Elephas Levi says: “The millions of germ cells that fail to become human beings are transformed into phantoms or larvae. These larvae possess aerial bodies formed from the steam of blood. For this reason they seek out spilt blood, and were formerly nourished by the smoke of sacrifices. The cohesion of the parts of these phantastic organisms is so feeble that they fear a strong wind, large fires, and above all the points of swords. They are vampires.” This accounts for the craving of the gods for blood sacrifices. The spirits and phantoms were mistaken for gods by the drunken prophets.
“The cells are spheroids and they are men in embryo,” says Plato. “God caused the universe to move with a circular motion and created original man as a perfect circle. The sexes were originally three in number, man, woman and hermaphrodite, and they had two faces and four arms and four legs, but Zeus cut them in two. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring the other half, came together and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one. Each of us when separate is but the indenture of a man, having one side only like a flat-fish, and he is always looking for his other half.”—Plato, 1-483.
The intelligence of the cells has been clearly established by overwhelming proofs. An egg or ovum is at first a small fertilized cell, and in its development or transformation into an embryo, it is at first divided into several cells, to wit, the head cell, the body cell, the tail cell and the food cells. Prof. Oppel, in his experiments in embryology, separated these cells, removing them from their proper positions, but the cells so removed, traveled about trying first one place and then another until they usually found their proper positions and there joined the body and grew thereon, producing a perfect animal. If they made a mistake and joined the body in the wrong place, a monster was produced.
Furthermore, a scientist produced a mushroom-shaped being by subjecting metallic salts to the action of a galvanic current. The particles of the metal gathered around the pole of the magnet in the shape of a mushroom. This thing was a living being, with alimentary canal in its stem, through which it drew its nourishment and added to its growth. It was only necessary that a current of life or electricity be introduced among the particles to cause them to assume the form of a living organism. The metallic tree is produced by the same means. A copper wire and a piece of zinc are suspended in a bottle of a solution of acetate of lead, and the particles of lead gather about the copper wire and put forth branches, limbs and foliage.—Yogi Ramacharaka.
Each atom of matter, each molecule and every life cell, of which man is composed, has a soul of its own. And it is claimed that beside the individual cell souls, man not only has a communal soul in his brain, but a soul in his Solar Plexus. After a frog is beheaded, if a drop of acid is placed on his body, he will wipe it off with his foot.
The development of animals out of frogs and men out of animals was held by Anaximenes 600 B. C., and the evolution of species was an accepted doctrine before the flood. In the Hindu books it is written: “When the world had issued out of the darkness, the subtle, elementary principles produced the vegetal seed, which animated first the plants, from the plants life passed into fantastical bodies which were born in the waters, then through a series of forms and various animals it reached man.”—Bhagavata.
Kapella, an Aryan sage, denied the existence of a first cause, claiming that everything in nature found itself developed only in consequence of material fatal forces. The ancient Kabalists said: “A stone becomes a plant, a plant a beast, a beast a man, a man a spirit, and the spirit a god.”
CHAPTER XII.
Magic and Devil Worship.
Elephas Levi claimed that the attraction and repulsion of the atoms is caused by the astral light. “There exists an agent which is material and spiritual, a universal plastic medium, a common receptacle of the vibrations of motions and the images of forms, a fluid and a force. By means of this force all nervous apparatuses secretly communicate with each other, thence come sympathy and antipathy, thence dreams and second sight. The existence and use of this force is the great secret of practical magic. The astral light attracts, repels, vivifies and destroys all things under the influence of powerful wills. It can be directed by the leaders of souls. By means of this agent we can correspond instantaneously from one end of the earth to the other, discern what is taking place at the antipodes, heal or hurt at a distance. The Gnostics called it the burning body of the Holy Ghost. Life is produced by the action of the astral light on the ether or matter. In man it forms the astral body, it is the first envelope of the soul, and it is by combining with the most subtil fluids that it forms this etherized body or phantom. The astral body is nourished by the astral light, as the physical body is nourished by the earth. The astral light is saturated with souls, which it releases in the incessant generation of existences, and whose imperfect wills can be dominated and employed by stronger ones. The elementary spirits are like children, they torment those who concern themselves about them. It is these that produce the raps on the walls and furniture.”—Mysteries of Magic, 65.
“An individual can leave the physical body and actually travel on either the material or astral plane in the astral body. Many persons are able to travel thus in their ordinary sleep.”—Astral World, 25.