Nature's Mysteries by APS

T ' •
OF TTFE :'!!'!E.S- No. V .
NATURE'S MYSTERIES
AND HOW THEOSOPHY
ILLUMINATES THEM
BY A. P. SINNETT
Author of "Esoteric Buddhism;" "The Growth of the Soul,"
etc., etc.
PRICE 6D. nett.
LONDON
THE THEOSOPH ICAL PUBLISioiiNG SOCIETY
I6I NEW BOND STREET W .
1
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface
.. iv.
CHAPTER,
I. Achievements and Limitations of

Science 1
II. Atlantis 14:
Ill. Astronomy Ancient and Modern 21
IV. Foretelling the Future . . 31
V. Behind the Scenes of Nature . . 4:0
VI. The Sensitive and the "O.P." 4:7
VII. Photographing the Unseen 54
THE SIN G.A.PO?-E LOD~

'tHEOSOPHICAl SOCI 1'
u~PJse_~)~
~
[l · I
PREFACE.
The collection of Essays, published in 1001, under

the title, "Nature's Mysteries," has long been out of
print, and the cream of that volume has now been
skimmed off for reproduction in the present form.
Much' has been omitted, but some additions have been
made where recent discoveries have thrown light on
the subjectlii dea.lt with.
lV
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
CHAPTER I.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS
OF SCIENCE.
People who may not be inclined or able to make
a special study of science are apt to credit those
who are recognised as men of science with know-
ing a great deal more than they would claim, as
knowledge, for themselves. The non-scientific
person may entirely underrate the delicacy and
minute precision of scientific work, but he is apt
to overrate its grasp and scope. A correct apprecia-
tion of the beauty and magnitude of scientific
achievement in one direction, and of the limitations
that confront it in another, is very desirable on the
part of anyone who, in a general way, is disposed
to pay attention to the progress of invention,
discovery and research.
To show plainly what I mean by a definite
example, I may point to what is known and
what is not known about electricity. The extent
to which students in that branch of science can
now manipulate electricity is wonderful and
splendid. We can make electric currents do almost
any kind of work we care to ,set before them. We
can make them carry messages or passengers ; we
can employ them to light houses and streets, or
to cook dinners; we can teach them to drive
machinery, or to ring bells, and we can all the
while measure their energies and quantities as
accurately as though we were dealing with so
much water or coals. Yet no man of science can
tell us the first word of the answer to the question·
What is electricity?
'
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
We can find out the rate at which electric

impulses travel, and we know that this is identical
with the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second. We
know that currents differ very greatly among
themselves in character, some being sharp and
intense, and some bulky and feeble. We invent
names for these attributes, and call the intensity
"volt," and the volume " ampere," and then we go
on to invent other names that relate to the different
characters of different substances as conductors of
electricity, and talk about "ohms" as measuring
the resistance such substances oppose to the
passage of electric currents; but all the while no
one knows whether there is anything at all to be
conducted, whether electricity is a fluid, like a gas,
only much finer, or a mere vibration in that
mysterious medium which pervades all space-
the ether.
One might take other illustrations of the idea
I want to enforce. We have all known since
Newton's time a good deal about the way in which
gravitation acts. Many accepted rules guide its
invariable behaviour. It is a force that a lways
bears a definite relation to the "mass" (for practi-
cal purposes, let us say the weight) of the bodies
it affects, and to their distance from one another.
But there the knowledge of the most advanced
men of science stops short. No one can say a
word when a~ked, What is gravitation? So again
with the simplest experiences of everyday life.
When you burn a lump of coal, what happens?
We know that the various constituents of the coal
enter into chemical combination with the oxygen
of the atmosphere, but we do not in the l east
degree know why that process should involve the
development of light and heat. Combustion is
the commonest, and yet, in some of its aspects,
still amongst the most puzzling, phenomena of
Nature.
Certainly, in saying this, I do not want to decry
the achievements of science, nor even its methods,
2
ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE.
though these will probably undergo considerable

modifications as time goes on; but it is important,
in connection with the study of Nature, to realize
both the range and limitations of science, because
we are in presence of other attempts to investigate
Nature besides those of the laboratory and observa-
tory, and I shall have something to sa y, from time
to time, about these, as well as about the achieve-
ments of ordinary science along the old familiar
road. That which is commonly called science is
exclusively "physical" science. It works with
instruments made of metal, glass and so on, and
has accomplished work that may be fairly termed
sublime in its examination of what I will venture
to call the outsides of things, but it always stops
short in groping after a comprehension of their
innermost essence.
Its failures are most oBvious when we deal with
any of the mysteries of Nature that are associated
with life. The extent and minute precision of
scientific knowledge concerning the mechanism of
the human body are marvellous and admirable.
Physiologists have found out all about the processes
by which the human body is developed, from the
earliest stages of conception to the latest maturity
of growth. We know how the muscles that move
the body are themselves controlled by the nerves;
how these are animated by energies proceeding
from the brain; and we even know how some
nerves convey orders, so to speak, from the brain
to the muscles, and others report sensations from
any part of the body to the brain.
We even know what parts of the brain are
concerned with the movements of each limb, what
parts do business with the interior functions of the
body, like digestion or blood circulation, and so
forth; and if a man is afflicted with paralysis of
some particular limb or muscle, we know exactly
where to look for the injury to the brain that may
have accounted for the defect. But with all this
we have not got one step nearer comprehending
3
' NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
the difference between the dead body and the

living one. We have not even got one step towards
comprehending the difference between the smallest
living weed and its dead companion. Or, at all
events, physical science has not accomplished one
step in any such direction. Mysteries of that kind
lie outside the domain of physical science. Workers
in that field are no more to be blamed for not
penetrating the mysteries of life than a painter of
pictures is to be blamed for not understanding how
to make a watch.
Enquiries concerning life and consciousness
belong to the domain of-what may be called super-
physicalscience,and that, as far as the modern world
is concerned at any rate, is a young branch of science
still at the stage of observing facts or phenomena
which it does not yet fully appreciate. Its
conclusions are, so far, little better very often than
guesses. Its theories are as yet vague and cloudy
in their outlines. Still, it is a progressive branch (
of science, and is growing up by degrees.
It is possible so to influence the body of a
person peculiarly or~anised-specially sensitive- ~i
that thesoul-mainsprmg, is set free from it for a time )1:
I'
and can act independently of it-can be conscious ·~

independently of it, which is the all-important
point to be considered. Meanwhile, the body is not
conscious. You can prick it with needles and it
does not feel, give it ammonia to smell and it does
not cough-indeed, more reckless experiments have
been tried on persons in the mesmeric state, and
their flesh may be burned without their feeling
anything; but such experiments as that are deeply
to be condemned, because the body is thus injured,
even though it does not feel pain at the t ime, so
that when the soul comes back it finds its tenement
out of repair.
A result of huge importance is r eached by such
experiments-equally well reached by those which
are innocent as by those which are blameworthy-
namely, that the ma.inspring of the human creature
L
4
r. ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE.
I is a separable something which can exist in full

