L. "The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Tristmegistus: Three Latin versions which were current among later Alchemists", Journal of Chemical Education, Vol.3, no.8, pp 863-75, 1926.
de Jong, H.M.E. Michael Maiers's Atlanta Fugiens: Sources of an alchemical Book of Emblems. E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1969.
Dobbs, B.J. "Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus" in Merkel, I and Debus A.G. Hermeticism and the Renaissance. Folger, Washington 1988.
Fulcanelli. Les Demeures Philosophales. Jean Jacques Pavert, Paris, 1964.
Hall, M.P. The Secret Teachings of all Ages. Philosophical Research, L.A. 1977 pp CLVII -CLVIII.
Holmyard, E.J. "The Emerald Table" Nature, Oct 6th pp 525-6, 1929.
Holmyard, E.J. Alchemy, Pelican, Harmondsworth 1957. pp95-8.
Linden, Stanton J. ed. "The Mirror of Alchimy Composed by the Thrice-Famous and Learned Fryer Roger Bacon (1597), Garland, NY. 1992.
Manzalaoui, M.A. Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, Early English Text Society. OUP, 1977.
Needham, J.Science and Civilisation in China vol 5, part 4: Spagyrical discovery and invention: Apparatus, Theories and gifts. CUP, 1980
Read, John Prelude to Chemistry, G Bell, London, 1939 pp15, 51-5
Redgrove, S. Alchemy: Ancient and Modern. William Rider, London, 1922. pp40-42.
Sadoul, J. Alchemists and Gold. G.P. Putnams, N.Y. 1972 pp 25-6.
Schumaker, Wayne. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. University of California, Berkely 1972, pp 179-80
Shah, Idres. The Sufis. Octagon, London 1977, p 198
Sherwood Taylor, F. The Alchemists. Paladin, London, 1976, pp77- 8.
Stapleton, H.E., Lewis, G.L, Sherwood Taylor, F. "The sayings of Hermes quoted in the Ma Al-Waraqi of Ibn Umail. " Ambix, vol 3, pp 69-90, 1949.
Steele, R. and Singer, D.W. "The Emerald Table". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine vol 21, 1928.

See also:

McLean, A & Tahil, P. Ampitheatre Engavings of Heinrich Kunrath. pp. 28, 73-6,
Anon, Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians (i.e. Paul Allen A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology, Steinerbooks, third edition pp228-30)
AMORC Supplementary Monograph: Hermetic Teachings RAD-13, Lecture Number 2, Inner hermetic teachings.

Buddhist Rituals & Practices
21:06:41 - Jul 06 2006
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Buddhism incorporates a variety of rituals practices intended to aid in the journey to enlightenment and bring blessings on oneself and others.

The practice of meditation is central to nearly all forms of Buddhism, and it derives directly from the Buddha’s experiences and teachings. Meditation is is the central focus of Zen Buddhism and the only way to liberation in Theravada Buddhism.

In addition to meditation, the Mahayana schools of Buddhism have developed a variety of other ritual and devotional practices, many of which were inspired or influenced by the existing religious cultures of India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Tibet.

Buddhist Meditation

All that we are is the result of what we have thought:
it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

--Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada

Buddhist meditation is a form of mental concentration that leads ultimately to enlightenment and spiritual freedom. Meditation occupies a central place in all forms of Buddhism, but has developed characteristic variations in different Buddhist traditions.

There are two main types of Buddhist meditation: vipassana (insight) and samatha (tranquility). The two are often combined or used one after the other (usually vipissana follows samatha). In China and Japan, an entire school of Buddhism developed around the practice of sitting meditation: Ch’an or Zen Buddhism. This article outlines the major types of Buddhist meditation and provides links to further information on Buddhist meditation.

Tranquility Meditation (Samatha)
The basic purpose of samatha meditation is to still the mind and train it to concentrate. The object of concentration (kammatthana) is less important than the skill of concentration itself, and varies by individual and situation. One Pali texts lists 40 kammatthanas, which include:

devices (like color or light)
repulsive things (like a corpse)
recollections (such as sayings of the Buddha)
virtues (like loving-kindness)
The goal of samatha meditation is to progress through four stages (dhyanas):

Detachment from the external world and a consciousness of joy and tranquility;
Concentration, with suppression of reasoning and investigation;
The passing away of joy, but with the sense of tranquility remaining; and
The passing away of tranquility also, bringing about a state of pure self-possession and equanimity.

Insight Meditation (Vipassana)
Many of the skills learned in tranquility meditation can be applied to insight meditation, but the end goal is different. As its name suggests, the purpose of insight meditation is the realization of important truths. Specifically, one who practices vipassana hopes to realize the truths of impermanence, suffering and "no-self."

Of course, these doctrines are already known to any Buddhist. After all, they are the central teachings of the Buddha. But in order to attain liberation, he or she must personally apprehend and truly understand these important truths. Simple knowledge of the Buddhist doctrines is not sufficient.

Because vipassana meditation alone produces the understanding through which liberation takes place, it is considered superior to tranquility meditation. It is the primary form of meditation practiced in Theravada Buddhism.

The practice of insight meditation centers around the notion of mindfulness. Mindfulness is related to, but different than, concentration. When one is concentrating, one’s entire focus is on the object of concentration in an almost trancelike manner - whether the object is a lotus, one’s own breathing, or a television program. But to be mindful of something is to think about it and observe it carefully. It is not only to focus on a television program, but to comprehend its content. It is not only to block out everything but breathing; it is to observe what the breathing is like and attempt to learn something about it.

Gaining the skill of mindfulness is the first step of insight meditation. The most common methods prescribed to develop mindfulness are:

walking mindfulness
sitting mindfulness
mindfulness of daily activities
Walking mindfulness is regularly practiced in monasteries and retreats, especially in the Theravada tradition. But to practice walking mindfulness anywhere, one finds a quiet place to walk, takes a moment to relax, then attempts to focus on the myriad movements and sensations associated with walking. If the mind strays to other things, this is to be mindfully noted, then put aside to again focus on the walking. According to Buddhists who practice this technique, as one progresses in skill it becomes easy to "lose oneself" in the activity and walk for a long time without it feeling like more than a few minutes have passed. This can be very blissful in itself, but it also brings the practitioner closer to insight into the fundamental truths of "no-self" and impermanence.

Sitting meditation is very similar to walking meditation, except now the focus is on the breath instead of the walking. The sitting meditator attempts to focus entirely on his or her own breath as it moves in and out, and the abdomen as it moves up and down. As in walking meditation, as other thoughts distract, these are to be mindfully recognized, then put aside. With practice, the meditator is distracted less and notices more about the object of observation, the breath. This practice certainly brings about tranquility, but again, the ultimate goal is to begin to realize for oneself the Buddhist truths of no-self, suffering and impermanence.

Finally, the practice of mindfulness in everyday activities applies the skills learned in walking and sitting meditation to everything one does: eating, washing dishes, washing, etc. As this skill is developed, one lives increasinly in the present moment and participates more fully in everything he or she does. One Buddhist master who was accomplished in the practice of mindfulness said simply, "When I eat, I eat. When I sleep, I sleep."

Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta Bhavana)
Loving-kindness is a central virtue of Buddhism, and loving-kindness meditation (metta bhavana) is a way of developing this virtue. It is a practice that is seen as supplemental or complementary to other forms of meditation.

The purpose of loving-kindness meditation is to develop the mental habit of altruistic love for the self and others. It is said to "sweeten the mind." There are, of course, a variety of ways to practice metta bhavana, but it generally progresses through three stages:

Specific pervasion
Directional pervasion
Non-specific pervasion
In the first stage, the practitioner focuses on sending loving-kindness to specific people, in the following order:

Oneself
An admired, respected person (like a spiritual teacher)
A beloved person (like a close friend or family member)
A neutral person – someone familiar but who evokes no particular feelings (like a person who works in a local store)
A hostile person (like an enemy or someone who causes the practitioner difficulty)
Beginning with oneself, the meditator seeks to evoke feelings of loving-kindness for each person in the above list. Tools for accomplishing this include:

Visualization – imagine the person looking joyful and happy
Reflection – reflect on the person’s positive qualities and acts of kindness they have done
Mantra – repeat silently or out loud a simple mantra like "loving-kindness"
When this first stage has been accomplished even for hostile persons, one moves on the next stage, Directional Pervasion. In this stage, the practitioner systematically projects feelings of loving-kindness in all geographical directions: north, south, east and west. This can be done by bringing to mind friends and like-minded communities in various cities around the world.

The last stage of metta bhavana is "Non-Specific Pervasion," which simply means radiating feelings of universal, unconditional love in everyday life. This stage is often a natural outcome of accomplishment of the other stages.

Buddhist Mantras and Dharanis

From the early history of Buddhism, Buddhists have practiced protective rites intended to stave off danger or evil influences. Such protective rites usually involve chanting of parittas (a selection of texts, most of which attributed to the Buddha). In Theravada communities, found primarily in Sri Lanka and other Southeast Asian countries, parittas are often chanted during large public rituals to avert collective danger and in private rituals to protect individuals against illness or other misfortune.

Protective rites play an even greater role in the Mahayana and esoteric Buddhist traditions, found primarily in East Asia and Tibet. In these regions, especially in Tibet, dharanis and mantras are widely used in exorcistic and protective rites. Dharanis are statements of doctrine or adoration believed to have spiritual power when chanted. Mantras are shorter statements, often just single words, that are believed to contain the same power.

As mentioned above, the primary purpose of dharanis and mantras is to protect against evil, danger, or misfortune. When translated, they do not seem to contain truths of any significance. Their power derives not as much from their content as from their invocation of the gods and the frequent exclamations, which are believed to frighten away evil spirits.

Following is the text of one common dharani.

DHARANI OF REMOVING DISASTERS

Adoration to all the Buddhas!
Adoration to the Teaching that knows no obstructions!
Thus: Om! Khya khya khyahi khyahi (speak, speak)!
Hum hum! Jvala jvala prajvala prajvala (blaze, blaze)!
Tistha tistha (up, up)!
Stri Stri!
Sphata (burst, burst)!
One who is quiescent!
To the glorious one, hail!

Meaning and Uses of Prayer Wheels
Prayer wheels are used primarily by the Buddhists of Tibet and Nepal, where hand-held prayer wheels are carried by pilgrims and other devotees, and are turned during devotional activities.

According the Tibetan Buddhist belief, spinning a prayer wheel is just as effective as reciting the sacred texts aloud. This belief derives from the Buddhist belief in the power of sound and the formulas to which deities are subject. For many Buddhists, the prayer wheel also represents the Wheel of the Law (or Dharma) set in motion by the Buddha.

The prayer wheel is also useful for illiterate members of the lay Buddhist community, since they can "read" the prayers by turning the wheel.

Forms of Prayer Wheels
Prayer wheels come in many sizes: they may be small and attached to a stick (above), and spun around by hand; medium-sized and set up at monasteries or temples (right); or very large and continuously spun by a water mill. Prayer wheels set up at monasteries and temples are located at the gates of the property, and devotees spin the wheels before passing through the gates.

The external cylinder of a prayer wheel is made out of repoussé metal, usually gilded bronze. The wheel is supported on a handle or axis made of wood or a precious metal. On the outside of the cylinder are inscriptions in Sanskrit (or sometimes Tibetan) script (often Om mani padme hum) and auspicious Buddhist symbols. This outer part is removable to allow for the insertion of the sacred text into the cylinder. The uppermost point of the prayer wheel forms the shape of a lotus bud.

The cylinder contains a sacred text written or printed on paper or animal skin. These texts might be sutra or invocations to particular deities (dharani or mantras). The most common text used in prayer wheels is the mantra Om mani padme hum.

Om Mani Padme Hum
"Om mani padme hum" is the most important mantra in Buddhism. It is the six syllable mantra of the Bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteshvara. The Dalai Lama is said to be an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, so the mantra is especially revered by his devotees. Click here to hear the mantra chanted by a Tibetan refugee.

The basic English translation of Om mani padme hum is "Om Jewel in the Lotus Hum" or "Praise to the Jewel in the Lotus." However, the meaning and significance of the six Tibetan syllables have been interpreted in a variety of ways. One common interpretation is that each syllable corresponds to one of the six realms of existence and purifies the vice associated with that realm:

Om purifies bliss and pride (realm of the gods)
Ma purifies jealousy and need for entertainment (realm of the jealous gods)
Ni purifies passion and desire (human realm)
Pad purifies ignorance and prejudice (animal realm)
Me purifies poverty and possessiveness (realm of the hungry ghosts)
Hum purifies aggression and hatred (hell realm)
It has also been said that recitation of each of the syllables prevents rebirth in the corresponding realm.

The first known description of the mantra appears in the Karandavyuha Sutra, which is part of certain Mahayana canons such as the Tibetan canon. In this sutra, the Buddha states: "This is the most beneficial mantra. Even I made this aspiration to all the million Buddhas and subsequently received this teaching from Buddha Amitabha."

In his book Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones, Gen Rinproche says of the mantra:

The mantra Om Mani Pädme Hum is easy to say yet quite powerful, because it contains the essence of the entire teaching. When you say the first syllable Om it is blessed to help you achieve perfection in the practice of generosity, Ma helps perfect the practice of pure ethics, and Ni helps achieve perfection in the practice of tolerance and patience. Päd, the fourth syllable, helps to achieve perfection of perseverance, Me helps achieve perfection in the practice of concentration, and the final sixth syllable Hum helps achieve perfection in the practice of wisdom.

So in this way recitation of the mantra helps achieve perfection in the six practices from generosity to wisdom. The path of these six perfections is the path walked by all the Buddhas of the three times. What could then be more meaningful than to say the mantra and accomplish the six perfections?

Buddhist Symbols: Symbols in Buddhist Art and Ritual

In the earliest centuries of Buddhism, statues of the Buddha were not used. Instead, Buddhist art consisted of images symbolizing the Buddha and his teachings, such as the lotus, the Wheel of the Law, the Bodhi tree, lions, and the Buddha's footprints.

Eventually, the Buddha statue became one of the most popular representations in Buddhism, but these early symbols remain important and are frequently used to this day. They are especially important in Theravada Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand.

As Buddhism spread, Buddhist symbolism was enriched by the cultures it came into contact with. This is especially true of Buddhism in Tibet, which has developed a rich symbolic tradition. The central symbols of Tibetan Buddhism are the Eight Auspicious Symbols, known in Sanskrit as Ashtamangala (ashta meaning eight and mangala meaning auspicious). The Eight Auspicious Symbols are printed on Tibetan prayer flags, incorporated into mandalas and thangkas, and used in other forms of ritual art. In addition to these, another important symbol is the Tibetan Wheel of Life, an symbolic representation of the universe as understood by Tibetan Buddhists.

Other important types of symbolism in Buddhism include colors, especially the five colors of white, yellow, red, blue and green, and symbolic hand gestures called mudras.

The articles in this section explore these eight symbols, as well as the richly symbolic Tibetan Wheel of Life and the use of color in Buddhist symbolism.

http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/symbols.htm

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/1/white1.html

Buddhist Rituals & Practices
21:06:09 - Jul 06 2006
Times Read: 30

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Buddhism incorporates a variety of rituals practices intended to aid in the journey to enlightenment and bring blessings on oneself and others.

The practice of meditation is central to nearly all forms of Buddhism, and it derives directly from the Buddha’s experiences and teachings. Meditation is is the central focus of Zen Buddhism and the only way to liberation in Theravada Buddhism.

In addition to meditation, the Mahayana schools of Buddhism have developed a variety of other ritual and devotional practices, many of which were inspired or influenced by the existing religious cultures of India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Tibet.

Buddhist Meditation

All that we are is the result of what we have thought:
it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

--Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada

Buddhist meditation is a form of mental concentration that leads ultimately to enlightenment and spiritual freedom. Meditation occupies a central place in all forms of Buddhism, but has developed characteristic variations in different Buddhist traditions.

There are two main types of Buddhist meditation: vipassana (insight) and samatha (tranquility). The two are often combined or used one after the other (usually vipissana follows samatha). In China and Japan, an entire school of Buddhism developed around the practice of sitting meditation: Ch’an or Zen Buddhism. This article outlines the major types of Buddhist meditation and provides links to further information on Buddhist meditation.

Tranquility Meditation (Samatha)
The basic purpose of samatha meditation is to still the mind and train it to concentrate. The object of concentration (kammatthana) is less important than the skill of concentration itself, and varies by individual and situation. One Pali texts lists 40 kammatthanas, which include:

devices (like color or light)
repulsive things (like a corpse)
recollections (such as sayings of the Buddha)
virtues (like loving-kindness)
The goal of samatha meditation is to progress through four stages (dhyanas):

Detachment from the external world and a consciousness of joy and tranquility;
Concentration, with suppression of reasoning and investigation;
The passing away of joy, but with the sense of tranquility remaining; and
The passing away of tranquility also, bringing about a state of pure self-possession and equanimity.

Insight Meditation (Vipassana)
Many of the skills learned in tranquility meditation can be applied to insight meditation, but the end goal is different. As its name suggests, the purpose of insight meditation is the realization of important truths. Specifically, one who practices vipassana hopes to realize the truths of impermanence, suffering and "no-self."

Of course, these doctrines are already known to any Buddhist. After all, they are the central teachings of the Buddha. But in order to attain liberation, he or she must personally apprehend and truly understand these important truths. Simple knowledge of the Buddhist doctrines is not sufficient.

Because vipassana meditation alone produces the understanding through which liberation takes place, it is considered superior to tranquility meditation. It is the primary form of meditation practiced in Theravada Buddhism.

The practice of insight meditation centers around the notion of mindfulness. Mindfulness is related to, but different than, concentration. When one is concentrating, one’s entire focus is on the object of concentration in an almost trancelike manner - whether the object is a lotus, one’s own breathing, or a television program. But to be mindful of something is to think about it and observe it carefully. It is not only to focus on a television program, but to comprehend its content. It is not only to block out everything but breathing; it is to observe what the breathing is like and attempt to learn something about it.

Gaining the skill of mindfulness is the first step of insight meditation. The most common methods prescribed to develop mindfulness are:

walking mindfulness
sitting mindfulness
mindfulness of daily activities
Walking mindfulness is regularly practiced in monasteries and retreats, especially in the Theravada tradition. But to practice walking mindfulness anywhere, one finds a quiet place to walk, takes a moment to relax, then attempts to focus on the myriad movements and sensations associated with walking. If the mind strays to other things, this is to be mindfully noted, then put aside to again focus on the walking. According to Buddhists who practice this technique, as one progresses in skill it becomes easy to "lose oneself" in the activity and walk for a long time without it feeling like more than a few minutes have passed. This can be very blissful in itself, but it also brings the practitioner closer to insight into the fundamental truths of "no-self" and impermanence.

Sitting meditation is very similar to walking meditation, except now the focus is on the breath instead of the walking. The sitting meditator attempts to focus entirely on his or her own breath as it moves in and out, and the abdomen as it moves up and down. As in walking meditation, as other thoughts distract, these are to be mindfully recognized, then put aside. With practice, the meditator is distracted less and notices more about the object of observation, the breath. This practice certainly brings about tranquility, but again, the ultimate goal is to begin to realize for oneself the Buddhist truths of no-self, suffering and impermanence.

Finally, the practice of mindfulness in everyday activities applies the skills learned in walking and sitting meditation to everything one does: eating, washing dishes, washing, etc. As this skill is developed, one lives increasinly in the present moment and participates more fully in everything he or she does. One Buddhist master who was accomplished in the practice of mindfulness said simply, "When I eat, I eat. When I sleep, I sleep."

Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta Bhavana)
Loving-kindness is a central virtue of Buddhism, and loving-kindness meditation (metta bhavana) is a way of developing this virtue. It is a practice that is seen as supplemental or complementary to other forms of meditation.

The purpose of loving-kindness meditation is to develop the mental habit of altruistic love for the self and others. It is said to "sweeten the mind." There are, of course, a variety of ways to practice metta bhavana, but it generally progresses through three stages:

Specific pervasion
Directional pervasion
Non-specific pervasion
In the first stage, the practitioner focuses on sending loving-kindness to specific people, in the following order:

Oneself
An admired, respected person (like a spiritual teacher)
A beloved person (like a close friend or family member)
A neutral person – someone familiar but who evokes no particular feelings (like a person who works in a local store)
A hostile person (like an enemy or someone who causes the practitioner difficulty)
Beginning with oneself, the meditator seeks to evoke feelings of loving-kindness for each person in the above list. Tools for accomplishing this include:

Visualization – imagine the person looking joyful and happy
Reflection – reflect on the person’s positive qualities and acts of kindness they have done
Mantra – repeat silently or out loud a simple mantra like "loving-kindness"
When this first stage has been accomplished even for hostile persons, one moves on the next stage, Directional Pervasion. In this stage, the practitioner systematically projects feelings of loving-kindness in all geographical directions: north, south, east and west. This can be done by bringing to mind friends and like-minded communities in various cities around the world.

The last stage of metta bhavana is "Non-Specific Pervasion," which simply means radiating feelings of universal, unconditional love in everyday life. This stage is often a natural outcome of accomplishment of the other stages.

Buddhist Mantras and Dharanis

From the early history of Buddhism, Buddhists have practiced protective rites intended to stave off danger or evil influences. Such protective rites usually involve chanting of parittas (a selection of texts, most of which attributed to the Buddha). In Theravada communities, found primarily in Sri Lanka and other Southeast Asian countries, parittas are often chanted during large public rituals to avert collective danger and in private rituals to protect individuals against illness or other misfortune.

Protective rites play an even greater role in the Mahayana and esoteric Buddhist traditions, found primarily in East Asia and Tibet. In these regions, especially in Tibet, dharanis and mantras are widely used in exorcistic and protective rites. Dharanis are statements of doctrine or adoration believed to have spiritual power when chanted. Mantras are shorter statements, often just single words, that are believed to contain the same power.

