a divine, luminous principle or substance, which permeates, and at the same time contains all things in it. It was called by the Hermetic philosophers the astral light, which signifies not star-light, as the word would seem to indicate, but the feminine wisdom-principle, it being from the same root as Astarte and Ashtaroth. It is a spiritual fire that does not burn. In the treatise on the Nature of the Gods (Lib. ii., c. 36), Cicero says: Aërem amplectatur immensus æther, qui constat, exaltissimis ignibus, the immensurable æther, which consists of the most subtle and exalted fire or flame, embraces the air. Also Apuleius ("De Mundo") says: Colum ipsum stellasque colligens, omnisque siderum compago, æther vocatur, non ut quidem putant quod ignitus sit et incensus, sed quod cursibus rapidis semper rotatur. The æther is that in which all things exist when we get round to their immaterial side. All life is compared to a flame, and the soul is poetically, but truly said to be a vital spark of heavenly fire. All growing things assume the flame form, as leaves and grasses. The æther is the unparticled substance, of which all things are made, and to which they return. The fire of which John the Baptist speaks, the baptismal flame, is identical with the Holy Spirit, and is the universal æther of occult philosophy; for it was not viewed as material in the common acceptation of the term. In the Book of Hermes, called Pimander, which signifies the Divine Thought, it is said: "The light is I. I am the nous or intelligence, and I am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. Think that what thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought which is God the Father. The celestial ocean, the other, which flows from east to west, is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving principle, the Holy Ghost." The universal æther, according to the authors of that remarkable book, the "Unseen Universe," is the repository of the spiritual images of all living things, and even human thoughts. All things that ever were, that are, or ever will be, all that was ever said or written, thought and felt, leaves its record upon this imperishable tablet of the unseen world; and the truly spiritual man, by using the vision of his own spirit, may read it there, and know all that has been known or can be known; for it still exists in the universal principle, which is the Apocalyptic "book of life," and the mysterious tree of knowledge" of Genesis, and the memory of God. It is one of the fundamental ideas of the work mentioned above, that "thought affects the matter (or substance) of another world simultaneously with this," and the missing link connecting mind and matter is thus found, and the great law of continuity is maintained. A blow on the body of another affects not merely the external shell, but goes deeper, and wounds and scars the primitive matter of the body. So a treatment given to another in kindness and a desire to heal, affects the inner man, and through that tends to form the external body into the image of health and divine harmony. A thought impulse can affect and set in motion the universal æther, the life-principle. It can create a current in the astral light, the welt-geist of the German, and give it quality, and direct it to a person near at hand, or send it as a sanative influence to any distance. Few persons know of the marvellous power that lies latent and slumbering in human nature; and it is well it is so. Our thoughts and feelings are not the evanescent things they are supposed to be, but they record themselves on this unseen tablet, and create a current, or, as it were, an eddying sphere, in the universal æther or life. The prevailing mode of thinking and predominant feelings of an age or community create a current or tendency in the world's life that bears us on with it, and it is hard to row against the stream. This is what is called in the teaching of Jesus the world, 6 Ye which is viewed as the antagonist of the spiritual life. are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world," by which is not meant the earth, but the general current of thought and feeling in the age and country where we live. To the spiritual eye most souls are seen floating in it like the dead and withered leaves of autumn upon the surface of a swollen and muddy stream. To take a patient and lift him out of this current of established beliefs and confirmed illusions, is the Herculean task before the true physician. When one is sick in any degree, the general current of the world's life leads him to think that he must take something, or do something. There is only one way in which we can not only stem this flood, but rise entirely out of it into a higher stratum of thought and feeling, and that is through the power of an intelligent faith. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith." (I John iv:4.) "And to him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God." (Rev. ii: 7.) This is purely Kabalistic, but full of meaning to him who has the key to it. The garden of God, according to the old science of correspondence, signifies spiritual wisdom and its delights. "The tree of life" is the Kabalistic Adam Kadmon, the primal and universal spiritual man, the true maximus homo, or greatest man, of the Scandinavian seer. To eat of this tree is to come into direct communication with the central fountain of all manifested life, that from which all existence springs, and to which it seeks to return. This is the elixir of life," the spiritual essence of silver" of the Alchemists and Hermetic philosophers. The tree of life of the Kabala was represented with its roots upwards and branches downwards. So we need to be taken up from our present inverted condition, the illusory life of sense, and transplanted into the garden of God, and planted with the spiritual root of our being upward, and we shall bear fruit downward. We shall receive influx from above, and no longer from -- beneath, from the mephitic vapors of the Stygian lake. Then we reach the secret of a long life in that tranquillity of mind which results from a life above the world, or that sphere or current of mental disorder that constitutes the life of men in general. It is on this plane alone that disease (which in its essence is discontent, dissatisfaction) can exist. On the spiritual plane we look down upon it, like earthly fogs seen from the summit of a mountain. In closing this lesson I would remark that things become necessary to the sustenance or maintenance of life in proportion as they become more and more subtle and interior. 1. We have the mineral and earthy elements in our food. A due proportion of these is essential to the preservation of the integrity of the corporeal structure. 2. Water, which is an element less gross than minerals, and we can live longer without food than we can without water. 3. The air, which is more subtle than the aqueous element and a thousand times more necessary to life. 4. Lastly, the universal æther, the principle of life itself, and the universal magnetic agent. We must caution the reader against taking a too material conception of this subtle principle, as is done by modern science, but was not done in the ancient Hermetic philosophy. This is the one thing needful," a designation applied to it in the old spiritual science, and often recurring in the writings of the Alchemists of all ages, and also employed by Jesus in his conversation with Martha. (Luke x: 38-42.) It is that rema or emanation from God, from which man lives more than from bread. (Luke iv : 4.) CHAPTER XIX. THE MOTHER PRINCIPLE OF THINGS, AND ITS USE IN SELFHEALING. THE universal life-principle in its latent state is the primal matter and cosmic substance, and fills all space, and connects all worlds. It pervades and contains the air, as the air contains the water, and the water the earth. We inhale it with every breath, and in it we live, and move, and have our being. But it is "without form and void" of quality. It is pure existence, and to it properties and qualities are given by thought alone. To it any quality can be given by the imagination as we breathe it in. It is the mother principle, the feminine creative potency, the passive power in nature, and is co-eternal with spirit, of which it is the correlative opposite. It is an interesting fact that the word mother and matter are nearly identical in most of the languages of the world. In Latin we have mater and materia, the matter, stuff, or material of which anything is made. In Italian, madre signifies mother, cause, origin, root, spring, and mould for castings. In the latter sense, the mother principle is the universal matrix. In Spanish we have madre, mother, and materia, matter. In Portuguese, madre means mother and the mould for castings. Even in the Irish, mathair means mother and also matter. This primal matter is the mother principle, or feminine passive ray, emanating from the "Unknown." It is the universal mould in which all ideas take shape. It is represented in the Jewish cosmogony by Eve (or Heva), "the mother of all living things," the very name signifying completeness and fulness |