consciousness apart from the body, and, when apart
from the body, is quite indifferent as to what
happens to its deserted tenement. In short, the
survival of the soul of a m an, after what is
commonly called his death, is all but demonstrable
by means of mesmeric experiments-not yet, I
must confess, within the reach of everyone who
would like to try them, any more than the Lick
telescope is within the reach of everyone who would
like to look through it, but nevertheless within the
reach of special enquirers in that line fortunately
sit uated in various ways; and their work has been
duly recorded for the advantage of all who are
willing to become students of their depart ment of
science at second-hand. After all, every student
in any _department of science has to be content
with second -hand knowledge of about nineteen-
twentieths of all the facts he works· with.
In connection with the whole volume of research
that goes by the name of Spiritualism, it is as
certain as the occasional appearance of comets in
the sky, that spiritual seances are sometimes- very
often-attended byinvisible beings who a re actually
the departed souls of people who once lived
in the body. Persons who deny that a re as ignor-
ant a s t h ey are silly. They are ignorant of the fact
tha t scores-hundreds, indeed-of highly -cultured
people bear testimony to their experience in that
matter, and they are silly in supposing that their
trumpery little prepossessions as to what is pro-
bable and what is improbable are to be set against
the positive evidence of others at variance with
thos e prepossessions. Also they are marvellously
silly in supposing that because they may go to
some spiritualistic seance and see reason to think
the proceedings are imposture, therefore the pro-
ceedings at all other seances must be imposture too.
There are forged bank-notes in the world, no doubt,
but that does not militate against the fact that
there are also others which are genuine. But, on
5
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
the other hand, while the rank disbelievers in

spiritualism are foolish to an exasperating degree,
the devotees of that pursuit are grievously un-
scientific in their methods, as a rule. They are on
the threshold of a mighty science, but they too
often think themselves in possession of advanced
know ledge.
Spiritualism haE certainly shown, what, indeed,
could have been ascertained in other ways, that
the human soul survives the death of the body.
But it has not explained the destinies of the human
soul after death, because people who pass away
only learn about the.se by degrees, and while they
are in a position to communicate with friends still
in the flesh, they have rarely gone very far on their
ultimate journey, and have not acquired any
knowledge concerning its later stages.
A new impulse has been given to scientific
thought within the last few years by the discovery
and examination of that wonderfully interesting
substance, Radium. Formerly it was supposed that
an atom of any one of the many substances known
as the chemical elements was a definite, indivisible
unity. Now we know that all such "atoms" (the
word is no longer appropriate in its literal meaning)
are a complicated structure built up of far more
minute atoms, the nature of which is still under
investigation.
Now, I want to convey an idea to begin with as
to how small the atom of the chemical elements
may probably be. Great mathematicians like Lord
Kelvin have worked at this problem, and they come
to fairly similar conclusions. Lord Kelvin some-
where illustrates the conclusion by saying that if
a drop of water were magnified till it became the
size of the earth- all the atoms of which it is
composed being magnified in the same proportion-
then the atoms would be probably smaller than
cricket balls, but larger than small shot. Something
between those two sizes !
That suggestion helps the imagination, but we
6
only dazzle it if we talk of the figures concerned.

The gases tha t compose the a ir we breathe consist,
of course, of a toms. In a cubic centimetre of air
(a centimetre is a little less than half an inch) there
are thirty trillions of gaseous atoms. A trillion is
a million billion, and a billion is a million million.
Now a million alone is a number almost beyond the
reach of imagination. If you began at six o'clock
on Monday morning to count seconds, and kept on
day and night without a moment's intermission till
Saturday evening at six o'clock, you would only
have counted half a million seconds, not quite that.
And yet, in a little quantity of air, such as you take ,
in hundreds at a breath, there are millions of
millions of millions of atoms.
Now about those things which are smaller than
chemical atoms. They are radiated or thrown off
from the electrical apparatus which generates the
much-talked-of Rontgen ray.
SYNTHETIC MATTER.
.. Some of us have recently been interested in

current statements concerning a n ew process for
the preparation of "synthetic milk "-from v ege-
table materials-identical in chemical composition
with the milk supplied by the cow. A still more
remarkable achievement has since been announced
-the production of matter itself by a synthetic
process dealing with the fundamental etheric atom,
which, as occult students have long been aware,
though science has but recently caught them up,
is the basis of all physical manifestation. Sir
William Ramsay, who has been conspicuous in
advancing scientific knowledge in reference to the
possibility of transmuting one form of physical
matter into another, has again been successful in
showing that some simple forms of matter can be
produced-one might almost say created-by the
treatment of the ultimate atom itself, hitherto
beyond the range of physical investigation.
7
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
This new development of scientific knowledge

may be described as beginning with the examina -
tion of that highly interesting substan ce, radium.
Some time ago Sir William Ramsay showed that
it was possible to obtain helium-a gas previously
regarded as a n elementary body-from r adium.
Occult studen ts were not surprised. Radium is a
substance of very high atomic weight. That is to
say, its atom is composed of a very great number
of primary etheric atoms held together in l ess
stable equilibrium than the corresponding condition
of simpler bodies. That which is described as its
radio-activity, is r eally its readine!>s to break up
into t h e etheric condition. The Beta particles it
throws off in such enormous volume-called a t
present "electrons" by the ordinar y scientist-are
really t h e etheric atoms of which it is built up.
Ordina ry scientists are for the moment working
with an erroneous hypothesis to the effect that
these a r e actu a lly atoms of electricity. They are in
reality etheric atoms carrying a definite ch arge of
electricity. To a great extent they stream out in
individual atoms (as electrons), but in some cases
they break off so to speak in lumps, and when
these represent aggregations of atoms equ a l in
number with t he aggregations formin g definite (so
called) elem entary bodies, they present t h em selves
in that capacity. Th t:tt is the way in which Sir
William Ramsay obtained his helium, and estab-
lished t h e theoretical possibility of t ransmutation,
thus no longe1· r egarded as a superstition of the
misguided a lchemists. Following up his first
discovery Sir William h as since m a intain ed that he
h as b een able to obtain lithium from copper (in
other wor ds to transmute copper into lit hium), and
carbon from silicon. His scientific contemporaries
for the m ost part remain incredulous as regards
these achievements, but there is no particular
reason why the occultist should distrust t he claim.
The latest work done in this department of
inves liigation approaches the problem from the
8
other end of the scale. Instead of breaking up a

body of high atomic weight, the attempt now has
been to construct bodies of light atomic weight by
combining the fundamental etheric atoms.
To explain the method adopted we must
remember first of all what goes on in a Rontgen or
X-ray tube. The electric current projected through
such tubes is partially reflected out in the form of
Rontgen rays, but also affects the ether in the tube
generally. That has been going on ever since
Rontgen rays have been studied, but the conse
quence has only just been realized. That which has
now been discovered is that from the glass of an
old Rontgen tube it is possible to obtain helium.
There was no helium there to begin with. It is
assumed that during the flow of the electric
current the helium was formed by the aggregation
of the etheric atoms or electrons. I need not
attempt to describe the precise chemical process by
which the helium is set free from the glass. That
belongs to the region of technicality, but is not the J
point in dispute among chemists. The argument
of the incredulous opponents of the new discovery
is to the effect that as helium exists in the atmos-
phere it may have been occluded in the glass to
begin with. The answer to this objection is that
the quantities obtained by the process described
are far in excess of those which could be accounted
for in that way. The quantities normally in the
atmosphere are infinitesimal.
The present research has been carried on by
other distinguished chemists besides Sir William
Ramsay-by Professor Collie and Mr. Patterson-
and these investigators have obtained the rare gas,
neon, from tubes that have been filled in the first
instance with hydrogen (of course in a highly
rarefied condition).
There is nothing surprising in the results from
the point of view of the occult student, and they
may be looked upon as the thin end of a wedge that
will ultimately be driven much further into old-
9
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
fashioned conceptions relating to the constitution

