The Sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;
and they took them wives of all that they chose.
Genesis 6:2

PREFACE

It has been my high privilege to have some practical experience as the earthly wife of an angel from the unseen world. In the interests of psychical research, I have tried to explore this pathway of communication with the spiritual universe, and, so far as lay in my power, to make a sort of rough guidebook of the route. For not all wives of heavenly bridegrooms travel the same path at first. There are roads running into this one from every religion and folklore under the sun, since the pathway of marital relations on the Borderland was once, and still is, as I hope to show, one of the main thoroughfares connecting our world with the world beyond the grave. This thoroughfare, along part of which I hope to conduct the reader in imagination, is marked with signposts, many crumbling under the religious storms of centuries, others preserved as sacred trellises upon which to train a rank growth of flourishing superstition, and still others fresh with modern paint and gilding. Part of this thoroughfare runs straight through the Christian Church, or, to speak more accurately, the foundations of the Church are laid upon this very principle. For Jesus himself is said to be the child of a union between an earthly woman and a heavenly bridegroom who (however godlike, and whatever the details of the relation) certainly seems to have manifested to Mary on the occult plane. If it be objected that Mary's Borderland spouse was not an angel, but God himself, and therefore Borderland laws could be laid aside in His case, I reply that modern philosophy holds apparent miracles to be no violation of natural laws, but to have happened in accordance with some law as yet unknown to us; for God never breaks His laws, and if He became a Borderland spouse to Mary, it must have been in accordance with Borderland laws. And we, as made in His likeness, are bound by the same natural laws as God. Moreover, as Mary and me are sharers in a common humanity, she and me are bound alike, sharers in the glorious possibilities of Borderland.

[Missing portion of original manuscript] ...abraded survivals of an ancient religious teaching of marital purity and self-control of so lofty a type that it has been obscured by the fogs in the lowlands of modern sensuality.

Enlightened by my experiences as the wife of my unseen angel visitant, I wrote a defence (from a folklore standpoint) of the Danse du Ventre, which was published in the New York World.

This I afterwards added to, and issued in a typewritten essay for private circulation. As the essay showed that I wrote from experience, as I was still "Miss" Craddock, and as my social standing had hitherto been above suspicion, I deemed it only prudent to state to my readers that I had acquired my knowledge from a spirit husband. This I did on a little slip of paper pinned to the last page of the essay.

The persecutions which in consequence of this straightforward effort to tell the truth simply and clearly I suffered at the hands of those who deny the possibility of angelic communication, need not be dwelt on here. Suffice it to say that, while my non-occultist readers who did not know me personally pooh-poohed the idea of a spirit husband, declared that I must surely speak from an illicit experience, my non-occultist friends, who knew my habits of life from day to day, could find no explanation for the essay but that I must have gone crazy; and two physicians made efforts to have me incarcerated as insane.

One of the latter remarked: "Had that essay been written by a man, by a physician or by any other scientist (and the paragraph about spirit husband ommitted), it would have been alright; but coming from an unmarried woman, neither a physician nor a scientist, and with that claim of a spirit husband, there is no explanation possible but (1) illicit experience, which is denied by all who know her, or (2)insanity."

That is to say, because I had, by means of knowledge gained through channels of which he was ignorant, given utterance to what would have passed unquestioned if coming from a scientist, therefore, I must be insane! To put it more tersely a diamond of truth is to be considered genuine only when discovered by A or B; if the same diamond be discovered by X, Y, or Z, it is to be considered paste. My worst offence, however, in his eyes, seemed to be that, as a woman, I was out of my province in openly preaching marital reform, however high the ideals advocated; and, as my sense of duty did not conform with his conventional prejudices, he felt justified in seeking to incarcerate me until I should recant my heresy.

The factors in this case were:
1st. An unmarried woman of known reputation and integrity.
2nd. An essay written by that woman dealing with the marital relation along lines not known to one married couple in a thousand.
3rd. A claim by the essayist, that she wrote from an experience gained as the wedded partner of a ghost.

To ignore any one of these factors in arriving at a theory to explain the other two, is to invalidate that theory.

Now, there is one creed to which all genuine Freethinkers are faithful. It is to seek the truth, wherever it leads, and whatever the traditional belief upon the subject under investigation. This being so, I feel that I may confidently appeal to Freethinkers to consider carefully the evidence herewith submitted as to the world-wide extent of marital relations on the Borderland.

Last, but not least, I appeal to Spiritualists, Theosophists, and Occultists generally. Psychics and sex, Laurence Oliphant has shown, are so interwoven that you cannot take up one wholly separate from the other. Only an occultist--and somewhat experienced occultist, at that--knows anything of the perils which await the developing psychic on the Borderland. The Middle Ages are strewn with wrecked lives--mainly those of illiterate women who, beginning by dabbling with magic in an empirical fashion, ended by confessing themselves as witches, devil-haunted in body as well as in mind, and pledged to sins against nature.

Within the sheltered precincts of the most conservative of all Christian churches the Roman Catholic--really good and pious nuns have come under the sway of what the Church calls "Congressus cum daemonis". And among the non-churchly practisers of modern occultism we too often find a tendency, on the one hand, not only to justifiable freedom, but also to unjustifiable looseness of life; or on the other hand, to a rigid asceticism and unnatural suppresion of the sex instinct as impure. All these things point to the necessity for some teaching as to the fundamental principles of sex morality on the Borderland--all the more, as spirit bridegrooms and spirit brides are much more frequent than is generally supposed. Between the witch who held diabolic assignations as a devil's mistress, and the psychic who has been trained to self-controlled and reverent wedlock with an angel, it must surely be admitted, there is a wide stretch of road. Nevertheless, both are on the same road, and the downward grade is very slippery. In so far as I have been able to explore this road, therefore, I think it my duty to map out its perils and its safeguards, as to help my fellow occultists. For, no matter on what obscure by-path a psychic starts, he or she can never be sure of not coming upon this road unexpectedly, since it is, as I have said, one of the main thoroughfares of occultism.

To all three classes, then--to Occultists, Freethinkers, and Christians--I respectfully offer this treatise for consideration in the hope that each may find in it something of interest and, mayhap, of profit.

HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOM

The celestial being who, whether as God or an angel, becomes the Heavenly Bridegroom of an earthly woman, is better known to the literature of the Christian Churches than most people who are not theologians are aware. But he is not peculiar to Christianity. He has been known and recognized throughout the world in all ages. The woman to whom he comes is, as a rule, distinguished for her purity of life. Usually she is a virgin; but where already married and a mother, she must be recognized as chaste or, at least, there must be no stigma of impurity upon her reputation. I am not at the present writing aware of a single exception to this.

Let us, however, first consider the Heavenly Bridegrooms of Christianity, from the popular orthodox standpoint.

There are two Heavenly Bridegrooms--the Holy Spirit and Christ.

The first of these, the Holy Spirit, is, according to the New Testament, the Being through whose agency she whom the Catholic Church delights to honor as the Blessed Virgin became incarnate with Jesus. The second of these, Christ, is the Being honored alike by Catholics and by Protestants as the Bridegroom of the Church; by Catholics also as the mystic Spouse of the ecstatic and purified nun, as in the case of Saint Teresa; and by Protestants as the Bridegroom of the Soul, in that popular hymn beginning:

"Jesus, Lover of my soul,
"Let me to Thy bosom fly!"

I once attended a young women's revival meeting at Ocean Grove, held under the auspices of an evangelist who was noted for his success in converting young girls. When the enthusiasm flagged, and his hearers were slow in responding to his appeals to "come to Christ", he started the above hymn, and the ardor of his fair congregation was at once kindled, girl after girl rising to publicly give herself to Christ. That which earnest pleading for their soul's salvation had failed to accomplish, was brought about by this simple suggestion of the "Lover of the Soul". In thus stimulating the untrained emotions of a maiden to aspire to the Divine through symbolism of earthly affection, this revivalist not only showed keen insight into human nature, but was also instinctively true to the teachings of the innermost truth of all religions, as I hope to show further on.

In the Bible an entire book--the Song of Solomon--is given up to expressing the raptures of the Heavenly Bridegroom and his Bride. At least, this is the interpretation which the Christian Church universally puts upon Canticles--the reciprocal joys of Christ, the Bridegroom, and His Bride, the Church. Various phases of the sensuous relations of husband and wife are there set forth in figurative but unmistakable terms of passion--passion which the Christian world has, unfortunately, long since forgotten how to utilize as the most important means of growth towards the Divine.

But there are other Heavenly Bridegrooms besides Christ and the Holy Spirit referred to in the Bible.

In the sixth chapter of Genesis may be found a curious text, which reads:

"The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose."

The Septuagint originally rendered the words 'Sons of God' by [Greek letters Alpha-Gamma-Gamma-Epsilon-Lambda-Omicron- Iota Tau-Omicron-Upsilon Theta-Epsilon-Omicron-Upsilon], angels of God, and this rendering is found in Philo, de Gigantibus, Eusebius, Augustine and Ambrose.

This view of Genesis VI 1-4 was held by most of the early fathers.

See the Book of Enoch, translated from Professor Dillman's Ethiopic Text by R.H. Charles, Oxford, 1893 e.v. In fact, in the Book of Enoch, these sons of God are spoken of all through as angels who wedded earthly women; and it is further stated that these angelic husbands broke the law, living in depravity with their earthly wives, and laying the foundation of evils which required the Deluge to sweep away. Critical scholarship usually holds these angels to be fallen. But St. Augustine protests against this view, saying: "I truly firmly believe that God's angels could never fall so at that time."

Nevertheless, we find in the Book of Enoch, XV 4:

"Whilst you were still spiritual, holy, in the enjoyment of eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with women, have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and have lusted after the blood of men, and produced flesh and blood, as those produce who are mortal and short-lived."

Here we see that the angels, whatever their after depravity, were "still holy" when they united themselves as heavenly bridegrooms with earthly women.

However, from the above, and from other texts in Enoch, it would appear that the angels are blamed for having broken the laws of right living so far as to turn the relations existing between them and their earthly wives into the grossest sensuality. They, rather than the women, seem to be credited with the responsibility for evil-doing. But it is noticeable that Genesis is silent as to the character of these angelic bridegrooms, while it lays stress on the fact that the imaginations of men's hearts were evil continually, as though this last were the real cause of the wickedness which required the purification of the Deluge.

Now, let us remember that the Book of Enoch, although referred to in Jude, is not canonical. It belongs to the Hebrew Apocalyptic literature, and was for sometime lost, save for a few fragments preserved in references made by ecclesiastical writers. However valuable to scholars, it is uncanonical and thus cannot be accepted by Christians today as the Word of God. Genesis, on the contrary, is accepted by Christians today as the Word of God; and therefore, the total omission of this sacred book to bring any charge against these angelic "sons of God", while the depravity of man is dwelt upon at this period of the world's history, is not a matter to be passed over lightly by a Christian.

According to the Christian Scripture, then, it was not the wickedness of the angels who wedded earthly women, but the evil imaginations of the human heart that brought about the punishment of the Deluge. And in this, Genesis is in strict accord with modern Theosophy--the only philosophy, so far as I know, which professes to know the Alpha and Omega of occultism. Theosophy lays stress on the punishment which awaits the black sorcerer--the earthly being who uses real or pretended magical powers for evil purposes. And not only the "black sorcerer" himself, but those who uphold him, share in the punishment dealt out by the Higher Powers--as the Theosophical Society has found, to its cost, when it attempted to shield both from public investigation and from Theosophic censure a member who was said to have fraudulently exploited a Mahatma to further his own interests.

