the time who were strongly acted on by a | above his strength, and his comfortable berth desire to pierce deeper into the secrets of na- by door or hob of Penetralia, would have ture, so as to procure a long enjoyment of known him no more. this world's goods, as they looked but to a joyless after-life. These became incessant in sacrificing to, and otherwise propitiating, the mysterious Hecate, the powers that ruled Hades, and the elements of the earth, the fire, and the air, that they might be admitted to communication with those subtle and powerful beings from whom they were separated by their envelope of earth. The means used were travesties of the forms in which adoration had been paid from the beginning to the Supreme Being-incantations in mystic numbers instead of prayers, and sacrifices chiefly of unclean animals, and offerings of various substances always looked on with disgust as connected with the decay of our mortal frames. All that may be fairly looked on as superstitious practices among Christians, all belief in fairies and ghosts, are relics of paganism, which, despite the zeal and teaching of the early missionaries, remained fixed in the minds and hearts of the partly converted. Some pagan ideas remained the objects of lingering attachment and reverence, others of fear and dislike. The great shaggy satyr, Pan, concerning whom the awful voice was heard by the coast-dwellers of the central sea The spirit of prophecy made the soul of the chaste priestess of Delphi his favorite resting-place; but, when the oracle became dumb, the genius, now a lying, and perverse, and ill-informed one, selected for abode the breast of a woman, young or old, who, for the gift, had bartered her salvation with the Evil One. It fared somewhat better with the fauns and the female genii of the hills, the forests, the lakes, and the rivers. These became fairies, more or less kindly disposed to man; and the worst that happened to the fauns was their transformation to pookas, fir-darrigs, and lurikeens. In the heathen dispensation, Zens, Ares, Poseidon, and Orcus, contract morganatic marriages with mortal women; and some favored mortals, such as Anchises, Endymion, Tithonus, and Numa Pompilius, found favor in eyes of goddess, nymph of stream or sea, Oread of the hill, or Hamadryad of the wood. Those good times having come to an end, Michael Scott is found dwelling with the fairy queen in her kingdom; the handsome fisherman sitting by the side of the northern fiord, is enticed by the mermaid to descend to the meads and bowers at the bottom of the green waves; Ossian follows a golden-haired maiden through the sun-lighted waves till they reach Tir-na-n-Oge, land of youthful delight, at the bottom of the Atlantic; and the founder of the house of O'Sullivan Mhor is equally fortunate. Women, neglecting the sacred Christian rites, are carried into fairy hills, and recognized after many years by old neighbors, who, belated and slightly affected by "mountain dew," have entered an enchanted rath, lighted up brighter than the day, and filled with beautiful men and women with rich dresses, such as he never before saw, and probably will never see again. The great god Pan is dead," lost his prestige, and became the hoofed and horned devil of mediæval story and legend. The Lares and Lemures began to feel their identities and dispositions blending and getting confused; and at last the brownie or goblin, drudging lubber-fiend, lurikawn or pooka, was the result-nearly as well disposed as the Lar to the happiness of the family in which he was domesticated, but retaining something of the malignity of the Larva, and taking delight in whimsical and ludicrous annoyance, inflicted on lazy man or maid-servant. He still was grateful for food, but his reason for decamping from any house where new clothes But the representatives of the Celtic or were laid in his way, has not, as far as we Gothic superstition have received damage know, been satisfactorily accounted for. The from their remote ancestors. The graceful old familiar was only provided with a dog- fairy, dressed in red and green, skimming skin dressing-gown, so that for want of a suit over a Kerry meadow by moonlight, or the of ceremony, he could not go out to evening Neck, sitting by Scandinavian lake, and playparties however willing he might be. Per- ing on his harp, is equally doubtful of future haps had the Latian or Veian, or Tuscan happiness, when their present home shall Lar, been gladdened with the sight of a good" wither like a parched scroll." If priest or surtout, the temptation would have been peasant tell the anxiously inquiring Neck that he will be saved through the Saviour's | hypotheses as certain, deduces preposterous merits and goodness, then will he joyfully conclusions from them, but is not able to dance on the smooth lake to the sound of his shake the count's confidence in the soundness harp; but if a harsh answer is made, he ut- of his system, of which the following meagre ters a shriek, and dives to the water's deep-outline is presented :— est recess. These parallels might be extended to the utmost limit