HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOM

The celestial being who, whether as God or an angel, becomes the Heavenly Bridegroom of an earthly woman, is better known to the literature of the Christian Churches than most people who are not theologians are aware. But he is not peculiar to Christianity. He has been known and recognized throughout the world in all ages. The woman to whom he comes is, as a rule, distinguished for her purity of life. Usually she is a virgin; but where already married and a mother, she must be recognized as chaste or, at least, there must be no stigma of impurity upon her reputation. I am not at the present writing aware of a single exception to this.

Let us, however, first consider the Heavenly Bridegrooms of Christianity, from the popular orthodox standpoint.

There are two Heavenly Bridegrooms--the Holy Spirit and Christ.

The first of these, the Holy Spirit, is, according to the New Testament, the Being through whose agency she whom the Catholic Church delights to honor as the Blessed Virgin became incarnate with Jesus. The second of these, Christ, is the Being honored alike by Catholics and by Protestants as the Bridegroom of the Church; by Catholics also as the mystic Spouse of the ecstatic and purified nun, as in the case of Saint Teresa; and by Protestants as the Bridegroom of the Soul, in that popular hymn beginning:

"Jesus, Lover of my soul,

"Let me to Thy bosom fly!"

I once attended a young women's revival meeting at Ocean Grove, held under the auspices of an evangelist who was noted for his success in converting young girls. When the enthusiasm flagged, and his hearers were slow in responding to his appeals to "come to Christ", he started the above hymn, and the ardor of his fair congregation was at once kindled, girl after girl rising to publicly give herself to Christ. That which earnest pleading for their soul's salvation had failed to accomplish, was brought about by this simple suggestion of the "Lover of the Soul". In thus stimulating the untrained emotions of a maiden to aspire to the Divine through symbolism of earthly affection, this revivalist not only showed keen insight into human nature, but was also instinctively true to the teachings of the innermost truth of all religions, as I hope to show further on.

In the Bible an entire book--the Song of Solomon--is given up to expressing the raptures of the Heavenly Bridegroom and his Bride. At least, this is the interpretation which the Christian Church universally puts upon Canticles--the reciprocal joys of Christ, the Bridegroom, and His Bride, the Church. Various phases of the sensuous relations of husband and wife are there set forth in figurative but unmistakable terms of passion--passion which the Christian world has, unfortunately, long since forgotten how to utilize as the most important means of growth towards the Divine.

But there are other Heavenly Bridegrooms besides Christ and the Holy Spirit referred to in the Bible.

In the sixth chapter of Genesis may be found a curious text, which reads:

"The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose."

The Septuagint originally rendered the words 'Sons of God' by [Greek letters Alpha-Gamma-Gamma-Epsilon-Lambda-Omicron- Iota Tau-Omicron-Upsilon Theta-Epsilon-Omicron-Upsilon], angels of God, and this rendering is found in Philo, de Gigantibus, Eusebius, Augustine and Ambrose.

This view of Genesis VI 1-4 was held by most of the early fathers.

See the Book of Enoch, translated from Professor Dillman's Ethiopic Text by R.H. Charles, Oxford, 1893 e.v. In fact, in the Book of Enoch, these sons of God are spoken of all through as angels who wedded earthly women; and it is further stated that these angelic husbands broke the law, living in depravity with their earthly wives, and laying the foundation of evils which required the Deluge to sweep away. Critical scholarship usually holds these angels to be fallen. But St. Augustine protests against this view, saying: "I truly firmly believe that God's angels could never fall so at that time."

Nevertheless, we find in the Book of Enoch, XV 4:

"Whilst you were still spiritual, holy, in the enjoyment of eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with women, have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and have lusted after the blood of men, and produced flesh and blood, as those produce who are mortal and short-lived."

Here we see that the angels, whatever their after depravity, were "still holy" when they united themselves as heavenly bridegrooms with earthly women.

However, from the above, and from other texts in Enoch, it would appear that the angels are blamed for having broken the laws of right living so far as to turn the relations existing between them and their earthly wives into the grossest sensuality. They, rather than the women, seem to be credited with the responsibility for evil-doing. But it is noticeable that Genesis is silent as to the character of these angelic bridegrooms, while it lays stress on the fact that the imaginations of men's hearts were evil continually, as though this last were the real cause of the wickedness which required the purification of the Deluge.

Now, let us remember that the Book of Enoch, although referred to in Jude, is not canonical. It belongs to the Hebrew Apocalyptic literature, and was for sometime lost, save for a few fragments preserved in references made by ecclesiastical writers. However valuable to scholars, it is uncanonical and thus cannot be accepted by Christians today as the Word of God. Genesis, on the contrary, is accepted by Christians today as the Word of God; and therefore, the total omission of this sacred book to bring any charge against these angelic "sons of God", while the depravity of man is dwelt upon at this period of the world's history, is not a matter to be passed over lightly by a Christian.