As mentioned above, the primary purpose of dharanis and mantras is to protect against evil, danger, or misfortune. When translated, they do not seem to contain truths of any significance. Their power derives not as much from their content as from their invocation of the gods and the frequent exclamations, which are believed to frighten away evil spirits.

Following is the text of one common dharani.

DHARANI OF REMOVING DISASTERS

Adoration to all the Buddhas!
Adoration to the Teaching that knows no obstructions!
Thus: Om! Khya khya khyahi khyahi (speak, speak)!
Hum hum! Jvala jvala prajvala prajvala (blaze, blaze)!
Tistha tistha (up, up)!
Stri Stri!
Sphata (burst, burst)!
One who is quiescent!
To the glorious one, hail!

Meaning and Uses of Prayer Wheels
Prayer wheels are used primarily by the Buddhists of Tibet and Nepal, where hand-held prayer wheels are carried by pilgrims and other devotees, and are turned during devotional activities.

According the Tibetan Buddhist belief, spinning a prayer wheel is just as effective as reciting the sacred texts aloud. This belief derives from the Buddhist belief in the power of sound and the formulas to which deities are subject. For many Buddhists, the prayer wheel also represents the Wheel of the Law (or Dharma) set in motion by the Buddha.

The prayer wheel is also useful for illiterate members of the lay Buddhist community, since they can "read" the prayers by turning the wheel.

Forms of Prayer Wheels
Prayer wheels come in many sizes: they may be small and attached to a stick (above), and spun around by hand; medium-sized and set up at monasteries or temples (right); or very large and continuously spun by a water mill. Prayer wheels set up at monasteries and temples are located at the gates of the property, and devotees spin the wheels before passing through the gates.

The external cylinder of a prayer wheel is made out of repoussé metal, usually gilded bronze. The wheel is supported on a handle or axis made of wood or a precious metal. On the outside of the cylinder are inscriptions in Sanskrit (or sometimes Tibetan) script (often Om mani padme hum) and auspicious Buddhist symbols. This outer part is removable to allow for the insertion of the sacred text into the cylinder. The uppermost point of the prayer wheel forms the shape of a lotus bud.

The cylinder contains a sacred text written or printed on paper or animal skin. These texts might be sutra or invocations to particular deities (dharani or mantras). The most common text used in prayer wheels is the mantra Om mani padme hum.

Om Mani Padme Hum
"Om mani padme hum" is the most important mantra in Buddhism. It is the six syllable mantra of the Bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteshvara. The Dalai Lama is said to be an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, so the mantra is especially revered by his devotees. Click here to hear the mantra chanted by a Tibetan refugee.

The basic English translation of Om mani padme hum is "Om Jewel in the Lotus Hum" or "Praise to the Jewel in the Lotus." However, the meaning and significance of the six Tibetan syllables have been interpreted in a variety of ways. One common interpretation is that each syllable corresponds to one of the six realms of existence and purifies the vice associated with that realm:

Om purifies bliss and pride (realm of the gods)
Ma purifies jealousy and need for entertainment (realm of the jealous gods)
Ni purifies passion and desire (human realm)
Pad purifies ignorance and prejudice (animal realm)
Me purifies poverty and possessiveness (realm of the hungry ghosts)
Hum purifies aggression and hatred (hell realm)
It has also been said that recitation of each of the syllables prevents rebirth in the corresponding realm.

The first known description of the mantra appears in the Karandavyuha Sutra, which is part of certain Mahayana canons such as the Tibetan canon. In this sutra, the Buddha states: "This is the most beneficial mantra. Even I made this aspiration to all the million Buddhas and subsequently received this teaching from Buddha Amitabha."

In his book Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones, Gen Rinproche says of the mantra:

The mantra Om Mani Pädme Hum is easy to say yet quite powerful, because it contains the essence of the entire teaching. When you say the first syllable Om it is blessed to help you achieve perfection in the practice of generosity, Ma helps perfect the practice of pure ethics, and Ni helps achieve perfection in the practice of tolerance and patience. Päd, the fourth syllable, helps to achieve perfection of perseverance, Me helps achieve perfection in the practice of concentration, and the final sixth syllable Hum helps achieve perfection in the practice of wisdom.

So in this way recitation of the mantra helps achieve perfection in the six practices from generosity to wisdom. The path of these six perfections is the path walked by all the Buddhas of the three times. What could then be more meaningful than to say the mantra and accomplish the six perfections?

Buddhist Symbols: Symbols in Buddhist Art and Ritual

In the earliest centuries of Buddhism, statues of the Buddha were not used. Instead, Buddhist art consisted of images symbolizing the Buddha and his teachings, such as the lotus, the Wheel of the Law, the Bodhi tree, lions, and the Buddha's footprints.

Eventually, the Buddha statue became one of the most popular representations in Buddhism, but these early symbols remain important and are frequently used to this day. They are especially important in Theravada Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand.

As Buddhism spread, Buddhist symbolism was enriched by the cultures it came into contact with. This is especially true of Buddhism in Tibet, which has developed a rich symbolic tradition. The central symbols of Tibetan Buddhism are the Eight Auspicious Symbols, known in Sanskrit as Ashtamangala (ashta meaning eight and mangala meaning auspicious). The Eight Auspicious Symbols are printed on Tibetan prayer flags, incorporated into mandalas and thangkas, and used in other forms of ritual art. In addition to these, another important symbol is the Tibetan Wheel of Life, an symbolic representation of the universe as understood by Tibetan Buddhists.

Other important types of symbolism in Buddhism include colors, especially the five colors of white, yellow, red, blue and green, and symbolic hand gestures called mudras.

The articles in this section explore these eight symbols, as well as the richly symbolic Tibetan Wheel of Life and the use of color in Buddhist symbolism.

http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/symbols.htm

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/1/white1.html

Eastern vs western buddhism
20:58:56 - Jul 06 2006
Times Read: 31

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Buddhist traditions in the East:
Buddhism is not a single monolithic religion. Many of its adherents have combined the teachings of the Buddha with local religious rituals, beliefs and customs. Little conflict occurs, because Buddhism at its core is a philosophical system to which such additions can be easily grafted.

After the Buddha's death, splits occurred. There are now three main systems of thought within Buddhism which are geographically and philosophically separate. Each tradition in turn has many sects. One source divides the religion into three main groups by their location:

Theravada Buddhism (a.k.a. as Southern Buddhism) now has 100 million followers.

Buddhist missionaries from India took the religion to a number of countries, but it initially only achieved a foothold in Sri Lanka. It later spread from Sri Lanka to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and parts of Vietnam. They promoted the Vibhajjavada school (Separative Teaching). By the 15th century, this form of the religion reached almost its present geographical extent.
Concepts and practices include:

Dana - thoughtful, ceremonial giving
Sila - accepting Buddhist teaching and following it in practice; refraining from killing, stealing, wrong behavior, use of drugs. On special days, three additional precepts may be added, restricting adornment, entertainment and comfort.
Karma - the balance of accumulated sin and merit, which will determine one's future in the present life, and the nature of the next life to come.
The Cosmos - consists of billions of worlds grouped into clusters; clusters are grouped into galaxies, which are themselves grouped into super-galaxies. The universe also has many levels: four underworlds and 21 heavenly realms.
Paritta - ritual chanting.
Worship - of relics of a Buddha, of items made by a Buddha, or of other symbolic relics.
Festivals - days of the full moon, and three other days during the lunar cycle are celebrated. There is a new year's festival, and celebrations tied to the agricultural year.
Pilgrimages - particularly to Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka and India.

Mahayana Buddhism (a.k.a. Northern Buddhism) is the predominant religion in China, Japan, Korea and much of Vietnam. The tradition entered China during the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE). It found initial acceptance there among the workers; later, it gradually penetrated the ruling class. Buddhism reached Japan in the 6th century. It underwent severe repression during the 1960's in China during the Cultural Revolution.
Eastern Buddhism contains many distinct schools: T'ein-t'ai, Hua-yen, Pure Land teachings, and the Meditation school. They celebrate the New Year, harvest festivals, and five anniversaries from the lives of Buddha and of the Bodhissattva Kuan-yin. They also engage in Dana, Sila, Chanting, Worship and Pilgrimage.

Vajrayana Buddhism (a.k.a. Tantric Buddhism) has perhaps 10 million adherents in parts of China, Mongolia, Russia and Tibet. It entered Tibet circa 640 CE. Conflict with the native Tibetan religion of Bon caused it to go largely underground until its revival in the 11th century CE. The head of the Gelu school of Buddhist teaching became the Dalai Lama, and ruled Tibet. It has been, until recently, wrongly dismissed as a degenerate form of Buddhism.
Ceremony and ritual are emphasized. They also engage in Dana, Sila, Chanting, Worship and Pilgrimage. They developed the practice of searching out a young child at the time of death of an important teacher. The child is believed to be the successor to the deceased teacher. They celebrate New Years, harvest festivals and anniversaries of five important events in the life of the Buddha. Buddhist and Tibetan culture suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution when an attempt was made to destroy all religious belief

Buddhism in the West:
Southern Buddhism became established in Europe early in the 20th century.

Buddhism came to the U.S. in the early 19th century, with the arrival of Chinese and Japanese immigrants to Hawaii and to the west coast of the U.S. mainland. The Zen Buddhist tradition of Eastern Buddhism has developed a large following, particularly after the "Beat" generation, which began in the 1950's. Today, there are racial and cultural divides in American Buddhism, between nationalities of new immigrants, and between Caucasians and Asians. They exist largely as two solitudes, with little interaction.

For Asian-American Buddhists, the temple "has more congregational importance, playing a key religious, social and cultural role in the community." Many have come to America recently, escaping wars in the Far East.
Caucasians Buddhists focus on meditation. Their groups tend to be "more lay orientated, with more women in positions of leadership. For some converts, Buddhism is more a philosophy than a religion." 2

Tricycle: The Buddhist review maintains a listing of 834 centers in the U.S., Canada and Europe at: http://208.2.76.27/tricycle/

The number of Buddhists in North America:
Reliable data on Buddhism in the U.S. is hard to come by. Many estimates of total adherents to Buddhism ranged from three to four million. This would have made them the third largest religious group in the U.S., behind Christians and NOTAS (None Of The Above; persons with no religious identification.) However, the American Religious identification Survey (ARIS 2001) by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that the estimated number of American adults who identify themselves as Buddhist was 1,082,000 in 2001, a significant rise from 401,000 in their similar 1990 survey. This places the number of Buddhists nearly equal to the number of Muslims in the U.S., which they estimated at 1,104,000 in 2001. Numbers of Canadian Buddhists rose from 163,415 in the 1991 census to 300,345 in 2001. 3

Core of Buddhism:
20:57:28 - Jul 06 2006
Times Read: 32

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Buddhism, like most of the great religions of the world, is divided into a number of different traditions. However, most traditions share a common set of fundamental beliefs.

One fundamental belief of Buddhism is often referred to as reincarnation -- the concept that people are reborn after dying. In fact, most individuals go through many cycles of birth, living, death and rebirth. A practicing Buddhist differentiates between the concepts of rebirth and reincarnation. In reincarnation, the individual may recur repeatedly. In rebirth, in a person does not necessarily return to Earth as the same entity ever again. He compares it to a leaf growing on a tree. When the withering leave falls off, a new leaf will eventually replace it. It is similar to the old leaf, but it is not identical to the original leaf.

After many such cycles, if a person releases their attachment to desire and the self, they can attain Nirvana. This is a state of liberation and freedom from suffering.

The Three Trainings or Practices:
These three consist of:

Sila: Virtue, good conduct, morality. This is based on two fundamental principles: The principle of equality: that all living entities are equal.
The principle of reciprocity: This is the "Golden Rule" in
Christianity -- to do onto others as you would wish them do
onto you. It is found in all major religions.

Samadhi: Concentration, meditation, mental development. Developing one's mind is the path to wisdom which in turn leads to personal freedom. Mental development also strengthens and controls our mind; this helps us maintain good conduct.
Prajna: Discernment, insight, wisdom, enlightenment. This is the real heart of Buddhism. Wisdom will emerge if your mind is pure and calm.
The first two paths listed in the Eightfold Path, described below, refer to discernment; the last three belong to concentration; the middle three are related to virtue.

The Four Noble Truths:
The Buddha's Four Noble Truths explore human suffering. They may be described (somewhat simplistically) as:

Dukkha: Suffering exists: (Suffering is real and and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, the impermanence of pleasure.)
Samudaya: There is a cause for suffering. (It is the desire to have and control things. It can take many forms: craving of sensual pleasures; the desire for fame; the desire to avoid unpleasant sensations, like fear, anger or jealousy.)
Nirodha: There is an end to suffering. (Suffering ceases with the final liberation of Nirvana (a.k.a. Nibbana). The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving.)
Magga: In order to end suffering, you must follow the Eightfold Path.

Quotation:
"Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people's suffering. On these lines every religion had more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal." The Dalai Lama

Overview
Religious groups differ greatly in their concepts of deity, other beliefs and practices. Non-theistic ethical and philosophic systems, like Humanism and Ethical Culture, also exhibit a wide range of beliefs. But there is near unanimity of opinion among almost all religions, ethical systems and philosophies that each person should treat others in a decent manner. Almost all of these groups have passages in their holy texts, or writings of their leaders, which promote this Ethic of Reciprocity. The most commonly known version in North America is the Golden Rule of Christianity. It is often expressed as "Do onto others as you would wish them do onto you."

One result of this Ethic is the concept that every person shares certain inherent human rights, simply because of their membership in the human race. People are individually very different; they come in two main genders; different sizes, colors, and shapes; many races; three sexual orientations; and different degrees of ability. They follow many religious and economic systems, speak many languages, and follow many different cultures. But there is a growing consensus that all humans are equal in importance. All should enjoy basic human rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is one manifestation of this growing worldwide consensus. 1,2

In our opinion, the greatest failure of organized religion is its historical inability to convince their followers that the Ethic of Reciprocity applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers. It is our belief that religions should stress that their membership use their Ethic of reciprocity when dealing with persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc. Only when this is accomplished will religiously-related oppression, mass murder and genocide cease.

Some "Ethic of Reciprocity" passages from the religious texts of various religions and secular beliefs:
Bahá'í World Faith: "Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not." "Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself." Baha'u'llah
"And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself." Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

Brahmanism: "This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". Mahabharata, 5:1517 "
Buddhism: "...a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?" Samyutta NIkaya v. 353
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18

Christianity: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12, King James Version.
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31, King James Version.
"...and don't do what you hate...", Gospel of Thomas 6. The Gospel of Thomas is one of about 40 gospels that were widely accepted among early Christians, but which never made it into the Christian Scriptures (New Testament).

Confucianism: "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" Analects 15:23
"Tse-kung asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'shu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" Doctrine of the Mean 13.3
"Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence." Mencius VII.A.4

Ancient Egyptian: "Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson. The original dates to 1970 to 1640 BCE and may be the earliest version ever written. 3

Hinduism: "One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself." Mencius Vii.A.4

Humanism: "(5) Humanists acknowledge human interdependence, the need for mutual respect and the kinship of all humanity."
"(11) Humanists affirm that individual and social problems can only be resolved by means of human reason, intelligent effort, critical thinking joined with compassion and a spirit of empathy for all living beings. " 4
"Don't do things you wouldn't want to have done to you, British Humanist Society. 3

Islam: "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths." 5
Jainism: "Therefore, neither does he [a sage] cause violence to others nor does he make others do so." Acarangasutra 5.101-2.
"In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self." Lord Mahavira, 24th Tirthankara
"A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated. "Sutrakritanga 1.11.33

Judaism: "...thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.", Leviticus 19:18
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." Talmud, Shabbat 31a.
"And what you hate, do not do to any one." Tobit 4:15 6

Native American Spirituality: "Respect for all life is the foundation." The Great Law of Peace.
"All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk
"Do not wrong or hate your neighbor. For it is not he who you wrong, but yourself." Pima proverb.

Roman Pagan Religion: "The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves."
Shinto: "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form"
"Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God." Ko-ji-ki Hachiman Kasuga

Sikhism: Compassion-mercy and religion are the support of the entire world". Japji Sahib
"Don't create enmity with anyone as God is within everyone." Guru Arjan Devji 259
"No one is my enemy, none a stranger and everyone is my friend." Guru Arjan Dev : AG 1299

Sufism: "The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this." Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order.
Taoism: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss." T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien.
"The sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own. He is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for Virtue is kind. He is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for Virtue is faithful." Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 49

Unitarian: "We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent of all existence of which we are a part." Unitarian principles.
Wicca: "An it harm no one, do what thou wilt" (i.e. do what ever you will, as long as it harms nobody, including yourself). One's will is to be carefully thought out in advance of action. This is called the Wiccan Rede
Yoruba: (Nigeria): "One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts."
Zoroastrianism: "That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself". Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
"Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others." Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29

Some philosophers' statements are:
Epictetus: "What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others." (circa 100 CE)
Kant: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature."
Plato: "May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me." (Greece; 4th century BCE)
Socrates: "Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." (Greece; 5th century BCE)
Seneca: "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors," Epistle 47:11 (Rome; 1st century CE)

Examples from moral/ethical systems are:
Humanism: "...critical intelligence, infused by a sense of human caring, is the best method that humanity has for resolving problems. Reason should be balanced with compassion and empathy and the whole person fulfilled." Humanist Manifesto II; Ethics section.
Scientology: "20: Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you." This is one of the 21 moral precepts that form the moral code explained in L. Ron Hubbard's booklet "The Way to Happiness."

Ethics of Reciprocity

Comparison of Buddhism with Christianity:
20:55:40 - Jul 06 2006
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Since about 75% of American adults identify themselves as Christian and only 0.5% view themselves as Buddhist, it may be useful to compare Buddhism with the U.S.'s dominant religion.

We define as "Christian" any person or group who thoughtfully, sincerely, prayerfully regard themselves as Christian. This is the definition that pollsters and the census offices of many countries use. It includes as Christians the full range of faith groups who consider themselves to be Christians, including Assemblies of God members, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, United Church members, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, etc. Many Christians have a much less inclusive definition of the term "Christian."

Beliefs not shared: Buddhists do not share most of the core beliefs of historical Christianity. These include: An original golden era in the Garden of Eden, and a subsequent fall of humanity.
Original sin shared by all present-day humans, derived from Adam and Eve.
A world-wide flood in the time of Adam, causing the greatest human genocide in history.
The need for a personal savior whose death enabled individual salvation.
A god-man savior who was born of a virgin, executed, resurrected and ascended to heaven.
Salvation achieved through good works, specific beliefs and/or sacraments.
Eternal life spent in either a heaven or hell after death.
Return of the savior to earth at some time in the future.
An end of the world as we know it in the near future.

Some shared beliefs: Buddhism and Christianity share some features: Ethic of Reciprocity: Buddhism, Christianity and all of the other major world religions share a basic rule of behavior which governs how they are to treat others. Two quotations from Buddhist texts which reflect this Ethic are: "...a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?" Samyutta NIkaya v. 353.
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18.
This compares closely to Christianity's Golden Rule, which is seen in: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Matthew 7:12.
"...and don't do what you hate...", Gospel of Thomas 6.

Life after death: Almost all religions teach that a person's personality continues after death. In fact, many religious historians believe that this belief was the prime reason that motivated people to originally create religions. Christianity and Buddhism are no exception. However, they conceive of life after death in very different forms: Buddhism teaches that humans are trapped in a repetitive cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. One's goal is to escape from this cycle and reach Nirvana. The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. Suffering ends because desire and craving -- the causes of suffering -- are no more.
Christianity has historically taught that everyone has only a single life on earth. After death, an eternal life awaits everyone: either in Heaven or Hell. There is no suffering in Heaven; only joy. Suffering is eternal without any hope of cessation for the inhabitants of Hell.

Themes of morality, justice, love: These themes are found through both the Buddha's teaching and the Hebrew and Christian Bible.

Beliefs shared by some Buddhist traditions and Christianity: In its original forms, Buddhism did not teach of the existence of transcendent, immanent, or any other type of God, Gods, Goddess, and/or Goddesses. However, many Buddhists -- particularly in Japan -- do believe in a pantheon of deities.
Some traditions within Buddhism believe in the power of prayer; others do not.
Some Buddhists believe in Miroku, the "future Buddha." They expect him to be reincarnated and spread Buddhism further.

Buddhism p1
20:55:18 - Jul 06 2006
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(bd´ĭzm) , religion and philosophy founded in India c.525 by Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha. There are over 300 million Buddhists worldwide. One of the great world religions, it is divided into two main schools: the Theravada or Hinayana in Sri Lanka and SE Asia, and the Mahayana in China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. A third school, the Vajrayana, has a long tradition in Tibet and Japan. Buddhism has largely disappeared from its country of origin, India, except for the presence there of many refugees from the Tibet region of China and a small number of converts from the lower castes of Hinduism.

Basic Beliefs and Practices

The basic doctrines of early Buddhism, which remain common to all Buddhism, include the "four noble truths" : existence is suffering (dukhka); suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment (trishna); there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana; and there is a path to the cessation of suffering, the "eightfold path" of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Buddhism characteristically describes reality in terms of process and relation rather than entity or substance.

Experience is analyzed into five aggregates (skandhas). The first, form (rupa), refers to material existence; the following four, sensations (vedana), perceptions (samjna), psychic constructs (samskara), and consciousness (vijnana), refer to psychological processes. The central Buddhist teaching of non-self (anatman) asserts that in the five aggregates no independently existent, immutable self, or soul, can be found. All phenomena arise in interrelation and in dependence on causes and conditions, and thus are subject to inevitable decay and cessation. The casual conditions are defined in a 12-membered chain called dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) whose links are: ignorance, predisposition, consciousness, name-form, the senses, contact, craving, grasping, becoming, birth, old age, and death, whence again ignorance.

With this distinctive view of cause and effect, Buddhism accepts the pan-Indian presupposition of samsara, in which living beings are trapped in a continual cycle of birth-and-death, with the momentum to rebirth provided by one's previous physical and mental actions (see karma). The release from this cycle of rebirth and suffering is the total transcendence called nirvana.