of matter. The amusing feature of the present
controversy, as it is going on in the scientific
world while we write, is that no attention whatever
is paid, in that world, to the fact that the whole
volume of knowledge towards which these investi-
gations are groping their way, was anticipated by
occult investigation in the year 1895, when in the
November number of the ma~azine then called
Lucifer the atomic constitutiOn of hydrogen,
oxygen and some other bodies, was fully set forth in
much greater detail than later scientific investiga-
tion has yet reached. Clairvoyant research showed
not merely that these bodies were composed of
etheric atoms, but actually detected their number
and arrangement within the hydrogen, oxygen and
other atoms. The hydrogen atom consists of
eighteen etheric atoms and this is a key number,
giving us the number of etheric atoms in any
(hitherto called) elementary body of high atomic
weight. Disregarding this discovery with sublime
indifference, the modern physicist is speculating
wildly on the question how many " electrons " go
to the composition of hydrogen, and Sir J oseph
Thompson in a recent lecture suggested 1,700 as a
probable number, guided apparently by the entirely
delusive idea that the number would be indicated
by the ratio of the mass of the hydrogen atom to
the mass of the electron. The atom of any given
physical body is a solar system in miniature, the
negative etheric atoms representing the planets,
and perhaps a positively electrified" atom" of some
unknown matter, the sun of the system. Occult
knowledge concerning the beautiful phenomena of
Nature dribbles out to us by degrees and we are not
yet in a position to say much about the nature of
positive electricity. The scientific world is busy
with its investigation, but does not seem yet to be
on anything like the right trail. Meanwhile at all
events Sir William Ramsay's synthetic helium is a
very promising addition to the armoury of weapons
10
with which the deeper mysteries of matter will

be attacked at a later date.
Thus it has come to pass that some mysteries
of Nature scouted and hooted at fifty years ago as
empty pretences of fraud and imposture, are
already recognised as worthy of serious attention.
Others, of which the importance has not yet
been generally allowed, will establish their claims
. in due time. Mesmerism, for example, which was
ridiculed in the middle of the past century as
though it were nonsense and superstition, is
acknowledged on all hands now to be a fact in
Nature, though few people understand it properly
as yet, except those who have been at work with it
for many years. So with what is called " thought-
transference," the power some people have, if they
are specially gifted in that direction, of becoming
aware, without being told in any ordinary way, of
what some other person is thinking.
Mathematics and indirect experiment may
enable us to find out the size of the water molecule,
but we shall never see it with any physical
instrument. But such things can be seen by
the "clairvoyant" faculty of persons peculiarly
gifted. As the human ra~e improves, such people
will become more numerous than they are at
present, but already they are numerous enough to
enable students of " occult" science to be quite sure
of their existence, and to compare their observa-
tions one with another.
That phrase, by-the-way, "occult," merely
means something extra-mysterious for the time
being. The few people who possessed some
knowledge of electricity in the days of ancient
Egypt would have called that occult science. A
few generations hence there will be nothing occult
about thought-transference, or clairvoyance, but,
for the moment, the laws governing those faculties
are still hidden from us to so great an extent, that
the study of such matters lies still in the depart-
ment of occult science.
11
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
The term " clairvoyance " means, of course,

no more than clear seeing-seeing, that is to say,
, with the eye of the mind, in some mysterious fashion,
which has nothing to do with optics, but, neverthe-
less, is a bona-fide perception of actual things.
Clairvoyance is a faculty as old as the world.
There are perfectly well-authenticated stories
about it in ancient history, but no evidence of
that sort will make people believe what they do
not want to believe, so I will come to more
recent investigations. One of the most p atient
and careful investigators who have written on this
subject is Dr. Gregory, author of a book called
Animal Magnetism, published ~the middle of the
last century. He was lucky enough to meet with
a good many people who were endowed with
the necessary faculties, and willing to let him
experiment with them. In his day it seems to
have been taken for granted that clairvoyance was
a faculty that could only be exercised when people
were in the mesmeric state, so all Dr. Gregory's
subjects were first mesmerized, and then employed
to look at things that could not be seen with their
11
physical eyes.
For example, he would get a bagful of nuts:;,
each made up for children's parties, with a printed
motto inside. Anyone present would take one of
these nuts out of the bag at random. It would be
given to the "sensitive,' or clairvoyant, and he I,
(or she) would read the motto, or, anyhow, tell
correctly what it was. Then, before everyone
present, the nut would be cracked, and the clair-
voyant reading verified. These demonstrations
were very neat and satisfactory, because they
precluded the possibility that the motto could be
read by thought-transference. Nobody present
knew what any particular nut contained.
Many French experimentalists in the middle
of the century entangled their researches with
attempts to foresee the future by help of clairvoy-
ance. It does not follow that because a peculiarly-
xz
gifted person may be able to see what is at a

distance in space, he may be able to see what only
may be at a distance in time. All the same, a
great deal of interesting information on the subject
of true clairvoyance is to be found in the French ·
literature of mesmerism; and though we do not
understand much yet about the laws which govern
the exercise of this faculty, everyone who has
t h e patience to become, in even a moderate degree,
a student of occult science, knows that such a
faculty exists.
We shall never see an atom of carbon or
oxygen by means of microscopes, but we shall be
able to examine their structure and composition
by means of clairvoyant faculties turned in that
direction, for size is no embarrassment to the eyes
of the mind. The sm!lllest things in Nature a re as
visible to that sense as the medium-sized things
that suit our common eyesight, and the clairvoyant
sight can be no more embarrassed by the m agnitude
in the other direction. Astronomical distances are
as weil within its focus as those which we can
measure with our hands.
B 3
CHAPTER II.
ATLANTIS.
"My friends," said a simple-minded preacher
once in the hearing of one of my friends, " this
world is very old. It is six thousand years old ! "
Of course, the good man thought he had Scriptural
assurance in support of that estimate; but the
progress of knowledge has induced us, not to treat
Scriptural statements with disrespect, but to read
them in a new way, and thus all educated people
in the present age are well aware that the planet
on which we live has been slowly brought to its
present degree of perfection durin~ a great many
millions of years, a.n d that the six thousand of
our primitive ancestral belief is rather a phase of
the present time than a period that can be treated,
in any comprehensive sense, as the past.
A fragment of an old Egyptian history, the
bulk of which has been lost, gives us a catalogue of
kings and dynasties covering a period that has
been variously estimated at from 3,500 to 5,000
years before Christ ; but everyone admits that
remains apparently associated with the earliest
part of this period are of a kind that must have
been preceded by long ages of civilisation.
Professor Flinders Petrie, who has done a great
deal of patient work in Egypt, helps himself to
another two thousand years. I propose to show the
reason we need not submit to those narrow limits
in considering the past civilisation of Egypt, and
why it is desirable to attack the problem in quite
a different way from that adopted by Professor
Petrie, if we set out in search of general conclusions
concerning the antiquity of civilised mankind on
earth, irrespective of any particular area within
I-1-
ATLANTIS.
which such civilisation may, at a given period,