According to the Christian Scripture, then, it was not the wickedness of the angels who wedded earthly women, but the evil imaginations of the human heart that brought about the punishment of the Deluge. And in this, Genesis is in strict accord with modern Theosophy--the only philosophy, so far as I know, which professes to know the Alpha and Omega of occultism. Theosophy lays stress on the punishment which awaits the black sorcerer--the earthly being who uses real or pretended magical powers for evil purposes. And not only the "black sorcerer" himself, but those who uphold him, share in the punishment dealt out by the Higher Powers--as the Theosophical Society has found, to its cost, when it attempted to shield both from public investigation and from Theosophic censure a member who was said to have fraudulently exploited a Mahatma to further his own interests.

But Theosophy is not alone in this teaching. All occultism, by whatever name it is called, however imperfect in deductions, learns at last to beware of the occultist who breaks the moral law, or who, whether wilfully or carelessly, through prejudice or through crafty desire to advance his own selfish interests, closes his eyes to the truth. In other words, clear thinking and correct living are the only passport to trustworthiness in an occultist.

It is true that there are many psychical phenomena which at first sight do not seem to require any special exercise of morality on the part of the percipient. Such are the carefully attested phenomena of thought transference and wraith-seeing (especially of the astral form as "double" of people at the point of death or undergoing a sudden shock) which the Society for Psychical Research have collated from a multitude of sources--in the case of the "double" to the number of some three thousand. The percipients in these instances are probably average sort of folks, no better and no worse than the majority of their fellows. Yet they see or hear by means of senses which are still unrecognized by most people, and which are therefore termed "occult"; and what they perceived is afterwards proved to be an actual occurrence, often of something taking place miles away.

But it is to be observed that (1) the reliable cases collated by the S. P. R. are furnished by people who seem to be clear-headed enough, at least, to form definite mental conceptions; (2) that the majority of these cases are perceptions of occurrences in this earthly life. Where the thing claimed as seen or heard by the percipients no longer belongs to this world, but to the world beyond the grave, as in the case of visions or voices of those now deceased, the phenomena collated by the Society of Psychical Research seem not only to be accidental and capricious but they also seldom furnish a veridical (i.e., truth telling) communication.

In the case of Spiritualist mediums, professional or amateur, where the phenomena assume some show of regularity, and are claimed by the medium to come entirely from the world beyond the grave, one always has to be on one's guard against the subtle interpolation among otherwise truthful matter of fantastic or misleading statements made apparently by the communicating spirits themselves. Occultists in all ages have invariably assumed such statements to be the work of "lying spirits". But it is noticeable that a medium of correct life and clearness of intellectual conception is less troubled by such lying spirits than is the medium of halting intellect or morals. This of itself should indicate to the thoughtful student of occult phenomena that the medium, and not the spirits, may be to blame when lying communications are made. Just as in Astronomy it is now found that the apparent movements of the sun and fixed stars are due almost entirely to our own planet's motion through space, so, I think, when we explore the heavens of occultism we shall eventually realize that erratic psychical phenomena are due to our own shifting relation to the beings who produce phenomena. Not until people got rid of the Ptolemaic theory that the Earth was a permanent unmovable fixture in the heavens did they learn that the bewildering cycles and epicycles of the sun and fixed stars were caused by the movements of their own planet thorough space; and not until we get rid of what I may call the Ptolemaic theory of occultism, that the psychic is the one permanent, immovable factor in the apparently shifting phenomena about him, will we ever get at the true scientific laws of occultism that our own vibrations--or our own moral and intellectual ups and downs--are almost entirely responsible for the erraticness of Borderland communications. To blame Borderland intelligences for "lying" is as if in the proverbial London fog at noonday one should blame the sun for not shining. The sun is shining right along; but it is the smoke from one's neighbors which returns upon one to shield the sun from one's view.