of a volume; so we give them up in despair. In adverting to the successors of the magicians, white and black, of ancient times, we must necessarily refer to that repository of recondite knowledge, the Cabbala. The root of the word is kibbel, to receive, which had reference to the supposed lofty learning acquired by Moses, while on the Mount, and which he afterwards communicated to Joshua. This was orally handed down to succeeding scholars, and passed in time to Christian adepts, whom the later Jewish sages admitted to their confidence in the spirit of Freemasonry. By degrees, those secret communications, in which the hidden designs of Providence, and all the mystic relations of spirit and matter were revealed, were entrusted to ink and parchment. The adepts began to feel less interest in the vast scheme of creation than in their own supposed relations with the lower invisible beings among whom they lived; and at last the studies of the sages seemed confined to the means for obliging the elementary spirits to appear and reveal their knowledge. "At the creation, beings of a refined and subtle essence were created to watch over the four elements, and kept the machinery of our terrestrial orb in the most pleasing and useful order. They were not spirits in the the quintessence of the several elements, recommon acceptation of the word, but rather fined and condensed, and differing from each other much in the same proportion as the grosser particles from which they were sublimated. These were the nymphs, the sylphs, the salamanders, and the gnomes, air, the fire, and the earth. There were male their respective charges being the waters, the and female spirits, even as the human race consisted of men and women; and if our first parents had consulted the well-being of themselves and their posterity, Eve would have wedded one of these pure and powerful beings, and Adam another. Then, instead of the sickly, weak, and wicked race that now incumbers the earth, there would flourish, during the time allotted for its endurance, a noble race of intellectual, powerful, and glorious beings, exempt from the yoke of passion and appetite, and enriched with a profound knowledge of the operations of nature, the mystical relations of the other heavenly bodies with ours, and the duties of all creatures to the Creator. was a high professor), preferred each other for life companions, and, we their unhappy offspring, are enduring the bitter consequences of their folly. “This desirable state of things, however, Has any reader of the University not yet was not to be. Our first parents foolishly perused the "Rape of the Lock," that gem (and even wickedly according to the Cabbaof ethereal poesy? Without pausing for an-listic philosophy, of which Count Gabalis swer, we beg to remind him that the poet, in dedicating the work to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, the beautiful heroine of the piece, refers her to certain memoirs of Le Comte de Gabalis for illustration of the spiritual machinery of the fable. He tells her that many ladies had read the book on the supposition of its being a romance, but says nothing as to the author's name or station. The witty and learned writer was the Abbe de Villars, of the Montfaucon family, and near relative of the learned Père de Montfaucon, Benedictin. He was assassinated on the road from Paris to Lyons in 1675, by a relative of his own. The Count of Gabalis, a profound Rosicrucian, pays a visit to the representative of the author, a young gentleman with a penchant for occult studies, and reveals the mysteries of his peculiar science to his half incredulous listener. The disciple taking the master's "Noah was wiser in his generation than Adam. Being actuated by the most lofty motives, he and his wife, Vesta, agreed to live apart, and select new partners from the elementary genii. She selected the Salamander, Oromasis, for her new lord and master, and their children were the renowned Zorobeloved of Numa in aftertimes. Sambethe, aster (otherwise Japhet), and Egeria, the a wise daughter of Noe, had the same goodfortune. It is scarcely necessary to explain that the sybils had the blood (ichor, we meant to say) of the sylphs in their arteries. Ham did not approve of this conduct of his parents, nor of the similar one of his brothers and their partners. He was a man of low propensities, terity. The vestal virgins were instituted in | in principle with what has been explained, but honor of her mother by Egeria, and Zoroaster we are not to blame. shed his lights on Persia and other countries "During the period from the days of Noe of Asia. The noble race (Ham's posterity to the commencement of the Christian era, excepted) that so rapidly peopled the world and in the rampant days of Paganism, the after the flood, owed their personal greatness elemental spirits wished to furnish to man and the stupendous works they were able to these helps, which an outraged Providence execute (still an enigma to the little people seemed indisposed to afford. So fine weather of later times) to the wisdom of Noah and was sent and prophecies were uttered by variVesta's selection of partners.