But Theosophy is not alone in this teaching. All occultism, by whatever name it is called, however imperfect in deductions, learns at last to beware of the occultist who breaks the moral law, or who, whether wilfully or carelessly, through prejudice or through crafty desire to advance his own selfish interests, closes his eyes to the truth. In other words, clear thinking and correct living are the only passport to trustworthiness in an occultist.

It is true that there are many psychical phenomena which at first sight do not seem to require any special exercise of morality on the part of the percipient. Such are the carefully attested phenomena of thought transference and wraith-seeing (especially of the astral form as "double" of people at the point of death or undergoing a sudden shock) which the Society for Psychical Research have collated from a multitude of sources--in the case of the "double" to the number of some three thousand. The percipients in these instances are probably average sort of folks, no better and no worse than the majority of their fellows. Yet they see or hear by means of senses which are still unrecognized by most people, and which are therefore termed "occult"; and what they perceived is afterwards proved to be an actual occurrence, often of something taking place miles away.

But it is to be observed that (1) the reliable cases collated by the S. P. R. are furnished by people who seem to be clear-headed enough, at least, to form definite mental conceptions; (2) that the majority of these cases are perceptions of occurrences in this earthly life. Where the thing claimed as seen or heard by the percipients no longer belongs to this world, but to the world beyond the grave, as in the case of visions or voices of those now deceased, the phenomena collated by the Society of Psychical Research seem not only to be accidental and capricious but they also seldom furnish a veridical (i.e., truth telling) communication.

In the case of Spiritualist mediums, professional or amateur, where the phenomena assume some show of regularity, and are claimed by the medium to come entirely from the world beyond the grave, one always has to be on one's guard against the subtle interpolation among otherwise truthful matter of fantastic or misleading statements made apparently by the communicating spirits themselves. Occultists in all ages have invariably assumed such statements to be the work of "lying spirits". But it is noticeable that a medium of correct life and clearness of intellectual conception is less troubled by such lying spirits than is the medium of halting intellect or morals. This of itself should indicate to the thoughtful student of occult phenomena that the medium, and not the spirits, may be to blame when lying communications are made. Just as in Astronomy it is now found that the apparent movements of the sun and fixed stars are due almost entirely to our own planet's motion through space, so, I think, when we explore the heavens of occultism we shall eventually realize that erratic psychical phenomena are due to our own shifting relation to the beings who produce phenomena. Not until people got rid of the Ptolemaic theory that the Earth was a permanent unmovable fixture in the heavens did they learn that the bewildering cycles and epicycles of the sun and fixed stars were caused by the movements of their own planet thorough space; and not until we get rid of what I may call the Ptolemaic theory of occultism, that the psychic is the one permanent, immovable factor in the apparently shifting phenomena about him, will we ever get at the true scientific laws of occultism that our own vibrations--or our own moral and intellectual ups and downs--are almost entirely responsible for the erraticness of Borderland communications. To blame Borderland intelligences for "lying" is as if in the proverbial London fog at noonday one should blame the sun for not shining. The sun is shining right along; but it is the smoke from one's neighbors which returns upon one to shield the sun from one's view.

It is generally assumed that the false or fantastic remarks so subtly interpolated into communications which are otherwise truthful and uplifting are due to the fact that evil spirits get temporary control of the medium. But this theory presupposes a state of society in the spirit-world far worse regulated than with us. It is often claimed, for instance, that crowds of spirits throng about a powerful medium as a crowd of people on earth sometimes flock about a telegraph operator in times of excitement, each man selfishly striving to get his message sent off first. But, even in our imperfect civic life, is such an occurrence usual? By no means. Is it likely that in a new life, with its added experience, such gross violations of law and order should be allowed to take place or to continue right along? By no means. Even if Heaven be not as Christian believe, the abode of God and the angels; even supposing that it is merely, as most Spiritualists claim, an improved edition of this world, it is but logical to infer that law and order will obtain there as here, and even more so, because the tendency of human society is always in the direction of systematizing its work for mutual convenience of its members. The idea that a good spirit may at any moment be temporarily displaced by an evil one, and that the laws of that clearer thought-world beyond the grave are powerless to cope with this annoyance is absurd, and contrary to common sense. The fault of imperfect communication is just as likely to be ours as theirs. Let us but see to it that the lines of psychical communication are laid (on our side of the abyss of death) in correctness of moral living, and clearness of intellectual conception before we rashly assume the fault to be theirs. If they are in a world where new laws of matter obtain, as they must be, if they live at all after the decay of the body, to communicate intelligently with us may not be as easy for them as we imagine. They may find themselves confronted at every turn by such difficulties as confront the traveler who seeks to explain to African savages the wonders of, say, the telephone or the phonograph. Between his mind and theirs, what a gap! And this gap cannot be bridged by the clearest of explanations of his part, unless the savages in turn question and requestion on every point on which the least uncertainty remains. That is to say, the savages must do their utmost to form clear intellectual conceptions of every idea set forth by their civilized visitor from afar, or he will leave their brains filled with the most ridiculous and distorted mind-pictures. Yet, the savage and the civilized traveler are both dwellers on the same material plane, while the spirits who seek to tell us of the wonder of their life are evidently on a different plane of matter. How great the need, then, that we should take even more pains than must the savage to form clear conceptions of every idea uttered by these visitors from an unknown land! One idea prejudged by us, and allowed to remain without due examination of the foundations on which it rests, will throw the remainder of our mental conceptions out of balance. One false theory, stubbornly held as gospel truth, places us mentally where all else is out of focus.

(Therein will be found also a statement requiring an occult principle which seems not only to forbid spirits from communicating accurately with an immoral medium, but which seems to positively enjoin upon them the utterance of all the foolish, depraved and even criminal ideas that the medium is willing to receive, and places us mentally at a standpoint where all else is out of focus. Thus, the slightest prejudices on any given subject under discussion between our celestial visitors and ourselves will render us liable to distorted conceptions of their ideas.) Such is the law of our own thought-world here on the earthly plane; and we must remember that they have left our plane and entered into a far wider thought-world than ours. Hence the need for rigidly clear thinking on the part of every would-be occultist. And, since, as has been well said, "All badness is madness", we must not forget to also reckon a well-ordered moral life as among the attributes of the really clear-headed man or woman. Thus, correct living and clear thinking go hand in hand as vouchers for accuracy of mediumship between this world and the world beyond the grave. The philosophy which deals with what is variously called the automatic faculty, the subjective consciousness, the subconsciousness or the sub-liminal ("Below the threshold") consciousness as an important factor in fantastic and misleading psychic phenomena from spirits will be found set forth at length in my little book on Hell's Happy Sunshine. Therein will be found a principle which seems not only to forbid spirits from communicating with an unworthy medium, but positively to enjoin upon them the utterance of all the foolish, depraved, and even criminal ideas that the medium is willing to receive. (Up to a certain point; beyond which the spiritual intelligences withdraw and the medium's own sub-consciousness assumes control with the subterfuges and ingenious evasions peculiar to that faculty.) But when fantastic or misleading ideas emanate from spiritual intelligences and not from the medium's own sub-consciousness, they are either as an ordeal for the training of the medium, or as a wise and just punishment. To explain the application of this law in detail, however, would extend the present treatise to an undue length. Suffice to say here that in all such cases, however varied the manifestations, whether of a super-normal sub-consciousness or of outside intelligences, failure to think clearly, as to live in accordance with the moral requirements of self-control, duty, aspiration to the highest, unselfishness and genuine purity, will be found responsible for the disappointing psychic manifestations on the Borderland.

When, therefore, the Book of Enoch blames the angelic sons of God, rather than their earthly wives, for the depravity of relations said to exist between them as spirits and mediums, we may well ask if this be not a matter on which the writer of the Book of Enoch has carelessly accepted current legends. May it not be that he, too, believed all depraved psychical manifestations to be due to "evil sprits", and that he was totally unaware of the occult law which brings these things to pass with a medium who, ignorantly but persistently, fails in clear thinking or correct loving?

Once more let us remember that the Book of Genesis, which is canonical, lays stress on the fact that at this epoch the imaginations of men's hearts were evil continually.

Josephus refers to the subject as follows: "For many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat some that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. For the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants."

Josephus it will be noticed, agrees with Genesis in laying no blame on either the angelic husbands or the earthly wives. Neither does he on their daughters. The sons, and only the sons, are denounced by Josephus as "despisers of all that was good", on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. His account, taken with that of Genesis, brings out a suggestive idea--that in the succeeding generations man was pre-eminently the sex which violated the laws of right living.

If this inference be warranted, the question arises: what were those laws of right living which the male sex violated to such an extent that a deluge was needed to purge the earth of their evil? The answer to this will be manifested further on.

When the Christian Church appeared on the stage of history, it found several varying traditions current about those sons of God who, so many centuries before, had taken unto themselves wives from among the daughters of men.

One after the other the early Church Fathers wrestled with these traditions, and strove to fit them into the Christian theological system. Beginning with Paul, we find that he asserts in the 11th Chapter of 1st Cor. that a woman ought to be veiled, as a token of her inferiority and dependence upon man, and he adds: "For this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels." Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, quoting this text makes it read: "A woman ought to have a veil upon her head because of the angels." From Tertullian we learn what this "because of the angels" means. He says in his work Aganist Marcion (V. 18): "The apostle was quite aware that the spiritual wickedness (Ephesians, VI, 12.) had been at work in heavenly places when angels were entrapped into sin by the daughters of men."

In sundry places Tertullian waxes wroth over this supposed "entrapping" of angels by earthly women. In a treatise On the Veiling of Virgins--written as a rejoinder to those who claimed that women did not need to be veiled until they became wives, he speaks his mind thus:

"So perilous a face, then, ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far as heaven; that when standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their (native) confines, it may blush before the other angels as well; and may repress that former evil liberty of its head--a liberty now to be exhibited not even before human eyes."

The author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is, if anything, more severe. He remarks:

"Hurtful are women, my children; because, since they have no power or strength over the man, they act subtilly through outward guise how they may draw him to themselves; and whom they (do not) overcome by strength, him they overcome by craft. By means of their adornment, they deceive first their minds, and instil the poison by the glance of their eye, and then they take captive by their doings, for a woman cannot overcome a man by force. Therefore, my children, command your wives and your daughters that they adorn not their heads and their faces; because every woman who acteth deceitfully in these things hath been reserved to everlasting punishment. For thus they allured the Watchers before the flood."

He adds that these angelic Watchers manifested as apparitions to the women at the times of their union with their earthly husbands, "and the women, having in their minds desire towards their apparitions, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto Heaven."

Here we see an attempt to account for the resulting progeny of "giants" spoken of in Genesis VI by such simple and natural means as Jacob made use of when he desired to produce "ring-straked, speckled and spotted" goats (Genesis XXX). No mention is made of marital relations being established directly between earthly women and angels. Elsewhere the same writer (Testament of Naphthali, 3) speaks of these same Watchers as having "changed the order of their nature, whom also the Lord cursed at the flood, and for their sakes made desolate the earth."