From the beginning, meditation and observance of moral precepts were the foundation of Buddhist practice. The five basic moral precepts, undertaken by members of monastic orders and the laity, are to refrain from taking life, stealing, acting unchastely, speaking falsely, and drinking intoxicants. Members of monastic orders also take five additional precepts: to refrain from eating at improper times, from viewing secular entertainments, from using garlands, perfumes, and other bodily adornments, from sleeping in high and wide beds, and from receiving money. Their lives are further regulated by a large number of rules known as the Pratimoksa. The monastic order (sangha) is venerated as one of the "three jewels," along with the dharma, or religious teaching, and the Buddha. Lay practices such as the worship of stupas (burial mounds containing relics) predate Buddhism and gave rise to later ritualistic and devotional practices.

Early Buddhism

India during the lifetime of the Buddha was in a state of religious and cultural ferment. Sects, teachers, and wandering ascetics abounded, espousing widely varying philosophical views and religious practices. Some of these sects derived from the Brahmanical tradition (see Hinduism), while others opposed the Vedic and Upanishadic ideas of that tradition. Buddhism, which denied both the efficacy of Vedic ritual and the validity of the caste system, and which spread its teachings using vernacular languages rather than Brahmanical Sanskrit, was by far the most successful of the heterodox or non-Vedic systems. Buddhist tradition tells how Siddhartha Gautama, born a prince and raised in luxury, renounced the world at the age of 29 to search for an ultimate solution to the problem of the suffering innate in the human condition. After six years of spiritual discipline he achieved the supreme enlightment and spent the remaining 45 years of his life teaching and establishing a community of monks and nuns, the sangha, to continue his work.

After the Buddha's death his teachings were orally transmitted until the 1st cent. , when they were first committed to writing (see Buddhist literature; Pali). Conflicting opinions about monastic practice as well as religious and philosophical issues, especially concerning the analyses of experience elaborated as the systems of Abhidharma, probably caused differing sects to flourish rapidly. Knowledge of early differences is limited, however, because the earliest extant written version of the scriptures (1st cent. ) is the Pali canon of the Theravada school of Sri Lanka. Although the Theravada [doctrine of the elders] is known to be only one of many early Buddhist schools (traditionally numbered at 18), its beliefs as described above are generally accepted as representative of the early Buddhist doctrine. The ideal of early Buddhism was the perfected saintly sage, arahant or arhat, who attained liberation by purifying self of all defilements and desires.

The Rise of Mahayana Buddhism

The positions advocated by Mahayana [great vehicle] Buddhism, which distinguishes itself from the Theravada and related schools by calling them Hinayana [lesser vehicle], evolved from other of the early Buddhist schools. The Mahayana emerges as a definable movement in the 1st cent. , with the appearance of a new class of literature called the Mahayana sutras. The main philosophical tenet of the Mahayana is that all things are empty, or devoid of self-nature (see sunyata). Its chief religious ideal is the bodhisattva, which supplanted the earlier ideal of the arahant, and is distinguished from it by the vow to postpone entry into nirvana (although meriting it) until all other living beings are similarly enlightened and saved.

The bodhisattva is an actual religious goal for lay and monastic Buddhists, as well as the name for a class of celestial beings who are worshiped along with the Buddha. The Mahayana developed doctrines of the eternal and absolute nature of the Buddha, of which the historical Buddha is regarded as a temporary manifestation. Teachings on the intrinsic purity of consciousness generated ideas of potential Buddhahood in all living beings. The chief philosophical schools of Indian Mahayana were the Madhyamika, founded by Nagarjuna (2d cent. ), and the Yogacara, founded by the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu (4th cent. ). In this later Indian period, authors in different schools wrote specialized treatises, Buddhist logic was systematized, and the practices of Tantra came into prominence.

The Spread of Buddhism

In the 3d cent. the Indian emperor Asoka greatly strengthened Buddhism by his support and sent Buddhist missionaries as far afield as Syria. In succeeding centuries, however, the Hindu revival initiated the gradual decline of Buddhism in India. The invasions of the White Huns (6th cent.) and the Muslims (11th cent.) were also significant factors behind the virtual extinction of Buddhism in India by the 13th cent.

In the meantime, however, its beliefs had spread widely. Sri Lanka was converted to Buddhism in the 3d cent. , and Buddhism has remained its national religion. After taking up residence in Sri Lanka, the Indian Buddhist scholar Buddhaghosa (5th cent. ) produced some of Theravada Buddhism's most important scholastic writings. In the 7th cent. Buddhism entered Tibet, where it has flourished, drawing its philosophical influences mainly from the Madhyamika, and its practices from the Tantra.

Buddhism came to SE Asia in the first five centuries All Buddhist schools were initially established, but the surviving forms today are mostly Theravada. About the 1st cent. Buddhism entered China along trade routes from central Asia, initiating a four-century period of gradual assimilation. In the 3d and 4th cent. Buddhist concepts were interpreted by analogy with indigenous ideas, mainly Taoist, but the work of the great translators Kumarajiva and Hsüan-tsang provided the basis for better understanding of Buddhist concepts.

The 6th cent. saw the development of the great philosophical schools, each centering on a certain scripture and having a lineage of teachers. Two such schools, the T'ien-t'ai and the Hua-Yen, hierarchically arranged the widely varying scriptures and doctrines that had come to China from India, giving preeminence to their own school and scripture. Branches of Madhyamika and Yogacara were also founded. The two great nonacademic sects were Ch'an or Zen Buddhism, whose chief practice was sitting in meditation to achieve "sudden enlightenment," and Pure Land Buddhism, which advocated repetition of the name of the Buddha Amitabha to attain rebirth in his paradise.

Chinese Buddhism encountered resistance from Confucianism and Taoism, and opposition from the government, which was threatened by the growing power of the tax-exempt sangha. The great persecution by the emperor Wu-tsung (845) dealt Chinese Buddhism a blow from which it never fully recovered. The only schools that retained vitality were Zen and Pure Land, which increasingly fused with one another and with the native traditions, and after the decline of Buddhism in India, neo-Confucianism rose to intellectual and cultural dominance.

From China and Korea, Buddhism came to Japan. Schools of philosophy and monastic discipline were transmitted first (6th cent.—8th cent.), but during the Heian period (794—1185) a conservative form of Tantric Buddhism became widely popular among the nobility. Zen and Pure Land grew to become popular movements after the 13th cent. After World War II new sects arose in Japan, such as the Soka Gakkai, an outgrowth of the nationalistic sect founded by Nichiren (1222—82), and the Risshokoseikai, attracting many followers.

Quotations:
"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity" A widely cited, but spurious quotation attributed to Albert Einstein 1
"The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances." Atisha.
"If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion." Lin-Chi.
"Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.” Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh.

Overview:
Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world, being exceeded in numbers only by Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. It was founded in Northern India by the first known Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. In 535 BCE, he attained enlightenment and assumed the title Lord Buddha (one who has awakened)

As Buddhism expanded across Asia, it evolved into two main forms, which evolved largely independently from each other:

Theravada Buddhism (sometimes called Southern Buddhism; occasionally spelled Therevada) "has been the dominant school of Buddhism in most of Southeast Asia since the thirteenth century, with the establishment of the monarchies in Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Laos."
Mahayana Buddhism (sometimes called Northern Buddhism) is largely found in China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Mongolia.

To which might be added:

Tibetan Buddhism, which developed in isolation from Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism because of the remoteness of Tibet.

Since the late 19th century:

Modern Buddhism has emerged as a truly international movement. It started as an attempt to produce a single form of Buddhism, without local accretions, that all Buddhists could embrace.

Anthony Fore
20:43:38 - Jul 06 2006
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I always get asked, Do Vampires Exist?
Of course Vampires exist.
Are you yourself not a vampire?
Do you not drain the "Vital Force" from the food
you eat, from the sunlight or from your enviroment
While y0u sleep? It this way, every living thing
participates in a form of Vampirism.

Though, if we were to listen to Eliphas Lévi he
warns us against a type of person, fearless and
cold-blooded, who seems to have the power to cast
a sudden chill, merely by entering the room, upon
the gayest party ever assembled. They shake one's
resolution, kill one's enthusiasm, devitalize one's
faith and courage.

Thus, there are actually people running about all
over the place, who actually possess, and exercise,
faculties similar to those mentioned by Lévi, but
in much greater intensity, even of a kind far more
formidable, and directed by malignant will.

The doctrine of "Vital Force" & "Subtle Energies" has
been so brought back into the public limelight and so
I hardly need to bring credability to it's existence
as it's now accepted as certainly fact. These energies
have recently been coined as 'protoplasm' by modern
science. Science has recently discovered what Magick
has known for centuries --that every piece of physical
matter is simply this protoplasm vibrating at a frequency
our physical senses can perceive.

channelling the higherself
14:36:56 - Aug 30 2006
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Many people are searching at this time, for what they call the truth. They are seeking guidance in this arena from "higher" beings on other dimensions. Well, surprise, you are one of these beings. Everyone has a Higher Self, that exists simultaneously on this dimension, as well as all others. The possibilities for life are limitless, and the great Spirit that you are wants to experience all the possibilities. You always have contact with your Higher Self, but it comes through more clearly when you focus your intent upon bringing Spirit into your life.

So the phenomenon of channeling is really a simple concept: it is bringing in Spirit (not necessarily your own) and letting it communicate either to you or through you. Since your Higher Self is not limited by time or space, you can access the whole of your entire being, that is, your past, present, and future selves, as well as all aspects of it. Your Spirit is really greater and much more vast than you can imagine, because you are here on the physical plane, learning all about limitation, and don't have the "bird's eye view" that your multidimensional Self does.

Here is a simple technique you can use to channel your Higher Self, or Spirit. It is a very flexible method and you can always modify any of it to suit your own needs. Really anyone can do this. Go somewhere that is quiet where you won't be disturbed, and where you can sit comfortably with your feet flat on the floor or ground, and your eyes closed. It may be helpful to keep a pen and paper handy to write your experiences as they go along. If you like, you can have a helper with you who can guide you through the initial meditation and ask questions of your Higher Self, and write your answers for you.

Grounding:

Take three deep breaths, letting yourself relax. Imagine your consciousness drifting down into the Earth, as you keep breathing slowly and deeply, and then your consciousness comes to rest somewhere inside the Earth, where you find a place with a certain mineral in it that you feel attracted to. See this mineral start to glow, becoming brighter with colored light, whatever color you like. Now see the light become a beam, and it is moving up now, all the way up until it enters the bottom of your right foot. Then become aware of your right foot, how it feels, and see the light begin to move up your right leg, and become aware of your right leg. Then, see the light continue to go up your right side, as you become aware of that area, then it enters your right hand, and continues up your right arm to the shoulder. Become fully aware of your whole right side, and see the light illuminating the whole right side of your body. Now move the light cord over to your left shoulder, and become aware of that area. Now the light begins moving down your left arm, hand, fingers, and you feel it moving down your left side, as you focus your awareness to your left side. Then the light cord moves down your left leg, into your left foot. Become fully aware of all sensations in the whole left side of your body. The light finally continues back down into the Earth, where it connects back to its source, completing the circuit. The light is continually in motion, moving up form the Earth up your right side as you breathe in, and circulating back down your left side and back to its source as you breathe out. Feel this energy revitalizing you as you breathe and relax.

Clearing:

Now see a third energy cord come up out of the Earth, perhaps of another color, and it enters your body at the base of your spine, the first chakra. See that chakra as a wheel of light, which fills up with this new energy and begins to glow brightly, and starts to spin. As it does this, any negative energies, fears, or blockages begin to clear out, and you see it spinning in perfect alignment with the your spine as an axle. See the top of the first chakra open up, and see the energy beam move up into the second chakra. Continue moving the beam up into each successive chakra, seeing each one clear out and start to spin, all the way up to the seventh chakra at the crown of your head. Then see the energy beam shoot up out of the top of your head, showering your whole body with light, which surrounds and protects you from any unwanted energies.

Enter your Sanctuary:

See your consciousness rise up along with the beam out through your crown chakra, and find a place for your consciousness to come to rest, anyplace that you like. First you see a doorway, and only you have the key to enter this place, your Sanctuary. Your sanctuary will only have the things in it that you allow. It can be in nature, a special room, another world, wherever you feel comfortable and safe. Now look around you. Off to the left, there is a fountain with a pool of crystal clear water. You go over to the fountain and peer into the pool. At first your reflection in the surface of the water is clear, but then you see the water begin to get wavy and from the center of the pool you see a magnificent being rise up out of the water, glowing in white light. It's your Higher Self, greeting you with unconditional love and acceptance. You greet your Higher Self, and together you go to another part of your Sanctuary, where there is a place for you to put your mind into a soundproof container, where it will stay for the duration of the experience. Notice how you feel about your mind. Know that you are safe and protected, and with you mind put away, you will be able to more fully experience your Higher Self without any judgment. Feel yourself merge into your Higher Self. The energy there is wonderful.

Return to your body with your Higher Self:

You and your Higher Self now leave your Sanctuary and find the bright beam of light that brought you here, and follow the beam back to your physical plane body, where you enter with your Higher Self through the crown chakra. Take a few deep breaths. Notice how you feel. When you feel ready, open your eyes. If you have a helper with you, now is the time to begin asking the questions you prepared for your Higher Self. If you have just written the questions down and have no one to help you, ask yourself the questions and just let yourself receive whatever thoughts, feelings, images, or other sensations come to you. Write down whatever it is that you get. Do not try to analyze now, there will be time for that later. Just let yourself flow with the experience. After each answer (whatever form that comes to you in) feels complete, go on to the next question. Here are a few example questions that may be helpful for your first time:

What is my higher purpose for this year?
What blocks or fears do I have that would prevent me from attaining this?
What skills or attributes do I have to help me attain my goals?
What message of love and compassion do you have that [your name] needs to hear at this time?
After the questions feel complete, close your eyes once again, and take your Higher Self with you back to your Sanctuary. Let your Higher Self return to the magical fountain pool, knowing that it is there for you whenever you need it. Now go retrieve your mind, accepting it as a part of yourself. You may stay in your Sanctuary as long as you like, or return to it whenever you want, for it is your space, a place where you are truly free. When you are ready, return to your body through the crown chakra. Your awareness returns to the room you are in and you feel refreshed and balanced. This technique I described above was my first experience channeling my Higher Self. I also use the same technique for channeling other beings of the Light. It is very important when you channel that you state your intent and who you are willing to let into your space, because you will be sharing your energy with them and you don't want to do that with anyone who does not have your highest interests at heart.

This technique facilitates conscious channeling, that is, your consciousness does not leave your body while you channel, and you always have the choice when to stop. There is an element of surrender to Spirit involved, and people who have difficulty with control issues may find it more difficult to learn to channel until they have begun to deal with those fears of not being in control. If your desire for channeling is for your personal growth and healing, and you can learn to trust your Spirit to guide you, this technique can be learned very quickly and you will see results manifest in new ways you probably never imagined.

Chakra Guardian Meditation
14:32:36 - Aug 30 2006
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Meet the aspects and elements of your inner self.
A meditation process for meeting your chakras as beings or as the Guardian animal that is most realised in each one.

Then you can have conversations in meditation circles with them to find ways to meet your needs and understand and harmonise your life energies.

This will give you a more direct way of clearing and balancing your chakras and achieving and maintaining a healthy energy system.

If you do not get an impression from a chakra after a few minutes move on to the next one.

It may be fairly unusual to meet all the chakra beings in one session though it can happen.
Some chakras may have two beings or more for the front and back aspects and other parts of themselves.

The kind of animal you might meet varies greatly. It could be a swan, bear, snake, temple dancer, elk, lion, angel, - anything!

First relax completely and visualise waves of relaxation sweeping through your body.
Use the method of deep relaxation and spiritual centring that works best for you.

When you are completly relaxed bring your attention to your Root Chakra at your tailbone.
Ask that chakra to reveal itself as the guardian totem animal that is most representative of it at this time.
Be open to receive impressions. When you get an impression, greet the being and thank them for coming into your awareness and their work on your behalf. Ask them what they need from you and also ask what gift or information they have for you now - allowing time for the answers to come. When you have finished meeting your root chakra animal, thank them.
Move your focus to the Sacral Chakra, below your naval and repeat the process and continue with each of the seven chakras until you have gone to all the main Chakras and met `Them`.
If you do not meet them all that is alright for now.
You can then invite the guardian totem animals into a Circle to discuss the needs and concerns you have.
Ask each animal what you need to do to get your chakra into the most healthy condition and ask them to help you do this.
Pay close attention to the relationships between the different chakra animals and ask what is needed to help and harmonise their working together.
Some people find that not all their parts are talking to each other for instance.
When you are done, dissolve the circle and thank the beings and centre yourself, returning to your oneness.
This is just the beginning of working with the Chakra guardians and beings.
The possabilities are endless. Your chakra animals change and evolve over time and you may hear from those at minor chakra centres and from the emerging transpersonal centres like the etheric heart at the thymus (compassion) and the soulstar and earthstar too that need your attention and love as well.
It can be pretty extraordinary and revealing to see how the different chakras have a voice and a personality and a presence all of their own which are all part of you.

Channelling spirit guides and animals
14:31:33 - Aug 30 2006
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Channelling is a skill that can be developed by anyone with the desire and determination to reach upwards and grow spiritually.
It does not take years of special training but does require the ability to quieten one's thoughts and the ability to trust and surrender. Channelling is for those people who wish to add to, and develop, the wisdom of their higher selves. It is not a 'quick fix' method of solving all of your daily and emotional problems overnight. Miracles do happen, but a guide will 'guide' you in finding your own solutions through helping you to see the variety of options you have in your decision making processes.
'Your guide is a friend that encourages and supports you'
Channelling is not to be confused with spiritualism. It is not the intention when channelling to contact 'the dead' or to seek their assistance and guidance. Those in the astral plane, generally have the same fears, opinions and characteristics of souls in body here on Earth. They often lack the higher and broader perspective that a high level guide will have.

Keynote: Reclaiming One's True Power
Cycle of Power: Dark of the Moon -
New Moon - Winter
CHANT
Leopard gliding, through shadows sliding,
Intent on its plans in the dark of night.
Like the leopard I go with the energy flow
On the pathway to Otherworld light.
I journey for growth, for creating true worth,
For the learning of wisdom and might.
With wisdom I'll burn, while I confidently turn
All darkness about me to conquering light.

Everyone has guides, whether they know it or not, and those who consciously communicate with their guides have an enormous wealth of resources to tap into.
Those of us that DO - see/sense Spirit Guides differently. I believe that we all come from one Whole, a life-force that encompasses everything in existence. How it came to exist or what it's complete purpose is I don't pretend to fully understand. What I do know is that IT IS THERE/HERE and it does work in, with and around us to create our realities and to protect and learn about ourselves.
I also believe that within this life-force exists different dimensions of reality, different vibrational dimensions which we can reach through raising our vibrations through meditation, hypnosis, ritual, and other energy raising actions such as drumming, chanting, dancing... etc.

It is my belief there is no limit to how many dimensions there are, and that the more enlightened we become the easier it is to access and move through these dimensions.
Spirit guides, among many other beings, reside in such dimensions and come to us from this world of spirit to help us in our evolution. Spirit guides generally don't have a physical form; therefore they tend to reside on higher vibrational planes (dimensions) because they are not hindered by the physical lower-vibration body. They work from these planes (the world of spirit) and move into our reality (3rd dimension) occasionally to offer guidance, assistance and insight. We can reach them through the above mentioned methods such as meditation, hypnosis and by "tapping in" to our life-force and raising our vibrations that way.
Spirit Guides will stay with us even if we choose to ignore them, and they will continue to love and honour us throughout our life. These guides are here to help us with our Lesson or Lessons, and it is often true that their own Lessons may run in tandem with ours.
They can be teachers or protectors as well as helping to direct our paths and to release old past life karma.
One of the most popular misconceptions is that the spirits serve us, personally, rather than theWhole. This is not quite so. The spirits do serve us, and we serve them as well, in partnership. The partnership is mutual; there is no seniority (or ascendancy), nor is there an aspect of subjugation or obligation. While it is true that there are many people who understand that Earth society is based on Free Will, it is also true that very few people have applied this concept to the spirit world. Spirits operate within the parameters of Free Will, and they, too, have the right to claim fair treatment, love, and respect; rights that humans in our society have come to expect or learned to take for granted.
Spirit guides can be many things and have usually lived in a physical body, on a physical plane like Earth, and have usually had some connection to us from a past life of ours. They can be souls of people who we knew in past lives and to whom we have a karmic link. They could also be ancestors of our present life or perhaps souls who have decided to stay in the spiritual realms for a while and not reincarnate to the physical plane and therefore volunteered with our approval to be a guide for us. We chose each other because we knew they would help us "get the job done", and because we knew we could trust them as fully and completely as they willingly trust in us.
They are essentially, like us, energy-vibration which manifests in whatever form they choose...or which is acceptable to us. However, they do retain an identity because they are also souls, and have usually led lives in the physical plane also, just like we are doing now. They have their own personalities, their own goals, their own perspective and their own styles of communication.
Spirit guides will usually approach us in a form that is most comfortable and acceptable to us. For most people this is probably in the human form, though some of us might choose to see an animal, a crystal, colours, shapes or stars etc.
I believe we have as many as are assigned to us. I believe we have one guide (Master Guide) who joins with us at birth, and stays by our side right through our lives until we pass on. This isn't to say that this guide is our only guide.
I also accept that at different times in our lives, depending on the situation and lesson(s) we have to learn, we have new guides join us to provide guidance and insight into the situation. We can either choose to ignore this or use it.
If there is a change in life direction or emphasis, the master guide will step back and these other guides will come forward. These guides can come in unexpected forms, such as a stranger coming out of nowhere and giving us a helping hand. These guides can stay with us for a long period of time, or a very brief period... depending on what the lesson(s) is, and whether or not we're learning it.
There is always a guide of ours nearby... whether it's our spirit guide, animal guide or angel, someone will always hear what we say/think. So in effect we can talk to them any time we choose. Just don't always expect an answer straight away.
There are many ways of meeting your guides. Most children know their guides from birth, and can easily open up the channels to talking to them (remember those imaginary play friends? Were they really imaginary?), but as we grow older we get negative messages from our parents and other adults around us, "time to stop playing with imaginary friends Darling" "Don`t be silly" "No they don't really exist." "That's nice dear, but shouldn't you be playing with some REAL friends?" and messages like this, so children learn to break their connection to their guides and forget about these wonderful beings.
I believe that these unseen, imaginary friends are the child`s guides – frequently the master guide amongst them assuming an identity with which the child can communicate as he or she develops.