It is generally assumed that the false or fantastic remarks so subtly interpolated into communications which are otherwise truthful and uplifting are due to the fact that evil spirits get temporary control of the medium. But this theory presupposes a state of society in the spirit-world far worse regulated than with us. It is often claimed, for instance, that crowds of spirits throng about a powerful medium as a crowd of people on earth sometimes flock about a telegraph operator in times of excitement, each man selfishly striving to get his message sent off first. But, even in our imperfect civic life, is such an occurrence usual? By no means. Is it likely that in a new life, with its added experience, such gross violations of law and order should be allowed to take place or to continue right along? By no means. Even if Heaven be not as Christian believe, the abode of God and the angels; even supposing that it is merely, as most Spiritualists claim, an improved edition of this world, it is but logical to infer that law and order will obtain there as here, and even more so, because the tendency of human society is always in the direction of systematizing its work for mutual convenience of its members. The idea that a good spirit may at any moment be temporarily displaced by an evil one, and that the laws of that clearer thought-world beyond the grave are powerless to cope with this annoyance is absurd, and contrary to common sense. The fault of imperfect communication is just as likely to be ours as theirs. Let us but see to it that the lines of psychical communication are laid (on our side of the abyss of death) in correctness of moral living, and clearness of intellectual conception before we rashly assume the fault to be theirs. If they are in a world where new laws of matter obtain, as they must be, if they live at all after the decay of the body, to communicate intelligently with us may not be as easy for them as we imagine. They may find themselves confronted at every turn by such difficulties as confront the traveler who seeks to explain to African savages the wonders of, say, the telephone or the phonograph. Between his mind and theirs, what a gap! And this gap cannot be bridged by the clearest of explanations of his part, unless the savages in turn question and requestion on every point on which the least uncertainty remains. That is to say, the savages must do their utmost to form clear intellectual conceptions of every idea set forth by their civilized visitor from afar, or he will leave their brains filled with the most ridiculous and distorted mind-pictures. Yet, the savage and the civilized traveler are both dwellers on the same material plane, while the spirits who seek to tell us of the wonder of their life are evidently on a different plane of matter. How great the need, then, that we should take even more pains than must the savage to form clear conceptions of every idea uttered by these visitors from an unknown land! One idea prejudged by us, and allowed to remain without due examination of the foundations on which it rests, will throw the remainder of our mental conceptions out of balance. One false theory, stubbornly held as gospel truth, places us mentally where all else is out of focus.

(Therein will be found also a statement requiring an occult principle which seems not only to forbid spirits from communicating accurately with an immoral medium, but which seems to positively enjoin upon them the utterance of all the foolish, depraved and even criminal ideas that the medium is willing to receive, and places us mentally at a standpoint where all else is out of focus. Thus, the slightest prejudices on any given subject under discussion between our celestial visitors and ourselves will render us liable to distorted conceptions of their ideas.) Such is the law of our own thought-world here on the earthly plane; and we must remember that they have left our plane and entered into a far wider thought-world than ours. Hence the need for rigidly clear thinking on the part of every would-be occultist. And, since, as has been well said, "All badness is madness", we must not forget to also reckon a well-ordered moral life as among the attributes of the really clear-headed man or woman. Thus, correct living and clear thinking go hand in hand as vouchers for accuracy of mediumship between this world and the world beyond the grave. The philosophy which deals with what is variously called the automatic faculty, the subjective consciousness, the subconsciousness or the sub-liminal ("Below the threshold") consciousness as an important factor in fantastic and misleading psychic phenomena from spirits will be found set forth at length in my little book on Hell's Happy Sunshine. Therein will be found a principle which seems not only to forbid spirits from communicating with an unworthy medium, but positively to enjoin upon them the utterance of all the foolish, depraved, and even criminal ideas that the medium is willing to receive. (Up to a certain point; beyond which the spiritual intelligences withdraw and the medium's own sub-consciousness assumes control with the subterfuges and ingenious evasions peculiar to that faculty.) But when fantastic or misleading ideas emanate from spiritual intelligences and not from the medium's own sub-consciousness, they are either as an ordeal for the training of the medium, or as a wise and just punishment. To explain the application of this law in detail, however, would extend the present treatise to an undue length. Suffice to say here that in all such cases, however varied the manifestations, whether of a super-normal sub-consciousness or of outside intelligences, failure to think clearly, as to live in accordance with the moral requirements of self-control, duty, aspiration to the highest, unselfishness and genuine purity, will be found responsible for the disappointing psychic manifestations on the Borderland.

When, therefore, the Book of Enoch blames the angelic sons of God, rather than their earthly wives, for the depravity of relations said to exist between them as spirits and mediums, we may well ask if this be not a matter on which the writer of the Book of Enoch has carelessly accepted current legends. May it not be that he, too, believed all depraved psychical manifestations to be due to "evil sprits", and that he was totally unaware of the occult law which brings these things to pass with a medium who, ignorantly but persistently, fails in clear thinking or correct loving?

Once more let us remember that the Book of Genesis, which is canonical, lays stress on the fact that at this epoch the imaginations of men's hearts were evil continually.

Josephus refers to the subject as follows: "For many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat some that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. For the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants."

Antiquities of the Jews I, iii-/

Josephus it will be noticed, agrees with Genesis in laying no blame on either the angelic husbands or the earthly wives. Neither does he on their daughters. The sons, and only the sons, are denounced by Josephus as "despisers of all that was good", on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. His account, taken with that of Genesis, brings out a suggestive idea--that in the succeeding generations man was pre-eminently the sex which violated the laws of right living.