This follows a reference to Sodom, the writer seeming to trace a similarity between the two causes of the two punishments. Justin Martyr, however, makes the offence of the sinning angels to consist rather in ambition for power over mankind. He says:

"God committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed the appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by their lustful passions; and among man they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness."

These things, according to Justin, the poets (unaware that they were due to sinning angels) ignorantly ascribed to God (Jupiter) and to those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the Olympian deities in general.

Lactantius lays the blame principally upon Satan. Speaking of the repeated efforts of the serpent ("who from his deeds received the name of devil, that is, accuser or informer") to corrupt mankind, he adds:

"But when God saw this, He sent His angels to instruct the race of men, and to protect them from all evil. He gave these a command to abstain from earthly things, lest, being polluted by any taint, they should be deprived of the honor of angels. But that wily accuser, while they tarried among men, allured these also to pleasures, so that they might defile themselves with women. Then, being condemned by the sentence of God, and cast forth on account of their sins, they lost both the name and the substance of angels. Thus, having become ministers of the devil, that they might have a solace of their ruin they betook themselves to the ruining of men, for whose protecting they had come."

"Thus from angels the devil makes them to become his satellites and attendants. But they who were born from these, because they were neither angels nor men, but bearing a kind of mixed (middle) nature, were not admitted into hell as their fathers were not into heaven. Thus there came to be two kinds of demnos, one of heaven, the other of the earth."

In one place Justin Martyr speaks of "evil demons" who "in times of old, assuming various forms, went in unto the daughters of men." Elsewhere, he also speaks of these demons manifested as apparitions that misled boys as well as women.

He said that they "showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions done were struck with terror, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods." Justin evidently looks upon the angelic bridegrooms as demoniacal from the start. Clement of Alexandria says that the angels "renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell from heaven to earth."

Athenagoras asserts that the angels "fell into impure love of virgins." And the author of the Clementine Recognitions says that they "fell into promiscuous and illicit connections." But Tertullian calls attention to the fact that sacred Scripture terms these angels husbands; and he argues at length very ably to show that we are bound to infer from Scripture that the earthly wives of these angelic husbands were virgins, pure and undefiled, at the time of their marriage. From which, I think, it is evident that these marriages were acceptable to virtuous women, and therefore, we may infer, not an infringement of the civil law of the time; or the sex which is proverbially conservative would never have contributed so largely to these unions from among its best members. Nor could they have been unions which transgressed the laws of nature, or the offspring which was said to have resulted would not have been so well developed physically (as giants) nor mentally (as "mighty men which were, of old, men of renown.")

Clement of Alexandria, in his Miscellanies (Stromata), appears to blame the sinning angels in addition because they "told to the women the secrets which had come to their knowledge; while the rest of the angels concealed them, or, rather, kept them against the coming of the Lord." These "secrets", we learn from several of the Christian Fathers, were the arts of metallurgy, dyeing, the properties of herbs, astronomy and astrology, etc. Reasoning from this assumption--that certain sciences and industrial arts were imparted to mankind from sinful angels, we need not wonder that Tertullian pertinently asks:

"But, if the self-same angels who disclosed both the material substances of this kind and their charms--of gold, I mean, and lustrous stones--and taught men how to work them, and by and by instructed them, among their other instructions, in the virtue of eye-lid powder and the dyeing of fleeces, have been condemned by God, as Enoch tells us, how shall we please God while we joy in the things of those angels who, on these accounts, have provoked the anger and vengeance of God?"

This thought seems to have been to him a matter of serious moment, for he enlarges upon it as follows when speaking of the dress and ornamentation of women:

"For they, withal, who instituted them are assigned, under condemnation, to the penalty of death--those angels to wit, who rushed from heaven on the daughters of men; so that this ignominy also attached to women. For when to an age much more ignorant (than ours) they had disclosed certain well-concealed material substances, and several not well-revealed scientific arts--if it is true that they had laid bare the operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had promulgated the powers of enchantment, and had traced out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars--they conferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental means of womanly ostentation, the radiance of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of archil with which wools are colored, and that black powder itself wherewith the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent. What is the quality of these things may be declared meantime, even at this point, from the quality and condition of their teachers; in that sinners could never have either shown or supplied anything conducive to integrity, unlawful lovers anything conducive to chastity, renegade spirits anything to the fear of God. If these things are to be called teachings, ill masters must of necessity have taught ill; if wages of lust, there is nothing base of which the wages are honorable. But why was it of so much importance to show these things as well as to confer them? Was it that women without material causes of splendor, and without ingenious contrivances of grace, could not please men, who, while unadorned and uncouth, and--so to say--crude and rude, had moved the minds of angels? Or was it that the angelic lovers would appear sordid and--through gratuitous use--contumelious, if they had conferred no compensating gift on the women who had been enticed into connubial connection with them? But these questions admit of no calculation. Women who possessed angels as husbands could desire nothing more; they had, forsooth, made a grand match. Assuredly they who of course did sometimes think whence they had fallen and, after the heated impulses of their lusts, looked up towards heaven, thus requited that very excellence of women, natural beauty, as having proved a cause of evil, in order that their good fortune might profit them nothing but that, being turned from simplicity and sincerity they, together with the angels themselves, might become offensive to God. Sure they were all that ostentation and ambition, and love of pleasing by carnal means, was displeasing to God."

(Tertullian on Female Dress, Ch. II.)

Cyprian, when blaming virgins for wearing jewels, necklaces and wool stuffs colored with costly dyes, likewise remarks:

"...All which things sinning and apostate angels put forth by their arts, when, lowered to the contagions of earth, they forsook their heavenly vigor."

When we remember that early Christianity set its face like a flint against all delights of the senses, and that this extreme reaction of the spiritual against the sensuous has largely shaped our social customs of today, we begin to see how important and far-reaching were these opinions of the early Church Fathers that feminine adornment had been taught by angels who had sinned in wedding earthly women, and that it was therefore a sinful thing in that it had emanated from a depraved source. Some of the theories built upon this assumption are quite curious. Here are a few:

"That which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless He was unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces: if He was able, then plainly he was unwilling; what God willed not, of course, ought not to be fashioned."

"For it was God, no doubt, who showed the way to dye wools with the juices of herbs and the humors of conchs; it had escaped Him, when He was bidding the Universe come into being, to issue a command for the production of purple and scarlet sheep."

"Why should she walk out adorned? Why with dressed hair, as if she either had or sought for a husband? Rather let her dread to please if she is a virgin. It is not right that a virgin should have her hair braided for the appearance of her beauty."

"You are bound to please your husbands only. But you will please them in proportion as you take no care to please others. Be ye without carefulness, blessed sisters; no wife is ugly to her own husband. She pleased him enough when she was selected by him as his wife; whether commended by form or by character. Let none of you think that if she abstain form the care of her person (compositione sui) she will incur the hatred and aversion of husbands. Every husband is the exactor of chastity; but beauty a believing husband does not require, because we are not captivated by the same graces which the Gentiles think to be graces."

"O good matrons, flee from the adornment of vanity! Such attire if fitting for women who haunt the brothels. To a wife approved of her husband, let it suffice that she is so not by her dress, but by her good disposition."

Let us remember that these and similar teachings by the early Christian Fathers have laid the foundation of our present marriage customs. The theory that a woman sins in adorning herself to please a husband (whether present or prospective) is still indescribably popular among devout Christians.

Commodianus ascribes the teaching of "arts, and the dyeing of wool, and everything which is done", not to the angels but to the giant progeny. And he adds:

"To them, when they died, man erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of an evil seed, did not approve that, when dead, they should be brought back from death. Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies, and it is such as these especially that ye this day worship and pray to as gods."

The author of the Clementine Homilies records a tradition concerning these gigantic "wanderers" on the borders of Ghostland which seems to be that they were not unable to beget children. After speaking of the Deluge, he says:

"Since, therefore, the souls of the deceased giants were greater than human souls, inasmuch as they also excelled their bodies, they, as being a new race, were called also by a new name. And to those who survived in the world a law was prescribed by God through an angel, how they should live. For being bastards in race, of the fire of angels and the blood of woman, and therefore liable to desire a certain race of their own, they were anticipated by a certain righteous law."

Inasmuch as the Deluge had already destroyed every one on the earth except Noah and his family, we see that the author cannot mean by those who survived in the world any giants still in the flesh. Moreover, the decree which follows and which prescribes that they were to have power over only those human beings who broke the moral law and practiced magic would indicate these "giants" had then entered upon what Theosophists would call the astral; and from the paragraph quoted above, it is evidently taken for granted that these astral giants would propagate their kind. This is an important point--the testimony of a Christian Father of a tradition that human beings (not created angels) who had once inhabited bodies, could beget children on the plane of the astral unless prevented by the direct prohibition of Heaven. If it be objected that the author refers to giants still in earthly form when he speaks of "those who survived in the world", I am sure that the statement follows a remark about the Deluge and that in that case the surviving giants must have been Noah and his family. This view, however, is absurd, when we consider that the decree forbade the giants to assume power over any but the human race. If Noah and his family were the surviving giants, where would be the sense in promulgating such a decree to them? This same author gives an account of the doings of the angelic fathers of these giants which reminds one of the spirit seances of the late Rev. Stainton Moses, when under conditions which precluded all fraud or illusion tiny pearls and other precious stones suddenly materialized before the sitters.

Here is the tradition recorded by the Christian Fathers:

"For of the spirits who inhabit the heaven, the angels who dwell in the lowest region, being grieved at the ingratitude of man to God, asked that they might come into the life of man, that, really becoming man, by more intercourse they might convict those who had acted ungratefully towards Him, and might subject every one to adequate punishment. Then, therefore, their petition was granted; they metamorphosed themselves into every nature; for, being of a more god-like substance, they were able easily to assume any form. So they became precious stones, and goodly pearl, and the most beauteous purple, and choice gold, and all matter that is held in most esteem. And they fell into the hands of some, and into the bosoms of others, and suffered themselves to be stolen by them. They also changed themselves into beasts and reptiles and fishes and bird, and into whatsoever they pleased. These things, also, the poets among yourselves by reason of fearlessness sing, as they befall, attributing to one the many and diverse doings of all."

Then, "having assumed these forms, they convicted as covetous those who stole them, and changed themselves into the nature of man, in order that, living holily, and showing the possibility of so living, they might subject the ungrateful to punishment."

However, "having become in all respects men, they also became subject to masculine infirmities, and fell."