For those people that work to connect with their guides or naturally do so - often hear their guides speak, others get distant visual images, and yet others just get a sense of what their guide is trying to communicate, the important thing is to begin to develop trust that will allow us to be aware of the communications that we are being given. Each person`s experience will be different.
Saying that, some people do have difficulty connecting with their Spirit Guides and have trouble visualising them possibly because they are a sentient person and have trouble "seeing" things that are not in the 3rd dimension. However, they can usually “sense”.
They may get flashing images, but `sense` more. So, don't be disappointed if you can't see, or sense, or hear perfectly in meditation or through some of the above methods. Not everyone is that gifted.
We must trust that whatever messages we get, however we get them, are right... and what we need to know just at that point in time and learn to trust ourselves. My personal advice is to go with the technique that is the simplest and most comfortable, easy and relaxing for you.
Guides may also approach us in dreams or daydreams, imparting messages and giving guidance from there, where we are in a more open state and less critical in receiving these messages. A guide can arrive as a feeling, a smell, a light, a sound, or even just a `knowing` that it is present.

Spirit Guides are not the same as Angels. They are of the same "energy", being that of a higher vibrational force, but I don't agree they function in the same manner. Yes, we do have an angel who also stays with us throughout our lives too, but this is not our spirit guide. Angels rarely incarnate on the physical plane, preferring to do their work from the angelic realms (higher energy realms).
Spirit guides, though they can take on any form they choose, usually take a "gender". i.e. they appear as male or female; this is based mainly on the person/being they are presenting to us. Angels on the other hand are without gender. They may appear to us as more masculine or feminine if they appear to us, but they are in essence genderless, androgynous... it's their energy, which supplies them their more masculine or feminine attributes.
Angels function on a higher vibration than spirit guides, and in a higher dimension than spirit guides.
An encounter with an angel in it's full glory could very well scare someone more than assist or sustain them.
Angels are such beautiful beings with such love that their energy itself can bring too much truth to the person and as humans we are capricious creatures. They are the essence of purity. Too much truth can be scary or even terrifying, that is why angels will usually take on a form of lower stature when we encounter them, someone on our level so we can interact with them without the head-on, possibly overwhelming experience of an angel.
They are excellent conveyors of universal love, they are not always equipped to deal with earthy problems.
Spirit guides on the other hand have a lower energy and aren't nearly as intimidating in their full form.
To put it simply - Angels are of the stars and guides are of the earth.

Animal totems, animal guides or Power Animals can be a little of both. Spirit guides can and do take the form of animals and may always appear to us as an animal but I also believe that animal totems in the strict sense are different. They are the essence of the animal with it's message which appears in our life through various means such as divination, dreams, physical appearance of the animal etc when we need to receive this message, similar to spirit guides who come in and out of our life. By `sharing` with one particular totem we gain access to its qualities.
In the past animal totems functioned as spirit guides for those in native cultures, and they often appear in meditations and past life regressions as guides for those who have had past lives in native cultures. However, anyone from any culture can benefit from accessing his or her totem animal.
According to some Native American beliefs, we have two animal spirits who walk with us, one on our left and one on our right. These animals appear to us in dreams and visions to guide and protect us along the path of life.
We also have a guide within us, which envelops and surrounds our very being. It is through these guides we derive our personal strengths, and it is with this animal's Medicine that we can shape our path in life.
I personally believe that we have several animal totems we learn about as we progress through life... these animals and their essence protect different aspects of ourselves and guide us in that area. In contrast, the spirit guides tend to look after our whole wellbeing.

"If you talk to the animals
They will talk with you
and you will know each other
If you do not talk to them,
you will not know them,
And what you do not know
you will fear
What one fears one destroys."
-- Chief Dan George

It is true that some people view guides not as spiritual entities with consciousness outside of ourselves, but as part of ourselves. These people view and feel that guides are our `higher self` personified that hasn`t yet been `owned` or integrated into our personalities. In the world of `Spirit`, this could well be part of the picture, part of our Divinity or WHOLE but the picture is `huge` and it hasn`t been completed yet.

In conclusion, it is largely due to ego that people have not really been able or willing to perceive or interact with their Spirit Guides, as the ego is a barrier against recognising the Whole, and to understanding one's own place within the Whole. Ego, in this context, is the belief-system which says that Humanity is the most important aspect of Life, and that I, as the individual, am greater than the Whole. Many people are sadly not even consciously aware of their own egoistic outlook; yet they reflect this philosophy in their isolation, sadness, scepticism and general imbalance through life.

We have several different types of guides depending on the culture you come from.
Metaphysically speaking there are 4 basic categories or types of guides:

The Relative Guide.
This is usually a person who knew you in this lifetime. They are the relative who
helps you through day to day situations. They are the soul who greets you at the door when
your time comes from `transition` from life to death.
The Spirit Guide.
This is usually a person you knew in a past life. Or it might be a Power Animal. Someone who
is on the same spiritual level as yourself. This soul helps you with your higher purpose or
mission in this embodiment. The karmic issues, the spiritual lessons, the gifts and talents
you brought from the past into this life and so on. Their main purpose is to help you
evolve your soul during this incarnation and to learn and grow.
The Angels.
Everyone has a Guardian Angel watching over them, protecting them and providing
a connection to the higher Divine Force. Angels are rarely incarnated beings.
They are `of the stars`and are the messengers of the Divine.
The Master Teacher.
Our Master Guide joins with us at birth, and stays by our side right through our lives until we
pass on. This Guide gives us direction or emphasis. At different times in our lives, depending
on the situation and lesson(s) we have to learn, we have new guides join us to provide
guidance and insight into the situation. If there is a change in life direction or emphasis,
the Master Guide will step back and these other guides will come forward.
These guides can come in unexpected forms. You will also have with you, at the appropriate
time, a Master Teacher.
This soul is someone who is on a higher spiritual plane than yourself. They help you with the
responsibility of ‘development’, the dissemination, the higher more advanced spiritual
evolutionary issues that a person will need to be aware of.

It is refreshing to know that many people are learning now to take responsibility for themselves, and in their process of self-learning and self-healing, they will come to understand their partnership with their Spirit Guides or Higher Self . Through this connection and as they come to this understanding, the love energies and Light around these people will multiply with absolute perfection, as is the way of Spirit.

The Yoga-Sûtra of Patañjali
14:28:33 - Aug 30 2006
Times Read: 14

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A Translation from Sanskrit to English

Book I. The Foundations of Meditative Absorption

1.1 "Now, the teaching of the path of spiritual union (yoga).

1.2 Spiritual union (Yoga) through the stilling of the activities of cognition.

1.3 Then, the contemplative abides in his or her true nature.

1.4 Otherwise, one identifies with the activities of the mind.

1.5 There are five kinds of cognitive processes that are either harmful or benign.

1.6 They are right perception (pram‰–a), misperception (viparyaya), conceptualization and imagination (vikalpa), unconsciousness (nidr‰) and memory (smriti).

1.7 Accurate perception (pram‰–a) [of the path to enlightenment (dharma)] arises from direct experience, inference, canonical references and the words of the wise.

1.8 Misperception (viparyaya) and falsehood are not wisdom, because they are based upon the superficial (rupa).

1.9 Conceptual (vikalpa) knowledge is devoid of substance (vastu).

1.10 The mental state of unconsciousness (nidr‰) rests upon a lack of spiritual development (abh‰va).

1.11 Memory (smriti) is when the objects of experience are not forgotten.

1.12 These (cognitive processes) are mastered (nirodha•) by spiritual practice and dispassion.

1.13 Spiritual practice requires stillness and diligence.

1.14 And, this (spiritual practice) becomes skillful when it is firmly rooted upon continuous effort for a long time.

1.15 The accomplishment of mastery over attachment to the objects of things seen or heard is dispassion.

1.16 Pure awareness and insight are the products of non-attachment to the fundamental aspects of nature (gunas).

1.17 Cognitive absorption (Samprajnata samadhi) is accompanied by applied and sustained attention, a sense of self and blissful physical sensations. (DN 22)

1.18 Diligent practice is required to still the perceptions and storehouse of latent impressions (samskara).

1.19 Upon death if one is bonded to a sense of body, identity and perceptions one is likely to be reborn.

1.20 Otherwise wisdom is preceded by faith, energy (v”rya), mindfulness and meditative absorption (samadhi).

1.21 Those who are intense in their spiritual practice are very near (to enlightenment) (Dhammapada 372).

1.22 One's nearness depends upon whether one's spiritual practice is mild, moderate, or intense.

1.23 Or, surrender wholly to the Divine (Iswara), who is pure awareness.

1.24 God (Isvara) is a distinct, incorruptible form of the pure awareness (Purusha) within and is untouched by the hindrances (kleŒa) that are the causes of the ripening of the storehouse of demerits (karma).

1.25 That incomparable, all- knowing source,

1.26 who is unbounded by time, and who was also the teacher of the ancients,

1.27 is signified by the sacred sound.

1.28 Through repetition its meaning is realized.

1.29 And, from this practice comes inward attainment of consciousness and the obstacles disappear.

1.30 The obstacles are: Sickness, apathy, doubt, carelessness, laziness, hedonism, delusion, lack of progress, backsliding and a disturbed mind (anxiety).

1.31 They are accompanied by dissatisfaction, depression, the trembling of limbs, asthma and distraction.

1.32 These obstacles can be subdued with one of the following practices:

1.33 A calm mind radiating friendship (maitr”), compassion (karu–‰) and sympathetic joy (mudita) is equanimous (upek¾‰–‰þ) during pleasant and unpleasant (sukha & dukkha) times and when around the virtuous and the wicked. (Brahma viharas)

1.34 Or, during the cessation of breath.

1.35 Or, maintaining a stable mind as sensations arise.

1.36 Or. (through meditation) upon the supreme, ever-blissful light.

1.37 Or, maintaining one's mind free of desire for the objects of senses.

1.38 Or, resting upon the wisdom that comes from the dreams of sleep.

1.39 Or, through any desired meditation technique.

1.40 A contemplative's mastery can extend to the infinite or the infinitesimal.

1.41 Through becoming saturated in meditative absorption (samadhi) the habits of the mind, perceiver, perceiving and perception, dwindle until transparent as a jewel.

1.42 Meditative absorption (sam‰patti•) that is combined with sounds (Œabda), forms (artha) and concepts (j›‰na) is a conceptual meditative absorption with (sa) applied attention (vitarka) (savitarka samadhi) (upon objects).

1.43 Meditative absorption (samadhi) that is free of the (objects) of memory, thought and an awareness of a physical body, which is radiant in the emptiness of its own true nature, is meditative absorption without (nir) applied attention (vitarka) (nirvitarka samadhi).

1.44 In this way subtle phenomenon arise during conceptual (savic‰r‰) and non-conceptual (nirvic‰r‰) meditative absorption (samadhi).

1.45 Ending in subtle objects and without form.

1.46 These meditative absorptions (samadhis) occur also with the seed sound

1.47) In the non-conceptual (nirvic‰ra) meditative absorption (samadhi) the soul (adhy‰tma) is lucidly revealed.

1.48 This is consciousness in its absolute truest state

1.49 This wisdom is uniquely different from that which is acquired through testimony, scholarship and inference.

1.50 Its impressions efface all other impressions.

1.51 In seedless (nirb”ja•) meditative absorption (samadhi) all impressions are stilled, even the impressions of meditative absorption (samadhi).

Book II The Foundation of the Practice

2.1 Selfless Union (kriya yoga) with the divine (Isvara) is accomplished through discipline, study and devotion.

2.2 And, the purpose of meditative absorption (samadhi) is to weaken the obstacles of the mind (kleŒa).

2.3 The obstacles of the mind (kleŒa) are: the lack of wisdom (avidy‰), egotism (asmit‰), craving (raga), aversion (dve¾a), self-preservation (abhiniveŒ‰•).

2.4 Whether the obstacles (kleŒ‰•) are active, suspended, or weak, ignorance (avidy‰) is the breeding ground for them.

2.5 The lack of wisdom (ignorance) is seeing the impermanent (anitya) as permanent, the impure as pure, anxiety (dukkha) as happiness (sukha), the not-self as self.

2.6 Egotism is conflating the seer with the instrument of seeing and the powers (siddhis) as a product of self.

2.7 Lust follows pleasure.

2.8 Aversion follows anxiety (dukkha).

2.9 Self-preservation is rooted in following one's own tastes, thus follow a wise one.

2.10 Subtle are these ways with regard to overcoming the flow of the obstacles.

2.11 Meditation (dhyana) overcomes these tendencies.

2.12 The obstacles (kleŒa) are rooted in the storehouse of habitual behavior (karma) and can manifest in the present or in future births.

2.13 Materialism (bhog‰•) is the root of existence that ripens during the span of life.

2.14 The cause of either pleasure or suffering is due to the fruits of merit or demerit,

2.15 thus all people of discrimination transform anguish, tendencies, anxiety, the natural forces, habitual behavior and conflict,

2.16 less they be overcome by anxiety in the future.

2.17 Overcoming the causes of suffering the seer units with the seen.

2.18 The purpose of what is seen is liberation and illumination. activity and inertia (the three gunas), nature, the elements, the sense organs; consist of material existence.

2.19 The states of distinct and indistinct, definite and indefinite are the fundamental qualities of nature (gunas).

2.20 Although perception appears as if the mind is seeing, it is the pure awareness that has the power to see.

2.21 The revealing of the self (atman) is the only purpose of what is seen.

2.22 Although nature (Prakriit) ceases to be real for the one who has attained liberation. It (Prakriit) remains real as the common experience of others.

2.23 Through the true nature one recognizes the cause of the union between the owned (Prakriti) and the owner (Purusha) and their power.

2.24 Ignorance of this is the cause of the union.

2.25 The emancipation of the seer is from the absence of this ignorance.

2.26 Uninterrupted discriminative discernment is the means for the cessation of this ignorance.

2.27 The final stage of wisdom is seven fold.

2.28 By the practice of the limbs of Yoga, the impurities dwindle away revealing the light of wisdom, which leads to discriminative discernment.

2.29 The eight limbs (of yoga) are: external discipline (yama), internal discipline (niyama), posture (asana), breath observation (pranayama), withdrawal from the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana) meditative absorption or union (samadhi).

2.30 1- External discipline (Yama) is: not harming, truthfulness, not stealing, celibacy, no greed.

2.31 This great vow is a universal. It is not limited by class, place, time, or circumstance.

2.32 2- Internal discipline (Niyama) is: purity, contentment, intensity, scriptural study, and surrender to the divine.

2.33 Cognitive spiritual development (bh‰vanam) is paying attention (vitarka) to wholesome thoughts and repelling unwholesome thoughts.

2.34 When the attention (vitarka) is drawn to violence, etc., whether acted upon, instigated, or approved of, either slight, moderate or extreme, are always preceded by greed, anger and delusion and produce endless suffering and ignorance, thus cultivate (bh‰vanam) the opposite.

2.35 Hostility is abandoned in one who is firmly established in non-violence.

2.36 The fruit of selfless action (kriya) is based upon truthfulness.

2.37 Wealth comes to the one who is established in not stealing.

2.38 Energy (Vigor/v”rya/kundalini) is acquired through a practice that is based upon celibacy.

2.39 Insight and understanding into one's birth come to one who is not greedy.

2.40 Through purification one develops detachment from one's body and that of others.

2.41 And, the capacity for self-realization is based upon sattva, purity, gladness one-pointedness and mastery of the senses.

2.42 From contentment unsurpassed joy is acquired.

2.43 Intense discipline decreases bodily and sensory impurities and increases occult powers (siddhis).

2.44 Through study of the scriptures we commune with the sacred.

2.45 Through devotion to the sacred meditative absorption is attained.

2.46 3- Asana is a stable and comfortable posture.

2.47 Meditative absorption (samadhi) in the infinite is achieved through effort and relaxation,

2.48 therefore seek to be undisturbed by the dualities.

2.49 4- When the (posture) has been acquired, breath discipline (pranayama) is observing the flow of the breath in and out and its cessation.

2.50 The movement (of the breath) is to be scrutinized upon inhalation and exhalation, long, short or stationary, by space, time and number (frequency) (Anapanasati sutta MN 118].

2.51 This is the fourth limb. Transcending the objects of the senses externally and internally, [5) pratyahara sense withdrawal].

2.52 from this the veils covering the light are destroyed.

2.53 Thus the mind becomes fit for concentration (dharana).

2.54 In withdrawal from the senses (praty‰h‰ra) one uncouples the consciousness from following the sensory apparatus,

2.55 therefore the sensory apparatus will become one's ideal servant.

Book III The Foundations of the Powers (siddhis)

3.1 6- Concentration (Dharana) is binding consciousness in one place (one-pointedness).

3.2 7-Meditation (Dhyana) is continuously directing the attention (toward one object).

3.3 8- In meditative absorption (samadhi) there is only the shining form of one's (meditation) object (consciousness) is devoid of all other forms.

3.4 Contemplation (samyama) is these three [concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and meditative absorption (samadhi)] in one discipline.

3.5 Through mastership comes illumination (the light of wisdom).

3.6 Progress comes in stages.

3.7 These three [concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and meditative absorption (samadhi)] are the internal limb with respect to the preceding (five limbs).

3.8 Even they are external to the seedless (absorption-samadhi).

3.9 The transformation is made by the stilling of the latent impressions (saþsk‰rayo•) as they arise in the mind (which produces tranquility).

3.10 Tranquility is established through habit.

3.11 Through decreasing the non-contemplative habits of the mind, and increasing the contemplative habits of the mind meditative absorption is developed.

3.12 One-pointedness develops when the mind sees the subsiding past and the arising present equally.

3.13 By what has already been explained the elements, the senses the concepts, and the time dependent functions are transformed.

3.14 The seeker (dharmi) follows the path (dharma) from the past through the present and into the future.

3.15 The flow of these phases is the reason for differences in development.

3.16 Knowledge of the past and future can be developed through contemplation (samayama) on the three phases (past, present and future).

3.17 Through contemplation (samayama) upon the inner sound (Œabda) one moves beyond the confusion of superimposed distinctions in language, meaning and perception.

3.18 (Through contemplation/samyama) Knowledge of previous lifetimes can be had through direct observation of the mental impressions.

3.19 Through contemplation upon the characteristics of another, knowledge of their mental impressions is revealed.

3.20 The individual need not be present.

3.21 One can become invisible through contemplation (samyama) by uncoupling the light that enters the eye the power of perception can be interrupted.

3.22 In the same way as explained sound and the other faculties can be suspended, so that one disappears.

3.23 Through contemplation (samayama) knowledge of karma, either slowly or quickly manifesting, the time of death and signs and omens can be known.

3.24 Contemplation upon loving kindness, compassion, delight, and equanimity, one acquires occult powers.

3.25 Contemplation upon the elephant and other creatures yields their powers.

3.26 Contemplation upon the light within reveals the subtle, hidden and remote.

3.27 Contemplation upon the sun yields insight into the universe.

3.28 Contemplation upon the moon reveals knowledge about the arrangement of the stars (astrology).

3.29 Contemplation upon the polestar directs the flow of insight.

3.30 Contemplation upon the navel chakra yields insight into the organization of the body.

3.31 Contemplation upon the throat chakra eradicates hunger and thirst.

3.32 Contemplation upon the Ôtortoise channel' (a subtle tortoise-shaped tube located below the throat), one cultivates steadiness.

3.33 Contemplation upon the top of the head (sahasrara chakra) one receives the vision of the luminous one.

3.34 Or, through spontaneous illumination one realizes all these things.

3.35 Contemplation upon the heart chakra one understands the mind.

3.36 Wisdom comes from Contemplation upon the true self (soul/Purusha). The soul (Purusha) is unrelated to the intellect. Cognition creates indistinct experiences of self-interest, whereas the Purusha exists for the interests of others (not self-serving).

3.37 From Contemplation (samyama) arises luminous (charismatic) hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling.

3.38 These occult powers (siddhis) and the obstacles of worldly pursuits can emerge from meditative absorption.

3.39 By loosening one's attachment to the body, and becoming profoundly sensitive to its currents, consciousness can leave this body and enter another's body (astral).

3.40 And, through mastery of the higher energies one can rise up and travel above water, swamp, thorns, and other obstacles without touching them.

3.41 Through mastery of the energies, one becomes radiant.

3.42 Through contemplation upon the relationship of sound in space, one acquires divine hearing.

3.43 Through meditative absorption upon the relationship of the body in space, intent upon being light as cotton one can travel through space.

3.44 When, through contemplation one has become unidentified with the external patterns of the mind, the veils are destroyed revealing the light of the great bodilessness (OOB).

3.45 Through contemplation (samyama) one gains mastery over one's gross and subtle forms and one understands their pervasive relationship and function,

3.46 through that one can attain the power to become as small as an atom and other attainments, such as the attainment of a perfect indestructible body with all of its functions.

3.47 This perfect body will have beauty, grace, strength and imperviousness.

3.48 Through contemplation (samyama) one gains mastery over the senses, the essential nature, the identity, and their relationship, meaning and purpose.