have fermented.
Whenever this investigation is seriously under-
taken by the scientific world, it must centre round
the great problem of Atlantis. I have said that
we have no literary records concerning the remote
past, but that remark may be qualified. We have
none that are as yet universally accepted as
trustworthy, but Plato has left us some account,
flavoured, it is true, with obviously fabulous details,
concerning the existence, at a period long anterior
to the earliest known dynasties of the Egyptian
catalogue, of a great island or continent situated
in the middle of what is now the Atlantic Ocean.
He got his information from Egyptian priests.
Till recently the whole story was treated as a fable,
but modern research has gone far, by ordinary
methods, to establish the fact that such a continent
as he describes did really exist at one time. Of
course, there is nothing at variance with accepted
' scientific views in that belief.
Geologists freely admit the broad principle
that most of the land which is dry at the present
time was once under sea water, and presumably,
therefore, that a great deal of the present ocean
bed was once dry land. The only reason why the
former existence of Atlantis is not universally
4 r: recognised is that, as yet, we are not supposed to
.. have sufficient proof of its existence. So far, only
some students of the subject think the proof, along
ordinary lines, sufficient and complete. Some of
the scientific men connected with the ocean surveys
of the Challenger are disposed to regard the
configuration of the Atlantic bed as fully estab-
lishing the Atlantis theory.
Donnelly, the American writer, brings forward
a mass of testimony to show that the ancient
beliefs, the artistic work and the natural pheno-
mena-the plants and animals-of Mexico and the
Mediterranean basin had a common origin, which
could only have been possible if at one time those
IS
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
parts of the world were in touch with each other

along land communications, instead of being
separated by great expanses of ocean as they are
now. And since Donnelly wrote his book, some
overwhelming testimony has been forthcoming
to confirm the Atlantean story. But before I come
to that, it will be convenient to describe how it
comes to pass that students of occult science h ave
rushed on enormously in advance of investigation
along commonplace channels of research, in refer-
ence to the conditions of the world's civilisation at
the time when Atlantis was in full life and vigour.
The faculty of clairvoyance, of which I have
already spoken in reference to the power it gives
to some of its most gifted exponents of examining
the structure of atoms far too sm a ll for any
microscopic investigation, is equally applicable to
the investigation of the world's history in long
past ages. A time will most certainly come
when this wonderful power will be recognised as
the most potent instrument of research which
science can employ. As yet it is exercised in
perfection by only a few persons known to me,
but within the Theosophical connection there are
several sufficiently endowed and developed-for
the faculty requires not merely a natural gift, but
great perseverance and devotion to the task, for its
effective culture-to provide for the comparison
of observations one with another, to eliminate
occasional errors, and to fill up detail when the
problem in hand has to do with the investigation
of some long past period.
In that way the modern devotees of occult
science have at last put together such a mass
of information relating to the Atlantean period,
that we really know much more about it than,
for instance, about the so called historical period of
Egyptian civilisation. And we have been made
actually acquainted, in connection with this
research, with dates at which great changes in the
configuration of the earth's geography h ave taken
16
••
ATLANTIS.
place. Ordinary geology, as I have said, makes it

certain that such changes have taken place, but it
does not tell us when they happened. Clairvoyant
research does tell us when the changes occurred,
and, more than this, gives us actual maps of
the earlier configurations.
"The Story of Atlantis," the results of clair-
voyant investigation into that most interesting
period of the world's history, has been published
in a book bearing that title.* The whole narrative
is too elaborate and fascinating in its interest to
be dealt with in detail in this article, which has
necessarily been concerned with collateral matters,
but I want especially to explain bow the knowledge
we occult students possess concerning Atlantis
clears up questions connected with the early history
of Egypt that would be quite unmanageable in
any other way. Knowing how the geographical
changes have been going on, we can reconcile the
9000-year limit (reckoning back from the present
time), which Professor Petrie assigns to the whole
history of Egypt, with the fact, of which in other
ways we are quite equally sure, that the grandest
civilisation of Egypt was flourishing many tens of
thousands of years before the country entered
upon that 9000-year period. That neriod did not,
in real truth, represent its growth and develop-
ment, but merely its gradual decay.
Once upon a time-I will go into more exact
detail later-land stretched almost uninterruptedly
right across the region which is now the Atlantic
Ocean, from the land we now call Mexico-tbe
extreme westerly limit-to the northern shores of
what is now Africa (the southern part of Africa had
not then as yet come into existence), and so on
right across what is now Egypt (there was no Red
Sea then) to what is now Asia. The land, in fact,
* "THE STORY OF ATLANTIS" by W. Scott-Elliot,
3s. 6d. net, Theosophical Publishing Society. See also "THE
CHILD'S STORY OF ATLANTIS" ls. net, issued by the
same firm.
~
--------------~----------------------
I
.4
NATURlt'S MYSTERIRS•
. at the time I am speaking of made a huge belt

round the earth. There was no North or South
America, no Europe, no South Africa. Much later
on, through successive changes that I will not stop
now to describe, some approximation to the present
condition of affairs was reached, but still there
existed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean an
island-the remnant of the original vast continent
pf Atlantis-and this island was about as big in
area as all modern Europe, without Russia. The
Red Sea had been invented by that time (it was
the result of changes that took place about 80,000
years ago), and so matters remained without any
great further alteration until about 11,500 years
ago.*
That was the period during which the grand
civilisation of Egypt was actually in progress.
Why have its traces not been more definitely
identified? Because at the date last mentioned,
11,500 years ago, the latest of the great cataclysmic
convulsions that have from time to time altered
the configuration of the earth took place. The
vast island constituting the remains of Atlantis
subsided with terrific suddenness, and the sea,
which then covered what is now the desert of
Sahara, was driv~ eastward so as to completely
deluge the land M Egypt. The great pyramid,
already in existence (modern archreology is utterly
m_istaken as to the date of its construction), was
for a time under water. Lower Egypt was
obliterated as a region of land, and spent a good
many years as so much sea-bed. All traces of the
old civilisation disappeared except as regards some
of the temples, which, like the great pyramid, are
really prediluvian, and when the next change took
place, which. elevated, to some extent, the whole of
Northern Al:rica and shouldered off the waters of
the Saharan Sea, leaving that region to dry up and·
?'"'*The reader should refer to the two maps. No. 1 illus-
trates the conditions first described; No. 2 shows the enormous
clJ.a.nges which had taken place up to 11,500 years ago.
18
•. .
.':fP ~ ~
"" •• 1•0'
' ""'
1"-, ' . ~ ~~
~ ,....,ii
~ ;!· .
(~"~ ~··
0->J
ATLANTIS.
become a desert, then the Nile resumed business as

a river channel, and set to work to make a new
Egypt by the deposition of fresh mud. It is this,
its latter-day task, that the modern archreologist
treats as though it had occupied the whole of
past time.
And now, having stated what did occur-as
occult students ascertain by surer methods than
the guesses of archmology-let me, in conclusion
for the present, show how some commonplace
testimony of the ordinary kind has lately cropped
up to vindicate occult research in reference to
the latest period of Atlantean history and the
final disappearance of the last remaining island.
Mexico, as I have said, has from immense antiquity
been habitable land. A French archreologist, Dr.
Le Plongeon, has been at work there for many
years. He has written books about his discoveries,
and he has been the first person to decipher the
Mexican hieroglyphics (which differ from tho3e of
Egypt). In 1893, Mr. E. J. Howell, in the course of
a lecture before the Society of Arts, recounted the
contents of letters he had received from Dr. Le
Plongeon concerning his then recent work. He
had succeeded in translating a certain manuscript
known to archreologists as the Troano MS. It had
never before been deciphered, but Le Plongeon
found it to contain a straightforward narrative of
the submer~ence of Atlantis. It is in itself an
ancient Mexican manuscript of immense antiquity,
and it says that the catastrophe took place "8060
years before the writing of this book." Ten
countries, it says, were torn asunder in the
convulsion, and sank with their 64,000,000 inhabi-
tants. The date given, it will be seen, fairly well
corresponds with that obtained by clairvoyant
research, and it is not creditable to the ordinary
non-occult students of the bygone history and past
evolution of our race, that Le Plongeon's great
discovery should, so far, have excited so little
attention.
19
[
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
li The real, grand, early civilisation of Egypt was