Does it not seem as though we had here a survival of Animism--a state of mind frequent among savages, children and animals, in which an inanimate object which moves without visible cause or manifests in any peculiar way is thought to be alive? A horse is often terrified by a piece of paper blown in front of him; evidently he takes it for a live creature. Savages speak of the sun and moon as living individuals because of their apparently voluntary journeys through the sky; among the Kukis of Southern Asia, if a man was killed by a fall from a tree, his relatives would take their revenge by cutting the tree down, scattering it in chips. A modern King of Cochin, China, when one of his ships sailed badly, used to put it in the pillory, as he would any other criminal (Bastian, Oestl., Asein, Vol 1, p. 51.). In classical times, the stories of Xerxes flogging the Hellespont and Cyrus draining the Gyndes occur as cases in point, but one of the regular Athenian legal proceedings is yet a more striking relic. A court of justice was held at the Prytaneum, to try any inanimate object, such as an axle, a piece of wood or stone, which had caused the death of anyone without proved human agency; and this wood or stone, if condemned, was with solemn form cast beyond the border. The spirit of this remarkable procedure reappears in the old English law (repealed in the present reign) whereby not only a beast that kills a man, but a cart-wheel that runs over him, was forfeited and sold for the poor. The pathetic custom of "telling the bees" when the master or mistress of a house dies, is not unknown in our own country. In Berlin, Germany, the idea is more fully worked out; and not only is the sad message given to every beehive in the garden, and every beast in the stall, but every sack of corn must be touched and everything in the house shaken, that they may know the master is gone. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, I 286-7) And we all know that even an intelligent nineteenth century man is not above administering an angry kick to a chair against which he has bruised himself.

Now, the author of the Clementine Homilies seems to have similarly lighted on an instance of Animism in connection with gold, pearls, precious stones, etc. In prehistoric times this tradition, rational and intelligible, may suppose that these precious articles had moved or otherwise behaved as though endowed with life in the ancient times to which the tradition relates. Could it be that they suddenly appeared to those prehistoric gazers, coming from no one knew where, and moved about by unseen hands? As tables are lifted, bells rung, banjos played or flowers materialized at a modern Spiritist seance? As they were reputed to have come by occult means, supposed to be heavenly. The people who witnessed the phenomena were probably not accustomed to clear-headed and intelligent investigation of such phenomena. One sees at once it was an Animistic explanation such as is given in the Clementine Homilies. As to the frightened horse, and to the ignorant savage, inanimate things seem to be alive, so may the precious objects which materialized at those prehistoric seances have seemed to the amazed beholders to be living creatures, inasmuch as they sped through the air without visible support. If alive, they surely (so would argue the witnesses) must be angelic beings, since they were said to come from heaven; and the attendant phenomena of the seance no doubt would increase the awe with which these "angels" were received and treasured. An "angel" is simply a vehicle for a message, in the original signification. Let us glance in passing at the accounts of materializing through the psychic power. In this sense, a pearl materialized through the psychic power of so reliable a modern medium as the Rev. Stainton Moses, plainly by occult means, might be called an "angel"--i.e., the means by which the message from the unseen reached the sitters. In after times, when the word angel had come to be specialized as a personal envoy from Heaven, the old tradition about the pearls and precious stones which had evidently come as "angels" (vehicles for a heaven-sent message), whenever told, would probably be adopted to the specialized meaning and it would be said, as above, that personal beings transformed into those inanimate things. First, as to the manifestations through the Rev. Stainton Moses lately declared in his journal, occurs the following entry:

Tuesday, September 9th, 1873

"Same conditions. Plentiful scent as before. Sixteen little pearls were put on the table, six having been previously given during the day. Mrs. Speer and I were writing at the same table, and a pearl was put on my letter as I was writing. After that I saw a spirit standing by Mrs. Speer, and was told that it was Mentor, who had put a pearl on Mrs. Speer's desk. After that four others came. They seemed to drop on the table, just as I have seen them with Mrs. A--h. We have in all twenty-two now. They are small seed pearls, each perforated."

A week later, there is this entry:

"When we broke up we found a little heap of pearls was put before each. One hundred and thirty-nine little pearls have been brought to us, one hundred and ten in the last two days."

(This, it appears from another witness, occurred in daylight.)

Dr. Speer (referred to by Miss X. in Borderland as "a highly intelligent and by no means credulous witness") gives a striking instance of the materialization of a precious object:

December 31st, 1872

"A very successful seance. A blue enamel cross was brought, no one knew whence, placed before my wife, who was told to wear it."

Mrs. Speer testifies as follows:

Ventnor, November 29, 1893

"I wish to state that the most convincing evidences of spirit-power always took place when hands were held.

"Other manifestations occurred, often in light, such as raps, raising of table, scent, musical sounds, and showers of pearls. Two cameos were carved in light while we were dining."

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be well to quote the following by Miss X. in Borderland. (Miss X., I would add, is by no means a spiritualist, but is distinctly opposed to the Spiritistic hypothesis):

"Mr. Stainton Moses has for many years been one of the most important witnesses for Spiritualism. The fact that, like Professor Crookes and Alfred Russell Wallace, he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of recognized position and character, was, to say the least, a good letter of introduction. It may be said, once for all, that it is unnecessary to insist on the absolute sincerity of Mr. Stainton Moses. It is a point which has never been so much as raised. His life has been of a kind not to be called in question--obscure without mystery, dignified without pedantry, lived in the sight of just that class of the public which demands the strictest respectability of conduct, the most unequivocal correspondence between life and profession. As a clergyman, he was beloved by his parishioners, as a schoolmaster he was respected by his boys, and as a personal friend he commanded the confidence and esteem of all his intimates."

May it not be that the phenomena recorded by the author of the Clementine Homilies are essentially the same in kind as those referred to above in the case of the Rev. Stainton Moses?

St. Augustine, considering the possibility of occult sex relations between earthly women and beings from the unseen world, remarks:

"The Scriptures plainly aver that the angels have appeared both in visible and palpable figures. And seeing it is so general a report, and so many aver it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sylvans and fauns, commonly called incubi, have often injured women, and that certain devils from the Gauls called "Duses" do continually practice this, and tempt others to it, which is affirmed by such persons, and with such confidence that it were impudence to deny it.

"I dare not venture to determine anything here; whether the devils being embodied in air (for the air being violently moved is to be felt) can suffer this lust, or move it so as the women with whom they commix may feel it; yet do I firmly believe that God's angels could never fall so at that time."

Notice the perplexity of St. Augustine as a logician. He cannot deny that occult sex relations exist on the Borderland, the testimony to this is too widespread and of too reliable a character. But (we can imagine him saying), how to reconcile these phenomena with the popular belief that the inhabitants of the world beyond the grave are immaterial, vapory, mist-like beings?

How can such a hazy, ethereal creature as a ghost produce objective sensations of touch upon an earthly being? And if possible--as he ingeniously supposes, by such means as air becomes perceptible to us when violently put in motion--how reconcile such phenomena with the belief that sex is impure, and that it does not exist in the world beyond the grave? How could God's angels ever fall so? It were impossible!

But St. Augustine evidently starts from two hypotheses--the insubstantiality of ghosts and the impurity (footnote, as will be seen by a perusal of the quotation in full), and, therefore, non-existence of sex, neither of which two hypotheses has ever been definitely proven. As a logician, therefore, he is at fault, and I have already shown the danger of starting from mistaken premises when dealing with occult phenomena. The two hypotheses, however, were not peculiar to St. Augustine. They were, and are, the common property of the majority of mankind. But it does not follow that they are correct: and the psychic who rashly assumes their truth to start with (through prejudice or because other people think so) may expect to be deluded, and to come upon all sorts of fantastic, and possibly diabolical, manifestations. Such is the occult law. Start with a false premise or with a premise which you have not investigated with scrupulous care, and you are certain to get phenomena of either a misleading or a depraved character.

But all the Christian Fathers did not accept the possibility of bridegrooms from the unseen world. There were then, as now, materialist minds which disbelieved in ghosts. Alexander, Bishop of Lycopolis, endeavored to explain away angelic bridegrooms as myths, thus:

"When the Jewish history relates that angels came down to hold intercourse with the daughters of men, this saying signifies that the nutritive powers of the soul descended from heaven to earth."

Hence the "injuring" of women by incubi--to which St. Augustine refers, an injuring either wholly subjective and illusory, or, if objectively real, was brought about in part by the woman's ignorance of the occult requirements of correct living and clear-headedness on the Borderland, in part by her failure to thus live and think on the earthly plane.

It would be interesting to know his authority for this. Rationalistic theories cannot rest, as do folklore traditions, upon a mere say-so; they must be supported either by testimony or by argument. Otherwise, we are obliged to dismiss them as the whimsical fancies of a solitary individual.

Origen says he will "persuade those who were capable of understanding the meaning of the prophet, that even before us there was one who referred this narrative to the doctrine regarding souls, which became possessed with a desire for the corporeal life of men" and thus in metaphorical language he said were termed "daughters of men". But Origen does not give his authority, nor advances any argument in support of this explanation.

Julius Africanus suggests another Rationalistic explanation, but is candid enough to give it as his own notion. He says:

"When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies I find 'the sons of God'. What is meant by the Spirit, in my opinion is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him even down to the Saviour Himself; but that the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in them, on account of the wickedness of their race and the inequality of their nature, being a mixed people, and having stirred the indignation of God."

This ingenious theory has been eagerly grasped at by succeeding Christian writers who disbelieve in the substantiality of ghosts. So able a commentator in modern times, however, as Delitzsch (On Genesis) decides against this view, and quotes various authorities which I give elsewhere. He also quotes Keil as demonstrating that two of the Hebrew words in the text in Genesis show that "the contraction of actual and lasting marriages" is meant.

Julius Africanus, indeed, seems to have had doubts as to whether the current tradition about angelic bridegrooms might not be true after all, for he adds directly upon the heels of the above theory:

"But if it is thought that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic and jugglery, who taught the women the motions of the stars and the knowledge of things celestial, by whose power they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness came to its heights on the earth, until God decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the Deluge."

Nevertheless, Rationalists and Materialists are in the minority among the Fathers of the "Church" as regards this subject. The majority accepted the accounts in Genesis and Enoch at their face value.

To briefly sum up the majority's views of early Christianity on this matter:

1. Angels of a superior order did come into the earthly life--whether (a) because God sent them, or (b) because they were moved with indignation at the ingratitude of men toward God and came voluntarily in order to reconcile God and man, or (c) because they were enticed by women on the earth, the traditions do not agree.

2. Having come into this earthly life, they became either the lovers or the husbands of women, whether beguiled thereto in part by the Devil, or wholly by the women or, partially or wholly by their own desires, the traditions do not agree. One tradition, as we have seen, hints at the sin of Sodom; and an interference on the astral plane with the rights of earthly husbands; others hint at illicit amours; but Tertullian demonstrates unanswerably from sacred Scripture that the angels were the wedded husbands of the daughters of men, and that these daughters were virginal at the time of wedding their angelic lovers.

This was not, however, all their sin. One tradition, as we have seen, makes a vague allusion to the sin of Sodom in connection with the intercourse of angels with women.

3. That an angel should seek a woman in honorable marriage, specially an earthly woman, it would appear, was reckoned a sin. When asked why, we find that the "Church" Fathers, one and all, treated marriage as a mere expedient. Tertullian said that the reason why 'marrying' is good is that 'burning' is worse. Minneius Felix (Octavius XXXI) remarks that "with some, even the modest intercourse of the sexes causes a blush."

Methodius has an entire book devoted to an argument offered by ten virgins against wedlock and in behalf of perpetual virginity. Origen says: "God has allowed us to marry, because all are not fit for the higher, that is, the perfectly pure life." Cyprian says that "Chastity maintains the first rank in virgins, the second in those who are continent, the third in the case of wedlock". He also says:

"What else is virginity than the glorious preparation for the future life? Virginity is of neither sex. Virginity is the continuance of infancy. Virginity is the triumph over pleasures. Virginity has not children; but what is more, it has contempt for offspring; it has not fruitfulness, but neither has it bereavement; blessed that it is free from the pain of bringing forth, more blessed still that it is free from the calamity of the death of children. What else is virginity than the freedom of liberty? It has no husband or master. Virginity is freed from all affections; it has not given up to marriage, nor to the world, nor to children."