3.49 Therefore, through mastery over the foundation one gains the ability to move as quickly as the mind, and function without the aide of sense organs.

3.50 Seeing the difference between the essential pure nature and the soul (Purusha) one gains supremacy over all of the states, as well as omniscience.

3.51 Through non-attachment the seeds of bondage are destroyed and one is emancipated.

3.52 Even when the celestial beings admire one, one should not have pride or there maybe the inclination of repeating the undesirable.

3.53 Through contemplation (samyama) in every moment discriminative knowledge is born.

3.54 Through discriminative knowledge one can penetrate the seemingly indistinguishable characteristics of birth, appearances and, place.

3.55 And thus, knowledge born of discrimination simultaneously penetrates all experiential phenomena in all circumstances.

3.56 When the mental quality of purity (satva) is equal to the purity of the soul (Purusha), then one is emancipated.

Book IV The Foundations of Emancipation

4.1 Through previous births, medicine (or potions), intonation (mantra), austerity and meditative absorption one achieves occult powers (siddhis).

4.2 Through the flow of nature beings are transform from one class or species to the next.

4.3 Therefore, like a farmer prepares a field (by removing weeds, stones, tree limbs and trunks, etc.) nature effortlessly prepares us by presenting obstacles then removing them.

4.4 Only the ego forms cognition.

4.5 It is the (ego) who is the director of the many seemingly different functions of cognition.

4.6 That which is born from meditation (dhyana) is not part of the storehouse of latent impressions (psyche).

4.7 The actions (karma) of a contemplative (yogi) are neither white (good) nor black (bad), but for others they have three kinds (good, bad and neither good nor bad).

4.8 It is through favorable conditions that the latent impressions ripen and manifest.

4.9 Memory (smriti) and the latent impressions (samskaras) are identical, although they are separated by birth, place and time.

4.10 And, since the desire to exist is eternal the impressions are without beginning.

4.11 When the foundation for cause and effect disappears, so does cause and effect.

4.12 The path of differing characteristics of the past and future of one's form (body),

4.13 whether manifest or un-manifest, is the Nature of the gunas.

4.14 Our perception of reality is due to the ever-changing nature of the gunas.

4.15 Due to differences in cognitive abilities, perceptions vary.

4.16 An object's existence does not depend upon a single mind. Otherwise what would become of that object when that mind no longer perceived it? (If there is no one there to hear it, does a tree falling in the forest make a sound? Of course it does).

4.17 An object is perceived or not perceived depending upon whether or not the mind has been touched by it.

4.18 Changes in the cognitive mind are always known by the unchanging pure awareness (Purusha), its Lord,

4.19 The cognitive mind is not self-luminous but it is perceivable.

4.20) It, however, cannot be both the perceived and the perceiver.

4.21 If it were the perceiver of perceivers then there would be endless confusion of memory.

4.22 Consciousness is unchanging. It (the mind) assumes its shape from the Purusha and becomes self-conscious.

4.23 The cognitive self understands all, when it is touched by both the seer and the seen.

4.24 Though having countless tendencies, the mind exists for the sake of another (the Purusha, awareness) because it can act only in association with it.

4.25 The difference between one who sees and one who becomes the Self (Atman) is realizing cessation forever.

4.26 Discrimination bends the cognitive mind to gravitate toward emancipation.

4.27 A gap in discrimination allows distracting thoughts to arise due to habitual cognitive patterns.

4.28 The removal of the habitual cognitive patterns, like the obstacles (kleŒa), have been described before (see book 2, sutras 1, 2, 10, 11 and 26).

4.29 One who has achieved the highest summit of attainment and has dispassion and discriminative discernment in all circumstances has arrived at the meditative absorption of pervading wisdom called "cloud of truth," (dharma megha•).

4.30 From this absorption all obstacles and habitual behaviors end.

4.31 Then, all of the coverings and imperfections are removed, due to this boundless wisdom. What is left to be known is insignificant.

4.32 Through meditative absorption the fundamental qualities of nature (gunas) have fulfilled their purpose of the transformative sequence.

4.33 At the other end (enlightenment) the succession of moments that is the transformative sequence can be recognized.

4.34 Having no more purpose the fundamental qualities of nature (gunas) are reabsorbed upon emancipation into the foundation of its own nature or the power of pure consciousness.

Abbot of Spanheim, [Seven Secondary Causes] of the heavenly INTELLIGENCIES, governing the Orbes under GOD
12:37:40 - Aug 30 2006
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De Septem Secundeis
id est, intelligentiis, sive Spiritibus Orbes post Deum moventibus.
IOHN TRITEMIVS,
1508
Dedication, to the Emperor Maximilian
Renowned Caesar, it is the opinion of very many of the Auncients, that this inferious World by ordination of the first Intellect (which is God) is directed and ordered by Secundarian Intelligences, to which opinion Conciliator Medicorum assents, saying, that from the Originall or first beginning of heaven and earth, there were 7. Spirits appointed as Presidents to the 7. Planets.
Of which number every one of those ruleth the world 354. years, and four months in order.
To this Position, many, and they most learned men, have afforded their consent; which opinion of theirs my self not affirming, but delivering, do make manifest to your most sacred Majesty.

De septem secundeis

The first Angell or Spirit of Saturn is called Orifiel, to whom God committed the government of the World from the beginning of its Creation; who began his government the 15, day of the moneth of March, in the first year of the World, and it endured 354 years and 4 moneths.

Orifiel notwithstanding is a name appertaining to his Office, not Nature. Attributed to the Spirit in regard of his action: under his dominion men were rude, and did cohabite together in desert and uncouth places, after the homely manner of Beasts. This needs not any manner of proof from me, sith its so manifest out of the Text of Genesis.

The second Governour of the World is Anael the Spirit of Venus, who after Orifiel began to rule according to the influence of this Planet, in the year of the world 354. the fourth moneth, that is, the 24 day of the moneth of June, and he ruled the world 354 years, and 4 moneths, untill the year from the Creation of the world 708. as appears to any that shall Calculate the Age thereof.

Under the Regiment of this Angell, men began to be more Civilized, built Houses, erected Cities, found out Arts Manuall (viz. Monifactury) the Art of Weaving, Spinning, and Cloathing, and many such like as these, did indulge themselves plentifully with the pleasures of the flesh, took unto themselves faire women for their wives, neglected God, Receded in many things from their naturall simplicity; they found out Sports, and Songs, sang to the Harp, and did excogitate whatsoever did belong to the worship and purpose of Venus. And this wantonness of life in men did continue untill the flood, receiving the Arguments of its pravity from hence.

Zachariel the Angell of Jupiter, began to govern the world in the year of the Creation of Heaven and Earth 708. the eighth moneth, that is, the 25 day of the moneth of October, and he did regulate the World 354 years, 4 moneths, untill the year of the worlds Creation 1063 inclusively. Under whose moderation, men first of all began to usurp Dominion over one another, to exercise Hunting, to make Tents, to adorn their bodies with severall garments: and there arose a great Division betwixt the good and evill men; the Pious invocating God, such as Enoch, whom the Lord translated to Heaven' the wicked running after the snares and pleasant allurements of the Flesh.

Men also under the Dominion of this Zachariel began to live more civilly, to undergo the Laws and Commands of their Elders, and were reclaimed from their former fierceness. Under his rule Adam the first man died, leaving to all posterity an assured Testimony, that necessarily once we must dye.

Various Arts and Inventions of men did about this time first appear & manifest themselves, as Historians have more clearly expressed.

The fourth Rector of the World was Raphael, the Spirit of Mercury which began in the year of the Creation of Heaven and Earth 1063 the 24 day of February, and he reigned 354 years 4 months, and his Government continued untill the year of the World 1417 and fourth moneth. In these times writing was first found out, and letters excogitated of Trees and Plants, which notwithstanding afterwards and in process of time received a more gracefull shape, and the Nations varied or changed the Face of their Characters according to their own fancy. The use of Musicall Instruments, under the time and rule of this Raphael, began to be multiplied, and Commerce or Exchange betwixt man and man was now first invented: A presumptuous, rude and simple Audacity in these times begot Navigation or the manner of Sayling from one place to another, and many such like things in one kinde or other, &c.

The fifth Gubernator of the World was Samuel the Angell of Mars, who began the 26 day of the moneth of June in the year of the World 1417. and swayed the rule of this World 354 years 4 moneths, untill the year of the World 1771. and eighth moneth, under whose Empire and Government men imitated the nature of Mars, also under the Dominion of this Angell, the Universall deluge of waters happened Anno Mundi 1656. as evidently it appears by History out of Genesis. And its to be observed, what the auncient Philosophers have delivered, that so oft as Samuel the Angell of Mars is ruler of the World, so often there ariseth notable alterations of Monarchy. Religions and sects do vary, Laws are changed, Principalities and Kingdomes are transferred to Strangers, which we may easily finde out in order by perusall of Histories.

Notwithstanding Samuel doth not immediatly in the very beginning or entrance of his Dominion manifest the disposition of his behaviour or custome: but when he hath exceeded the middle time of his Gubernation which very thing is likewise to be understood concerning the Angels of the other Planets, (as it may be manifested from Histories) all which do send down their influence according to the Proprieties of the natures of their Stars, and operate upon the inferiour bodies of this World.

The sixth Governour of the World is Gabriel the Angell of the Moon, who began after Samuel the Angel of Mars had finished his course: the 28 day of the moneth of October in the yeare of the World 1771 and eighth moneth: and he ordered the affaires of the World 354 years and 4 moneths, untill the year of the World 2126. Again in these times men were multiplyed, and builded many Cities: and we must note: that the Hebrews do affirme that the Generall deluge, was Anno Mundi 1656. under the moderation of Mars: But the Septuagint interpreters, Isidorus and Beda confirme the Deluge to be in the year of the World 2242. under the Regiment of Gabriel, the Angel of the Moon, which seems unto me by Multiplication to be rather constentaneous unto truth, but to express my further conception hereof, is not the work of this present discourse.

Michael the Angel of the Sun was the 7. Ruler of the World, who began the 24. of February, in the year of the World according to common computation 2126. and he governed the world 354. years and four moneths, until the year of the age of the world 2480. and four moneths.

Under the Dominion of the Angel of the Sun even as Histories consent with truth, Kings began first to be amongst Mortall men, of whom Nimrod was the first, that with an ambitious desire of Soveraignty, did Tyrannize over his Companions.

The worship of several Gods by the foolishness of men, was now instituted, and they began to adore their petty Princes as Gods.

Sundry Arts also about this time were invented by men; to wit, the Mathematicks, Astronomy, Magique, and that worship which formerly was attributed to one onely God began now to be given to divers Creatures: the knowledge of the true God, by little and little, and the superstition of men became forgotten.

About these times Architecture was found out, and men began to use more policy both in their civill institutions, and manners, or customs of living.

From henceforth the eighth time in order, again Orifiel the Angel of Saturn began to govern the World the 26. day of the moneth of June, in the year from the beginning of the world 2480. and four moneth; and he continued his government of the world this second return, 354. years and four moneths, untill the year of the world 2834. and eight moneths. Under the regulation of this Angel, the Nations were multiplied, and the earth was divided into Regions; many Kingdoms instituted; the Towel of Babel was built, the confusion of Tongues then fell out, men were dispersed into every part of the earth, and men began to Till, and Manure the earth more acurately, to ordain Fields, sow Corn, plant Vineyards, to dig up Trees, and to provide with greater diligence, what ever was more convenient for their food, and rainment.

From that time forward, first of all, amongst men, the discerning of Nobility begun to be taken notice of; which was, when men in their manner of living, and in wisdom did excell the rest of men, undertaking Trophies of glory from the great ones of the earth, as rewards for their merits: From hence first of all, the whole world began to come into the knowledge of men, whilest every where the Nations being multiplied, many Kingdoms did arise, and various differences of tongues did follow.

The ninth time in order and course, Anael, the Angel of Venus began again to sway the world the 29. day of October, and in the year of the Creation of Heaven and earth 2834. and 8. moneths: and he presided 354. years, four moneths, untill the year of the VVorld 3189.

In these times men forgetting the true God, began to honour the dead, and to worship their Statues for God, which Errour hath infected the World more then two thousand years: Men did now devise curious and costly Ornaments, for better trimming, and adorning their bodies: found out divers kindes of Musicall Instruments; again, men prosecuted too much the lust and pleasures of the flesh, instituting, and dedicating Statuas and Temples to their Gods. Witchcraft, and Incantations in these times were first excogitated by Zoroaster King of the Bactrians (and divers others as well as he) whom Ninus King of Assyria overcame in War.

In order the tenth time Zachariel the Angel of Jupiter, again began to ruler the world the last day of February, in the year of the building, or framing the heaven and earth, 3189. and he moderated according to his custom, and manner 354. years, and four moneths, untill the year of the world 3543. and four moneth.

These were joyfull times, and might truly be called golden, wherein there was plenty of all manner of usefull things, which much conduced for the increase of mankinde, giving thereby exceeding beauty and adornment to the things of this World.

In like manner about this time, God gave to Abraham the Law of Circumcision; and first of all promised the Redemption of Mankinde by the Incarnation of his onely begotten Son.

Under the Government of this Angel, the Patriarchs first Founders of Justice, were famous, and the righteous were divided from the ungodly, by their own proper indeavour and consent.

About these times in Arcadia, Iupiter grew famous, who was stiled also Lisania, the Son of Heaven and God, a King, who first of all gave Laws to the Arcadians, made them very civill in their manners and behaviour, taught them the worship of God, erected them Temples, instituted Priests, procured many advantagious benefits for mankinde, for which his so great benefits, he was by them termed Jupiter, and after his death accounted for a Deity or God.

He had his Original from the sons of Heber, viz. Gerar, as ancient Histories do record to posterity.

Prometheus also the son of Atlas is reported under the Government of this Angel to have made Men; onely, because of rude and ignorant, he made them wise and knowing, humane, courteous, accomplished in learning and manners: he made Images by Art to move of themselves.

He first found out the use of the Ring, Scepter, Diadem, and all kingly ornaments.

In or about these times other joviall men did excell; men most wise, and women also, who by their own understanding delivered many profitable inventions to mankinde; who being dead, for the greatness of their wisdom, were reputed as Gods: viz. Photoneus, who first of all instituted amongst the Greeks, Laws, and judgements, as also, Sol, Minerva, Ceres, Serapis amongst the Aegyptians, and very many besides.

In order the 11. time Raphael the Angel of Mercury again undertook the ordering of the world the first day of the moneth of Iuly, in the year of the world 3543. and fourth moneth; he continued in his Commands 354. years, and four moneths, untill the year of the Creation of heaven and earth 3897. and 8. moneth.

Verily in these times, as it evidently appears from the Histories of the Ancients, men more earnestly applied themselves to the study of wisdom, amongst whom the last learned and most eminent men, were Mercurius, Bacchus, Omogyius, Isis, Inachus, Argus, Apollo, Cecrops, and many more, who by their admirable inventions, both profited the world then, and posterity since.

Severall Superstitions also about these times, concerning the worship of their Idols were instituted by men.

Sorceries, Incantations, and Arts of framing Diabolical Images, were now in a marvellous manner increased, and whatsoever either of subtilty, or wit, that could possibly be attributed to the invention, or cunning of Mercury about these times, did exceedingly increase.

Moses the wisest Commander of the Hebrews, expert in the knowledge of many things and Arts, a Worshipper of one onely true God, did deliver the people of Israel from the slavery of the Aegyptians, and procured their liberty.

About this time Janus first of all reigned in Italy, after him Saturnus, who instructed his people to fat their grounds with soile or dung, and was accounted or esteemed for a God.

Near these times Cadmus found out the Greek Letters, or Characters, and Carmentis, the daughter of Evander, the Latine.

God Omnipotent, under the Government of this Raphael, the Angel of Mercury, delivered by the hands of Moses, to his people a Law in writing, which giveth a manifest testimony of our Saviour Iesus Christ, his future birth and nativity to be born in the flesh.

Here arose in the World a wonderful diversity of Religions: During these times, here flourished many Sybills, Prophets, Diviners, Soothsayers, or such as used inspection into the entrals of Beasts, Magitians, or Wise-men, Poets, as Sybilla, Erythraea, she of the Isle of Delphos, she whom we call the Phrygian, because she lived in Phrygia with the rest.

Again in order the twelfth time Samuel the Angel of Mars, began to exercise his Dominion upon the world, the second day of the moneth of October, in the year of the world 3897. and eighth moneth, and his time of ruling, was 354. years, and four moneths from thence, untill the year 4252. under whose Empire and rule, was that great and most famous Destruction of Troy in Asia the less: as also an admirable mutation, and alteration of Monarchy, and many Kingdoms together with new institutions, or moldings of many Cities, as Paris, Monunce, Carthage, Naples, and very many besides these.

Many new Kingdoms were newly erected, or now had their first beginning, as that of the Lacedemonians, Corinthians, Hebrews, and divers more.

Here in these times all over the whole world, there was very great wars, and Battels of Kings and Nations, and several alterations of Empires.

The Venetians from this time, do compute and reckon the originall both of their people and City from the Trojans.

And its observable that very many other Nations, as well in Europe as in Asia, pretend to have taken their originall from the Trojans, to whom I thought good to give so much credit, as they themselves were able to perswade me was truth, upon sufficient testimony and proof.

The Arguments they produce concerning their Nobility and Antiquity are frivolous, being desirous to magnifie themselves openly, as if there were no People, or Nation in Europe, before the Destruction of Troy, or as if there had been no Pesant, or Clown amongst the Trojans.

Under the moderation also of this Planet, Saul was made first King of the Jews, after him David, whose son King Salomon, built in Ierusalem the Temple of the true God, the most famous and glorious of the whole world: from hence the Spirit of God illustrating, and enlightening his Prophets with a more ample illumination of his grace, they did not only foretell of the future incarnation of our Lord and Saviour, but also many other things, as holy Scriptures do testifie, amongst whom were Nathan son of King David, Gad, Asaph, Achias, Semeias, Asarias, Anan, and many others.

Homer the Greek Poet, VVriter of Troys Destruction, Dares, Phrygius, Dyctis Cretensis, who were themselves at the rasing, and sacking thereof, and have likewise described it, are supported to have been alive near about these times.

The thirteenth time in order, Gabriel the Spirit of the Moon, again undertook the ordering of this world the 30. day of Ianuary in the year from the beginning of the Universe 4252. and he presided in his Government 354 years, 4 moneths, untill the year of the World 4606. and fourth moneth.

In this time many Prophets were famous and excelled amongst the Jews, viz. Helias, Heliseus, Micheas, Abdias, with many others: There were many alterations of the Kingdom of the Jews: Lycurgus gave Laws and Ordinances to the Lacedemonians, Capetus, Sylvius. Lyberius Sylvius, Romulus Sylvius, Procas Sylvius, Numitor, Kings of Italy flourished, during the moderation of this spirit: more Kingdomes also had their Originall or foundation under him, as those of the Lydians, Medes, Macedonians, Spartans, and others: the Monarchy of Assyrians under Sardanapalus now ended. And in like manner the Kingdome of the Macedonians was consumed, or worn out.

Sundry lawes are imposed on men, the worship of the true God is neglected, and the Religion of false Gods too much propagated: the City of Rome is built under the Dominion of this Spirit, in the year 1484. which yeare in order, was the 239 of the Angell Gabriel, the Kingdome of the Sylvans in Italy now ended, and that of Rome began in these times, Thales, Chilon, Periander, Cleobulus, Bias, and Pittacus, the seaven wise men of Greece florished, and from thence Philosophers and Poets came into request. At Rome, Romulus the first founder of the City reigned 37. years being a Fratricide and a stirrer up of Sedition. After whom Numa Pompilius continued that Kingdome in peace full 42 years: he amplified the worship of the Gods, and lived in the time of Hezekiah King of Iudea. About the expiration of this Angell of the Moon his government: Nebuchadonozor King of Babylon, took Hierusalem, and destroyed Zedechiah the King and carryed away all the people Captive.

Hieremiah the Prophet was now famous, who fore-told this destruction, as also their future delivery from Babylon.

When Gabriel had finished his course, againe Michael Angell of the Sun did assume the 14. government of the World, who began the first day of the moneth of May, in the year of the World 4606. the fourth moneth, and did rule the World according to his own order 354. years, untill the year of the Worlds Creation 4960. and eighth moneth.

In the time of this Angels moderation Evill Merodach King of Babylon, did restore both their Liberty and King to the people of the Jews, according to the direction of the Angell Michael, who as Daniel wrote, stood for the Nation of the Jews, unto whom they were committed by God.

In these times likewise the Monarchy of the Kingdome of the Persians began, whose first King Darius: and the second Cyrus did bring to nothing or utterly ruine, that most powerfull Kingdome of Babylon in the dayes of Balthazar, (as Daniel and the Prophets had predicted.)

In these times Sybilla Cumana was much spoken of, and grew famous; who brought 9 books to Tarquinius Priscus the King to be bought for a certain price; in which were contained the reason, order, and succession of future Avisements, of the whole common-wealth of the Romans. But when the King refused to give her the price demanded, Sybilla (the King seeing it) burnt the three first books, demanding the same price for the other six; which when again he had denyed to give her, she committed to be burnt three of those remaining, and would have done so by the rest; unless the King by perswasion and Councell of others, had not redeemed them from consuming, giving the same price for the three last, for which he might have had the whole nine.

Moreover the Romans having abrogated Government by Kings constituted two Consuls to reign every year.

Phalaris the Tyrant in these times occupied Sicilia: Magique or naturall Philosophy was also in these times highly esteemed amongst the Kings of Persia.

Pythagoras the Philosopher, and very many others flourished amongst the Greeks; the Temple and City of Hierusalem are a new reedified.

Esdras the Prophet repaired the books of Moses, burned by the Chaldeans; who were also called Babylonians, and committed them to memory for example. Xerxes King of the Persians brought his Army against the Greeks, but had no success therein. The City of Rome is taken, burned, and destroyed, by the Gaules; the Capitoll only preserved by a Goose, stirring up the weary Champions. The Athenians had eminent wars in these times: Socrates & Plato Philosophers lived now.