If this inference be warranted, the question arises: what were those laws of right living which the male sex violated to such an extent that a deluge was needed to purge the earth of their evil? The answer to this will be manifested further on.

When the Christian Church appeared on the stage of history, it found several varying traditions current about those sons of God who, so many centuries before, had taken unto themselves wives from among the daughters of men.

One after the other the early Church Fathers wrestled with these traditions, and strove to fit them into the Christian theological system. Beginning with Paul, we find that he asserts in the 11th Chapter of 1st Cor. that a woman ought to be veiled, as a token of her inferiority and dependence upon man, and he adds: "For this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels." Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, quoting this text makes it read: "A woman ought to have a veil upon her head because of the angels." From Tertullian we learn what this "because of the angels" means. He says in his work Aganist Marcion (V. 18): "The apostle was quite aware that the spiritual wickedness (Ephesians, VI, 12.) had been at work in heavenly places when angels were entrapped into sin by the daughters of men."

In sundry places Tertullian waxes wroth over this supposed "entrapping" of angels by earthly women. In a treatise On the Veiling of Virgins--written as a rejoinder to those who claimed that women did not need to be veiled until they became wives, he speaks his mind thus:

"So perilous a face, then, ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far as heaven; that when standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their (native) confines, it may blush before the other angels as well; and may repress that former evil liberty of its head--a liberty now to be exhibited not even before human eyes."

(On Veiling of Virgins, VII.)

The author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is, if anything, more severe. He remarks:

"Hurtful are women, my children; because, since they have no power or strength over the man, they act subtilly through outward guise how they may draw him to themselves; and whom they (do not) overcome by strength, him they overcome by craft. By means of their adornment, they deceive first their minds, and instil the poison by the glance of their eye, and then they take captive by their doings, for a woman cannot overcome a man by force. Therefore, my children, command your wives and your daughters that they adorn not their heads and their faces; because every woman who acteth deceitfully in these things hath been reserved to everlasting punishment. For thus they allured the Watchers before the flood."

(Testament of Reuben, 5.)

He adds that these angelic Watchers manifested as apparitions to the women at the times of their union with their earthly husbands, "and the women, having in their minds desire towards their apparitions, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto Heaven."

Here we see an attempt to account for the resulting progeny of "giants" spoken of in Genesis VI by such simple and natural means as Jacob made use of when he desired to produce "ring-straked, speckled and spotted" goats (Genesis XXX). No mention is made of marital relations being established directly between earthly women and angels. Elsewhere the same writer (Testament of Naphthali, 3) speaks of these same Watchers as having "changed the order of their nature, whom also the Lord cursed at the flood, and for their sakes made desolate the earth."

This follows a reference to Sodom, the writer seeming to trace a similarity between the two causes of the two punishments. Justin Martyr, however, makes the offence of the sinning angels to consist rather in ambition for power over mankind. He says:

"God committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed the appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by their lustful passions; and among man they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness."

These things, according to Justin, the poets (unaware that they were due to sinning angels) ignorantly ascribed to God (Jupiter) and to those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the Olympian deities in general.

Lactantius lays the blame principally upon Satan. Speaking of the repeated efforts of the serpent ("who from his deeds received the name of devil, that is, accuser or informer") to corrupt mankind, he adds:

"But when God saw this, He sent His angels to instruct the race of men, and to protect them from all evil. He gave these a command to abstain from earthly things, lest, being polluted by any taint, they should be deprived of the honor of angels. But that wily accuser, while they tarried among men, allured these also to pleasures, so that they might defile themselves with women. Then, being condemned by the sentence of God, and cast forth on account of their sins, they lost both the name and the substance of angels. Thus, having become ministers of the devil, that they might have a solace of their ruin they betook themselves to the ruining of men, for whose protecting they had come."

(Lactantius: Epitome of the Divine Institutes, XXVII)

"Thus from angels the devil makes them to become his satellites and attendants. But they who were born from these, because they were neither angels nor men, but bearing a kind of mixed (middle) nature, were not admitted into hell as their fathers were not into heaven. Thus there came to be two kinds of demnos, one of heaven, the other of the earth."

(Lactantius: The Divine Institutes, Book II, 15)

In one place Justin Martyr speaks of "evil demons" who "in times of old, assuming various forms, went in unto the daughters of men." Elsewhere, he also speaks of these demons manifested as apparitions that misled boys as well as women.

He said that they "showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions done were struck with terror, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods." Justin evidently looks upon the angelic bridegrooms as demoniacal from the start. Clement of Alexandria says that the angels "renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell from heaven to earth."