* It is not sur-ous oracles, the foreseeing power of each beprising that the grand feature of Manichæism, ing an individual of one of the four orders. the denouncing of matrimony as being of the Evil Principle or Arimanes, should have taken its rise in the favored country of the son of the Salamander, Oromasis. As in most cases the human Media of old prophecies were of the gentle sex, they must have got their inspiration from spiritual beings of the ungentle ditto, who imparted "One little inconvenience attending the their knowledge of futurity to their mortal condition of our Rosicrucian essences, was spouses in return for the great boon of imtheir being subject to annihilation after longer mortality received through them. Gnome, or shorter periods of existence. However, nymph, salamander, or sylph, partaking in there was not wanting balm in Gilead. As no degree whatever of the malevolent nature soon as marriage rites were solemnized be- of the demons, thought-good easy spirits!— tween mortal and sylph, that moment the that they were doing great good by imparting aerial bride or bridegroom became immortal. their knowledge of future and distant occurSo the tutelary spirits of fire, air, and water, rences to their favorites; but see how the were well disposed to these profitable and best things may be abused by mortal folly pleasing alliances with the adepts of the Cab- and demon wickedness. The devils finding balistic science. The devils, notwithstanding man abandoned to his own devices, and no the prevalent belief concerning their state, powers looking after his lowly condition but were strictly confined within the glowing cen- the benevolent beings of the Cabbala, got it tre of the earth, and unable to look abroad circulated among the degenerate sons of men, on our fair world, or induce man or woman that the priestess who sat on the uncomfortto displease the Creator. The gnomes-the able tripod at Delphi, received inspiration, spirits of the earth produced by the selection not from an elemental sprite, but from a and etherization of its finest particles, resid- deity, who deserved and ought to receive diing in the regions next to the demons' habi- vine honors from the hands and lips of man. tation, had good opportunity of witnessing Moreover, the spirits the refined quintessentheir horrible condition, indefinitely aggra- ces and the guardians of the elements from vated by the idea of the eternity of their suf- which they had been formed, were not merely ferings. The demons, on their side, improved to be cherished and honored, but adoredthe occasion by representing to the simpleminded gnomes, that if they formed earthly connections they would be damned, and their torments lengthened out for an eternity of eternities. This had the desired effect. Scarcely a gnome would consent to be united to the finest man or woman born (bear in mind that there are male and female gnomes), while the only bar that prevented every nymph, sylph, and salamander from obtaining the boon of immortality, was the fewness of the large minded philosophers of the occult science, who alone were calculated to make them happy. The following great fact jars a little It may be reasonably supposed that the text "The sons of God saw the daughters of men," etc., etc., misunderstood and misinterpreted, led, to the adoption of these absurdities and the Manichean errors, among the professors of the Cabbala. A variety introduced by some sage makes Namah, wife of Noah, to have been beloved by the spirit Azael, who for her sake voluntarily renounced his high privilege, and has continued an outcast to the present time. yes, adored!* Oh, cunning and baleful fiends, how like the bees of Trebizond,' you convert the finest juice extracted from the flowers of creation into deadly poison, driving the souls of men into madness. "It might be naturally supposed that the marriage of an ondine or a sylph with a son of Eve, would be attended with some joyful ceremonial; such, indeed, was the case. The sprites on these occasions would, as a preparatory exercise, listen to a Prone from a head doctor in Cabbalistic lore. If it were a reluctant gnome brought at last to see the er-ror of his ways, the professor would hold forth on the great benefit conferred on him *We are not ignorant of the jarring of this portion of the Cabbalistic theory upon that already enunciated concerning the innocuous and confined condition of the natives of Pandemonium. But if any theory-monger whose system is not based on God's Word finds fault, we will be at the trouble of obliging him to produce his own. The vulgar theory: as to the necessity of a good memory to a liar is very applicable here. by his union with a daughter of earth, all that his neighbors of the burning pit could say against it, notwithstanding. Orpheus was the first of mortal mould who held forth to these subtilized beings; and on his opening speech the great gnome, Sabatius, abjured annihilation and celibacy, and took a mortal bride. These meetings have since borne the name of the wise convert, and a new