Justin Martyr exults that "many, both men and women of the age of sixty and seventy years, who have been disciples of Christ from their youth, continue in immaculate virginity."

In a spurious fragment credited to "Hippolytus, the Syrian Expositor of the Targum", the writer refers to an ancient Hebrew MS., which tells of Noah being commanded by God to stake off each male animal in the ark "for the sake of decency and purity"! The Church Fathers generally held that the one object of the marriage institution is to bear children. The other principal object of marriage, which runs through all nature from protoplasmic cells up to man--of mutual exchange of strength and mutual happiness--seems to have been totally ignored by the early Christian Fathers. Lactantius held that it is impossible the two sexes could have been constructed except for the sake of generation. Justin Martyr says frankly:

"Neither marry at first, for no other object than to rear children, or else abstaining from marriage continue to live in a state of continence."

He notes with approval a Christian youth who begged Felix, the governor of Alexandria, for permission to be made a eunuch by a physician, in order to attest his continence to the world. (Felix, however, had the good sense to refuse.) To such an extent was this unnatural loathing for wedlock carried, that Constantine found it judicious to remove the old-time penalties against celibacy, because of the many Christians who continued celibates from motives of religion.

Since marriage on natural grounds was thus deprecated by the early Christian Church as impure when occurring between earthly men and women, we need not wonder that she viewed with horror the very thought of wedlock with an angel, inasmuch as angels were supposed to be above earthly weaknesses. Having thus started from a false premise, i.e., that marital passion cannot be pure in God's sight, there was no other deduction to be made regarding these love-matches between angels and women but that they were sinful.

4. But, according to the Christian Fathers, the angels committed other sins, in addition to seeking a woman in honorable marriage. They actually endeavored to beautify the world into which they had come, and to make men wiser and happier by teaching them various arts and sciences!

One might have thought this a cause for gratitude; but the Church Fathers, having started from a false premise, were logically bound to deduce the theory which Tertullian did--that as these spirit husbands were fallen angels, what they taught could not possibly be conducive either to integrity, chastity, or the fear of God. Therefore, dress and adornment and the industrial arts of dyeing and metallurgy were sinful, and consequently, displeasing to the Almighty. Very different is the view taken by a more modern writer, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici, who, advocating the doctrine of this celestial guardianship over marriage on earth, observes: "I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelation of spirits; for these noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth."

5. Ambition plays a prominent part in the traditions, it will be noticed. It is said that these angels were ambitious for earthly power and exacted libations and sacrifices; and also that they were the beings whom the heathen ignorantly supposed to be gods.

But if the reader will recall what I have said about the misleadings in spirit manifestations when the psychic starts from a false premise, he will understand how possible it is that we have to deal here with subjective illusions, and not objective realities; and that the lower estimate in which these angelic visitors came to be held was due entirely to the failure of earthly psychics to keep the laws of correct moral living or common sense; then, weaknesses and vanities and superstitions will be played upon ad libitum. As for the giant offspring said to have resulted from these unions--offspring which in the male line became evil-doers, and finally demons on the astral plane--if the reader will consider that necessity to which I have referred for correct living and clear thinking on both sides of the abyss of death, if the bridge of communication is to hold, he will see that if these "giants" continued to influence the world from the astral plane they could not be evil demons, but must be beneficient helpers of mankind. But there is, I think, grave doubt as to whether such offspring ever resulted from these unions between angels and earthly women, as the reader will see when I come to speak of the occult laws governing such unions. Nevertheless, there is something to be said on both sides, and we should do well to reserve our judgment until all the evidence is before us.

We have seen that Commodianus says that these giants are the gods to whom the heathen ignorantly prayed.

Justin Martyr, mindful of certain similarities between the stories told of those same heathen gods and the scriptural account of Jesus, advances the theory that the demons had some imperfect perception of the coming Messiah, gleaned from the Old Testament prophecies, and that they tried to forestall Christianity by ascribing Christ's possible attributes in advance to the gods.

Justin says: "The demons, then, hearing these prophetic words (Genesis 49: 10, 11), asserted that Bacchus was born the son of Jupiter; they ascribed to him also the invention of the vine, and in the celebration of his mysteries led an ass in procession, and taught that Bacchus was torn in pieces and taken up into heaven."

Justin also draws a comparison between some of these gods and Christ, to show that Christianity claims no more for its god than did the heathen for those whom they called "Sons of Jove". He says:

"When we affirm that the Word, which is the first-begotten of God, was born without carnal knowledge, even Jesus Christ our Master, and that he was crucified, and rose again and ascended into heaven, we advance no new thing different from what is maintained respecting those whom ye call sons of Jupiter. For ye well know how many sons your approved writers attribute to Jupiter: Mercury, the word of interpretation and teacher of all men; Esculapius, who was a physician, and yet was struck with lightning and taken up into heaven; Bacchus, who was torn in pieces; Hercules, who burned himself upon the pyre to escape his torments; Castor and Pollux, the sons of Leda; Perseus the son of Danae; and Bellerophon, born of human race, and carried away upon the horse Pegasus. Neither is it necessary that I should relate to you, who already know well, of what kind were the actions of each of those who were called the sons of Jupiter; I need only say, that the writings in which they are recorded tend only to corrupt and pervert the minds of those who learn them; for all take a pride in being the imitators of the gods. But if we say that he (Jesus) was begotten of God, in a manner far different from ordinary generation, being the Word of God, as we have before said, let this be considered a correspondence with your own tenets, when ye call Mercury the word who bears messages from God. And if any one objects to us that He was crucified, this too is a point of correspondence with those whom ye call the sons of Jupiter, and yet allow to have suffered. Again, if we affirm that he was born of a virgin, let this be considered a point in which he agrees with what you (fabulously) ascribe to Perseus. And whereas we say that he made those whole, who were lame, {480} palsied and blind from their birth, and raised the dead; in this too we ascribe to him actions similar to those which are said to have been performed by Esculapius.

We thus see that the heathen gods and heroes whose father was Jupiter, the Christian Messiah whose father was the holy spirit and the traditional "giants" whose fathers were angels were, in the eyes of at least one Church Father, but different aspects of the same underlying principle: the possibility of marital union between dwellers in the unseen world and dwellers upon the earth, for the purpose of begetting children.

Today, however, we look upon the story of the virgin-born Perseus as fabulous. But the ancient heathen opponents of Justin seem to have accorded as scant respect to the story of the virgin-born Jesus as we do to the story of virgin-born Perseus. Now, to laugh to scorn the birth of Perseus from the occult union of God with one virgin, and then to accept without question the birth of Jesus from the occult union of God with another virgin, is somewhat inconsistent.

On strictly logical grounds, if one story be false, so may the other be false; if one be true, so may the other be true. But Perseus is only one of many virgin-born heroes or gods. We find these children of a visible earthly mother and an invisible, celestial mysterious father the world over, in all ages.

There was Buddha, the child of Maya and a celestial god be-ing who, in the form of a white elephant, entered her side; or, according to De Gingnes (see Higgins, Anacalypsis I, 157) his mother conceived by a ray of light, and without defilement.

The Hindu Chrishna was born of a chaste matron who, though a wife and a mother, is always spoken of as the Virgin Devaki. Chrishna, by the way, has many attributes in common with Kama, the East Indian god of love, corresponding to the Latin Cupid. He is represented as black--a symbolism to which I will return later on.

The Egyptian God Ra was born from the side of his mother, "but was not engendered".

The Mayas of Yucatan had a virgin-born god, named Zama.

Among the Algonquin Indians we find the tradition of a great teacher, by name Michabou, who was born of a celestial Manitou and an earthly mother.

"Upon the altars of the Chinese temples were placed behind a screen images of Shin-Moo, or the 'Holy Mother', sitting with a child in her arms, in an alcove, with rays of glory around her head, and tapers constantly burning before her." (Rev. Joseph B. Gross, Heathen Religion, 60, quoted in Bible Myths, p. 327.) Shin-Moo is called the "Mother Goddess", and the "Virgin".

In ancient Mexico, "the virgin Chimalman, also called Solchiquetzal or Suchiquecal, was the mother of Quecalcoatle (evidently the same as Quetalcoatl, who was crucified as a Saviour for the Mexicans, as Jesus was for the Christian world.)

In one representation he is shown hanging by the neck holding a cross in his hands. His complexion is quite black.

Sochiquetzal means the lifting up of Roses. (This is really our Sukey, and the Greek [Greek letters: Psi-Theta-Chi-Eta], Psyche, which means the soul, and which was appropriately applied to the bride of the spirit-lover, Cupid.) Eve is called Ysnextli, and it is said she sinned by plucking roses. But in another place, these roses are called Fruta del Arbor (arbol?).

"The Mexican Eve is called Suchiquecal. A messenger from heaven announced to her that she should bear a son, who should bruise the serpent's head. He presents her with a rose. This was the commencement of and Age, which was called the Age of Roses."

(Is this the age when angels became the husbands of pure-minded women--an age fitly symboled by the rose, the flower of perfect love? Note, also, the resemblance between this tradition and the Christian tradition, concerning the angel's offering Mary a lily-branch at the Annunciation. Evidently, these are two different aspects of the same symbolism.)

Higgins, continuing, says: "All this history, the monkish writer is perfectly certain is the invention of the Devil" and Justin Martyr strove to account for the analogy between the story of Christ and the story of Bacchus by supposing that demons had imitated the Christian Scriptures in advance, so totally unaware was he that both stories had the same esoteric meaning to the initiate. Torquemada's Indian history was mutilated in Madrid before it was published.

Suchiquecal is called the Queen of Heaven. She conceived a son, without connection with a man, who is the God of Air.

"The Mohammedans have a tradition that Christ was conceived by the smelling of a rose." Anacalypsis II, 32, 33.

In the Finnish epic of the Kalevala there is a heroine by the name of Mariatta (from Marja, "berry") who becomes pregnant through unwittingly eating a berry--the berry here played a similar part to the rose referred to above in the Mohammedan tradition. She goes from one to another person, vainly seeking a place in which to bring forth her child. At last she is referred by one household to the stable of "the flaming horse of Hisi", and she then appeals to the horse of Hisi in the following words:

"Breathe, O sympathizing fire-horse,
Breathe on me, the virgin-mother!
Let thy heated breath give moisture,
Let thy pleasant warmth surround me,
Like the vapor of the morning:
Let this pure and helpless maiden
Find a refuge in thy manger!"

Observe that, although the mother of an illegitimate child she, like all the mothers of such children when their father is divine or mysterious, is "pure", the "virgin-mother", etc.

These virgin-mothers are not copies of the Christian Mary. Most, if not all of them, were known long before the days of Christianity.

The mother of the Siamese Somona Cadom was impregnated by sunbeams, another form of Danae's golden shower. She was called Maha Maria or Maya Maria, i.e., "the Great Mary". And this brings out some curious coincidences in name among virgin-mothers. Thus:

Marietta of the Kalavala has already been referred to above.

The mother or Hermes or Mercury was Myrrha or Maia.