Athenagoras asserts that the angels "fell into impure love of virgins." And the author of the Clementine Recognitions says that they "fell into promiscuous and illicit connections." But Tertullian calls attention to the fact that sacred Scripture terms these angels husbands; and he argues at length very ably to show that we are bound to infer from Scripture that the earthly wives of these angelic husbands were virgins, pure and undefiled, at the time of their marriage. From which, I think, it is evident that these marriages were acceptable to virtuous women, and therefore, we may infer, not an infringement of the civil law of the time; or the sex which is proverbially conservative would never have contributed so largely to these unions from among its best members. Nor could they have been unions which transgressed the laws of nature, or the offspring which was said to have resulted would not have been so well developed physically (as giants) nor mentally (as "mighty men which were, of old, men of renown.")

Clement of Alexandria, in his Miscellanies (Stromata), appears to blame the sinning angels in addition because they "told to the women the secrets which had come to their knowledge; while the rest of the angels concealed them, or, rather, kept them against the coming of the Lord." These "secrets", we learn from several of the Christian Fathers, were the arts of metallurgy, dyeing, the properties of herbs, astronomy and astrology, etc. Reasoning from this assumption--that certain sciences and industrial arts were imparted to mankind from sinful angels, we need not wonder that Tertullian pertinently asks:

"But, if the self-same angels who disclosed both the material substances of this kind and their charms--of gold, I mean, and lustrous stones--and taught men how to work them, and by and by instructed them, among their other instructions, in the virtue of eye-lid powder and the dyeing of fleeces, have been condemned by God, as Enoch tells us, how shall we please God while we joy in the things of those angels who, on these accounts, have provoked the anger and vengeance of God?"

Tertul. on Female Dress, II. 10.

This thought seems to have been to him a matter of serious moment, for he enlarges upon it as follows when speaking of the dress and ornamentation of women:

"For they, withal, who instituted them are assigned, under condemnation, to the penalty of death--those angels to wit, who rushed from heaven on the daughters of men; so that this ignominy also attached to women. For when to an age much more ignorant (than ours) they had disclosed certain well-concealed material substances, and several not well-revealed scientific arts--if it is true that they had laid bare the operations of metallurgy, and had divulged the natural properties of herbs, and had promulgated the powers of enchantment, and had traced out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars--they conferred properly and as it were peculiarly upon women that instrumental means of womanly ostentation, the radiance of jewels wherewith necklaces are variegated, and the circlets of gold wherewith the arms are compressed, and the medicaments of archil with which wools are colored, and that black powder itself wherewith the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent. What is the quality of these things may be declared meantime, even at this point, from the quality and condition of their teachers; in that sinners could never have either shown or supplied anything conducive to integrity, unlawful lovers anything conducive to chastity, renegade spirits anything to the fear of God. If these things are to be called teachings, ill masters must of necessity have taught ill; if wages of lust, there is nothing base of which the wages are honorable. But why was it of so much importance to show these things as well as to confer them? Was it that women without material causes of splendor, and without ingenious contrivances of grace, could not please men, who, while unadorned and uncouth, and--so to say--crude and rude, had moved the minds of angels? Or was it that the angelic lovers would appear sordid and--through gratuitous use--contumelious, if they had conferred no compensating gift on the women who had been enticed into connubial connection with them? But these questions admit of no calculation. Women who possessed angels as husbands could desire nothing more; they had, forsooth, made a grand match. Assuredly they who of course did sometimes think whence they had fallen and, after the heated impulses of their lusts, looked up towards heaven, thus requited that very excellence of women, natural beauty, as having proved a cause of evil, in order that their good fortune might profit them nothing but that, being turned from simplicity and sincerity they, together with the angels themselves, might become offensive to God. Sure they were all that ostentation and ambition, and love of pleasing by carnal means, was displeasing to God."

(Tertullian on Female Dress, Ch. II.)

Cyprian, when blaming virgins for wearing jewels, necklaces and wool stuffs colored with costly dyes, likewise remarks:

"...All which things sinning and apostate angels put forth by their arts, when, lowered to the

contagions of earth, they forsook their heavenly vigor."

(On the Dress of Virgins, 14)

When we remember that early Christianity set its face like a flint against all delights of the senses, and that this extreme reaction of the spiritual against the sensuous has largely shaped our social customs of today, we begin to see how important and far-reaching were these opinions of the early Church Fathers that feminine adornment had been taught by angels who had sinned in wedding earthly women, and that it was therefore a sinful thing in that it had emanated from a depraved source. Some of the theories built upon this assumption are quite curious. Here are a few:

"That which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless He was unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue fleeces: if He was able, then plainly he was unwilling; what God willed not, of course, ought not to be fashioned."