introduced by migrations of enterprising colonists
from the great Atlantean continent long before the
contraction of that continent to the dimensions
of the island which lasted till 11,500 years ago.
Everything, in fact, in any part of the ancient I
world had a n Atlantean origin, just as a few ~
thousand y ears h ence everything then existing
about the world in the shape of civilisation will
necessarily b e recognised as having h ad a European
origin. Nobody can begin to understa nd the old
world, or the beginnings of the civilisation in the
midst of which we live, until he has obtained a
comprehensive grasp of the state of m ankind in
the Atlantean period. Atlantis is the key to a ll
knowledge concerning the past history and evolu-
tionary progress of our race.
• I
h~
..l
20
CHAPTER III.
ASTRONOMY ANCIENT AND MODERN.
People who do not make a special study of
astronomy credit modern astronomers with too
much knowledge in one direction and with too little
in another. I am going to try and show first what
kind of knowledge they do possess in perfection,
and then, where and why their limitations come
in. If we wanted to select one word which should
be the key-word, as it were, of modern science, a
single word to be its motto, that word would be
"measurement." It is by accurately measuring
distances, magnitudes, temperatures, weights, and
so on, that the grand results of chemistry, physics,
electricity, as well as those of astronomy, have
been reached. Modern scientists are fanatical
about the importance of measurement. A chemical
analysis must be quantitative to have any value.
The energies of an electric current must be ex-
pressed in terms which measure its volume, its
intensity, it s power of overcoming the resistance
of various kinds of conductors, with the minutest
conceivable accuracy. In dealing wit h the charac-
teristics of light, we must use tho ten-millionth of
an inch a s the unit of measurement when we are
talking about wave lengths. And in astronomy,
instruments are used that will measure distances
in the sky that are no greater than would be
covered by a human hair held 36 feet from the eye.
We reach, in astronomy, a series of conclusions
about the distances from us of some of the :fixed
stars. These conclusions rest upon observations of
apparent movements of such stars against the
background of the sky, as they are observed a t
intervals of six months when the earth has com-
pletely crossed over to the other side of its orbit.
ZI
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
But though that crossing means that, the earth is

180 millions of miles away from its previous
position, the apparent movement of the star is not
~reater than the diameter of a penny looked at
from a distance of two miles. None the less are
the instruments used of such exquisite mechanical
perfection that they can deal quite successfully with
these minute measurements, and bring out results
which we feel sure are approximately right,
though the figures used to express them are beyond
the grasp of the imagination.
'£he distances we have to talk about in
reference to our solar system alone are terribly
stupendous. The earth swings round in space at
a distance of more than ninety millions of miles
from the sun, but we are quite near compared with
some of the other planets of our family. Jupiter is ,
five times as far from the sun as we are, and the
outermost planet as yet discovered, Neptune, is
thirty times as far, or over 2,700 millions of miles
away. The light by which we see Neptune has to
radiate out from the sun to that planet, and then
come back to us, and though light travels at the
rate of 186,000 miles per second, it takes over four
hours on the voyage out and home when it
illuminates Neptune for our benefit. These figures
give one some sort of idea concerning the magni-
tude of the solar system as a whole. And yet the
orbit of Neptune, which may be thought of, for the
present, as including the whole solar system, bears
a surprising relation to the region in space that is,
so to speak, allotted to the solar system. ,
If you imagine that region a spherical space ):1
extending to the nearest of the fixed stars, how }
big would that space be compared to the diameter
of the system itself, the orbit of Neptune? The .\
answer is, that if we had a flat map of that spherical

region, and drew it AO that the circle was about
equal in area to Lincoln's Inn-fields, then the whole
solar system would have to be represented by a
shilling in the middle. Thousands of millions of
22
miles are as nothing compared with the distances

of the fixed stars. The nearest of them is twenty
or thirty billions of miles away from u s, and a
billion is a million million.
Facts of this kind can be served out to us by
modern astronomers to any extent we desire.
And besides the measurements they are enabled to
undertake, astronomers can now reach conclusions
that are more interesting even than their figures.
Other sciences have lent their aid to astronomy,
and, above all, that which enables us to discover,
from the examination of light, the chemical con-
stitution of the body which emits it. The light to
the eye may look just the same whether it comes
from highly-hea ted carbon or from highly-heated
iron. But to the spectroscope these two kinds of
light look very different indeed. The trained
observer can recognise one from the other at a
glance. And so every kind of substance known to
L chemistry, when heated sufficiently to be luminous,
gives out its own kind of light, and no other. In
this previously unexpected way astronomers were
suddenly put in possession of a resource, an instru-
ment, by mea ns of which they were enabled to
ascertain first what the sun was made of, and
eventually what each star that shines with its own
light is made of.
So, creeping on from one step to another,
modern astronomy has come to include a great
volume of knowledge concerning what I have called
..... the outsides of the heavenly bodies. But the temper
,. of mind in which scientific men of the nineteenth
century have, for the most part, regarded Nature,
f has led them to neglect all those aspects of
.
\ astronomy which do not come within the range
of measurement. And the prevailing mental fault
of the nineteenth century has been conceit with
itself and its own achievements, giving rise to
contempt for everything it did not understand.
Traditions handed down from earlier periods of
the world's civilisation have been thrown aside
ZJ
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
as superstition if they did not fit in with knowledge

t h at t he nineteenth century h a d acquired for itself.
Our tendency to do this has been aggravated by
the objectionable shape in which, f01·the most part,
such traditions have come down to modern times.
But none the less has this h asty, careless policy
betrayed t he modern scientific world into taking
up a n attitude, in reference to a multitude of
Nature's most interesting mysteries, for which we
shall b e laughed at by the scientists of the future
much more contemptuously even t han we have
been laughing at the folly of our an cestors.
The study of t he hea vens in past ages bore
fruit of a w h olly different kind from that which
has rewarded t he observations of telescopic astro-
nomers. The prevailing belief was that the stars
and planets, t h e sun and t h e moon, exercise some
mysterious influence on human affairs, and,
generally, on the world in which we liv-e. The
fur ther b ack we go in cla irvoyant investigation,
t he more persis tent and minute we find this belief
to have been, a nd it survived u p to a very recent
period. It survives, for that matter, with soma
modifications, amongst those who know, u p to the
present time, and will revive with gr eat effect at
some period in the future, when, perhaps, the
mysteries concerned will be b etter understood
than in the p ast. But the point I want to make
first, before going into speculations con cerning the
future, is that ancient astronomy-or "astrology,"
as it used to be called-represented a n enormous
volume of conviction a mongst millions of people
far advanced in ot her branches of knowledge a nd
culture, to an extent t h at ough t to make modern
thinkers pause before scoffing at their beliefs.
Our principal difficulty in handling the subject
is that we have no authentic record of t h e theories
t hat prevailed a mong ancient astrologers in refer-
ence to the influence of t h e stars on human a ffairs.
We only know that they gave a n amount of
attention to the whole subject, which m a k es it
24
certain that experience had shown them to be on