The Romans lessened the power of their Consuls, instituted Tribunes & Aedils, and were also about these times involved in many calamities: Alexander the great after the expiration of the rule of Michael, reigned in Macedonia, destroyed the Monarchy of the Persians in Darius: conquered all Asia, and annexed it with part of Europe to his own Empire.

He lived 33 years, reigned 12 after whose death infinite wars and many mischiefs followed, and his Monarchy became divided amongst four.

Now amongst the Jews, first of all, they began to contend for the Priesthood: the Kingdome of Syria began.

After the Spirit of Michael had finished his course, then the 15 time in order, Orifiel the Angell of Saturn, the third time assumed the regulating of this World, the last day of the moneth of September, in the year from the building of the Universe 4960. and eighth moneth: and he did rule in Chief 354 years, 4 moneths, untill the year of the World 5315. Under whose moderation, the Punick war began betwixt the Romans and Carthaginians: the City of Rome was almost wholly consumed by fire and water. The Brazen Molten Image called Colossus, in length one hundred and twenty six foot fell down, being shaken by an earthquake. At, or near this time the City of Rome enjoyed peace one year after the Punick War: which Common-wealth had never been without War in 440 years before.

Hierusalem together with the Temple is burnt and destroyed by Antiochus and Epiphanes, the History of the Machabees and their Wars were now acted.

In these times Carthage 606 years after its first foundation is destroyed, and burned continually by the space of 17 whole dayes. In Sicilia seaventy thousand slaves made a Conspiracy against their Masters.

Many Prodigies in these times were beheld in Europe; tame domesticall cattle fled to the Woods, it raigned blood, a fiery Ball shined, appeared, and glistered out of heaven with great noyse and crackling. Mithridates King of Pontus, and Armenia held Wars with the Romans 40 years. The Kingdome of the Jews is restored, which had interruption 575 years from the time of Zedechia untill Aristobalus. The people also of Germany called the Theutines, invaded the Romans and after many fights are overcome and one hundred and threescore thousand of them slain, besides innumerable others of them, who slew themselves and familiars under Cajus and Mantius the Consuls: notwithstanding this, many of the Romans were before this cut off by them: after which time, Civill Wars did much shake the Romane Common-wealth, which endured full 40 years. Three Suns appeared and were seen in Rome, but not long ere they were reduced into one.

A very few years succeeding, Julius Cajus Caesar usurped the government of the Romans, which Octavius Augustus after him amplified, and joyned Asia, Africk and Europe into one Monarchy he reigned 36 years by whom, or whose means God gave peace to the whole World: In the year from the building of the City 751. and of Caesar Octavius Augustus 42. and in the 245 year and eighth moneth, the 25 of December, of the government of the aforesaid Orifiel the Angell of Saturne: Iesus Christ the Son of God is born in Bethelem of Iudea, of Mary the Virgin. Note, how faire and wonderfull the Ordination of Divine providence is; for the World at first was created under the rule of Saturn his Angell Orifiel: and mercifully redeemed, instaurated, and made new again under his third government; so that the great number and agreement of concurring Actions, may seem to administer no small beliefe to this manner of description, or setting forth, that this World is governed by the seaven Angels of the Planets: for in the first Gubernation of Orifiel, there was one only Monarchy of the whole World, under his second (as we mentioned before) it was divided amongst many.

Again, during his third, (as is manifest) it was reduced into one, although, if we consider or measure time aright, it is manifest also that in the second government of Orifiel, there was but one only Monarchy, when the Tower of Babel was built. From this time forward the Kingdome of the Jews was quite taken away, and the sacrifice of meat-offerings ceased, nor shall liberty be restored to the Jews before the third Revolution of the Angell Michael, and this shall be after the Nativity of Christ, in the year 1880. the eighth moneth, viz. In the year of the World 7170. and eighth moneth. Many of the Jews in those times, and of the Gentiles also, shall embrace Christian Religion, most plain and simple men preaching the word of God, whom no humane institution, but a divine spirit hath inspired. The World shall then be brought to its first innocency of its simplicity, the Angell of Saturne Orifiel governing the World every where.

Coelestiall things are mixed with earthly, many of the Christians for that faith which they did Preach, shall be slaughtered by the rulers of this World. About the ending of the Moderation of Orifiel, Hierusalem is destroyed by the Romans, and the Jews are dispersed into every Nation, there being massacred of them eleven hundred thousand, and four score thousand sold for slaves, the residue of them fled; and so the Romans wholy destroyed Judea.

After that Orifiel had finished his government, Anael the Angell of Venus, the sixteenth in order, the third time reassumed his Regiment of the World: the last day of Ianuary, in the year of creating the Heaven & Earth 5315. but from the year of the birth of Christ 109. and he regulated the affaires of the World 354 years, 4 moneths, untill the years of the World 5669. 4 moneths, but of the Nativity of our Saviour Iesus Christ in the flesh 463. And its remarkable, that almost during the whole rule of this Anael the Angel of Venus, the Church of Christians did flourish in her persecutions, and prevailed; many thousands, of men being Butchered for the Faith of Christ. Moreover in these times very many Heresies began to be broached in the Church, which were not extinguished, but after some time, and with labour & the blood of good men.

Many men were eminent about these times in all manner of learning, and such as were learned and Eloquent Divines, Astronomers, Physitians, Orators, Historiographers, and men of like quality, not only amongst the Gentiles, but Christians. At length the persecution of Infidels ceased, after that Constantine Caesar the great, had assumed the Christian faith, in the year of the World 5539. after the middle of the Government of the aforesaid Anael the Angell of Venus. Although those professing the Religion and faith of Iesus Christ in some measure were now and then disturbed and molested by the Ungodly; Yet notwithstanding the peace of the Church did remain free from molestation a long time.

From this time forward, Mankinde which from the time of Ninus the King, for almost the space of two thousand and three hundred years, had most miserably gone astray about the worship of Idols, was now revoked mercifully to the knowledge of one only God.

Various Arts of Subtilty in these times were augmented, and had increase and reputation according to their convenience to the nature of Venus.

For the manners of men are changed with the time, and the inferiour bodies are disposed according to the influence of the superiors.

The mind of man (verily) is free, and receives not the influence of the Stars, unless it doth too much commaculate his affection, by inclining its self with the commerce which it hath with the body. For the Angels who are the movers of the Orbs, do neither destroy nor subvert any thing, which nature it self hath constituted or framed.

A Comet of unwonted and unusuall greatness did precede the death of Constantine.

The Arrian Heresie in many Countreys disturbed the holy Church.

Toward the end of this Angels Government, in the time of Iulianus Caesar, Crosses appeared in lines, and Crosses in the garments of men.

In Asia and Palaestina wars followed, Pestilences and Famine in those places where the Crosses appeared.

In these times also about the year of our Lord 360. the Franks or Franconians in Germany had their Originall; who afterwards wasting Gallia, gave the name unto it of France, having first overcome and conquered the people thereof. The description of Francia in greatness is long and wide, or of great circuit, whose Metropolis Moguntia sometimes was; now truly and only Herbipolis.

The Bavarians, Suevians, the people of Rhine, Saxons, Thuringers, this day do occupie a great part of France in Germany, under jurisdiction of the Papacy in some places. Moreover in the 280 year of the Gubernation of this Angell Anael, the Roman Empire began to decline, whilst the City was taken and burned by the Goths the Imperial seat being first translated into Greece under Constantine, which was very mischievously done, and the only cause of the declining of that whole Monarchy: for neer the determination of this Angell Anael his Regiment, there did arise Radigifus, Alaricus, Atholfus, Kings of the Gothes: Also after this Genserick of the Vandals and Attilas of the Hunns who runing all over Europe, did most miserably teare the Empire in sunder, as is evident in these Histories.

When Anael the Angell of Venus had finished his Regiment, then Zachariel the Spirit of Jupiter did reassume the Universall Government of this World the seaventh time, the first day of June, in the year of the World 5669. the fourth moneth, but in the year of our Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ 463. four moneths; and governed in his turne years and four moneths untill the year of the World 6023. and eighth moneth: but of our Lord God 817.

Many men in these times out of their affection to Christian Philosophy, betook themselves to live in the Wilderness: many Prodigies appeared, Comets, Earthquakes, it raigned blood.

Merlin born in Tumbe, predicted wonderfull things in the beginning or entrance of this Angels Government.

Arthurus who commonly is called Arthur, the most glorious King of great Britain, who overcame the Barbarians, restored peace to the Church, went away conquerour in many battels: propagated the Faith of Christ, subdued to his dominion all Gallia, Norway, Denmark, and many other Provinces. He was the most glorious of all Kings that lived in his time, who after many famous actions performed, did never more appear, being expected to return by the Britains for many years, of whom in times past many praise-worthy songs were published by the Bardes of that people of wonderfull Poesie; for whilest he raigned, England was in its most flourishing condition, unto whom thirteen kingdoms were subject.

In or near these times the severall Orders of Monks began to multiply in the Church of God: Theodoric King of Gothes being an Arrian did possess all Italy, slue Boetius their Consull.

All manner of Estates were full of perturbation, as well the Empire as Church affairs, or Church and Common-wealth were now in great distress.

Zenon and Anastasius, Arrian Emperours in the East, Theodoric and his successors in Italy, Honorius King of the Vandalls in Affrica did excercise no small Tyranny.

Clodoucus King of France at length in Gallia being turned Christian, both overcame the Gothes, and restored peace in many places, though not in every Country and Kingdom.

In the time of St. Benedict, and year of Christ 500. or thereabouts, in the beginning of the government of this Angel Zachariel the Spirit of Iupiter, whose spirits property it is, to change Empires and Kingdoms, which was done in this Revolution, histories do manifoldly declare; and what himself could not perform, he ordained Raphael the Angel of Mercury, his successor, to perfect in Charles King of French-men.

Many Kingdoms came to their periods under these 350. years both of the Gothes, Vandalls, Burgundians, Lumbards, Thuringers, Almains, Bavarians, and very many besides.

Iustinianus the Emperour first of all about these times beautified the Common-wealth very deservedly with his Lawes.

Many gallant and most admirable men flourished under Zachariel.

Iustinianus built the Temple of St. Sophia in Constantinople consisting of 400. Towers. The Empire is divided and made Bi-partite, and ever and anon is more and more oppressed with mischiefs.

Many signs in heaven appeared about these times, as is easily collected from Histories.

Cosdroes king of the Persians took Hierusalem, whom Heraclius the Emperour afterward slue.

Mahomet the Arabian in these times about the year of Christ 600. introduced the Sect of Sarazens, by which Sect the Roman Empire in Asia is now quite extinguished.

Dagobert King of France slue the English, at that time called Saxons (whom in battell he overcame). Its remarkable, that by little and little Christianity about these times began to fail in Asia and Affrick, upon entrance of the Sect of the Sarasins therein, which now had almost poysoned the whole world.

About the years of our Lord God 774. Crosses appeared in the garments of men, and not long after the Roman Empire is divided, a translation of the Monarchy being made to Charles who was of the Frankes Nation in Germany, who preserved the Empire and Church from perishing, and fought many famous battels.

The name of Western Galls, or Westphalians in Saxony after his victory first had its beginning.

In the 18. place after finishing the rule of Zachariel, the Angel of Iupiter, Raphael the spirit of Mercury undertook the disposing of this worlds affaires, the third time, the second day of November in the year of the Creation of the World, 6023. eighth moneth, and he swayed the scepter of the World 354. years, four moneths, untill the years of the world 6378. and of our Lord God 1171.

In the first beginning of this revolution of Raphael the Angel of Mercury, the Monarchy of the Roman Empire (as we mentioned before) was translated to Charles the great.

After Charles his son Lodowick ruled 25. years, who being dead, his sons contending amongst themselves, did again extenuate the strength of the Empire.

The Normans harrowed France: Rome is twice scourged by the Saracens: under Lodowick the second it raigned blood from Heaven in Italy, by the space of three whole dayes.

In Saxony, a certain village with all its buildings, and inhabitants was in a moment swept away by an horrible gaping or opening of the earth.

About the year of our Lord God 910. there were many great motions in Italy, and Italy fell from the Empire of the Franks or Franconians, and ordained proper kings for themselves of their own election; the first whereof was Berengarius the Duke of Fonolivium, after whom seven in order succeeded, near upon fifty years, untill the translation of the Empire unto the Germans: The first Emperour that was thereof was Otho, from which time the Empire began to be reformed; unto whom Otho his son, and hos Nephew Otho after succeeded in the Empire: under whose Government the Hungarians are converted to the Christian Faith. But the third Otho dying without children, instituted after his death Electors of the Empire in the year of Christianity 1002. even as they remain to this present day.

Ierusalem is again taken by the Saracens: many strange sights are seen in the air, in the Heavens, in the Earth and sea, and in waters: But Otho the third being dead, Henry the first by election of the Princes succeeded, raigned 20. years, who founded the Church of Bamburg, and dying a Virgin, together with his wife Kunigunda he shone gloriously in miracles; after whom Conrade, first Duke of the Francks is chosen, and ruled 20. years.

Godfrey Earl of Bullen also recovered the holy Land, and City of Jerusalem from the hands of the Infidels.

Before the end of this Revolution many signs and Prodigies were seen, and a little time after the Nation of the Tartars exceeded the bounds of their own Country, and did many mischiefs to the Empire of Rome.

There was Famine, Pestilence, Earthquakes in the Empire: Three suns were seen in the East, and as many Moons. In the year of our Lord God 1153. Frederick first called Barbarossa began to reign, and ruled 33. years, the beginning of whose Government was in the 336. year of Raphael: He did many noble exploits, and enlarged the strength of that Empire, performed sundry wars with great success, in whose ninth year the Egians and Lituotrians were converted to the Faith of Christ.

Samael the Angel of Mars in order, the nineteenth time came to accept the Gubernation of the universall world, it being now his third returne, and this he did the third day of March, Anno Mundi, 6378. and he regulated mundane affaires 354. years four moneths, untill the years of the World 6732. four moneth; and of our Lord God 1525. under whose predominancy many wars were all over the whole world, by which means infinite thousands of men perished, and sundry Kingdoms lost their former bounds: betwixt Frederick the first Emperour and the Romane Nobility, many controversies arose, sundry great battels were fought, and many thousands of Romans perished.

The aforesaid Frederick did wholy subvert Mediolanum: Leige is destroyed, Hierusalem is again taken by the Saracens, the Empire of the Tartarians the greatest in the whole World about these times took its beginning, occasioned a very great plague in the World, nor yet do they cease.

After Frederick, Henrie his Son is elected Emperour. Who being dead, Schism confounds that Empire; under Philip and Otho many battels followed in the confines of Germany, Argentine, Cullen, Liege, Wormes, Spires, and all over the Kingdome. The sect of begging or Mendicant Friars began in these times, in the 40 year year, or thereabouts of Samael: from whence it is most apparent, that all things are done by providence. The Sarazens fought many battels against the Christians in Asia and Africk. Constantinople is taken by the Germans: Baldwin Earl of Flanders is instituted Emperour. In Almain more then twenty thousand young men are drowned in the Sea by Pyrats, who seduced by a vain spirit, did give forth they would recover the holy land.

From Spain many shepheards or keepers of cattle united themselves together, coming to Paris dispoiling the clergy of their livelyhoods, the common people taking part with them, or being well pleased with it.

But when they extended their hands to take away the goods of the Layity, they were quite cut off and destroyed.

In the year of Christ 1212. Frederick the second is elected, he reigned 33. years, and did many acts against the Church. In the yeare 1238. an Eclipse and a continual Earthquake undid many thousands of men.

Frisia also by continuall incursions of the sea, was almost wholly drowned, and there did perish more then one hundred thousand of men and women.

The Tartars waste Hungaria and Polonia, Armenia the greater being first subdued, and many regions besides.

In the year of Christ 1244. a certain Jew digging in the ground at Toledo in Spain, found a book, in which it was written, In the third World Christ shall be born of the Virgin Mary, and shall suffer for the salvation of man, not long after the third World believing, shall be baptized.

It was the third Revolution of the Angell of Saturn, concerning which, what is spoken is intended: in the beginning of whose reign, Christ was born of a Virgin.

The Popes of Rome deposing Frederick, it is said the Empire was vacant 28 years, untill the Election of Rodolph Count of Habspurg, constituting Kings by turns in the Intervals or vacancy. First Henry Count of Schuvartzenburg at Thuring by election of the Princes; then William Earle of Holland, Conrade the Son of Frederick, Alfonsus King of Castile, Richard Earl of Cornwall, brother to the King of England, many evils were multiplied upon the face of the Earth.

At or neer this time about the year of our Lord God 1260. the Confederacy of the Switzers began, a small people in number, but have increased with the time, who have slain many of their Nobility, and being a Warlike people have banished and frighted away many others of their Nobles from their proper habitations, whose Common wealth is now known to all the people of Germany.

In the year of Christians 1273. Rudolphus of Habspurg is constituted Emperour by Election of the Princes he raigned 18 years, the best of men, prudent in all manner of affaires, from whom afterwards descended all the Dukes of Austria. The Tartarians invading the Lands of Christians, Constantinpole and Greece, brought infinite damage to the Christians.

The Saracens do occupie many Cities in Asia, kill and destroy more than four hundred thousand Christians: Rudolphus being dead, Adolph of Nassaw is elected King, he governed six years, whom Albert the son of Rudolph, afterwards overcame and slew in fight neer Wormes and was chosen Imperator in the yeare of Christ 1298. he governed ten years and was slain by his brothers son. The Order of the Knights Templars by command of Pope Clement the fifth is destroyed, the Isle of Rhodes is recovered by Christians out of the hands of the Sarazens, after the War and siege thereof had continued four whole years. Albertus being slain by his Nephew; Henry is constituted the eighth Emperour, being Count of Luxenburg, who reigned 5 years; he being dead Lodowick the fourth of Bavaria reigned 32 years, beginning in the year 1315. unto whom the Popes of Rome gave a Crown.

Frederick Duke of Austria opposeth himself against Lodowick, but is overcome by him.

After Lodowick, Charles the fourth King of Bohemia is constituted Emperour; who converted the Bishoprick of Prague into an Archbishoprick; he reigned 31 years: there were most fearfull Earthquakes. This Charles did institute many things in favour of the Princes Electors, concerning their Customes and Tallayes, which were not in use formerly. Gunther Count of Schuartzenburg stiled himself King, opposed Charles the Emperour, but prevailed nought at all against him.

After Charles, his Son Winceslaus governed 22 years: after whom Jodocus Marques of Moravia succeeded, Sigismund Cozen German of Winceslaus.

Winceslaus was disposed, Leopald Duke of Austria, 8 Earls, and more then 4000 souldiers fighting against the Switzers, were all by them slain.

During the government of Winceslaus King of Bohemia Emperour: the Tenets of Iohn Huss had their beginning. Winceslaus being deposed, Rupert Count Palatine of Rhine, and Duke of Bavaria was elected, and ruled 10. years. In the year of our Lord God 1369. the Christians did ingage themselves in a war against the Sarazens, which succeeded ill by reason of the French mens Arrogancy: because more then one hundred thousand of our men did dye in that war; besides such as were made Captives, amongst whom was Iohn Duke of Burgundy, many were the wars of those times.

In the year of the World 1407 Sigismund is made Emperour, and governed 27 years: he indeavoured to wast and destroy the kingdome of Bohemia thereby to extinguish Heresie, but it little availed him. The Kingdome of France is most grievously wasted and consumed by the English and Burgundians: Sigismund being departed this life, Albert Duke of Austria, Sigismunds son in Law, succeeded in the year of Christians 1438. and only raigned two years, an admirable man and worthy of the Empire. He being deceased, Frederick the third Duke of Austria, the Son of Ernestus, by election of the Princes, is chosen Emperour: and reigned 56 years, a man of a Divine soul and peaceable conversation, who began to rule Anno Dom. 1440.

In the year of Christians 1453. Constantinople is taken of the Turks by Treachery of a certain Genoway, and a little after by degrees all Greece fell from their Christian faith. For a litle time after many Kingdoms and Provinces of the Christians were harrowed, wasted, and taken by the Turks. Many and most grievous wars the Christians had amongst themselves about this time, in France, England, Saxony, Westphalia, Prusia, Flanders, Sweden, and other places. In these times the Art of Printing was newly found out, and invented at Mogunce the Metropolis of Almain, by a wonderfull industry, and not without the speciall gift of the Deity.

In the year of Christ 1456. the Turks were overthrown in Hungaria by the faithfull Christians, whereof many of them perished. The Pilgrimage of young men to Saint Michael was wonderfull. There were Earthquakes in the Kingdome of Naples, and more then fourty thousand people perished thereby.

In the year of the World 1462 Moruntia is taken and spoiled being the Metropolis of the Franconians or Francks in Germany.

Charles Duke of Burgundy overcame the Franconians in Anno 1465. after that in 1467 he destroyed the cities Dinant & Liege, An. 1473. he entered Gelderland, and with much valour obtained it, & in like manner all the whole Dukedome of Loraigne.

A Comet during all the moneth of Ianuary 1472 appeared. Charles Duke of Burgundy not long besieged the Towne of Nussicum one whole years space, viz. in or about 1474. which Magnanimous Prince was afterwards slain in war 1467. The Turks took away from the Christians about these times, many of their cities, Nigropont in Euboia, the Kingdome of Bosnia, Dukedome of Speta, Achaia, Mysia, and more Kingdomes besides these in the East.

Anno 1476 a convocation of fools was in Franconia of Germany neer Niclaushausen, full of errours.