Maya, the mother of Buddha, is identical in name with the Hindu goddess Maya, who is represented as walking upon waters, with her peplum teeming with animals, to show her fecundity. Maya is also a well-known Hindu term for "illusion".

The month of May (so nearly like the name of Maia) was sacred to some of the virgin-goddesses of ancient times, as it is now to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The Christian Virgin Mary was also called Myrrha and she is still called Santa Maria in Southern Europe and in Mexico. The title bestowed on her of "Star of the Sea"--a title given to the Egyptian Virgin-Mother, Isis, perhaps two thousand years earlier--shows how close a resemblance tradition and folklore have traced between both of these virgin-mothers and the ancient genitrix of the waters. Also, the Latin "mare" and the French "mer" for "the sea" and the French "mere" for "mother" bear a striking resemblance to the name Mary in sound. And Venus, the presiding divinity of love between the sexes, was born from the foam of the sea. She is credited with having been "indulgent Venus" to a mortal man, Anchises, to whom she bore the hero of Virgil's Aeneid; a Borderland espousal, this, though here it is the wife and not the husband who comes from the invisible world.

The Apocryphal Gospels speak of the Virgin Mary's being brought up as an orphan, in the temple, and they refer to her as an obedient and pure-minded maiden, accustomed to holding daily converse with angels. That she should have been called by the same root-name as these ancient virgin-mothers is, therefore, the less remarkable, if we consider the possibility of her having been trained in the temple by the priests as an initiate in the sacred mysteries, and of her having passed the various ordeals so successfully as to entitle her to be called by the name sacred to the type of womanhood worthy to sustain marital relations on the Borderland.

In some cases it would appear that ambitious princes or other designing politicians of ancient days did not scruple to avail themselves of the current belief in the possibility of divine paternity, when it would serve their purpose. It was an open secret among the Greeks that Alexander the Great had not hesitated to do this, on the occasion of his march into Egypt and Syria, when the oracle at the temple of Jupiter Ammon (doubtless for a bribe) declared Alexander to be the son of Jupiter, saying that this god, in the form of a serpent, had manifested to Alexander's mother.

The serpent is, in ancient sex worship, a well-known symbol of the phallus, and therefore of the creative fatherhood. It appears in several stories of divinely begotten children.

Scipio Africanus was another politician who availed himself of the popular belief in these matters, it would seem. "There is no doubt," remarks Higgins in his Anacalypsis, I, 212,-213, "that he aimed at the sovereignty of Rome, but the people were too sharp-sighted for him." A. Gellius says, "The wife of Publius Scipio was barren for so many years as to create a despair of issue, until one night, when her husband was absent, she discovered a large serpent in his place and was informed by soothsayers that she would bear a child. In a few days she perceived signs of conception, and after ten months gave birth to the conqueror of Carthage."

The Emperor Augustus was said to have been the result of a mysterious connection of his mother with a serpent in the temple of Apollo.

Ovid in his Fasti records a story that Servius Tullius was son of a mysterious shape, claiming to be a vulcan, which appeared to the mother, Ocrisia, among the ashes of the altar, when she was assisting her mistress (Ocrisia was a captive) in the sacred rite of pouring a libation of wine upon the altar.

Pythagoras, who lived more than five hundred years before Christ, was said to be the offspring of Apollo. He was born on a journey, his father (or rather, his mother's earthly husband) having traveled up to Sidon on business. Pythais, the mother, had been beloved by a ghostly personage who claimed to be the god Apollo. Afterwards this same apparition showed itself to the husband, informing him of the parentage of the coming child, and bidding him to have no connection with his wife until after its birth.

A similar event is said to have transpired in the case of Plato, Apollo his father also. His mother was Perictione, a virgin, who was betrothed to one Ariston at the time. In this case also Apollo appeared to inform the earthly lover of the child's paternity. Higgins, relating this tradition, adds:

"On this ground, the really very learned Origen defends the immaculate conception (Higgins evidently refers not to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary's stainlessness signified by that term, but to the conception of Jesus) assigning, also, in confirmation of the fact, the example of Vultures (Vautours) who propagate without the male."

The Vulture was an accompaniment of Hathor, the Egyptian Venus; and it would therefore seem as though Origen had unwittingly stumbled on a bit of folklore. Graves, in his Sixteen Crucified Saviors, remarks (I know not on what authority, but give his remark rather for its suggestiveness than as a vouched-for historical fact:)

"Many are the cases noted in history of young maidens claiming a paternity for their male offspring by a God. In Greece it became so common that the reigning King issued an edict, decreeing the death of all young virgins who should offer such an insult to deity as to lay to him the charge of begetting their children."

"The tradition of the Vestal Virgin Rhea Sylvia, who bore Romulus and Remus to the god Mars, is well known. It is a curious coincidence that the name Rhea, which was one of the names of the Mother of all the gods, is applied by one writer to the Virgin Mary, who likewise became the `Mother of God'".

The Mongolian conqueror, Genghis Khan, and his two twin brothers were said to be the result of an occult union of the earthly mother with a mysterious intelligence.

"His mother having been left a widow, lived a retired life, but some time after the death of her husband she was suspected to be pregnant. The deceased husband's relations forced her to appear before the chief judge of the tribe for this crime. She boldly defended herself, by declaring that no man had known her; but that one day, lying negligently on her bed, a light appeared in her room, the brightness of which blinded her, and that it penetrated three times into her body, and that if she brought not three sons into the world she would submit to the most cruel torments. The three sons were born, and the princess was esteemed a saint. The Mongols believed Genghis Khan to be the product of this miracle, that God might punish mankind for the injustices it had committed."

Of the conqueror Tamerlane, who claimed direct descent from Genghis Khan on the mother side, it is related that he was the result of a connection of his mother with the God of the day.

Dean Milman says, in his History of Christianity (Bible Myths, p. 119):

"Fo-hi of China--according to tradition--was born of a virgin, and the first Jesuit missionaries who went to China were appalled at finding, in the mythology of that country, a counterpart of the story of the Virgin of Judaea."

But, had those same Jesuit missionaries apprehended the idea which lies back of both stories--the substantiality of the unseen world beyond the grave and the possibility of marital relations on the borderland of that world and this, they would not have been thus "appalled". The mother of Confucius, says one tradition, while walking in a solitary place, was impregnated by the vivifying influence of the heavens.

The Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tse, born 604 B.C., the founder of the Religion of the Supreme Reason, was said to have been born of a virgin of black complexion--a forerunner this, by hundreds of years, of the Black Madonnas in the Italian Churches.

Do those black madonnas typify, mystically, the darkness of the unknown world beyond the grave whence the Heavenly Spouse emerges?

The Earls of Cleave were said to descend from a union between the heiress of Cleave and a being from the upper air, "who came to Cleave in a miraculous ship, drawn by a swan, and after begetting divers children `went away at Noon-day, in the sight of a World of People, in his Airy Ship.'"

The famous Robert le Diable, according to one tradition, was the child of an incubus.

The enchanter Merlin, "son of an incubus and of a holy woman, became the center and the master of all nature", says Peyrat. The Magic of the Middle Ages, Rydberg, speaks of a number of adventurers during the Middle Ages who asserted themselves or others to be the bastards of devils and human beings. If they led a blameless life, evincing a firm belief in the dogmas of the Church, the danger of such a pedigree was not greater than its honor. The son of a fallen angel did not need to bend his head before a man of noble birth.

"But," it will be objected, "these stories are myths of ancient, or at least, mediaeval, times. You don't find virgin-born children nowadays."

Stay!

In the establishment of Schweinfurt, that individual in Rockford, Illinois, who today claims to be the Christ, a woman a few years since bore a child, and steadfastly declared her belief that it was immaculately conceived. Trial, it is said, before a jury of the women of Schweinfurt's establishment, did not succeed in shaking the faith of these women in the possibility of such a thing.

In the Truthseeker of New York occurs this paragraph:

"Mrs. Helen Fields, of Wichita, Kansas, has given birth to a child whose father she avers is the Holy Ghost."

Moncure D. Conway, in his Demonology and Devil-Lore, II. 231, says: "When in Chicago in 1875 I read in one of the morning papers a very particular account of how a white dove flew into the chamber window of a young unmarried woman in a neighboring village, she having brought forth a child, and solemnly declaring that she had never lost her virginity."

It is, of course, easy to dismiss all these stories, ancient, mediaeval and modern, with contempt, as so many falsehoods or, at best, self-delusions. I have already said that, despite the immense number of traditions and miraculous births, I doubt if such ever occur upon the borderland of the two worlds, owing to certain occult principles to which I shall briefly refer further on. Nevertheless, this mass of folklore belief is too overwhelming in quantity and too widely diffused to be dismissed lightly. Back of it all there must be some objective realities and some fire for all this smoke. And we must not forget that there is one miraculous birth which is accepted throughout Christendom--the birth of Jesus from a Divine Father and an earthly Virgin Mother. Nevertheless, by the cultured heathen opponents of Justin the story of the divine paternity of Jesus seems to have been regarded with a scorn similar to what with which we regard the above tales today; and that Church Father showed his wisdom when he placed heathen and Christian stories upon the same logical basis.

Am I not right in saying that to impugn the possibility of marital relations between earthly women and heavenly bridegrooms is to strike at the very foundations of Christianity?

In folklore customs and fairy tales, fantastic though these may be, we find numerous indications of the world-wide belief in bridegrooms and brides from the unseen world of spiritual beings; or, as they were termed in the middle ages, incubi and succubae. (Latin, incubo, "to lie upon"; succubo, "to lie under".)

We may set out with that description among the islanders of the Antilles, where they are the ghosts of the dead, vanishing when clutched; in New Zealand, where ancestral deities 'form attachments with females, and pay them repeated visits'; while in the Samoan Islands such intercourse of mischievous inferior gods caused 'many supernatural conceptions'; and in Lapland, where details of this last extreme class have also been placed on record. From these lower grades of culture the idea may be followed onward. Formal rites are specified in the Hindu Tantra which enable a man to obtain a companion--nymph--by worshipping her and repeating her name by night in a cemetery.

Congress with ghostly beings is mentioned in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, as an accepted accusation against "Many persons of both sexes, forgetful of their salvation, and falling away from the Catholic faith". (Taylor, ibid.)

Among the Metamba negroes, a woman is bound hand and foot by the priest, who flings her into the water several times over with the intention of drowning her husband, a ghost, who may be supposed to be clinging to his unfeeling spouse. (T. F. Thiselton Dyers, The Ghost World, p. 182.)

In China, it is not considered respectable for widows to re-marry, for the express reason that their husbands are expected to return to them from the world beyond the grave and resume marital relations with them upon the Borderland.

In the case of widows it would appear to be but a resumption of a relation previously established between the two upon earth. And there are indications that the same stress is not laid upon passing prelimary ordeals as in the case with the virgin, who "has never known man". May it not be because of the virgin's greater ignorance, physiologically speaking, so that she has to enter upon a more extended course of training than does the widow, who already has experience?