the right track. They probably had no theory to
account for the facts they observed, but they had
not fallen into the peculiar vice of our age-that
of denying that a fact is a fact if we cannot
understand it.
· The supremely great mind of Francis Bacon
found room for a belief in astrology. Kepler, one
; of the founders of modern astronomy, avows that
a study of the facts has "instructed and compelled
my unwilling belie£" in the inexplicable relation-
ship of planetary aspects and conjunctions with
human affairs; and Flamstead, the first Astrono-
mer-Royal of Greenwich Observatory, was not only
a believer in astrology, but a practical astrologer
himself, and he cast an astrological figure to
determine the probable future of the Observatory
itself. Nor has the study been altogether neglected
even in our own time. Plenty of text-books are in
print, and new ones are often appearing, which
teach inquirers the rules of the astrological art as
far as it is understood now; and other books on the
subject have accumulated great masses of evidence
to show that though we cannot see the sense of it,
I' astrological forecasts of the future do continually
\ turn out right. My limits will not allow me to tell
stories in detail. I know of one case in which a
• man's death, by an unusual kind of accident, at
somet);ling over sixty, was foretold at his birth by
an astrologer (long since deceased), together with
the leading events of his lifetime.
The books record such cases to an extent
that makes the theory of accidental coincidence
altogether ridiculous. And in a manner that is
profoundly mysterious, but almost invariable, the
"horoscope," or map of the heavens, at the time of
anybody's birth, will be found to correspond, in
certain ways, with his physical appearance. I am
not going to guess why certain configurations of
the planets and stars at the moment of a birth 1
should correspond with the physical characteristics
:zs
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
of the child. The idea is so difficult to understand

that it looks absurd, and all one can say is that it
is so, and every student who has the sense to
examine the facts before coming to conclusions
about them, will bear testimony that it is so.
Unfortunately we have lost touch with the
finer details of the astrological art as practised by
the scientists of the ancient world, and, so far, the
scientists of our world have not taken the trouble
to work up the lost knowledge afresh. All that
we know of astrology practically in the presP.nt
day is derived from the writings of the Egyptian
philosopher, Ptolemy. The situation is all the more
tantalising because, if ·we go back far enough, we
find that in old Chaldea-the country lying along
the valley of the Euphrates-the learned men of
the time not only made great use of astrology, but
possessed so complete a comprehension of the
solar system, that they bad anticipated our exact
knowledge of the distances and masses of the
planets. They seem to have been astronomers, in
our sense, as well as astrologers, though in those
days measurements were apparently held to be of
little importance beside what may be called the
human interest of the heavens.
In speaking of Chaldean knowledge, I am, of
course, drawing upon the results of clairvoyant
investigation for my facts. This investigation~has
not yet recovered touch with Chaldean methods of
astrological calculation, but it shows that, at a
period about twenty thousand years ago, the
Chaldean priests constructed their temples on
astronomical principles. A series of temples in
that country constituted a kind of orrery, or model
of the solar system. The great temple in the
middle stood for the sun. At distances that
corresponded in their proportions with the real
distances, other temples represented the various
planets, and the sizes were all to scale, though, as
we find necessary in drawing a map of the solar
system, the Chaldean:'l had to adopt one scale for
26
sizes and another for distances. Anyhow, the

arrangement of the temples showed that they
already, at thn.t remote date, knew about the
existence of Uranus and Neptune, and apparently
they were acquainted with one planet that has
long been suspected to exist, but has never yet
been seen by modern eyes-the interior little
world, provisionally called Vulcan, revolving so
• close to the sun that it is inside the orbit of Mercury.

Already a fairly widespread appreciation of
the situation, as I have described it, is leading a
good many people to pay attention to astrology,
and some of them get too enthusiastic, fancying
that the "science," as they regard it, can tell
us a great deal more than is really possible. It is
not a science at all in its present condition, but a
confused mass of rules imperfectly understood, by
which calculations can be made, but for no one
of which have we any foundation in reason. All
we know is that calculations made along those
lines come out right in a proportion of cases that
makes all talk of coincidence absurd. But the·
art-regarding it ip. that light rather than as
a science-is fraught with embarrassments. In its
first broad application it has to do with "nativities,"
with figures, or maps, representing the positions of
the stars and planets in the heavens at the moment
of a child's birth. But, first of all, how often is the
real, exact moment of a child's birth accurately
recorded? .An error of five minutes will alter the
significance of the figure. .And what is the exact
moment of a birth? It is needless for me here to
go into physiological details on that point. Enough
to say that the child's first cry is the orthodox:.
.~. moment in question, according to most modern
astrologers.
Given any moment, it is very easy to ''put up
the figure," as the phrase goes. All the necessary
almanacs and tables are regularly published,
and anyone can learn the rules for "casting the
horoscope." But to read its meaning is quite
~7
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
another business. For that, an astrologer has

to be saturated with a knowledge of all the
significances attributed by Ptolemy to the various
-almost infinitely various-conjunctions, aspects,
relative angular distances, and so forth, of the
heavenly bodies concerned. And in order to predict
future events, according to the· rule-of-thumb
methods handed down to us, intricate calculations
have to be made as to the places that will be
occupied by the planets at future periods. Finally,
in regard to nativities, no modern astrologer of
intelligence would claim to be able to do more than
forecast probabilities. The calculations, as we
have to make them now, are either too slovenly to
be trustworthy, or too intricate to be accomplished
by anybody with exactitude. But there is another
branch of astrology called "horary astrology,"
which does not aim at doing so much as that kind
which deals with nativities, but is more- easily
worked. For choice, it seems more absurd-more
hopelessly opposed to reason-than the kind I have
been describing.
But experience again floors incredulity. If
some really important, momentous question con-
cerning your life, health, fortunes, or happiness is
preying on your mind, and it suddenly occurs to
you, Could astrology answer this question for me?
-ridiculous and preposterous though it may seem,
astrology most likely could! You yourself, if you
are an astrologer, or somebody else for you-the
rules to be followed being a little different in the
two cases-must put up a figure, draw a map of
the heavens, for the moment at which the idea of
doing the thing occurred to you. If you have
accurately observed that moment, the work can be
done at any convenient time afterwards. Then the
map is read according to certain rules (which do
not involve any intricate calculations), and the
answer stares you in the face !
Perhaps, indeed, the figure will not, so to speak,
make sense. It will not be coherent. It will,
28
perhaps, resemble a mass of letters jumbled

together at random, as compared with intelligible
words. But if it does make sense, it will very
generally turn out to tell the truth. That is the
wonderful part of the story. You cannot begin to
explain why. The whole business is utterly
unintelligible, but the facts of experience are
stubborn things. When they come within our own
experience, we all submit to their force, but when
they are gathered up by other people, then there
are two ways of looking at them. We may say:
That sounds all nonsense, so the people who relate
their experience must be telling lies. Or we may
say : Our knowledge concerning the mysteries of
Nature is, so far, the merest smattering. For
anything which really happens there must be an
explanation to be got at sooner or later. Since the
unintelligible experience is there to ~uide us, let us
examine, investigate, try new experiments, gather
together such a volume of facts that the actuality
of the occurrence shall be beyond dispute, and then
let us set out in all directions to hunt for the clue
to the infinite marvel with which we have to deal.
For, remember that there is no problem with which
scientific investigation could concern itself that is
of deeper significance to the human race than this
which lies at the root of the astrological mystery.
To what extent is the future mapped out before-
hand by powers above us? How is this globe on
which we live concatenated in its destinies with the
other globes wandering in space? What, in the
name of all that is bewildering, can be the nature
of the unseen influences pouring down on this
earth across the awful distances that separate us
from the planets and the stars? And how, as they
intermingle, do they qualify, modify, or accentuate
each other?
The leaders of orthodox thought in the present
age of the world, and by that phrase I mean, of
course, the leading scientists of the time-for
no flattery could now assign that title to the
c 29
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
theologians-represent a woeful mixture of good