(Tertullian on Female Dress, I. 8.)

"For it was God, no doubt, who showed the way to dye wools with the juices of herbs and the humors of conchs; it had escaped Him, when He was bidding the Universe come into being, to issue a command for the production of purple and scarlet sheep."

(Ib., II. 10.)

"Why should she walk out adorned? Why with dressed hair, as if she either had or sought for a husband? Rather let her dread to please if she is a virgin. It is not right that a virgin should have her hair braided for the appearance of her beauty."

(Cyprian on the Dress of Virgins, 5.)

"You are bound to please your husbands only. But you will please them in proportion as you take no care to please others. Be ye without carefulness, blessed sisters; no wife is ugly to her own husband. She pleased him enough when she was selected by him as his wife; whether commended by form or by character. Let none of you think that if she abstain form the care of her person (compositione sui) she will incur the hatred and aversion of husbands. Every husband is the exactor of chastity; but beauty a believing husband does not require, because we are not captivated by the same graces which the Gentiles think to be graces."

(Tertullian on Female Dress, Book II, Ch. IV.)

"O good matrons, flee from the adornment of vanity! Such attire if fitting for women who haunt the brothels. To a wife approved of her husband, let it suffice that she is so not by her dress, but by her good disposition."

(The Instructions of Commodianus in favor of Christian Discipline against the Gods of the Heathens, 59.)

Let us remember that these and similar teachings by the early Christian Fathers have laid the foundation of our present marriage customs. The theory that a woman sins in adorning herself to please a husband (whether present or prospective) is still indescribably popular among devout Christians.

Commodianus ascribes the teaching of "arts, and the dyeing of wool, and everything which is done", not to the angels but to the giant progeny. And he adds:

"To them, when they died, man erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of an evil seed, did not approve that, when dead, they should be brought back from death. Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies, and it is such as these especially that ye this day worship and pray to as gods."

(Ibidem)

The author of the Clementine Homilies records a tradition concerning these gigantic "wanderers" on the borders of Ghostland which seems to be that they were not unable to beget children. After speaking of the Deluge, he says:

"Since, therefore, the souls of the deceased giants were greater than human souls, inasmuch as they also excelled their bodies, they, as being a new race, were called also by a new name. And to those who survived in the world a law was prescribed by God through an angel, how they should live. For being bastards in race, of the fire of angels and the blood of woman, and therefore liable to desire a certain race of their own, they were anticipated by a certain righteous law."

(Clementine, Homilies, VIII, 18.)

Inasmuch as the Deluge had already destroyed every one on the earth except Noah and his family, we see that the author cannot mean by those who survived in the world any giants still in the flesh. Moreover, the decree which follows and which prescribes that they were to have power over only those human beings who broke the moral law and practiced magic would indicate these "giants" had then entered upon what Theosophists would call the astral; and from the paragraph quoted above, it is evidently taken for granted that these astral giants would propagate their kind. This is an important point--the testimony of a Christian Father of a tradition that human beings (not created angels) who had once inhabited bodies, could beget children on the plane of the astral unless prevented by the direct prohibition of Heaven. If it be objected that the author refers to giants still in earthly form when he speaks of "those who survived in the world", I am sure that the statement follows a remark about the Deluge and that in that case the surviving giants must have been Noah and his family. This view, however, is absurd, when we consider that the decree forbade the giants to assume power over any but the human race. If Noah and his family were the surviving giants, where would be the sense in promulgating such a decree to them? This same author gives an account of the doings of the angelic fathers of these giants which reminds one of the spirit seances of the late Rev. Stainton Moses, when under conditions which precluded all fraud or illusion tiny pearls and other precious stones suddenly materialized before the sitters.

Here is the tradition recorded by the Christian Fathers:

"For of the spirits who inhabit the heaven, the angels who dwell in the lowest region, being grieved at the ingratitude of man to God, asked that they might come into the life of man, that, really becoming man, by more intercourse they might convict those who had acted ungratefully towards Him, and might subject every one to adequate punishment. Then, therefore, their petition was granted; they metamorphosed themselves into every nature; for, being of a more god-like substance, they were able easily to assume any form. So they became precious stones, and goodly pearl, and the most beauteous purple, and choice gold, and all matter that is held in most esteem. And they fell into the hands of some, and into the bosoms of others, and suffered themselves to be stolen by them. They also changed themselves into beasts and reptiles and fishes and bird, and into whatsoever they pleased. These things, also, the poets among yourselves by reason of fearlessness sing, as they befall, attributing to one the many and diverse doings of all."

(Clementine, Homilies, VIII, 12.)

Then, "having assumed these forms, they convicted as covetous those who stole them, and changed themselves into the nature of man, in order that, living holily, and showing the possibility of so living, they might subject the ungrateful to punishment."

