Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science

[275] Ibid., p. 488.

[276] Lecture by T. H. Huxley, F. R. S.: “Darwin and Haeckel.”

[277] “Migration of Abraham,” § 32.

[278] Cory: “Ancient Fragments.”

[279] “Origin of Species,” pp. 448, 489, first edition.

[280] Huxley: “Darwin and Haeckel.”

[281] Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the Theos ek petros—god of the rock.

[282] Bordj is called a fire-mountain—a volcano; therefore it contains fire, rock, earth, and water—the male and active, and the female or passive elements. The myth is suggestive.

[283] Virgil: “Georgica,” book ii.

[284] Porphyry and other philosophers explain the nature of the dwellers. They are mischievous and deceitful, though some of them are perfectly gentle and harmless, but so weak as to have the greatest difficulty in communicating with mortals whose company they seek incessantly. The former are not wicked through intelligent malice. The law of spiritual evolution not having yet developed their instinct into intelligence, whose highest light belongs but to immortal spirits, their powers of reasoning are in a latent state and, therefore, they themselves, irresponsible.

But the Latin Church contradicts the Kabalists. St. Augustine has even a discussion on that account with Porphyry, the Neo-platonist. “These spirits,” he says, “are deceitful, not by their nature, as Porphyry, the theurgist, will have it, but through malice. They pass themselves off for gods and for the souls of the defunct” (“Civit. Dei,” book x., ch. 2). So far Porphyry agrees with him; “but they do not claim to be demons [read devils], for they are such in reality!” adds the bishop of Hippo. But then, under what class should we place the men without heads, whom Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself? or the satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were exhibited for a considerable length of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us, “men with the legs and tails of goats;” and, if we may believe him, one of these Satyrs was actually pickled and sent in a cask to the Emperor Constantine!

[285] “Tria capita exsculpta sunt, una intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum” (Sohar; “Idra Suta,” sectio vii.)

[286] Gentle gale (lit.)

[287] Higgins: “Anacalypsis;” also “Dupruis.”

[288] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” pp. 401-406, and “The Songs of a Völuspa” Edda.

[289] From a London Spiritualist Journal.

[290] Hemmann: “Medico-Surgical Essays,” Berl., 1778.

[291] Robert Fludd: “Treatise III.”

[292] Prof. J. P. Cooke: “New Chemistry.”

[293] In the “Bulletin de l’Academie de Medecine,” Paris, 1837, vol. i., p. 343 et seq., may be found the report of Dr. Oudet, who, to ascertain the state of insensibility of a lady in a magnetic sleep, pricked her with pins, introducing a long pin in the flesh up to its head, and held one of her fingers for some seconds in the flame of a candle. A cancer was extracted from the right breast of a Madame Plaintain. The operation lasted twelve minutes; during the whole time the patient talked very quietly with her mesmerizer, and never felt the slightest sensation (“Bul. de l’Acad. de Med.,” Tom. ii., p. 370).

[294] Prophecy, Ancient and Modern, by A. Wilder: “Phrenological Journal.”

[295] The theory that the sun is an incandescent globe is—as one of the magazines recently expressed it—“going out of fashion.” It has been computed that if the sun—whose mass and diameter is known to us—“were a solid block of coal, and sufficient amount of oxygen could be supplied to burn at the rate necessary to produce the effects we see, it would be completely consumed in less than 5,000 years.” And yet, till comparatively a few weeks ago, it was maintained—nay, is still maintained, that the sun is a reservoir of vaporized metals!

[296] See Youmans: “Chemistry on the Basis of the New System—Spectrum Analysis.”

[297] Professor of Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology. See his “The Earth a Great Magnet,“a lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, 1872. See, also, Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture on “The Sun and the Earth.”

[298] “De Magnetica Vulner Curatione,” p. 722, l. c.

[299] See “On the Influence of the Blue Ray.”

[300] Ennemoser: “History of Magic.”

[301] “Du Magnetisme Animal, en France.” Paris, 1826.

[302] “The Conservation of Energy.” N. Y., 1875.

[303] “Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy.”

[304] “Simpl. in Phys.,” 143; “The Chaldean Oracles,” Cory.

[305] Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science.”

[306] J. R. Buchanan, M.D.: “Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology.”

[307] W. and Elizabeth M. F. Denton: “The Soul of Things; or Psychometric Researches and Discoveries.” Boston, 1873.

[308] “Religion of Geology.”

[309] “Principles of Science,” vol. ii., p. 455.

[310] J. W. Draper: “Conflict between Religion and Science,” pp. 132, 133.

[311] “Unseen Universe,” p. 159.

[312] F. R. Marvin: “Lecture on Mediomania.”

[313] “Unseen Universe,” p. 84, et seq.