trait of the malice of the devil has manifested itself thereby. We do not hear much of Witches' Sabats,' so called, til the middle of the fifteenth century, but they existed long before; and the Satanic agents took care to spread abroad that instead of intellectual and mildly joyful reunions, they were meetings held by repulsive old hags, and shameless young women, and the reprobate men, all presided over by the great goatish-looking wretch himself, who made villanous music for them, exhorted them to do all the mischief practicable between that and the next meeting; and instead of allowing them to kiss his hand or mouth, obliged each man or woman to bestow his or her accolade upon a less honorable portion of his person. Another palpable instance of the devil's vain-glory, and his spite against gnomes and men! Knowing the noble and lofty position to be attained by man when united in brotherhood to the elemental genii, he gets his fauterers on earth to throw an air of sordid indecency, impiety, and horror over these reunions, Goethe and other poets giving their aid, and thus deterred men from an acquaintance so beneficial to themselves and their posterity. "We must give another instance or two of the malicious aspersions thrown upon the descendants of the gnomes and sylphs. The great (impostor according to some) Appolonius of Tyana understood the language of birds; could vanish into thin air when Domitian wished to lay hands on him; raised a dead girl to life; announced in an assembly in Asia, that at the same moment they were putting a tyrant to death in Rome; * but all these great deeds of his are imputed to the devil instead of the ondine or salamander, to whom he was tied in Hymen's chain. An English princess bears the sage Merlin to a spirit-husband, and the world, instigated by the evil one, denounces her as an unchaste woman. Yea, many will contend that the * This Cagliostro of the ancients was born in Cappadocia, a few years before the Christian era. He was a Pythagorean, and renounced wine, women, meat, and fish, at least in appearance. He died towards the end of the first century, making sure to conceal the manner of it, even from his confident, Damis. This honest man wrote his life, which was afterwards enlarged and polished into a romance by Philostratus. fay or genius, Melusina, is not the ancestress of the noble house of Lusignan, in Poitiers. 66 If any ambitious and inquisitive reader is induced to seek the acquaintance of these wise, beautiful, and benevolent beings, and is anxious to know the mode of opening a communication with them, let him restrain his impatience a little. The learned Comte de Gabalis offered to introduce his disciple to an assembly whom he was going to address in public; this was to be on the next interview between disciple and sage; but if it took place, the Abbé has left presentation and acquaintance unrecorded. There is a supposition that the Teraphim carried off from Laban were used by him for obtaining interviews with the sprites, and therefore his concern at being robbed of them was so great. Micheas, in the Book of Judges, also bitterly lamented his idols, probably for the same reason. The only hope we can hold out to our presumptuous friend lies in a search after these idols or Teraphim. "The mystics of the Middle Ages cherished tutelar genii, as well as these beings just enlarged on. These undertook to warn the mortals to whom they were attached of impending danger, to point out the right line of conduct in doubtful concerns, and to be of as much use to him in worldly matters as his guardian angel in the affairs of his spiritual ones. Hence the warnings sent in dreams the sudden thoughts that enter the mind, as by inspiration, pointing to this or that line of conduct or action, sure to lead to a good result. Those who appear born to disappointments and misfortunes are naturally wayward and negligent and indocile to good instruction: hence their genii at last get tired of their charge, and leave them to the ordinary adverse course of events. What earthly chance would all the non-beautiful women have of winning desirable partners in life were they not aided by their genii, who communicate a charm to their tones and gestures, infuse an agreeability of manner into them, and cause their homely features to be seen through an enchanted medium? An example will exhibit the proceedings of these good genii better than whole pages of essay. "A savant of Dijon, contemporary with Christina of Sweden and Descartes, was annoyed by a passage in one of the Greek poets for days. He was unable to penetrate the sense; and, at last, despairingly betook himself to sleep. In a dream his genius conducted him to the royal library of Stockholm. He accurately observed the arrangement of the shelves, busts, etc., and at the end, opened a volume, and found, about the twenty-fourth page, a passage in Greek which completely solved his difficulty. Awaking, he struck a light, wrote down the lines while they were fresh in his memory, and on rising next morn- of the genius- the brimless hat, the winding, he found the solution of his