The myths and fairy tales which speak of maidens with mysterious lovers from the realm of the unseen are certain to contain, so far as I have observed, reference to some rule or pledge which the woman must strictly observe. If she fails to do this, her lover vanishes, and she can find him again only after passing long and toilsome ordeals. Such was the case with Psyche, who broke the command of her heavenly lover, Cupid, not to look upon him while he slept. He had come to her night after night in the darkness, unseen, as is the wont with so many of these heavenly bridegrooms; and she naturally desired to see his face. But, in her eagerness to know him more intimately, she let fall a drop of hot oil from the lamp upon him, which awoke him, and he vanished. This myth is an evident euphemism for a broken law of marital self-control. In other words, she wanted to enter upon the second step in the occult training which she was receiving from her husband, before she had fully mastered the first step. What those steps were--first, second and third--(for there is a third) through which the earthly wife of a heavenly bridegroom must will appear further on in this book.

In one of the oldest of the Vedas--those books which contain the legends of the Aryans before they split up into fragmentary races--we find a similar story about Urvasi and Pururavas.

These two stories are usually explained as myths which show how the dawn vanishes as soon as it looks upon the sun. In solar myths, the dawn is often typified as a maiden, the sun-god being her lover who pursues her vanishing form through the heavens--an idea picturesquely brought out in the myth of Cinderella. If these two stories really are a bit of sun and dawn folklore, then Urvasi and Psyche must each be the dawn-maiden, and Pururavas and Cupid must be the sun-god on whose glorious form, unveiled by any clouds, the dawn-maiden dare not look, for, as she looks, the two lovers become separated--i.e., the dawn vanishes before the rising sun. But it is a little curious that in one story the maiden disappears, while in the other it is the lover himself who flees. Obviously there is some other myth than a purely solar one involved in these two stories--stories so strikingly similar and yet so strikingly at variance in the one feature in which they should agree, if true sun and dawn myths.

May not their likeness be due to their being memorials of the belief in Borderland marriages and in the self-control which is obligatory upon the earthly partner in such marriages? May not their unlikeness as to the sex of the partner who disappears when that self-control is violated be due to there being heavenly brides, as well as heavenly bridegrooms?

Pyramus and Thisbe, the lovers who, separated by a huge wall, were fain to satisfy themselves with kisses exchanged through a hole therein, are a euphemistic expression for those marital unions one of the parties to which is invisible to his earthly love, impalpable to the physical senses. In this story a bloodthirsty lion puts an end to the lovemaking. This is probably the solar lion, the meaning being that the ancient faith is superseded by the later and (in some respects) purer Sun Worship which seems to have been a reform movement of the science and materialism of the time against the Borderland sensuality which obtained in the declining age of Sex Worship.

Heavenly bridegrooms, it will be noticed, predominate over heavenly brides in Borderland traditions. The reason, I take it, is that women, because of their social environment, usually lead a more self-controlled and temperate life than men do, and thus are in most (though not all) respects more worthy of marital union with an angel. Custom allows men more freedom--a privilege which the masculine sex is not slow to avail itself of, especially in the direction of wine, women and tobacco. These three dissipations not only exhaust the nerve force of men, but blunt both their physical and their moral sensibilities so that the man for whom, in all possibility, his angel mate may be waiting upon the Borderland may find himself handicapped at the outset, should he ever essay an adventure into Borderland romance while still on the earth. In this connection, we may remark that in India, where the attempt to obtain a spirit wife is said to be of common occurrence (and, it would appear, often rewarded with success) we find a nation singularly gentle and peaceable in disposition, unaccustomed to drunkenness until taught it by outside peoples (there is a proverbial saying among the Hindus, "as drunk as a Christian") and endowed by nature with a tendency to aspire to union with God. Last, but not least, it is a nation whose religions, for the most part, recognize the truth that sex is holy; and in this it is in strong contrast with our Western "civilization" where the most sacred function of humanity is looked upon as vile. We occidentals have a whole life's teaching to unlearn, before we can approach the subject of marital relations on the Borderland from a natural and pure-minded standpoint.

The chief tradition regarding spirit brides relates to Lilith or Lilis or Lilot, and is mostly Rabbinical. As in the case of the angelic bridegrooms, she is supposed to be demoniacal. Lilith is said to have been Adam's first wife; one tradition says that by her he begat only demons, another says that she rebelled when Adam assumed authority over her and fled from him to the evil angel Samael, to whom she bore a demon progeny. Another legend has it that being jealous of Eve she slipped back into Eden behind the particeps criminis in the temptation.

Another says that Adam kept himself apart from Eve for a hundred and thirty years in order not to fill hell with their offspring; but that in a weak moment a female devil, called Lilith, seduced him and became his wife, and from their union arose devils, ghosts and evil night dreams; and Eve in like manner became the wife of a demon. (The Serpent in Paradise, London.) Of a similar tenor is the tradition about the Zoroastrian Yeina, who fell from a state of innocence by means of a great serpent, the Azis-Dahaka.

For a long period Yena and his subjects were in the power of this evil serpent, Azis-Dahaka. Yena himself, in order to oblige this master, had to abandon his own wife, who was also his sister, and to take a female devil for his wife, and consent to the union of his former wife with a demon. From these unions were produced apes, bears, and black men."

During this evil period women much preferred young devils to young men for husbands, and men married young seductive "Paris", or female devils.

The psychic who can sustain marital relations on the Borderland must above all be sensitive at the extremities of the nerves of touch. Neither blind people nor deaf people are hindered by their respective infirmities from marrying in this earth-life; and on the Borderland a psychic may be clairvoyant and clairaudient to only a limited extent, and yet be a partaker in connubial joys. For the Borderland husband must materialize more or less fully to enable her to understand the relation clearly upon the physical side. Whereas for most men this is unnecessary, and the spirit bride may remain in all save a few essentials invisible, inaudible, intangible--a veritable "woman of air". Hence her ghostliness and her philological connection with the idea of pale blue or pale purple--the color of air and the mist.

Lilith is said to come to young men's bedsides at night to seduce them, under the aspect of a beautiful and finely dressed woman with golden hair. And, afterwards, she strangles them, and they are known to be Lilith's victims because one of her golden hairs is found tightly wound around the victim's heart. In the Zoroastrian legends, she is much connected with night and night dreams; and men are cautioned not to sleep alone for fear of the evils of Lilith.

She also lies in wait for children to kill them if they are not protected by "Amulets".

"Herodotus says that the Arabians called the moon Alilat. The Assyrian word for night is Lilat, and Talbot supposes that the Arabians really called the moon 'Sarrat ha Lilat', the queen of the night.

"Mr. Talbot also says 'Alilat' may also mean the star Venus.

"The Greeks considered Lilith evidently to be the moon, as with them she is Ilithyia, the sister of Apollo, one of the birth goddesses. Night in Hebrew is layelah.

"That the moon should be selected to represent the feminine principle is readily accounted for by her waxing and waning propensities, to say nothing of her controlling or coinciding with the feminine periods."

Summing up these varying traditions we find the following incidents prominent:

1. A woman who is not of the earth but evidently from an unknown world enters upon relations with Adam or with the men of later generations.

2. The relation is in most cases that of husband and wife and not a mere liason.

3. In those cases where the relation is illicit, the earthly partner comes to an unfortunate end.

4. This woman from the unseen world is credited with being a seducer and a devil.

5. She bears no children, save demons, and is reputed to destroy children.

6. She causes men to dream evil dreams at night.

Lilith is evidently the complement of the tradition about angelic bridegrooms. That the typical spirit bride should have so much more unsavory a reputation than has the typical spirit bridegroom is also typical of nowaday. The masculine nature is proverbial for its lack of self-control where women are concerned; and in this it has usually contrasted unfavorably with the self-control of women in similar cases. On the other hand, the men of our Western civilization are mostly superior to our women (of the virtuous classes) in the ardent, dramatic and artistic expression of love for the opposite sex--a desirable qualification in the romance and uncertainties and trying ordeal of Borderland wedlock.

If, therefore, the propositions which I have laid down as to the necessity for self-control in occult investigations be correct, we need not be surprised that the spirit bride is ere long denounced as demoniacal and seducing.

But it is the ignorance or the wilful wrong-doing of her earthly lover that is to blame, and not the spirit-bride--unless in some rare instance, where the celestial visitor is exceptionally careless. In that case, her superiors in the invisible world interfere and remove her. The connection with her earthly partner is snapped, never to be resumed until he passes over to her world at death. But such failures on the part of the heavenly visitor are rare; and if the resulting phenomena are diabolical, it is the earthly medium's own fault.

That she should bear no children except demons points to the proposition which I have already advanced, that children cannot be begotten from Borderland marriage unions. If the earthly husband still insists on doing all he can to beget such children he breaks the law of Borderland, and will be led deeper and deeper into the mire of sensuality, and at last, perhaps, be deceived by a subjective hallucination of devils whom he will be told are his children. If he presses for information, he will probably receive a more explicit truthful statement, i.e., that his spirit bride is unable to bear children on the Borderland of two worlds. But should he fail about this time in some detail of moral duty, or clear-headedness, and especially should he persist in sowing seed where no harvest can be reaped, he will most certainly be misled by all sorts of fantastic excuses. For such is the occult law. The psychic who, whether ignorantly or wilfully, is unworthy, loses his grip on the lines of communication, and his own ill-regulated subliminal consciousness then steps in with its ingenious excuses--such as, perhaps, that his celestial partner is abnormally constituted as a woman, or that she kills her children as fast as they are begotten, etc. etc. And thus, through the failure of the earthly husband to observe the laws of marital self-control on the Borderland, one more tradition is launched upon the world about the devil-bride who seduces men and begets demons and kills children.

That she should be credited with being the author of "evil night-dreams" shows how prone the partners of spirit brides have been to subjective hallucinations. We do not find any such wholesale charge brought against spirit husbands of producing evil dreams, as is brought against Lilith. The imaginations of men's hearts must indeed have been evil in those days, and their brains beclouded, or the difference between a materialized spirit bride and the subjective phantasm of an amorous dream would have been more sharply defined. The psychic who conforms two separate planes of existence has forsaken the path of self-control and clear-headedness, and has entered upon the path whose end is insane delusion.

In the supplement of Littre's Dictionary (French), 1877, occurs a suggestive etymology of the lilac (or as it is in French, lilas). The writer connects the root of this word with the Persian nil, indigo, and calls attention to the various Persian words nilah, niladj, liladj, lilandj, lilang, all relating to indigo. He connects the word lilas (French for lilac) with these words and also the diminutive lilak (bluish, as fingers blued by the cold)--a tint which perfectly characterizes the flowers of the lilac of Persia which are of a plae purple. May there be some philosophical connection between this palely purple flower "lilas" and the ghostly "Lilis" or "Lilat" or "Lilith"?

Lilith figures in a text of Isaiah, but we have to go both to Mohammedan and to Ancient Greek folklore to find the connecting link between this text and the Lilith of Rabbinical traditions. The text refers to the destruction which the Lord threatens will befall Eden, and reads:

"And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and thistles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be an habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches and the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves (or howling creatures); and the satyr (or he-goat) shall cry to his fellow: yea, the night monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest".

The word "night-monster" is in Hebrew "Lilith". The King James version translates this word "screech-owl"; the Vulgate, "Lamia"; in Luther's Bible, "Kobold". Lamia or Lamya is found in the Great Bible, and in Coverdale's, Matthew's, Beck's and Bishop's bible.

