The Spiritualist newspaper > No.317, September 20th 1878

Sept. 20, 1878.
THE SPIRITUALIST,
135
DANGEROUS ILLNESS OF PRINCE WITTGENSTEIN.
All English Spiritualists will regret to hear of the serious
illness of Prince Wittgenstein, who for so many years, both
in public and in private, has been an outspoken advocate of
the truths of Spiritualism. In the course of a private letter
to us, the Baroness von Vay says :—(i Do you know that my
dear friend and cousin the Prince Emile Wittgenstein is very
ill in Bavaria ? He has been in bed for weeks, has dreadful
headaches and fever—in fact, is dangerously ill. Pray re¬
commend him to the prayers of all good Spiritualists.”
RELIGION OF MAGIC.
(From Bonwick’s “ Fgyptian Belief and Modern Thought."')
Few things have more excited the wonder of Egyptologists than the
discovery of papyri containing magical texts and tormulse. They were
employed to ward off evil and bring good. They were of service to
the dead as well as to the living, since the dead were alive in another
world, to be influenced in their course there by the prayers and rites
of the faithful still dwelling by the Nile.
The Spiritualism, if such it may be called, of the ancients has been
little understood and much derided. Whatever folly and deceit were
connected with it, there was sense or fascination enough about it to
hold the greatest and wisest in its folds. Plato said that magic con¬
sisted in the worship of the gods ; and Psellus, that “ magic formed the
last part of the sacerdotal science.” Proclus the Platonist has the
following reasoning upon magic :—
“ As lovers gradually advance from that beauty which is apparent in
sensible forms, to that which is divine, so the ancient priests, when
they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in
natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers,
and discovered that all things subsist in all, they fabricated a sacred
science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. Now, the ancients,
having contemplated this mutual sympathy of things, applied for
occult purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which,
through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this
inferior abode.”
We notice this sympathy in objects, and call it chemical affinity,
natural attraction, &c. Swedenborg talked of correspondencies between
heaven and earth. Some philosophers, even in this age of blank
materialism, are beginning to recognise subtle influences in nature not
to be explained, but which in olden times formed the groundwork of
magic. In fact, as Dr. Carter Blake pithily has it, “ The nineteenth
century is not that which has observed the genesis of new, nor the
completion of the old, methods of thought.” If the ancients knew
but little of our mode of investigation into the secrets of nature, we
know less of their mode of research.
The ancients recognised the action of divinity on man through
sensible objects. But they believed in the power of man, under what is
called magic, to command the services of the gods. Magic is, then,
religion. “Magic was considered,” Deveria remarks, “'as a sacred
science or sacred art, inseparable from religion.” It is important, then,
says F. Lenormant, “to determine the influence which religious belief
of different peoples and of different ages have had upon it, and the
influence which in its turn it has exercised on these same beliefs.”
The power of magic with the Egyptians is thus spoken of by Jamb-
lichus: “ They, through the sacerdotal theurgy, announce that they
are able to ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those
that are established above fate, viz., to God and the Demiurgus : neither
employing matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the
observation of a sensible time.” Thus, quoting Dr. Blake, “ Nearly all
the higher facts of Spiritualism are mere" repetitions of the conceptions j )!
of intellectual men in past generations.” Egyptian mystics could j j j
levitate, walk the air, handle fire, live under water, sustain great
pressure, harmlessly suffer mutilation, read the past, foretell the future,. j
make themselves invisible, and cure diseases. Their great priestly j j j
teachers were known as Rekh-get-amen. ,
Admission to the mysteries did not confer magical powers. These ! ]
depended upon two things : the possession of innate capacities, and the j
knowledge of certain formulae employed upon suitable circumstances. j
Divination, therefore, was" practised by those who had special gifts j
or faculties born with them, and carefully developed* by prayer and j
fasting, which kept down the grosser impulses of ihe soul. Justin j I
Martyr supposed Joseph a great proficient. To divine, however, the j (j
person must have an object by which to work, and must repeat ] j j
approved magical texts. Joseph’s divining cup was quite an Egyptian j j j
institution. Ezekiel notices the divining arrows without points. Books j |
of divination were common, like calendars of good and bad days. | j j
They divined then from the elements, trees, birds, &c.
Dreams were held important in certain cases. The dreams of 11 j
Pharaohs were interpreted according to fixed rule by special magicians. ! j j
A long story is hieroglyphically detailed on a granite monument at j J j
Napata, of the dream of King Amen-meri Nout. He thought he saw two i j
serpents, one on each side of him. The explanation afforded was this : | !
“ The land of the South shall be thine, thou shalt take the land of the j j
North.” This, we are told, came true. He was first King of Ethiopia, j; i
and then captured Memphis. The stone is called “ The Stele of the j i
Dream.” The gods sent the dream to the king, and gave the wise men j' i
the interpretation. j
Oracles were communipations from the gods to favoured persons, |1 !
that is, to mediums. They were delivered from the holy place of the j j j
temple, and by special priptesses. They evidenced prophetic powers j 1 •
clairvoyance, discerning of spirits, second sight, or whatever else that
faculty may be called, undoubtedly possessed by some, and, perhaps,
capable of development by exercise. But the ancients, like some
moderns, not content with simple and natural explanation, ascribed
the action to supernatural visitation, and so connected it with religion.
