Unfortunately for them and happily for us, it is not the modern Occultists who have invented the doctrine. They are on their defense. And they prove what they say, i.e., that no “personality” has ever yet been “reincarnated” “on the same planet” (our earth, this once there is no mistake) save in the three exceptional cases above cited. Adding to these a fourth case, which is the deliberate, conscious act of adeptship; and that such an astral body belongs neither to the body nor the soul still less to the immortal spirit of man, the following is brought forward and proofs cited.

Before one brings out on the strength of undeniable manifestations, theories as to what produces them and claims at once on prima facie evidence that it is the spirits of the departed mortals that re-visit us, it behooves one to first study what antiquity has declared upon the subject. Ghosts and apparitions, materialized and semi-material “SPIRITS” have not originated with Allan Kardec, nor at Rochester. If those beings whose invariable habit it is to give themselves out for souls and the phantoms of the dead, choose to do so and succeed, it is only because the cautious philosophy of old is now replaced by an a priori conceit, and unproven assumptions. The first question is to be settled—“Have spirits any kind of substance to cloth themselves with?” Answer: That which is now called perisprit in France, and a “materialized Form” in England and America, was called in days of old peri-psyche, and peri-nous, hence was well known to the old Greeks. Have they a body whether gaseous, fluidic, etherial, material or semi-material? No; we say this on the authority of the occult teachings the world over. For with the Hindus atma or spirit is Arupa (bodiless,) and with the Greeks also. Even in the Roman Catholic Church the angels of Light as those of Darkness are absolutely incorporeal: “meri spiritus, omnes corporis expertes,” and in the words of the “Secret Doctrine,” primordial. Emanations of the undifferentiated Principle, the Dhyan Chohans of the ONE (First) category or pure Spiritual Essence, are formed of the Spirit of the one Element; the second category of the second Emanation of the Soul of the Elements; the third have a “mind body” to which they are not subject, but that they can assume and govern as a body, subject to them, pliant to their will in form and substance. Parting from this (third) category, they (the spirits, angels, Devas or Dhyan Chohans) have BODIES the first rupa group of which is composed of one element Ether; the second, of two—ether and fire; the third, of three—Ether, fire and water; the fourth of four—Ether, air, fire and water. Then comes man, who, besides the four elements, has the fifth that predominates in him—Earth: therefore he suffers. Of the Angels, as said by St. Augustine and Peter Lombard, their bodies are made to act not to suffer. It is earth and water, humor et humus, that gives an aptitude for suffering and passivity, ad patientiam, and Ether and Fire for action. The spirits or human monads, belonging to the first, or indifferentiated essence are thus incorporeal; but their third principle (or the human Fifth—Manas) can in conjunction with its vehicle become Kama rupa and Mayavi rupa—body of desire or “illusion body.” After death, the best, noblest, purest qualities of Manas or the human soul ascending along with the divine Monad into Devachan whence no one emerges from or returns, except at the time of reincarnation—what is that then which appears under the double mask of the spiritual Ego or soul of the departed individual? The Kama rupa element with the help of elementals. For we are taught that those spiritual beings that can assume a form at will and appear, i.e., make themselves objective and even tangible—are the angels alone (the Dhyan Chohans) and the nirmanakaya[141] of the adepts, whose spirits are clothed in sublime matter. The astral bodies—the remnants and dregs of a mortal being which has been disembodied, when they do appear, are not the individuals they claim to be, but only their simulachres. And such was the belief of the whole of antiquity, from Homer to Swedenborg; from the third race down to our own day.

More than one devoted spiritualist has hitherto quoted Paul as corroborating his claim that spirits do and can appear. “There is a natural and there is a spiritual body,” etc., etc., (1 Cor. xv, 44); but one has only to study closer the verses preceding and following the one quoted, to perceive that what St. Paul meant was quite different from the sense claimed for it. Surely there is a spiritual body, but it is not identical with the astral form contained in the “natural” man. The “spiritual” is formed only by our individuality unclothed and transformed after death; for the apostle takes care to explain in Verses 51 and 52, “Immut abimur sed non omnes.” Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.