Now a lamia is a mythical serpent-woman of a demoniacal character. Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, gives a memorable instance. A young man on the road near Corinth met a charming woman who invited him to her house in the suburbs of the city, and said that if he would remain with her, "he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him and she being fair and lovely would live and die with him." The young man was, as Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy puts it in giving the account, "a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love" and he "tarried with her awhile to his great content." At last he married her. To the wedding came Apollonius, and he at once recognized her as a lamia, and declared that all her furniture was but illusion. She wept and begged Apollonius to be silent, but he persisted in exposing her, whereupon she, her house, and its content, vanished.

This is probably a Beauty and the Beast myth on the masculine side, Apollonius playing the part of the outsider who separates the lovers by harping on the things which are illusory and monstrous in the young man's psychic manifestations. It is worth noticing, in this connection, that the young man had been living a temperate and self-controlled life when he was first approached by this Lamia or Lilith, so that he was evidently found worthy to taste the joys of affectionate connubial intercourse with his mysterious bride. Here, evidently, the young man is not strong enough to endure the training required to consummate Borderland wedlock. He also, evidently, does not have his sub-consciousness well under control, but allows it to run away with him. Mastery of self in every possible aspect, physically, intellectually, morally, affectionately, is one of two requisites for sustained marital relations on the Borderland; the other requisite being steadfast aspiration to personal communion with the Divine.

The ancient Churchyard of Truagh, county Monaghan, in Ireland, is said to be haunted by an evil spirit, whose appearance generally forebodes death. The legend runs, writes Lady Wilde (Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, p.84), "that at funerals the spirit watches for the person who remains last in the graveyard. If it be a young man who is there alone, the spirit takes the form of a beautiful young girl, inspires him with ardent passion, and exacts from him a promise that he will meet her that day month in the churchyard. The promise is then sealed by a kiss, which sends a fatal fire through his veins, so that he is unable to resist her caresses, and makes the promise required. Then she disappears and the young man proceeds homewards; but no sooner has he passed the boundary wall of the churchyard than the whole story of the evil rushes on his mind, and he knows that he has sold himself, soul and body, for a demon's kiss. Then terror and dismay take hold of him, till despair becomes insanity, and on the very day month fixed for the meeting with the demon bride the victim dies the death of a raving lunatic, and is laid in the fatal graveyard of Truagh."

In Capt. Richard F. Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights occurs a story of a female desert-monster, who devours human flesh. Captain Burton, in a footnote, remarks:

"The Ghulah (fem. of Ghul) is the Hebrew Lilith or Lilis; the classical Lamia; the Hindu Yogini and Dakini; the Chaldean Utug and Gigim (desert-demons) as opposed to the Mas (hill-demon) and Telal (who steal into towns); the Ogress of our tales and the Baba-yaga (Granny-witch) of Russian folklore. Etymologically 'Ghul' is a calamity, a panic fear; and the monster is evidently the embodied horror of the grave and the graveyard."

In its more usual spelling of "Ghoul", this graveyard monster will probably be familiar to most readers.

"The female Ghul appears to men in the deserts, in various forms, converses with them, and sometimes prostitutes herself to them."

Here we see (1) the spirit bride, degraded to the level of harlot, (2) vague and unreasoning terror, (3) loathing and horror of the spirits of the deceased, all meeting under one name. So far has Lilith, the Borderland bride, fallen from her rightful estate by reason of the befogged imaginations of mankind.

"The Shiqq is another demoniacal creature, having the form of a half human being (like a man divided longitudinally) and it is believed that the Nasnas is the offspring of the Shiqq and a human being. The Nasnas is described as having half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg, with which it hops with much agility."

This is another form of the giant progeny of Borderland unions, a form so fantastic as to show that its origin is a subjective hallucination, and not an objective reality. In other words, the Mohammedan Shiqq and Nasnas are both of them probably the subliminal invention of some imperfect earthly psychic in the centuries agone, who broke the Borderland law in his or her relations with a spirit bride, or a spirit husband, and who was grossly midled, in consequence, by his or her own subliminal self. That others since then claim from time to time to see these fantastic creatures does not prove that they exist. In psychical matters nothing is more common than for people to see ghosts at a given time and place when their imaginations have been worked up to the expectation of seeing one then and there, of a certain predetermined type.

The Mohammedan Paradise as well as its Borderland recognizes love between the sexes. And in this it differs from the Christian paradise as popularly conceived--although, as I have elsewhere shown, the statement by Jesus that we shall be after death, as regards marrying, "like the angels in heaven", when taken in connexion with the text in Genesis about the sons of God who wedded earthly women, shows pretty conclusively that the Christian Scriptures admit the existence of sex and marriage in the world beyond the grave. Nevertheless, the Romish Church has chosen to flatly contradict the teaching of both the Old and the New Testament in this, with the result of blinding Christians utterly to these potent Scriptural truths. Mohammed, on the other hand, was sufficient of a seer to venture on restoring the ancient doctrine.

Heaven, as is well known, abounds in love-making, beautiful women called Houris attending upon the risen soul of the male Mohammedan as he reclines at feast. It is true that apologists have suggested a figurative sense in which the accounts of Mohammed's Paradise are to be taken.

On the contrary, it is not at all remarkable. It was precisely because Mohammed was at that time living a fairly well-ordered and self-controlled life that he was enabled to learn sufficiently of the world beyond the grave to assert that love between the sexes survives death and is one of the potent factors in social life there, as here. It is true that, being an Oriental, his "revelations" would inevitably conform to his cast of mind, so that the glitter and luxurious abandon of a feast presided over by Houris might seem to him the acme of ideal bliss. But beneath and permeating all this voluptuous imagining breathes the mighty truth of sex-love in Paradise.

That love which mutually strengthens and mutually uplifts as no other love in all the world can strengthen and uplift. I take it is the chief reason for its existence--the propagation of the species being of necessity incidental, therefore, secondary.

But there is also a third reason which, unfortunately, is known to but few. Nor is it likely to be understood as it should be until modern civilization ceases to brand the sacred details of the marriage union with the stigma of impurity. The third reason for the marital union is that for those who are worthy, it is, whether on the Borderland or the earthly plane, the surest and safest method of seeking union with the Divine Heart of the Universe and becoming one with all God's world. Only in giving joyful thanks to God, indeed, should that relation ever be entered upon, whether on the Borderland or on the earthly plane. This, not only because it is fitting to give thanks to God for every good thing, but because it is beautiful at that time and because only those who have experienced the bliss of taking God into the marital partnership in its most intimate relation can be said either to be truly wedded or to truly realize what it is to love God and be in return beloved by Him. This applies in earthly as well as Borderland wedlock.

Trite and commonplace as may seem this suggestion, to give thanks to God in this relation and share one's joy with Him, it nevertheless appears to be the inner, sacred truth of all religions on their esoteric side, and of all mysticisms and forms of occult teaching, the world over--a truth which has been jealously hidden away from the masses. It has been concealed for several reasons, probably.

First, it is not a matter to be attained at once, but requires systematic and careful training in self-control. And some degree of intellectual and spiritual insight is necessary to rate this training at its just value, as well as to respect the sacredness of the idea which underlies it. There are three degrees to be passed in this training, of which I will speak later on.

Second, inasmuch as it enhances, instead of extinguishing, connubial pleasure, while at the same time it puts the begetting of children absolutely under the control of parents, and this without violation of either civil or natural laws, its initiates evidently feared lest it be turned to base uses by the unscrupulous and licentious. A needless fear, this, however; as to the libertine, the game will never seem worth the candle; while, should he persevere in the training so as to become an adept in the third and last degree, he will be no longer a libertine.

Third. There is a belief among some occultists that an earnest wish breathed at that time, when husband and wife are one, will not fail to be granted. This opens, it is said, the door to those who practice what is called "black magic", and enables them to work harm upon other human beings. What foundation there is for this belief as applied to the magicians I do not see. If it really be that a wish is granted then more readily than when the seeker is in any other mood, it is probably because the occultist who attains the second degree has to exercise such supreme self-control at that moment that he is complete master of his sub-consciousness, and if he has attained the third degree he is in rapport with Spirit throughout the universe, so that his desire is granted because he desires only what is in harmony with Good and Right. That a black magician should be able at such a moment to enter upon harmonious relations with the universe by breathing a curse seems to me very unlikely.

I am of the opinion that this belief is due to the mistaken idea that correct living and clear thinking are unnecessary to establish lines of accurate communication with the unseen world.

And, because occultists have usually assumed the nearness of a world of devils, rather than a world of angels, and because they have assumed that depravity and prejudice offer no bar to communication with unseen intelligences, whether good or evil, it was a most natural conclusion that it would be dangerous to entrust the secret of the third degree to a "black magician". But, so long as a man is a black magician, he will fail to enter upon the third degree.

This last degree is, I am firmly convinced, impossible, whether in earthly or Borderland wedlock, for either man or woman who does not live a pure life in self-control and aspiration to the Divine. And the occultist who seeks to attain to the third degree must first become a white magician.

Nevertheless, as I have said, the initiates in the third degree have guarded this secret most jealously, and apparently for the reasons I have assigned.

The first and second degree, however, seem to have been taught publicly in symbolic rites--such as for instance in that much misunderstood dance at the Columbian Exposition--the Danse du Ventre. It was noticeable that the oriental men, one and all, viewed the dance with serious and at times reverent gaze.

This fact was brought to my notice by two ladies (school teachers) who knew absolutely nothing of the Sex Worship symbolism of the dance, but who had concluded, simply from thoughtful observation, that there must be some religious and pure-minded motif back of it all. Nevertheless, most Americans and Europeans, whether men or women, failed to penetrate beneath the surface of this markedly symbolic dance, owning to the occidental habit of thought which sees naught but impurity in the most important and sacred function of our nature. In Oriental countries, however, despite their being "heathen", sex is looked on as holy. In this connection, our phrase "Give God the glory", takes on itself a vaster significance than is ever taught in our pulpits.

It is no wonder, then, the Oriental occultists should have penetrated at an early date to the underlying principles of marital relations on the Borderland. From their lifelong habits of thought, they viewed sex as simply and naturally as we should view the circulation of our own blood--as a curious phenomenon of absorbing personal interest. With no false shame to overcome, they were fitted to receive the higher truths concerning this subject, whereas our Occidental mediums, for the most part, receive words of impurity or are misled into a loose life. The difference is due to the exact antipodal standpoints of Occidental and Oriental psychics on the subject of the holiness of sex.

I have said that the initiates of the third degree seem to have made this the inner secret of their mysteries, the world over, and, that they have always jealously guarded this secret from the masses. I am inclined to think that in the beginning it may not have been so, but that this jealous care may have been the result of a bitter lesson learned of the unwisdom of throwing pearls before swine, not because the swine turn and rend one--for the earnest teacher of truth never gives his own danger a second thought--but because the swine are too apt to soil the pearls by trampling them in the mire.

If it be asked in amazement how this teaching of "Giving God the Glory" and sharing with Him the supreme joy of the marital relation could become so degraded by swinish human beings as to cause its teachers to withhold it in future from the masses, I answer:

By turning it into a commercial transaction with God.

The piggish, greedy man, learning by hearsay of the connubial bliss attending the Triune partnership with god, pressed eagerly forward with one thought uppermost: "I will pay God cash down for so much of my pleasure, and I mean to drive a close bargain with Him."

The voluptuary, seeking to enhance his physical sensations, likewise pressed f