Spirits were believed to convey the information. It might bp Isis, or
Apollo, or the sainted dead.
The early Christians had no doubt of the reality of Egyptian oracles.
Among the believing fathers were' Tatian, Clemens Alexandrinus,
Chrysostom, Origen, Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Tertullian, Jerome, and
Augustine. It was natural for the last named, as an African, to place
credence in spiritualistic movements. He thus refers to the prophetic
power of the spirits.
“ They, for the most part, foretell what they are about to perform;
for often they received power to send diseases by vitiating the atmos¬
phere. Sometimes they predict what they foresee by natural signs,
which signs transcend human sense ; at others they learn, by outward
bodily tokens, human plans, even though unspoken, and thus foretell
things to the astonishment of those ignorant of the existence of such
plans.”
Spirits played a conspicuous part in Egyptian magic. They are
called godst of course. The Chaldean Magi believed in elementary
1 spirits, something between the divine and human, floating in air or
! water, existing in fire, or dwelling in caves and rocks. The Egyptians,
on the contrary, thought, says Lenormant, “ the possessing spirits, and
i the spectres who affright or torment the living, were damned souls
j come again to earth, betore being submitted to the annihilation of the
second death.” They believed what Swedenborgians and a crowd of
Spiritualists now believe in England and America.
They had no doubt about possession, any more than the Jews had
j at the time of the Gospels. J osephus assures us that his countrymen
were tormented by the spirits of the wicked dead possessing bodies,
j Maspero thus describes the Egyptian notion : “ The damned sought a
| human body to lodge there ; and, when finding it, overwhelmed it.with
! diseases, and sent it to murder and folly.” Allan Kardec, the re-incar-
i nationist, has another view of the case; saying, “ Since two spirits
i cannot inhabit simultaneously the same body, there is no such thing as
possession. But from the days of the pyramids to our own time, pos-
j session has been acknowledged. All sects of Christians have declared
I this belief.
Mr. Firman, the medium, is in Spain, and is expected back in Paris
I next Saturday.
j M. Constant, of Smyrna, is announced in Nature to be taking an
i active part in attempts to make the “positive” system of scientific
| research known among Oriental nations.
Mr. Constantine Delhez, a Viennese Spiritualist, gives lectures
almost daily in the Austrian Court of the Paris Exhibition, on “ Intel-
] lectual Gymnastics,” a system devised by him for the rapid and easy
j education of children. His home address is Singerstrasse 7, Vienna.
The Messager de Liege states that in consequence of a large number
j of Belgian Spiritualists having resorted to Paris during this month, the
; annual meeting of members of the Brussels Spiritualist Society will not
be held as usual.
! The Peterborough Standard, in its last issue, says It may interest
i many of our readers to learn that Mr. J. T. Markley, who left this city
i last spring, in connection with the London National Press, is now
j fulfilling an appointment at Horsham, as one of the special reporters of
j the Sussex Daily News, a well-known Brighton morning newspaper.”
La Nueva Fra is the title of a new monthly spiritual journal pub-
| lished at Vera Cruz (Mexico), which is the organ of the spiritual club
called after St. Augustine and St. Matthew. The literary section
I contains some really good lines of Spanish poetry by R. Menendez,
which may deserve, some day, translation into English. This paper
also contains a reply to the pastoral which the Roman Catholic Bishop
pf Vera Cruz has directed against Spiritualism.
The Boston Transcript of August 14th, 1878, says:—“No public
bequests are made in the will of the late Mrs. George B. Emerson. The
bulk of her property, consisting of real estate, stocks, bonds, &c., to the
amount of several hundred thousand dollars, goes to her daughter, Mrs.
Caroline F. Hare, wife of Colonel Robert Harford Hare. One domestic
receives ten thousand dols., and four others three hundred dols. each.
The little daughter of one of her friends receives two hundred dols.”
The Colonel Hare here referred to is son of the late Professor Hare, of
Philadelphia, well known to Spiritualists. He was in London recently
with his wife, and he has much of the talent and many of the genial
traits of his eminent father.
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.
“Northbrook.”—We do not treat anonymous letters taking away the
characters of individuals as “private and confidential,” but as dis¬
graceful un-English documents condemnatory to the writers thereof. If
any more come, they will be sent on to the person slandered.
To Readers of The Spiritualist.—Until further notice all communications
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Correspondents who send communications from foreign countries are
requested to write all proper names distinctly. It is a common thing
for manuscript to arrive in a condition altogether unfit for publication
from indistinct writing and the difficulty of battling with the
eccentricities of the English language. After much labour is expenued
in making such communications readable, the authors sometimes think
they are entitled to a column of space to talk about errors due to their
having posted manuscript unfit for the printer’s hands,