Anno 1480 the Turks besieged the Rhodians with a powerfull Armie but prevailed not; departing the same year from Rhodes, they took the city Hydruntum, more then twelve thousand Christians being slain there, only 22 souldiers escaping. The next year Mahomet Emperour of the Turks died; to whom Bajazet his first born succeeded in the Kingdome, having reigned now at this present 27 years. In the year of Christ 1486. Maximilian the Son of Frederick was instituted King of Romans at Franckford, and saluted Caesar by Iulius the Pope 1508. who instituted the Order of warfare of Saint George purposely against Hereticks and Turks: he brought the Switzers low by war, and even to this day makes war against the Rebellious Sicambrians; he will be fortunate against all such as break their Leagues or Covenants with him.

The King of France after his wonted manner, a constant persecutor of the Empire, is discovered to plot new devices against it. The Omnipotent protects those assigned to the Government of Samael: Anno 1508. the Venetians Rebels to the Empire of Caesar, are threatned with War and Banishment. Punishment of stubbornness will be the reward of an advised satisfaction. About the end of this third Revolution of Samael, the Image of alteration shall pass to the first and shall be the Perdition of many men for unless Aries be reduced again, (God assisting) (ad algos) there will be translation of one Monarchy, or of some great Kingdome.

A strong sect of Religion shall arise, and be the overthrow of the Ancient Religion.

It's to be feared least the fourth beast lose one head.

Mars first of all in the Government of Samael foretold the Flood, in his second returne, the siege and destruction of Troy: in his third toward the end thereof will be found great want of Vnity: from matters preceding may be Judged what will or ought to succeed. This third Revolution of Mars shall not be consummated without Prophecie, and the institution of some new Religion, from this year of our Lord 1508. here yet remains untill the end of the Government of Samael 17. years wherein signes and figures shall be given, foreshewing the beginnings of evill. For in Anno. 1525. Crosses were seen in the garments of men by the space of ten years before, what is past already shall shew their effects: but 13 years from hence being justly summoned away, thou shalt surrender thy place to the (non Intelligent) thou shalt revive again far greater to me, after the Fates in the third; unless it be lawfull thou obscure thy self in a cloud.

The twentieth time in order, Gabriel Angell of the Moon received the moderation of the World, in the year of the World 6732. the fourth moneth, and fourth day of Iune: in the year of Christ 1525. and he shall regulate the world 354. years, and four moneths, untill the year of the world 7086. eighth moneth, but of our Lord Christ 1879. and 11. moneth.

The future Series of this Revolution requireth Prophecy.

Most sacred Caesar, I have not wrote these things assertively, or that we must believe it by any means whatever with the injury of Orthodox Divinity.

There are some that in these things have supputed Lunar moneths, which if thou holdest fit to consent unto, then those things I have wrote must be varied.

I protest with my own proper hand, and confess with my own mouth, that in all these things delivered, I beleeve nothing, or admit of anything, unless what the Catholick Church doth hold: the rest, I refute and contemn as vain, faigned and superstitious.

Finis Joh. Trit.

new personality test
15:20:20 - Aug 25 2006
Times Read: 30

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I am a A Titanium Dragon!

Hey, I took the http://dragonhame.com online Inner Dragon quiz and found out I am a Titanium Dragon on the inside.

In the war between good and evil, Titanium Dragons take the side of the noble and good....
When it comes to the powers of Chaos vs. those of Law and Order, your inner dragon is a risk taker and answers to no one....
As far as magical tendancies, Your inner dragon has the ability to conquer the world of magic, but it will not be easy....
During combat situations, the Titanium Dragon shows a preference for the rending and slashing of Hand to Hand combat....
Instead of scales, this dragon is made out of a very strong Titanium Alloy. Titanium Dragons build and live in very strong castles made out of different kinds of metal.'
The Titanium Dragon has an elongated snout and very short front and hind legs. Titanium Dragons are not very big for their weight but they are very powerful fighters.'
Titanium Dragons are found mostly in the southern hemisphere of the world. They enjoy cooler climates and tend to build homes in mountainous regions, where the metal ore is plentiful.
'
This Dragons favorite elements are: Metals, Creativity, and Shiny Things.

http://Dragonhame.Com

Biogenetically engeneered,with learn AI planes and robotic
13:55:49 - Sep 02 2006
Times Read: 28

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Objectives
To achieve its objectives, the project will analyze, specify, develop, and validate a complete end-to-end production chain which constitutes significant innovation over the state-of-the art in major technological areas of work:
(1) development of innovative content representation formats with an emphasis on scalable content management techniques.
(2) design of an integrated customization and personalization framework able to deal with complex multimedia content formats and metadata.
(3) demonstration of the end-to-end platform accessing the content over various networks including fixed and wireless networks as well as fixed and mobile terminals.
Innovation areas
A] Scalable Representation Techniques
Intelligent and interoperable services require a representation of the multimedia content that allows effortless scalability of content according to the constraints set by the network, the end device and the user profile.
B] Integrated customization and personalization framework
Customization is the process of adapting content to constraints coming from the transport or terminal
capabilities at the moment of viewing, including access rights management. Personalization is the process of adapting content to the request of the viewer or his/her stored preferences. Personalization and customization can be built upon the same technologies.
The core innovation of ISIS is the specification and development of an integrated customization and personalization framework.
Technology
A] Personalization
The idea behind personalization technologies is that of helping users during their interaction with complex services when for example they want to find information items from a large database of available content. The greatest benefit they provide is the ability to make a complex MultiMedia service easy to use, by presenting only the content that a given user wants to see, in a way well suited to its habits, and at the appropriate time. In different words, personalization techniques allow the delivery of content and services actively tailored to individuals based on rich knowledge about their preferences and behavior. As personalization technologies allow modifying what is presented to each user, they are usually tightly integrated into the presentation components of the overall architecture. With personalization technologies working, two individuals simultaneously accessing a same service could see completely different services and content.
The primary benefit of personalization is a better relationship with each user. Things like name recognition, convenience, and superior service are known factors in customer retention and a well-integrated personalization solution can provide all of these benefits.
A good example could be a tourist site or application on which the personalization infrastructure tracks a customer's browsing activity and remembers what kind of tourist items the customer has chosen, selected, examined. All that information, possibly combined with other aggregate data, allows the system to recommend tourist items the customer is likely to enjoy. As a matter of fact, the number of items in the site could be so big that we can not assume the user will see his or her way all interesting items. So, recommending specific items increases the chances the customer has of finding items that he will like.
This type of personalization is referred to as personalized-recommendation and is a kind of automatic adaptation of a service to user preferences. The primary use of recommended systems is in electronic commerce where they allow the site to suggest products to potential customers. In marketing parlance, personalization delivers on the following objectives:
* to convert more browsers into buyers;
* to increase the average order size with cross-sell/up-sell recommendations; and
* to increase the frequency of purchases by promoting customer loyalty through learned customer preferences. The main objective is to conquer the user and retain the customer, especially in a world like the web where a competitor is only "a click away".
Recommender systems can be also used in several other contexts in which informed suggestions could represent a useful personalization strategy.
Technically speaking, personalization techniques propose algorithms that starting from the on-line and off-line observation of user behavior are able to predict user preferences related to the services at disposal and accordingly propose services and contents considered of interest for the user.
In the case of the ISIS tourist planet, personalization requires the dynamic generation of an MPEG-4 catalogue (content delivery pages), implemented through an application server that queries the Content Description database for the content to insert in page templates following the instructions of personalization algorithms. To relate content and user profiles, content has to be tagged with metadata providing a semantic description of stored tourist information. Also contextual information such as the time of the day, the time spent reading a piece of content etc., can be fruitfully used by the personalization algorithms.
In addition to the already available and commercial tools for the personalization services, the ISIS platform realizes a new type of architecture that permits to join the server-side and the client-side user modeling engines with special regard to the users’ privacy aspects.User modeling on the server side is actually exposed to possible concerns in terms of privacy and security. Generally, it requires the user to have a high degree of confidence in the prospected use of his or her own personal data by the service provider that maintains the server. Another drawback is that the user models stored at the server may not be specific for each single user, but rather correspond to aggregate profiles regarding a plurality of users. Oftentimes, for each service there is a fixed, limited set of pre-defined user models among which the user has to choose when registering.
B] Context-awareness
With the ever more rapid integration of mobile technology into our everyday lives we are also seeing the development of new applications to complement it. Mobile devices are no longer seen simply as a communication device, but are taking on the role of versatile, networked terminals enabling users to communicate multimodally as well as access Internet services, play games and access a wide range of multimedia content. However, there is a big difference with respect to traditional PC based interaction in that it is no longer clear where, when and how users’ will need to make use of such services. A variety of situational factors can play a role in how the services should be provided. There is, therefore, more need than ever before for context aware services and applications
Terrain Navigation : Due to the very large amount of data needed to represent such scenes, a scalable streaming format is needed. This format has to be associated with some transmission scenarios exploiting it fully. Indeed, the format developed in ISIS relies on geometric wavelets, coupled with a geometric adaptation of the classical SPIHT zerotree-compression. Though it provides very good compression and is naturally prone to adaptive decoding, the detail selection / navigation scenario has to be specified in a context of real-time client / server dialog in order to play "3D on demand" and navigate freely while the data are streamed.
Figure a - Textured terrain during flyover
In practice, the end user should be able to select a terrain database and, within a moderate time lap, flyover the terrain with no waiting time for transmission or loading. This is made possible by the selective transmission of the refinements needed by the current navigation. While the observer is viewing a particular location, the client requests the needed data that will refine this location and setup the neighboring areas for future visualization. This concept is illustrated by Figure b.
Figure b - View from above of a virtual navigation over a terrain. The red sector represents the actually viewed scene. The blue area is composed of the areas in which new data are requested
The overall behavior of both client and server is as follows: during navigation, the client maintains a cache with the information already transmitted. When a new location has to be refined, it sends its position and orientation in the scene to the server, along with compact information of its cache content. The server determines the local data and corresponding precision, and sends them to the client. This exchange is repeated periodically.
# Benefits of the wavelet 3D mesh format : View-dependency : wavelets are well located in space, thus allowing a geometric sorting of the coefficients according to the visibility of the portion of the mesh they refine.
# Sub-band decomposition : partial reconstruction can be achieved by using a subset of the whole wavelet coefficients set, instead of all of it.
# Hierarchical structure : the wavelet decomposition is based on canonical facet subdivision, which is a simple hierarchical structure that can be used for multiresolution animation or editing.
# Compression : because of this hierarchical organization, only the geometric component has to be encoded. Moreover, the surface variations are decorrelated by the wavelet transform, leading to one of the best known results in terms of lossy mesh compression.
# Bitstream embedding : the SPIHT algorithm provides by nature bitplane refinements of wavelet coefficients.
C] MPEG-21 with special focus on MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation
* Level of Articulations for Virtual Humans : this technology enables the adaptation of animation for 3D virtual humans (regarding the number of animated joints and points) within MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation.
* Terminal capabilities, benchmarking : this features allow the adaptation engine to take into account the terminal characteristics and performances for a particular content
D] MPEG-4 with special focus on :
* MPEG-4 Scalable Video Codec :This recently started standardisation activity within MPEG targets to provide a fully scalable video codec to support temporal, spatial and quality scaling of a video stream. The competing proposed codecs are all based on wavelet technology. Due to the wavelet representation, which is used in the spatial as well as the temporal domain, the codec is inherently scalable along the spatial and temporal dimensions. However, the levels are restricted to powers of two.
Within ISIS a first optimization of the decoder code has been developed in order to support Wavelet 2D+t video coding in a complete end to end streaming chain. As a result, one of the first real-time decoder implementations at least for QCIF sequences at 25 fps has been developed. Currently, decoding of CIF images can be achieved at least at 12,5 fps on high-end PCs (2,8 GHz).

* The coding system divides consecutive frames into groups, similar to the Group of Pictures (GOP) structure in MPEG-1/2/4. Each GOP has a typical size of 16 frames. The motion compensated (MC) filtering is performed on pairs of frames to produce (at level 1) temporal low- (t-L) and high-pass filtered (t-H) frames using the Haar wavelet. The temporal low frames are then decomposed again with the same MC filtering method. Continuing to level 4, the octave based five-band temporal decomposition is generated. In this case, we have 1 t-LLLL frame, 1 t-HHHH frame, 2 t-HHH frames, 4 t-HH frames, and 8 t-H frames per GOP (=16 frames here) and the associated motion vector fields MV(0)... MV(3).
* MPEG-4 Audio BSAC : In the MPEG-4 Audio standard ( Internet Audio Working Profile) there exists the so called AAC-BSAC. The Bit Sliced Arithmetic Coding allows scaling of the bitstream in steps of 1kbit/s down to a certain base layer (typically at 16 kbit/s per channel), therefore it is the only 'fine granular' scalable codec within MPEG-4 Audio. Base and enhancement layers plus some additional header information form an elementary stream that is presented below.
The bitrate adaptation in case of BSAC elementary streams is realized as truncation of the 48 enhancement layers. The base layers are not changed in terms of adjusting their length, but they include a parameter framelength, which needs to be updated during the bitstream transformation since it provides information necessary for the decoding process. The BSAC elementary stream starts with a BSAC header, which remains unchanged in the adaptation of the bitstream. The customization of such a bitstream can even be done in streaming scenarios frame by frame, since this unit is the minimum block a decoder needs to reconstruct the audio signal.
BSAC solves the problem of exhaustive processing needed when transcoding of audio streams nowadays takes place. There is no need for decoding and again encoding with different parameters, since the scalability is based on the nature of the BSAC stream. In order to deliver an adapted stream, just a few blocks of the bitstream are truncated, while others are updated. This very processing effective operation can be done on demand, just in the moment of the stream delivery as demonstrated within the ISIS project. The remarkable project results of ISIS contain also BSAC encoder, bitstream syntax description generator, realtime decoders for PC and PDA.
* Scalable body and facial animation : Based on MPEG-4 BBA, H-Anim skeleton, MPEG-4 FAP and FAT, scalable body and facial animation enables the rendering of 3D animated virtual humans on different devices, such as standard desktop PC but also laptop and personal digital assistants.
Different Levels of Detail
To adapt 3D representations, several tools have been developed to allow the authoring of MPEG-4 compatible models that are usable as input in the adaptation engine. The generated models support adapted facial and body animation
. Different FAP levels
* MPEG-4 Systems : adaptive 2D graphics :
* Wavelet 3D Mesh : The purpose of the 3DMesh scalable coding tool is to allow immersive virtual navigation in large scenes representing textured geographic data on various terminals. Due to the very large amount of data needed to represent such scenes, a scalable streaming format is needed. This format has to be associated with some transmission scenarios exploiting it fully. Geometric Wavelets, for 3D meshes for the terrain fly-through application in ISIS provide view-dependency, sub-band decomposition, a hierarchical struction, high compression and bitstream embedding. ( more... )
Workpackage structure
In a nutshell, the ISIS project aims at analyzing, specifying, developing, and validating the technologies of a complete end-to-end chain that exploits the innovative opportunities offered by new services based on scalable, customizable, personalizable content.
The objective of offering to users the optimum perceived quality, taking into account the nature of the content (audio, video and graphics) as well as the network, terminal, and user constraints, will challenge the project.
These objectives are worked out in a certain number of logical phases and project activities :
- Technology evaluation to gather the basis and assess the state-of-the-art
- Platform System architecture design and global system specification
- Tool development for the different elements of the technical covered by the Project
Specification and Implementation of scalable audio, video and graphics codecs
Specification and implementation of a content customization personalization and delivery framework
Specification and implementation of content consumption tools (2D and 3D players) for end user devices
- Demonstrator build-up and integration
- Prototype Application development
- System and Prototype application validation
- Dissemination of results
Some of these phases are very closely interrelated. They are therefore grouped into the same workpackage in order to simplify the communication between the partners and within the project.
The project is therefore organized into 5 workpackages (WP) whose inter-relationship is shown in figure 4.
The figure shows also the flow of information within the project.

figure 4: Workpackage structure and interrelationship
WP1 is responsible for the technical and administrative management of the project as well as for the dissemination of results;WP2 is responsible for designing the overall architecture of the system and validating the technologies developed in the other WPs.WP3 to WP5, finally, are responsible for the analysis, specification, and implementation of the technologies.

ISIS project: Navigation systems
This project is carried out by Division of Communication Systems and Division of Automatic Control in cooperation with SAAB (Dynamics and Gripen).
Selected publications
Since this project focuses on managing master thesis projects, no PhD student is involved and hence there are no publications. For navigation publications, we refer to sensor fusion publications that all concern navigation problems in airborn, automotive and underwater systems.
Background
In the recent years activities in the navigation field have been boosting. There are and will be more and more areas where navigation becomes an important part of a system solution. So far navigation systems have been of major importance for aircraft, missiles, ships, etc., but it is now becoming used in automobiles and other smaller systems. Even in aircraft systems the advance in computer capacity has opened the possibility for a broad spectrum of applications where accurate navigation plays an important role. Typical tools today for navigation are inertial navigation systems (INS), which essentially means that acceleration and angular velocity measurements are integrated to a position. Systems that have an increasing importance are Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), e.g. the Global Positioning System (GPS), which are based on satellite information. The use of maps and terrain information (on charts or databases) has recently become a competitive component in navigation systems. Other sensors are more traditional sensors as for instance distance measuring equipment that can measure distances to stations at known locations. A good navigation system should be capable of integrating the information from different sources in an efficient and reliable way. In an aircraft application the requirements put on a navigation system varies with respect to reliability depending on what the objective is at a certain moment. One objective is a challenge from a reliability point of view - the landing of an aircraft. Originally, the main areas in this project were:
* Configuring the sensor data fusion algorithm
* Detection of failures and integrity monitoring in navigation systems
* Terrain database related applications
The licentiate thesis below focused on the second item:
* J. Palmqvist. On integrity monitoring of integrated navigation systems. Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Thesis No 600, 1997.
As a continuation, Per-Johan Nordlund is studying a general framework attacking all three problems in his sensor fusion project. This navigation project is so to say resting, except for master thesis, and the research is transfered to the project sensor fusion.
Master Theses
Today, the activity centers around an extensive master thesis program. The block diagram below, and the reference list describe how over 50 theses fit into the general picture. There is a flight animation illustrating one of the recent thesis about a ground collision avoidance system. The movie was generated inside matlab directly from simulation data and the geographical information system (GIS). The animation starts at low altitude over the lake Tåkern (50km from Linköping), goes to the hill Omberg and just before the ground collision is unavoidable, the system automatically steers over the hill and out to the lake Vättern.

Several of these theses have received awards:
# [25] The Polhem prize 1997 for best master thesis in Sweden.
# [10] Radionavigationsnämndens 1'st prize 1997.
# [17] Radionavigationsnämndens 2'nd prize 1997.
# [37] Radionavigationsnämndens 1'st prize 1999.
# [33] Radionavigationsnämndens 2'nd prize 1999.
# [56] Radionavigationsnämndens 1'st prize 2001.
# [52] Radionavigationsnämndens 2'nd prize 2001.
Another aspect is that these people have been a useful source of recruitment, and the following students got employed at SAAB directly after finishing their theses: [2,6,9,15,17,20,22,25(both students),32,37,39,39]
Project status
There is no PhD student in the project at the moment, but several of the PhD students in sensor fusion are working with navigation problems. The project is neveheless very active due to a large number of master thesis at Saab military aircraft, Saab dynamic and also at other "non-ISIS" companies as FOA (national defence research institute), Celsius aerotech and Luftfartsverket.
References:
1. Niclas Bergman. Recursive Bayesian Estimation: navigation and tracking applications. PhD thesis 579, 1999.
2. Jan Palmqvist. On integrity monitoring of integrated navigation systems. Licentiate thesis 600, 1997.
3. Niclas Bergman. Bayesian inference in terrain navigation. Licentiate thesis 649, 1997.
4. M. Lundberg. State estimation from flight test data with Extendend Kalman filtering and smoothing. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1637, 951212.
5. P. Johansson. Target Tracking by fusing Radar and IR-sensor data. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1607, 951220.
6. J. Carlbom. A Study of Inertial Navigation Vertical Loops for Military Aircrafts. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1567, 950925.
7. N. Bergman. Parallel filters for detection of aircraft manoeuvres. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1598, 951006.
8. C. Nilsson. Knowledge Based Specification of a Pilot Model for Complex Tasks. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1673, 951220.
9. B. G. Sundqvist. Simulator of JAS throttle control system, a mode changing system. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1566, 951030.
10. F. Gunnarsson. Parallel filters for terrain reference navigation. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1741, 960911.
11. P. Carlsson. Modelling and simulation of GPS. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1699, 961115.
12. E. Johansson. Integration methods for acceleration signals. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1676, 960125.
13. F. Jonsson. Dynamic performance and control methods for primary flight control with servopump. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1661, 960918.
14. R. Karlsson. Optimal trajectory generation for Taurus. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1714, 961216.
15. A. Malmberg. Track-to-track association in multisensor multitarget tracking. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1705, 961129.
16. P. Norberg. Target Tracking with Decentralized Kalman Filters. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1575, 960429.
17. P.-J. Nordlund and J. Sonesson. An environment for simulation of global positioning system (GPS) and a method for integration of inertial navigation system and GPS. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1728, 961213.
18. M. Stern. Suggestion for an altitude meter for an autonomous miniature helicopter. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1603, 960209.
19. Dan Rylander. Robust Control of a Hypersonic Vehicle using Gain Scheduling. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1546.
20. Håkan Frank. Robust Control of a Hypersonic Vehicle Using Dynamic Inversion and mu-synthesis. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1681.
21. Magnus Andersson. Graceful degradation of an integrated navigation system and improvement of an INS simulator. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1834, 971217.
22. Mats Bergman. Filtering of radar measurements for aiming the automatic gun in JAS 39 Gripen. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1826, 971121.
23. Johan Hedin. Specific emitter identification of radar. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1875, 971202.
24. Lars Holmberger. Dimensioning of a real-time simulation environment for the BILL-sight. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1810, 970930.
25. Thomas Jensen and Mathias Karlsson. Sensor management in a complex multisensor environment. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1831, 971128.
26. Nicklas Johansson. H-infinity filtering. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1791, 971216.
27. Tomas Larsson. Control law design for high alpha vehicle using linear quadratic optimization. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1748, 970311.
28. Roine Pettersson. Position determination with GPS. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1760, 970603.
29. Jan Wallenberg. Extending the TACSI tactical air combat simulator with Monte Carlo Simulation. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1768, 970214.
30. Johannes Wintenby. Target tracking using IMM, JPDA and adaptive sensor updating. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1747, 970418.
31. Håkan Wissman. Control stick steered aircraft simulation model. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1812, 971215.
32. Daniel Murdin. Data fusion and fault detection in decentralized navigation systems. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1920, 980512.
33. Charlotte Dahlgren. Non-linear black box modelling of JAS 39 Gripen's radar altimeter. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1958, 981023.
34. Niklas Ferm. Identity fusion and classification of aircraft in a multisensor environment. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1985, 981204.
35. Robert Guricke. Simplified models of sensor inaccuracy, data fusion and tracking in an air combat simulator. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1903, 981124.
36. Ingela Lind. A design method for H-infinity optimal filtering. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-1945, 981005.
37. Martin Pettersson. Distributed integrity monitoring of differential GPS corrections. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-2021, 981210.
38. Mattias Svensson. Aircraft trajectory restoration by integration of inertial measurements and GPS. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-2021, 991026. SAAB.
39. Jan-Ole Jacobsen. Controller Design of a Generic Aeroplane Model using LFT Gain Scheduling. Master Thesis LiTH-ISY-EX-2059.
40. Stefan Ahlqvist. SAAB 1999.
41. Karolina Danielsson. Error modeling in navigation systems. SAAB 1999.
42. Björn Hässler. Transmission model for IRST SAAB 1999.
43. Mats Hallingström. Modeling data traffic in onboard computer. SAAB 1999.
44. Josefin Hovlind. Measurement conditioning from camera surveyed weapon delivery. LiTH-ISY-EX-3071, SAAB 2000.
(resources up to 75)