However, "having become in all respects men, they also became subject to masculine infirmities, and fell."

Does it not seem as though we had here a survival of Animism--a state of mind frequent among savages, children and animals, in which an inanimate object which moves without visible cause or manifests in any peculiar way is thought to be alive? A horse is often terrified by a piece of paper blown in front of him; evidently he takes it for a live creature. Savages speak of the sun and moon as living individuals because of their apparently voluntary journeys through the sky; among the Kukis of Southern Asia, if a man was killed by a fall from a tree, his relatives would take their revenge by cutting the tree down, scattering it in chips. A modern King of Cochin, China, when one of his ships sailed badly, used to put it in the pillory, as he would any other criminal (Bastian, Oestl., Asein, Vol 1, p. 51.). In classical times, the stories of Xerxes flogging the Hellespont and Cyrus draining the Gyndes occur as cases in point, but one of the regular Athenian legal proceedings is yet a more striking relic. A court of justice was held at the Prytaneum, to try any inanimate object, such as an axle, a piece of wood or stone, which had caused the death of anyone without proved human agency; and this wood or stone, if condemned, was with solemn form cast beyond the border. The spirit of this remarkable procedure reappears in the old English law (repealed in the present reign) whereby not only a beast that kills a man, but a cart-wheel that runs over him, was forfeited and sold for the poor. The pathetic custom of "telling the bees" when the master or mistress of a house dies, is not unknown in our own country. In Berlin, Germany, the idea is more fully worked out; and not only is the sad message given to every beehive in the garden, and every beast in the stall, but every sack of corn must be touched and everything in the house shaken, that they may know the master is gone. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, I 286-7) And we all know that even an intelligent nineteenth century man is not above administering an angry kick to a chair against which he has bruised himself.

Now, the author of the Clementine Homilies seems to have similarly lighted on an instance of Animism in connection with gold, pearls, precious stones, etc. In prehistoric times this tradition, rational and intelligible, may suppose that these precious articles had moved or otherwise behaved as though endowed with life in the ancient times to which the tradition relates. Could it be that they suddenly appeared to those prehistoric gazers, coming from no one knew where, and moved about by unseen hands? As tables are lifted, bells rung, banjos played or flowers materialized at a modern Spiritist seance? As they were reputed to have come by occult means, supposed to be heavenly. The people who witnessed the phenomena were probably not accustomed to clear-headed and intelligent investigation of such phenomena. One sees at once it was an Animistic explanation such as is given in the Clementine Homilies. As to the frightened horse, and to the ignorant savage, inanimate things seem to be alive, so may the precious objects which materialized at those prehistoric seances have seemed to the amazed beholders to be living creatures, inasmuch as they sped through the air without visible support. If alive, they surely (so would argue the witnesses) must be angelic beings, since they were said to come from heaven; and the attendant phenomena of the seance no doubt would increase the awe with which these "angels" were received and treasured. An "angel" is simply a vehicle for a message, in the original signification. Let us glance in passing at the accounts of materializing through the psychic power. In this sense, a pearl materialized through the psychic power of so reliable a modern medium as the Rev. Stainton Moses, plainly by occult means, might be called an "angel"--i.e., the means by which the message from the unseen reached the sitters. In after times, when the word angel had come to be specialized as a personal envoy from Heaven, the old tradition about the pearls and precious stones which had evidently come as "angels" (vehicles for a heaven-sent message), whenever told, would probably be adopted to the specialized meaning and it would be said, as above, that personal beings transformed into those inanimate things. First, as to the manifestations through the Rev. Stainton Moses lately declared in his journal, occurs the following entry:

Tuesday, September 9th, 1873

"Same conditions. Plentiful scent as before. Sixteen little pearls were put on the table, six having been previously given during the day. Mrs. Speer and I were writing at the same table, and a pearl was put on my letter as I was writing. After that I saw a spirit standing by Mrs. Speer, and was told that it was Mentor, who had put a pearl on Mrs. Speer's desk. After that four others came. They seemed to drop on the table, just as I have seen them with Mrs. A--h. We have in all twenty-two now. They are small seed pearls, each perforated."

A week later, there is this entry:

"When we broke up we found a little heap of pearls was put before each. One hundred and thirty-nine little pearls have been brought to us, one hundred and ten in the last two days."

(This, it appears from another witness, occurred in daylight.)

Dr. Speer (referred to by Miss X. in Borderland as "a highly intelligent and by no means credulous witness") gives a striking instance of the materialization of a precious object:

December 31st, 1872

"A very successful seance. A blue enamel cross was brought, no one knew whence, placed before my wife, who was told to wear it."

