The Theosophists revel in the mystic and occult. If they can construct a sentence that no one can understand, and that they do not know the meaning of themselves, they are in the seventh heaven of delight, their wisdom borders on the Divine. Stating their doctrine of transmigration in plain language: God sits at his desk in Heaven, with a great lot of pigeonholes before him, in each one of which is a soul in a state of coma. When he receives a wireless from the earth that Pat and Biddie McGee have formed in their marital relationship a psychic vortex, or soul vortex, he makes a grab at the pigeonholes and lights perhaps on the soul of Pythagoras and sticks it into the new-born embryo, which already has a soul, and there is no room for any other. See “Spermatozoa,” Stand. Dic., and note those very energetic individuals in a frantic race to enter the ovum and blossom out as human beings. You will then realize that the child already has a very lively soul, provided by nature, and there is no occasion for any doped soul, supplied by any idiotic human plan.
“The astral light keeps an unmutilated record of all that was, that is, or ever will be. The minutest acts of our lives are imprinted on it, and even our thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. It is the Book of Life, it is the memory of God. If the medium or subject’s sight is ably directed by the mesmerizer, magician or spirit, the light must yield up its most secret records to our scrutiny.”—Astral World. It is claimed that each person’s atmosphere in the astral light is peopled with the images of his or her immediate family, thus accounting for the assertions of the mediums that they see the spirits of our lost ones.
Swedenborgians claimed that the human body is sometimes abandoned by the soul in consequence of overpowering fright, grief, despair or sickness, and that we encounter every day such living corpses. Into these bodies may enter the soul of an adept sorcerer or some earth-bound, disembodied soul. In insanity the astral soul is partly paralyzed, bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampire or human soul near its own dissolution, and clinging desperately to earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this expedient.
The ancients claimed that the soul was located in the solar plexus, and it was asserted that they could read, hear, see and smell through the navel. In our vermiform stage of development before evolution had supplied us with heads, the soul was perhaps in the stomach, but it may have moved since. Plato says that the divine part of the soul is located in the head. Haeckel says that the human soul is a combination of the souls of all the cells of the body. It is impossible to destroy any simple substance, and if it affords you any comfort, you can assume that the soul or ego is an indestructible electron. The Stoics claimed that the soul is in the heart, and that although it outlives the body, it is yet perishable and can only endure at the longest till the termination of the world period, 4,320,000,000 years. Epicurus claimed that “nothing that exists will ever cease to exist. Atoms exist from all eternity, and worlds were formed by their vortical motion. The soul is material and composed of exceedingly fine atoms, and is dispersed through the whole body. The rational soul is in the breast.” Stephanus, of Alexandria, says that “copper is like a man, it has a soul and body.” Yoga Ramacharaka says that “iron is alive and may be killed by poison.”
“Transmigration of the soul takes place in all flesh, in beasts, reptiles and fowls. For one form of uncleanness the soul will pass into a Gentile, for another into a mule, for others into an ass, a woman, a bat, a she-mule or a camel.”—Kabala Nishmath Chaim, Ch. 13, No. 1. It sometimes happens that one sacrifices an animal with a human soul in it. Therefore the slaughtering knife must be without defect, and the slaughter must needs be delicately done to avoid cutting the gizzard out of the human soul. “The soul of a murderer is transmigrated into water. Let no man drink from a running stream, lest the soul of a wicked sinner pass into him.”—Kabala Emeh Hamelech, fol. 153, col. 1.
“By a combination of the letters of the ineffable name Rava once created a man and sent him to Rav. Zera. The man being unable to reply when spoken to, the Rabbi said to him: ‘Thou art a creation of the company (of necromancers) return to thy dust.’ By the same means a Rabbi created pumpkins, melons, deers and roes.”—Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrim, ch. 7.
The soul, called Psyche, when she is at home, lives in that part of the brain called the Medulla Oblongata, and the spirit, called Budhi, lives in the next house up the street, the Pineal Gland. When Budhi, or the Word, wins the affections of Psyche, and they are married, the Word saves the soul, and the man who harbors these entities is illuminated and becomes a master.
If you read Genesis in the original Hebrew, you will find that Al or El, the sun, not the Christian God, says: “To every beast of the earth I gave a living soul.” The souls of human beings are composed of material as refined and spiritual as that of the souls of cockroaches and bedbugs, and men, if they behave themselves, are equally as good as those animals and of just as much importance in the universe.
CHAPTER XIII.
Ghosts and Hobgoblins.
The Hindus of the Malibar coast said they had ghosts, but they knew them to be bad spirits, for good ones can hardly ever appear at all. Apuleius says the human soul is a demon or genius, an immortal god. According to Philo Judaeus, the air is filled with an invisible host of spirits, the bad ones are mortal, and the good ones are immortal. The soul, upon the death of the body, transforms into a lemure (phantom). If it is wicked, it is called a larvae. The ghosts who, through vice, fearful crimes and animal passions, are confined to the eighth sphere immediately surrounding the earth, are the magnetic vampires and demons so well known to mediaeval ecstatics, nuns, monks and witches, the blood demons of Porphery. They may be cast out by powerful magicians, but if a sorcerer is not available, you can take a saucer containing two ounces of nitre and pour over it one ounce of vitrol and place it under the bed of the obsessed, and the devil will take to his heels.