ISISIntercultural Strategies for International Success

Westover Air Reserve Base, Chicopee, Massachusetts
* Largest Air Reserve Base in the world.
* Operates the C-5A Galaxy, one of the largest military transport planes in the world. The air pollution generated by one single C-5A Galaxy is enormous.
* Contamination problems include solvents, "general base refuse," jet fuels, degreasers, pesticides, herbicides, ashes from heat plant, oils.
* Waste disposal and landfill records poorly kept or unavailable.
* Vast stretches of land contaminated with Jet Fuel (JP-4) used for training and jet engine testing purposes.
* There have been over 20 sites in the Installation Restoration Program since 1994.
* Surface water contamination includes strong evidence of deicing compounds in Cooley Brook, which discharges into the Chicopee Reservoir, a popular recreational swimming spot.
* Groundwater pollution by contaminants leaching through the ground from landfills, waste disposal sites, and fire training areas. Many residents of the base who draw their water from wells are at risk of being exposed to contaminants in the groundwater.
* Efforts to monitor contaminants from a hazardous landfill are hampered by a poor understanding of the complex underground groundwater system. Westover consistently collects faulty and/or suspect data that does not support a conclusive understanding of this system. Westover's groundwater monitoring well database is unreliable and poorly organized. It is incomplete, contains errors, and disorganized.
Project Synopsis
This representation and analysis project is investigating the combination of model-integrated computing and aspect-oriented programming composition technologies to develop 1) a domain-specific, graphical language that captures the functional design of real-time embedded systems, 2) a weaving process that maps high-level invariant properties and system requirements to design constraints affecting specific program regions, and 3) a generation process that customizes components and composes real-time embedded systems. These technologies and tools are being demonstrated in the Boeing Bold Stroke OEP, where they are used to automatically initialize and configure avionics mission computing components that are customized for particular mission needs, and in the BBN UAV OEP, where the tools are used to synthesize CDL/QDL specifications, customizing the quality adaptive behavior of multi-media streaming applications. If successful, this project will help produce domain-specific and even application-specific modeling tools that will enable DoD systems engineers to configure, analyze, and validate complex real-time embedded systems in a more intuitive manner.
Project Description
The main goal of this project is to demonstrate the synergy of model-integrated computing (MIC) with the ideas from Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP). In particular, the concepts of aspect-orientation will be applied at a higher level of abstraction - at the modeling level. An additional goal is to develop a framework for building weavers.
The motivation for the project stems from difficulties encountered when trying to specify the constraints for a model-based system. It became apparent that constraints cross-cut the model. A solution that isolates the constraints as a separate area of concern will improve the manageability of such models.
Challenges
Under a prior project, we created a development environment for specification, simulation, and synthesis of dynamic, real-time embedded systems. A system's requirements, algorithms, resources, and behavior is captured as a 'design-space,' representing a multitude of alternative system implementations. An integrated language allows specification of design constraints as components within a set of hierarchical, multiple aspect models.
Figure 1
A drawback of our current approach can be seen in the sprinkling of many constraints throughout various levels of our model. It is difficult to maintain and reason about the effect and purpose of constraints when they are scattered about. Managing these distributed constraints becomes extremely difficult as system sizes increase (see Figure 1, where models are represented by the black circles and the replicated constraints are red blocks). Also, experimenting with different architectures, synchronization methods, network protocols, etc., becomes error-prone and labor intensive. We need a mechanism to separate out this concern. Our goal is to be able to specify global constraints at a particular level in the model and have that constraint automatically propagated down to the sub-objects (in this case a sub-object represents aggregation, not inheritance).
Approach
Handling Crosscutting Constraints
To solve these problems, we require a consistent, powerful way of specifying constraints and automatically weaving these into the target system designs. Aspect-oriented approaches can be applied to create system-wide constraint languages and methods for distributing and applying user-defined, embedded system, real-time constraints.
The manner in which our weaver is used is illustrated in Figure 2. The GME can export the contents of a model in the form of an XML document. In our former approach, the generated XML would be tangled with constraints throughout the document. Under our new approach, however, it may be quite possible that the exported XML is void of any constraint. The weaver is assigned the job os spreading the constraints throughout the model.
In the figure below, the input to the domain specific weaver consists of the XML representation of the model, as well as a set of specification aspects provided by the modeler. Specification aspects are similar to pointcuts in AspectJ in the sense that the define specific locations in the model where a particular constraint is to be applied. The output of the weaving process is a new description of the model in XML. This enhanced model, though, contains new constraints that have been integrated throughout the model by the weaver.
Figure 2
The requirements for our new approach necessitate a different type of weaver from those that others have constructed in the past. A new weaver is desired that will allow propagation of constraints to sub-objects. As the weaver visits a particular node in the object graph, it must know how to diffuse that constraint to its underlings. Depending on the type of node, the diffusion process may be performed in different ways. To provide the weaver with the needed information to perform the propagation, a new type of aspect is needed. We call this a “strategy aspect.” Strategy aspects are specified independently of any particular model and are joined to the object graph by the weaver.
The intent of a strategy aspect is to provide a hook that the weaver may call in order to process the node-specific constraint propagations. Strategy aspects must be weaved prior to the weaving of constraint aspects. As the weaver visits each object node during constraint weaving, it may call upon the strategy aspect to aid in applying the constraint to that object. Thus, strategy aspects provide numerous ways for instrumenting object nodes in the object graph with constraints. An important design goal of this aspect language will be to decouple the strategy aspects from the constraint aspects. For more information on the specifics of this approach, please see our Communications of the ACM paper below.
Synthesizing Customized Components
We are also working on techniques to generate customized CORBA Component Model (CCM) components and containers. This generation will be driven by specific QoS properties that are provided from the higher-level specifications.
This work will provide a way to represent component functionality, along with system requirements, in a behavior/runtime-neutral way. The functional components will then be composed by generating the component wrappers with the behavior required to meet the QoS specifications.

Current ISIS Projects
Data Bases for Control, Modelling and Simulation and Intelligent sensory information systems
Embedded Realtime Databases for Engine Control Jörgen Hansson, Thomas Gustafsson
Diagnosis, Supervision and Safety
Diagnosis and Supervision for Vehicle Functions
Lars Nielsen, Erik Frisk, Marcus Klein, Lars Eriksson
Fault Isolation in Object Oriented Control Systems
Ulf Nilsson, Inger Klein, Dan Lawesson
Detection and Diagnosis in Control Systems
Lennart Ljung, Inger Klein, Fredrik Gustafsson, Anna Hagenblad, Mattias Krysander
Techniques for Developing Integrated Control and Information Systems
Resource Management in Wireless Communications Systems
Fredrik Gustafsson, Fredrik Gunnarsson, Erik Geijer Lundin, Frida Gunnarsson
Methods for Synthesis of Control and Supervision Functions
Supervision and Control of Industrial Robots
Svante Gunnarsson, Mikael Norrlöf, Erik Wernholt
Model Predictive Control for Systems Including Binary Variables
Anders Hansson, Torkel Glad, Daniel Axehill
Signal Processing in Integrated Control and Supervision Systems
Navigation Systems
Fredrik Gustafsson, Gustaf Hendeby
Signal Interpretation and Control in Combustion Engines
Lars Eriksson, Per Andersson
Sensor Fusion
Fredrik Gustafsson, Rickard Karlsson, Jonas Gillberg

ISIS project: Model Predictive Control for Systems Including Binary Variables
Background
Model Predictive Control (MPC) has proved to be a strong method to control large MIMO systems and has gained substantial interest in the industry, especially within the process and petrochemical fields. The main benefit is the possibility to handle constraints on various variables in the plant.

An extension to ordinary MPC is also to include the ability to use binary variables as control signals and as internal variables in the model description.

The central idea in MPC is to state the control problem as an optimization problem, and solve this optimization problem on-line repeatedly. When binary variables are used in MPC, the optimization problem to solve is changed from a Quadratic Program (QP) to a Mixed Integer Quadratic Program (MIQP), where the latter is known in general to be NP-hard.

The research is performed in collaboration with ABB Corporate Research.

As an example of linear MPC, let us consider a linear system
$displaystyle x_{k+1}$ $displaystyle =$ $displaystyle Ax_{k}+Bu_k$

A standard MPC controller is typically defined as
$displaystyle u_k$ $displaystyle =$ $displaystyle u_{kvert k}$
$displaystyle u_{(cdotvert k)}$ $displaystyle =$ $displaystyle arg min_{u_{(cdotvert k)}} J_k$
$displaystyle J_k$ $displaystyle =$ $displaystyle sum_{j=0}^{N-1} vertvert x_{k+jvert k}vertvert _{Q}^{2}+vertvert u_{k+jvert k}vertvert _{R}^{2}$
$displaystyle u$ $displaystyle in$ $displaystyle mathcal{U},~ x in mathcal{X}$

The optimization problem can be solved with quadratic programming if the control and state-constraints are linear. This is most often the case since amplitude and rate-constraints are the most common constraints in reality.
Research Area
As mentioned above, when binary signals are used in the MPC problem, an NP-hard problem has to be solved in each time instant. Our research is aiming at finding and exploring the structure in MIQP problems originating from MPC. The objective with this research is to speed up the solution of these optimization problems.
3-Dimensional Engineered Tissue - Isis Project No 1088
Researchers at the Department of Engineering Science have developed a nutrient circulation and scaffold system for 3-dimensional bulky tissue culture.Engineering tissue involves the seeding of appropriate cells in to a scaffold to form a bio-construct or matrix. The Oxford invention comprises of systems of capillaries made of semi permeable membranes where pore size is sufficiently small to keep cells from leaving the system. The capillary network is embedded within the scaffold made from biopolymers or synthetic polymers; cells attach to these scaffolds, are serviced by the capillaries and grow to form tissue.
Figures 1 & 2 are SEM pictures of rat bone marrow fibroblastic cells grown in perfused hollow fibre bioreactors. Cell growth and tissue formation are significantly higher than the control without the membrane capillary perfusion.
Figure 1Cells grow on collagen scaffold and produce new collagen fibrils
Figure 2Cells do not grow directly on the hollow fibres and do not block the pores
The Oxford Invention
The invention employs biodegradable porous membrane capillaries to mimic blood capillary network in the natural tissue. No other engineered tissue currently employs a system of capillaries that deliver nutrients and remove metabolic waste deep inside and tissue growth is no longer governed by diffusion of nutrients from outside the scaffold. Biodegradation of the capillary membrane is a useful feature because as time progresses the pores will widen allowing more nutrients in and waste out allowing tissue of greater density to be grown. As the tissue becomes bulkier, epithelial cells can be introduced in to the capillaries to promote blood vessel formation. This invention enables the culture of 3-dimensional tissues opening the possibility of growing more complex structures (such as complete organs).

Interactive Quantitation of Movement and Motion in 4D Microscopy

Overview
This project is part of research program '4D-imaging of Living Cells and Tissues'. Within this NWO funded program the analysis and quantitation of movement and motion in sequences of 3D confocal microscopy images is covered in this project.
To the end of motion analysis, several techniques are possible to extract information from image sequences. The development of these techniques are geared towards the efficient computation of motion quantities from large datasets.
Several techniques for motion quantitation are e.g. computation of optical flow or tracking of moving particles. Further research interests are quantitation and description of changes in object shape over time.
Sensemaker
SenseMaker - a multi-sensory, task-specific adaptable perception system
(IST-2001-34712)
Funded by the European Commission under the Life-like Perception Programme.
SenseMaker Demonstration site
Read more on the Sensemaker project.
Introduction
In contrast to the majority of artificial sensor machines, animal or plant organisms have available a vast array of modalities for interaction with their environment. Perception in living organisms is thus a complex process going beyond the simple detection and measure of sensory stimuli. It is dependent on integration of sensory information entering through a number of different channels and, in higher animals, is subject to modulation by higher cognitive processes acting at the cortical level, or via descending brain pathways to early stages of the sensory processing chain.

Internal representations of the sensory world are formed through unification of information from different sources. Interaction of information arriving through different sensory pathways may be hardware representation (click to enlarge) complementary for object identification. For example, auditory information - e.g. the "moo" of a cow - may help to identify the visual entity - i.e. the shape of the cow. Perception is not a fixed concept: it is significantly modulated by the internal state of the organism and by many contextual factors such as past experience, internal prediction, association, or on-going motor behaviour. Repetitive experience of a particular sensory-motor context may lead to functional habituation, based on central prediction of the sensory world. In contrast, active goal-directed exploration of sensory space may focus attention on a particular sensory modality, on a particular region of body space, or on a particular temporal sequence of motor command and re-afferent sensory input. The importance attributed to each sensory modality in constructing this integrated representation of the sensory world also depends on its working range: for instance, vision is often the preferred sense when light conditions are good but touch, hearing, or smell, or a combination of all three, may serve better for object recognition in the dark.

The range of sensory modalities available to living organisms is large. In order to deal with different sorts of environmental milieux, nocturnal or aquatic animals have developed a variety of senses, which higher animals, such as humans, do not possess. These include echolocation used by bats, the electric organ combined with active electric senses used by many tropical freshwater fish, the magnetic sense of certain moles and birds, infrared sensors used by certain snakes and beetles, lateral line mechanoreceptive or hydrodynamic sensory systems used by fish and some marine mammals, and sonar and ultrasound also used by aquatic mammals. Humans themselves have developed certain artificial sensors, which detect physical or chemical signals that are not perceived directly by living organisms, but which if made available in a biologically compatible manner might also extend the human sensory range. These include, for example, sensors to detect chemical pollutants, x-rays, radioactivity, electromagnetic fields or cosmic radiation.

The SenseMaker Project

The project has two principle aims. One is a project to combine biological, physical and engineering technological approaches in the production of a multi-sensory, task specific adaptable perception system. The second aim will be to push forward knowledge of natural systems and to find the links between what we consider as biological principles and the science of mathematics, which has been used effectively by humans in the construction of intelligent machines.

The first aim of the project is thus to conceive and implement electronic architectures that embody the features of living perceptual systems reviewed above and are able to merge sensory information obtained through different sensory modalities, into a unified perceptual representation of the environment. The architectural design of the SenseMaker machine will be based on biological principles of sensory receptor and nervous system function, inspired by experimental studies of several different sensory modalities. The system will include higher cognitive levels modelled on psychophysical research paradigms, whose function will be to implement dynamic rules of cross-modal integration, activity and time-dependent algorithms for internal prediction, goal directed attention, and transitions between dominant or convergent sensory modalities according to changing environmental parameters.

As in living systems, we will seek to create a representation of the proximal environmental space, which is largely independent of the sensory substrates. The electronic architecture will have the capacity for auto-reconfiguration, forming supplementary cross-connections between the sensory receptor level of a given modality and the higher stages of processing specific to another sensory modality. The ultimate ambition is thus to generate the capacity to create entirely new senses based on hybrid system design.

The Partners

The project partners are a multi-disciplinary team of biologists, neuroscientists, engineers and computer scientists and are comprised of:
No. Acronym Institution Group Researchers
1 UU Universtiy of Ulster, UK (co-ordinator) Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory, Faculty of Informatics Prof. TM McGinnity
Dr LP Maguire
2 UNIC Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France The Integrative and Computational Neuroscience Research Unit Dr Y Fregnac
Dr K Grant
Dr A Destexhe
Dr J Lorenceau
Dr T Bal
Dr D Shulz
3 UHEI Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg, Germany Electronic Vision Group, Kirchhoff- Institut fur Physik Prof. Dr K Meier
Dr J Schemmel
4 TCD Trinity College, Ireland Visual Cognition Group, Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Psychology Dr F Newell
5 IXL ENSEIRB-CNRS Universite Bordeaux, France IXL Laboratory, School of Elctronics Dr Sylvie Renaud-Le Masson

SenseMaker Partner’s Websites

* Intelligent Systems Engineering Laboratory(ISEL), University of Ulster, Magee College, UK.
* Unité de Neurosciences Intégratives et Computationnelles (UNIC -CNRS).
* Electronic Vision(s) Group, at Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg University, Germany.
* Psychology, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
* ENSEIRB-CNRS Universite Bordeaux(IXL Laboratory), France.

Cognitive Computer Vision
Understanding human vision is an intriguing challenge. Vision dominates our senses for personal observation, societal interaction, and cognitive skill acquisition. At the Intelligent Sensory Information Systems group of the University of Amsterdam, we have recently started a new line of research into computational models for visual cognition.

modules Cognitive vision is the processing of visual sensory information in order to act and react in a dynamic environment. The human visual system is an example of a very well-adapted cognitive system, shaped by millions of years of evolution. Since vision requires 30% of our brain capacity, and what is known about it points to it being a highly distributed task interwoven with many other modules, it is clear that modelling human vision -let alone understanding it- is still a long way off. It is also clear that there is a close link between vision and our expressions of consciousness, but statements such as this add to the mystery rather than resolving it.

Understanding visual perception to such a level of detail that a machine could be designed to mimic it is a long-term goal, and one which is unlikely to be achieved within the next few decades. However, as computers are expected in the next twenty years to reach the capacity of the human brain, now is the time to start thinking about methods of constructing modules for cognitive vision systems.

For both biological and technical systems, we are examining which architectural components are necessary in such systems, and how experience can be acquired and used to steer perceptual interpretation. Since human perception has evolved to interpret the structure of the world around us, a necessary boundary condition of the vision system must be the common statistics of natural images.
Receptive Fields Neurobiological studies have found a dozen or so different types of receptive fields in the visual system of primates. As the receptive fields have evolved to capture the world around us, they are likely to be dual to our physical surrounding. These fields must be derived from the statistical structures that are probed in visual data by integration over spatial area, spectral bandwidth and time. In our cognitive vision research, we have initially derived several receptive field assemblies, each characterising a physical quantity from the visual stimulus.
As the visual stimulus involves a very reductive projection of the physical world onto a limited set of visual measurements, only correlates to relevant entities can be measured directly. Invariants transform visual measurements to true physical quantities, thereby removing those degrees of freedom not relevant for the observer. Hence, a first source of knowledge involved in visual interpretation is the incorporation of physical laws. In the recent past, we have used colour invariance as a well-founded principle to separate colour into its correlates of material reflection, being illuminant colour, highlights, shadows, shading components and the true object reflectance. Such invariants allow a system to be sensitive to obstacles, while at the same time being insensitive to shadows. The representation of the visual input into a plurality of invariant representations is a necessary information- reduction stage in any cognitive vision system.
To limit the enormous computational burden arising from the complex task of interpretation and learning, any efficient general vision system will ignore the common statistics in its input signals. Hence, the apparent occurrence of invariant representations decides what is salient and therefore requires attention. Such focal attention is a necessary selection mechanism in any cognitive vision system, critically reducing both the processing requirements and the complexity of the visual learning space, and effectively limiting the interpretation task. Expectation about the scene is then inevitably used to steer attention selection. Hence, focal attention is not only triggered by visual stimuli, but is affected by knowledge about the scene, initiating conscious behaviour. In this principled way, knowledge and expectation may be included at an early stage in cognitive vision. In the near future, we intend to study the detailed mechanisms behind such focal attention
Driver station : CARDS2 generic cockpit, fully instrumented with CAN multiplexed data acquisition
Force feedback :
DAE TRW steering wheel actuator and active gas pedal,
Passive actuators for gas and clutch pedals, gearbox lever and hand brake
Motion platform : 6-axes electromechanical from Hydraudyne
Image generation : Linux PC with last generation graphics boards
Projection :Barco Sim4 and LCD projectors
Software : SCANeR© II, developed by the Technical Center for Simulation
Multiagent Systems
In our group we carry out research on several aspects of (mainly) cooperative Multiagent Systems. We are especially interested in multiagent systems that are embedded in realistic real-world situations (for instance soccer playing robots), and have to successfully deal with motion noise, sensor uncertainty, and time constraints.
Current projects:
* Multiagent coordination
* Multiagent fusion systems
* Multiagent decision making under uncertainty
∑ Hierarchical awareness in distributed agents
Model-based detection/tracking of humans
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