Mrs. Speer testifies as follows:

Ventnor, November 29, 1893

"I wish to state that the most convincing evidences of spirit-power always took place when hands were held.

"Other manifestations occurred, often in light, such as raps, raising of table, scent, musical sounds, and showers of pearls. Two cameos were carved in light while we were dining."

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be well to quote the following by Miss X. in Borderland. (Miss X., I would add, is by no means a spiritualist, but is distinctly opposed to the Spiritistic hypothesis):

"Mr. Stainton Moses has for many years been one of the most important witnesses for Spiritualism. The fact that, like Professor Crookes and Alfred Russell Wallace, he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of recognized position and character, was, to say the least, a good letter of introduction. It may be said, once for all, that it is unnecessary to insist on the absolute sincerity of Mr. Stainton Moses. It is a point which has never been so much as raised. His life has been of a kind not to be called in question--obscure without mystery, dignified without pedantry, lived in the sight of just that class of the public which demands the strictest respectability of conduct, the most unequivocal correspondence between life and profession. As a clergyman, he was beloved by his parishioners, as a schoolmaster he was respected by his boys, and as a personal friend he commanded the confidence and esteem of all his intimates."

May it not be that the phenomena recorded by the author of the Clementine Homilies are essentially the same in kind as those referred to above in the case of the Rev. Stainton Moses?

St. Augustine, considering the possibility of occult sex relations between earthly women and beings from the unseen world, remarks:

"The Scriptures plainly aver that the angels have appeared both in visible and palpable figures. And seeing it is so general a report, and so many aver it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sylvans and fauns, commonly called incubi, have often injured women, and that certain devils from the Gauls called "Duses" do continually practice this, and tempt others to it, which is affirmed by such persons, and with such confidence that it were impudence to deny it.

"I dare not venture to determine anything here; whether the devils being embodied in air (for the air being violently moved is to be felt) can suffer this lust, or move it so as the women with whom they commix may feel it; yet do I firmly believe that God's angels could never fall so at that time."

St. Augustine's City of God, XV, 23.

Notice the perplexity of St. Augustine as a logician. He cannot deny that occult sex relations exist on the Borderland, the testimony to this is too widespread and of too reliable a character. But (we can imagine him saying), how to reconcile these phenomena with the popular belief that the inhabitants of the world beyond the grave are immaterial, vapory, mist-like beings?

How can such a hazy, ethereal creature as a ghost produce objective sensations of touch upon an earthly being? And if possible--as he ingeniously supposes, by such means as air becomes perceptible to us when violently put in motion--how reconcile such phenomena with the belief that sex is impure, and that it does not exist in the world beyond the grave? How could God's angels ever fall so? It were impossible!

But St. Augustine evidently starts from two hypotheses--the insubstantiality of ghosts and the impurity (footnote, as will be seen by a perusal of the quotation in full), and, therefore, non-existence of sex, neither of which two hypotheses has ever been definitely proven. As a logician, therefore, he is at fault, and I have already shown the danger of starting from mistaken premises when dealing with occult phenomena. The two hypotheses, however, were not peculiar to St. Augustine. They were, and are, the common property of the majority of mankind. But it does not follow that they are correct: and the psychic who rashly assumes their truth to start with (through prejudice or because other people think so) may expect to be deluded, and to come upon all sorts of fantastic, and possibly diabolical, manifestations. Such is the occult law. Start with a false premise or with a premise which you have not investigated with scrupulous care, and you are certain to get phenomena of either a misleading or a depraved character.

But all the Christian Fathers did not accept the possibility of bridegrooms from the unseen world. There were then, as now, materialist minds which disbelieved in ghosts. Alexander, Bishop of Lycopolis, endeavored to explain away angelic bridegrooms as myths, thus:

"When the Jewish history relates that angels came down to hold intercourse with the daughters of men, this saying signifies that the nutritive powers of the soul descended from heaven to earth."

(On the Tenants of the Manicheans, XXV.)

Hence the "injuring" of women by incubi--to which St. Augustine refers, an injuring either wholly subjective and illusory, or, if objectively real, was brought about in part by the woman's ignorance of the occult requirements of correct living and clear-headedness on the Borderland, in part by her failure to thus live and think on the earthly plane.

It would be interesting to know his authority for this. Rationalistic theories cannot rest, as do folklore traditions, upon a mere say-so; they must be supported either by testimony or by argument. Otherwise, we are obliged to dismiss them as the whimsical fancies of a solitary individual.

Origen says he will "persuade those who were capable of understanding the meaning of the prophet, that even before us there was one who referred this narrative to the doctrine regarding souls, which became possessed with a desire for the corporeal life of men" and thus in metaphorical language he said were termed "daughters of men". But Origen does not give his authority, nor advances any argument in support of this explanation.

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