Author: win r

"If the "spirit", or the divine portion of the soul, is pre-existent as a distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other Christian fathers and philosophers taught, and if it is the same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be otherwise than eternal? And what matter it in such [...]

"On the other hand, the philosophers who explained the "fall into generation" in their own way, viewed spirit as something wholly distinct from the soul. They allowed its presence in the astral capsule only so far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the "shining one" were concerned. Man and soul had to conquer their [...]

"A consideration of the subject from the standpoint of the ancients, affords us, it will be seen, a very different view from that taken by Professor Tyndall in his famous address. "To super sensual beings", says he, "which, however potent and invisible, were nothing but species of human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and [...]

"Eliphas Levi expounds with reasonable clearness, in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magi, the law of reciprocal influences between the planets and their combined effect upon the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, as well as upon ourselves. He states that the astral atmosphere is as constantly changing from day to day, and from [...]

"In the Jewish Kabala, the nature-spirits were known under the general name of Shedim and divided into four classes. The Persians called them all devs; the Greeks, indistinctly designated them as demons; the Egyptians knew them as afrites. The ancient Mexicans, say Kaiser, believed in numerous spirit-abodes, into one of which the shades of innocent [...]