Modern Magic: Ancient Enlightenment

Publisher Marketing: Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem, Cogitat, ut speciosa dehine miracula promat. HORACE. The aim of this little work is, therefore, limited to the gathering of such facts and phenomena as may serve to throw light upon the nature of the magic powers with which man is undoubtedly endowed. Its end will be attained if it succeeds in showing that he actually does possess powers which are not subject to the general laws of nature, but more or less independent of space and time, and which yet make themselves known partly by appeals to the ordinary senses and partly by peculiar phenomena, the result of their presume, the double griefat being separated from the body, with which it has so long been closely connected, and at the sins it has committed during life. This repentance will be naturally all the heartier, as it is no longer interrupted by sensual impressions. After a while this grief, like all sorrows, begins to moderate, and the soul returns to a state of peace: sooner, of course, in the case of persons who in their earthly life already had secured peace by the only means revealed to man; later, by those who had given themselves entirely up to the world and their passions. At the same time the living soul enters into communion with other souls, retaining, however, its individuality in sex, character, and temper, and, possibly, proceeds on a course of gradual purification, till it reaches the desired haven in perfect reconciliation with God. During this intermediate time there is nothing known to us which would absolutely forbid the idea that these living souls continue to maintain some kind of intercourse with the souls of men on earth, with whom they share all that constitutes their essential nature, save only the one fact of bondage to the body. Nor is there any reason why the soul in man should not be able, by its higher powers, to perceive and to consort with souls detached from mortal bodies, although this intercourse must needs be limited and imperfect because of the vast difference between a free soul and one bound to an earthly, sinful body. For man, when he dies, leaves behind in this world the body, dead and powerless, a corpse. He continues, however, to live, a soul, with all the peculiar powers which make up our spiritual organism; that is to say, the true man, in the higher sense of the word, exists still, though he dwell in another world.