perplexity ing-sheet, and the inscriptions, and fumigaon the table. He questioned by letter the tions, and lustrations, were not omitted. philosopher, Descartes, who had charge of The tyro went on his knees, and recited a the library at Stockholm at the time, and certain formula, with his face to the east, his found the description given of its local fea- eyes having previously been rubbed with a tures to correspond exactly with the picture collyrium used by Psellus* when invoking presented to him in his sleep. A duplicate spirits. He had also swallowed some drops of the very scarce volume, which he had up of a concentrated essence of pure earth. The to the date of his dream, never seen, was sent gnome prince appeared, small of size, but to him, and his wonder and perplexity were finely proportioned, and in his reply to the great. Let no professional mountebank as- great Magnamara, he was as little complicribe this wonderful circumstance to his dar-mentary to the human family as the King of ling clairvoyance; the savant had no profes- Brobdingnag to Lemuel Gulliver's fellowsor by to throw him into the mesmeric trance, and bid him cherche. "This case was nearly matched by what happened to a councillor of the French Parliament, to whom a young man appeared in his sleep, and uttered a few words in a foreign and (to him) unknown tongue. He wrote down the sounds as well as he could, and showed the paper to the learned Mons. de Sommaise, who pronounced the piece to be a Syriac passage written in Roman character, and the purport this: "Go out of thy house; for it will be a heap of ruins tomorrow evening." The councillor showed himself a man of sense. He removed his family and his furniture; and the house, when it fell, caused no loss of life nor valuable furniture. men, after the little man had endeavored to impress his gigantic majesty with the goodness and power and ability of European human nature in the reign of the First George." Such sages as the imaginary Count of Gabalis and Mr. Magnamara would, of course, shudder at being obliged to seek aid from genius or elementary sprite in obtaining any gift less than the Universal Menstruum or the philosopher's stone, and this chiefly for the advantage of their fellow men. They renounced the agency of the devil and his imps (in theory) as earnestly as ever did Miss Miggs" prenounce the Pope of Babylon and all his works which is Pagan. The contrast between the knowledge-seeking, disinterested "These and other wonderful interferences spirit of Rosicrucianism † evident in the of genii for good are given on the authority dreamy theories of Cardan, Agrippa, Paraof an Irish adept, whom his French laudator called Magnamara. He made no difficulty celsus, Albertus Magnus, and others, and the of bringing a young aspirant face to face malignant, disgusting, and horrible practices with his guardian genius. In an obscure of sorcery, from its rise among the earliest apartment he drew a circle on the floor, and idolators, is very striking. It is not surprisa square within the circle (Sir E. Bulwer ing, that those who believed every portion of Lytton would have preferred a pentagon), the earth and its products, and all the powers placed a mysterious name of the Deity at of nature, to be represented by some numen each angle of the figure, and the powerful name, Agla, in the centre. He then stripped or spiritual influence, should endeavor to the postulant, clapped a brimless hat on his propitiate the superior essences, and subjuhead, and a winding-sheet round his shoul-gate the inferior ones to their will. The ders, made him so stand inside the square moon, so mystical in its motions and changes, that the powerful Agla would lie between his its apparent waning and extinction, and refeet, punctured some characters on his fore-newal of being, could not fail to attract the head, and wrote certain words in two small deepest attention from every tyro in the circles in his right hand. This was all, except some very vigorous prayers said on his study of occult sciences. The priests boasted knees, with his face to the rising sun. * A Greek writer who flourished in the reign of Constantine Ducas. "It will be recollected that the Comte de Ros, dew; and crux, cross. The dew was supGabalis forgot to summon, or was prevented posed one of the most effective dissolvents for all from summoning, one of the elementary stubborn substances. Crucibles were marked with sprites for the edification of his disciple; but the cross, and the compound word was deemed a fit the Irish sage, after gratifying his pupil with title for sages in search of the Universal Menstruum the sight of his genius, called up a refractory and the philosopher's stone. John Valentine Angnome, to whom he read an unavailing lec- drea, born in the end of the fifteenth century, ture on the stiff-neckedness of his tribe re- their secrets as carefully as the Druids. They seem makes first mention of the society. They guarded garding intermarriages with mortals. The to have dwindled into the Illuminati of the eighdress of ceremony was the same as on the visit teenth century. |