qualities and bad. They are so careful, so accurate,
so beautifully painstaking within the limits of their
activity, that from one point of view they command
enthusiastic admiration. And yet they have so
many characteristics in common with the Man of
the Muck Rake in The Pilg1-im's Progress. They
will not interest themselves in anything except the
physical plane of Nature. A problem must come
within the r ange of laboratory experiment to be
a problem for modern science. That is a glorious
foundation most assuredly, but it is only a found-
ation, and the time cannot now be far off when the
architects of science will begin to dream of the
mighty structure that must ultimately r est upon
it, and set themselves to work to gather the new
kind of material with which alone that structure
can be raised.
'
30
CHAPTER IV.
FORETELLING THE FUTURE.
When people blunder by accident, so to speak,
into the paths of occult research, and first become
aware, in their own experience, that things may
happen which their previous training made them
think impossible, it often seems to upset the
balance of their judgment. The boundary between
the possible and that which they have a lways been
accustomed to regard as the impossible, has b een
broken down. They do not know where to set it
I~ up again. So it arises that I often see half-joking,
half-credulous conjectures as to wonders that may
be perhaps brought about, or as to stories told of
something wonderful that is said to have occurred,
which no experienced occultist would treat seriously
for a moment. In reality, the regions of Nature
in which super-physical events take place are just
as much under the reign of law as those which
have to do with chemistry or electricity. As I
grant that these regions are imperfectly explored
at present, it may be that they hold many surprises
in store for even the most advanced students. But
that may be said of any science. Chemis try itself
may have surprises in store for us, but, neverthe-
less, if we are told that some chemist has
accomplished some new result, we know, from
previous experience, whether such a result lies
within the domain of regions not yet fully explored,
or whether it is in flagrant contradiction with
existing knowledge. So with tales of occult
achievement. · I could illustrate what I mean in
a dozen different ways, but, to begin with, I will
deal with theories that are reasonable, and theories
which are absurd, in connection with a matter
which interests everybody and hinges on to what
3I
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
I was writing about in the last chapter-the

problem of foretelling the future.
Palmistry and astrology are only two of the
methods that from time to time in the history of
the world have been employed with this end in
view. Most of my readers will be surprised at the
length of the list if I give them a mere imperfect
glance at some of the systems adopted in the
ancient and mediooval world for getting forecasts
of future events. We may read about geomancy,
capnomancy, coscinomancy, bibliomancy, belo-
mancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, rabdomancy, and
many ot.h ers, not to speak: of our more recent
cartomancy and cheiromancy. These were all
systems of divination which the prigs of the
nineteenth century classed together as so much
fraud and imposture, in total disregard of facts
as well authenticated in many cases as any
of history or geography. The more intelligent
view is that, if events are well authenticated as
having occurred, and if they seem at variance with
some law we think we understand, there must be ,
some hidden factor in the body of circumstances
concerned which altered their significance. I will
take an example from the testimony of the first
Lord Lytton, who, as everybody who knows any-
thing at all about the history of modern occultism
will be aware, was a very earnest student of
Nature's mysteries.
The system of divination which L ord Lytton
chiefly made use of was the first on the above list,
Geoma ncy. It would take too long to describe the
practical rules of the art, which, as the name
implies, has some supposed connection with move-
ments of the earth, but the "figure" set up to
solve any question presented to a geomancist
(never mind for a moment the rules by which he
sets it up) consists simply of dots or marks irregu-
larly grouped on paper. He reads the significs.nce
of these markings according to other rules. In
1860 Lord Lytton put up such a figure to see what
32
would be the future of "Mr. Disraeli," as he was

then-and, remember, the period was one at which
it was still the fashion -among •<L'iba.rals, then
predominant in Parliament, to ridicule and despise
Disraeli-and long before he had ever been Prime
Minister. Lord Lytton was astonished at the
significance of the figure. He recorded it as quite
out of keeping with any reasonable expectations.
It betokened important advantages from marriage,
a peaceful hearth, public honours far beyond
anticipation, death ultimately in an exceptionally
high position, in the midst of general affection and
regret. The subject of the inquiry would bequeath
a reputation "quite out of proportion to the
opinion now (in 1860) entertained of his intellect
even by those who think most highly of it. His
enemies, though active, \vill not be persevering ;
his official friends, though not ardent, will yet
minister to his success." The details of this pro-
phecy will be found in the second volume of the
second Lord Lytton's life of his father. What
is the meaning of such cases, which could be
multiplied almost indefinitely? I will give some
others from my own experience a little further on,
but first I want to suggest some general ideas on
all such subjects.
To call such a triumph of divination as that
just quoted "coincidence," is the common refuge of
stupidity. But it is hopelessly unsatisfactory to
attribute a correct divination to the arbitrary
markings on paper, which seem all there is to go
by. The missing factor in the whole transaction is
to be found in the all but invariable circumstance
.
~.
Q
that the successful diviners, whatever method they
become attached to, are '' psychics" in a greater or
• less degree-people who have to some extent,
however unconsciously, developed the faculty of
clairvoyance, the faculty of taking in perceptions
by means of a certain sensibility which we may,
for convenience, call a sense not yet generally
developed. The external rules of the system
33
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
employed would be of very little use in the hands

of a person who was not in any measure a psychic,
and in the hands of a person really so endowed
almost any mode of divination will sometimes
prove successful. The use of the favourite method,
whatever that may be, has the effect of concentrat-
ing the attention, of stirring up the activity of the
sense in question, so that the tangible things
observed become, as it were, fraught with a
meaning.
This explains the nasty old habit of the Roman
augurs, who ~ot into the habit of inspecting the
entrails of b1rds or animals. Modern wiseacres
laugh at the idea that such indications of the
future could be found in such casual and dirty
combinations. They fail to realise how stupid it is
to suppose mankind for a long period going on
believing in predictions that never came true.
0.£ course, they sometimes came true-the predic-
tions of the old oracles and diviners-because,
however dirty and meaningless in themselves were
the methods of divination employed, the more or
less effective clairvoyance of the augurs or diviners
put them in touch with the foresight which is
possible for people whose consciousness can reach
that region of Nature which occultists call "the
Astral Plane." I have known really accomplished
clairvoyants who thoroughly understood all that
I am saying now, and a great deal more, who,
nevertheless, would cling to some favourite trick,
quite meaningless in itself, as a way of starting the
activity of the astral senses. Looking in a crystal
ball is one such method. The ordinary man might
look for a month and see nothing, but I know
several persons (quite unknown to fame, and not
"professional") who never look in a crystal for a
minute without beginning to see visions of one
sort or other. One most genuine clairvoyant of
my acquaintance had a trick of gazing intently at
the bits of tea leaf at the bottom of a cup as a
means of stimulating the astral sense. Arabs of
34
old who watched the flight of arrows (Belomancy),