But this is no proof except for the Christians. Let us see what the old Egyptians and the Neo-Platonists—both “theurgists” par excellence, thought on the subject: They divided man into three principal groups subdivided into principles as we do: pure immortal spirit; the “Spectral Soul” (a luminous phantom) and the gross material body. Apart from the latter which was considered as the terrestrial shell, these groups were divided into six principles; (1) Kha “vital body”; (2) Khaba “astral form,” or shadow, (3) Khou “animal soul” (4) Akh “terrestrial intelligence;” (5) Sa “the divine soul” (or Buddhi;) and (6) Sah or mummy, the functions of which began after death. Osiris was the highest uncreated spirit, for it was, in one sense a generic name, every man becoming after his translation Osirified, i. e., absorbed into Osiris—Sun or into the glorious divine state. It was Khou, with the lower portions of Akh or Kama rupa with the addition of the dregs of Manas remaining all behind in the astral light of our atmosphere—that formed the counterparts of the terrible and so much dreaded bhoots of the Hindus (our “elementaries.”) This is seen in the rendering made of the so-called “Harris. Papyrus on magic.” (papyrus magique, translated by Chabas) who calls them Kouey or Khou, and explains that according to the hieroglyphics they were called Khou or the “revivified dead,” the “resurrected shadows.”

When it was said of a person that he “had a Khou” it meant that he was possessed by a “Spirit.” There were two kinds of Khous—the justified ones,—who after living for a short time a second life (nam onh) faded out, disappeared; and those Khous who were condemned to wandering without rest in darkness after dying for a second time—mut, em, nam—and who were called the H’ou-mêtr (“second time dead”) which did not prevent them from clinging to a vicarious life after the manner of Vampires. How dreaded they were is explained in our Appendices on Egyptian Magic and “Chinese Spirits” (Secret Doctrine.) They were exorcised by Egyptian priests as the evil spirit is exorcised by the Roman Catholic curé; or again the Chinese houen, identical with the Khou and the “Elementary,” as also with the lares or larvæ—a word derived from the former by Festus, the grammarian; who explains that they were “the shadows of the dead who gave no rest in the house they were in either to the Masters or the servants.” These creatures when evoked during theurgic, and especially necromantic rites, were regarded, and are so regarded still, in China—as neither the Spirit, Soul nor any thing belonging to the deceased personality they represented, but simply, as his reflection—simmulacrum.

“The human soul,” says Apuleius, “is an immortal God” (Buddhi) which nevertheless has his beginning. When death rids it (the Soul), from its earthly corporeal organism, it is called lemure. There are among the latter not a few which are beneficent, and which become the gods or demons of the family, i. e., its domestic gods: in which case they are called lares. But they are vilified and spoken of as larvae when sentenced by fate to wander about, they spread around them evil and plagues. (Inane terriculamentum, celerum noxium malis;) or if their real nature is doubtful they are referred to as simply manes (Apuleius. see—Du Dieu de Socrate, pp. 143-145. Edit. Niz.) Listen to Yamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, Psellus and to dozens of other writers on these mystic subjects.

The Magi of Chaldea believed and taught that the celestial or divine soul would participate in the bliss of eternal light, while the animal or sensuous soul would, if good, rapidly dissolve, and if wicked, go on wandering about in the Earth’s sphere. In this case, “it (the soul) assumes at times the forms of various human phantoms and even those of animals.” The same was said of the Eidôlon of the Greeks, and of their Nephesh by the Rabbins: (See Sciences Occultes, Count de Resie. V. II) All the Illuminati of the middle ages tell us of our astral Soul, the reflection of the dead or his spectre. At Natal death (birth) the pure spirit remains attached to the intermediate and luminous body but as soon as its lower form (the physical body) is dead, the former ascends heavenward, and the latter descends into the nether worlds, or the Kama loka.

Homer shows us the body of Patroclus—the true image of the terrestrial body lying killed by Hector—rising in its spiritual form, and Lucretius shows old Ennius representing Homer himself, shedding bitter tears, amidst the shadows and the human simulachres on the shores of Acherusia “where live neither our bodies nor our souls, but only our images.”

“* * * Esse Acherusia templa,

* * * Quo neque permanent animæ, neque corpora nostra,