and the modern water-finders who use a hazel
twig, a nd seem to feel it turn in their hands w h en
they come over a hidden spring, are in the same
way stimula ting clairvoyance.
The human goose who thinks they must be
" humbugging " because he cannot see the connec-
tion between a h azel twig and an underground
spring, is doubly stupid. First, there is no
contra diction to a ny r eally known law in t h e theory
that there may be some such connection (though I
do not say ther e is), but, secondly, the fact t h at
water finders do succeed in locating hidden springs
is perfectly well authenticated, while the idea that
this can be done by p er sons gifted with the necessary
amount of clairvoyance is no more unreasonable
than to suppose that a person with a sufficiently
good ear can play a tune he has h eard on the piano.
The painful embarrassment we have to face in
dealing with this matter arises from the appar ent
necessity of admitting-if we a dmit that the
future can be foretold-- the h orrible idea that we
are under the dominion of some t errible fate that
makes every misfortune or sorrow t h at befalls us
inevitable! To b elieve that the future can ever be
foretold seems equiva lent to saying that a ll future
events must be determined by some appalling
d estiny beforehand; that if we do foolish things,
or commit crimes even, those acts were inevitable!
We seem drifted in this way into the worst horrors
of Mohammedan f atalism. No such grievous con-
clusions need be drawn from t he fullest possible
recognit ion of t hat which to me, and to a ll who
h ave made the matter a study, is a certain fact,
that very often future events a re foreseen; that
• not infrequently prophetic dreams "come true,"
and that often the cr ystal, or even the tea-cup, in
competent h a nds will give warning of trouble , or
sometimes promise j oys that in progress of t ime
actua1ly come to pass.
The apparent contradiction is explained in this
35
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
way. I n that state of consciousness which we call

in occult terminology "being on the Astral Plane,"
or "reading in the Astral Light," the inevitable
result of any body of causes then in operation-that
is to say, the effect they would have if nothing
happens to disturb them- can be perceived in a
way i mpossible down here. A humble analogy
may be derived from the position of the man on a
ladder looking over a maze i n which holiday-
makers are wandering about and trying to find
their way. In the midst of the twists and obstacles
they cannot tell at any given moment whether
they are pursuing a path that will enable them to
get out, or running up a cul-de-sac. But the man
on the ladder can see quite plainly. He can see
the obstacle or clear path, as the case may be,
which is veiled from their sight; therefore he can
foretell whether they will go on or very soon
be turned back. In the same way, though the
complication of the process is greater, the clair-
voyant, seeking to follow out the progress of
events, sees what must happen, if things are left to
themselves, from the operation of the body of
causes in existence at any given moment.
But here we are not in presence of an unalter-
able set of facts like the obstacles in a maze, but
are dealing with alterable conditions affected by
the human will. Most generally it will h a ppen
t h at, by reason of their blindness to the tendency
of subtle causes affecting human affairs, people do
nothing to alter the course of events in such cases
as I am imagining, and then the prophetic vision,
the forecast of the clairvoyant, or the dream, as it
may sometimes be, is justified by the event, and
"comes true," as the phrase goes. Where the
person concerned is himself sufficiently alive to the
true meaning of a prophecy as to avail himself
of the warning it may convey, he very likely does
do something to import a new factor into the
transaction, and then the event does not collis
off. That does not invalidate the accuracy of the
36
prophecy. It merely puts the person concerned to

.. that extent in the position of one who has soared
above the commonplace conditions of life, and has
become, in a certain small degree, a power in the
world, not merely a straw borne on the waves of
circumstance.
The life of a very remarkable clairvoyant, the
late Mrs. Anna Kingsford, whose most interesting
memoirs have been written by her friend and
collaborator, Mr. Edward Maitland, will furnish us
with examples of both kinds of prevision. In
dreams chiefly, but in other ways as well, Mrs.
Kingsford was continually getting forecasts of
future events in which she herself was involved.
Many of them would be quite trivial, for it is not
the importance of an event that will lead to its
prevision, rather the condition of the clairvoyant
at the time. In one such case within my own
knowledge at the time, as I had the pleasure of her
acquaintance, she told friends with whom she was
staying just then that she had seen herself, in
vision, in a hansom cab surrounded by soldiers, and
apparently in the midst of some scene of fighting
or disorder. No sense could be made of the fore-
cast, but it chanced that the very next day, being
in a hansom cab, after calling at a club in Pall Mall
to leave a message for one of its members, she was
driven rapidly round the corner of Marlborough
House and full tilt into the midst of the Guards
just marching off the scene of the usual ceremony
in the courtyard of St. J ames's Palace. Her
unintentional charge threw the column for a
moment into disorder. Bayonets were flashing in
the sun, the cab horse was on his haunches, and the
insignificant scene of the vision was thus realised.
• Nothing serious happened. The whole transaction
was of no importance; but she chanced to have
• sensed the causes leading up to it on the astral
plane, and nothing was done to interfere with the
result.
In another case, when in Paris, she had caught
37
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
out a maid-servant in some serious delinquencies.

She was very angry, and resolved to prosecute the
girl. With this fixed intention in her mind, she
slept that night, and dreamed that she saw herself
turning the corner of a street in Paris and meeting
a woman who threw vitriol in her face. She woke
with the sting of the acid, as it were, burning
her cheeks. She took the warning, and did not
prosecute the ~irl, and the alarming vision never
was fulfilled. These are merely two examples out
of many that might be quoted from the experiences
of the remarkable woman I have named, and from
the experience of others less known to fame I
could quote other similar cases.
Before dropping the subject, I may as well
say a few words on the deplorable manner in
which some people sometimes aim at utilising the
possibility that the future may be foretold. There
are people who would not hesitate, if they thought
it possible, to get occult information as to what
horse is going to win the Derby, or what stocks
are going to rise or fall. Like every other
contingency depending on causes in operation,
such events are, in a certain sense, foretellable,
because there are few persons concerned with their
realisation who will be likely to have such know-
ledge as would enable them to import fresh causes
into the combination. But there are two difficulties
in the way of degrading the arts of divination
to the service of such purposes as those I have
indicated. First of all, some of the persons whose
apparent free-will is engaged in the business may
accidentally swerve from the line of action along
which they are being projected by the pressure of
circumstances. To discuss that point fully would
lead me ,into the depths of metaphysics, but it is
enough~ to say that such events, as foreseen from
the height of astral vision, are liable to disturbance
-like all others, indeed. But, secondly-and this
is a consideration of greater practical importance-
no clairvoyant of the higher order would consent
38
to be engaged in the investigation of such problems

.. That would involve a degradation of exalted
faculties from which every high-minded occultist
would shrink, while anyone who might be described
as a low-minded occultist would probably not be
sufficiently advanced to be guarded against the
infinite variety of confusing and erroneous visions
with which the astral plane is necessarily saturated
39
CHAPTER V.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF NATURE.
In a rude and humble sort of fashion the
arrangements of a theatre are designed in un-
conscious imitation of nature's operations in this
living world around us. Effects on the stage are
presented to the audience, but the machinery by
which they are brou~h t about is carefully concealed
from view. The visible stage may seem roomy a nd
profound, and the artful devices of the painter m ay
suggest an infinite perspective; but much nearer,
really, than the distant hills of the stage picture
are the pulleys and ropes that control the shifting
scenes. Unsuspected mechanism lurks above and
below, and, besides the actors in front of the foot-
lights, many other players of unrecorded parts
must be actively at work all the time, or the dawn
which has to break over the la ndscape would not
appear at the right moment; the thunder shower,
necessary to the progr ess of the piece, would fail
to keep its appointment, and the best sensations of
the melodrama might culminate in the shame of
the managers. So with the vast proscenium on
which the drama of human destiny is worked out;
the play could not go on for a day- not for
a minute- unless there were countless unseen
agencies, many of them quite as intelligent as, or
much more so than, those who "strut and fret their
hour upon the stage," busily engaged a ll the time
in working the machinery.
A deeper truth than even he intended is involved
in the words Lord Bacon used (playing a part himself,
and disguised as Shakespeare) when he said, "All
the world's a stage, and all the men and women
merely players." There are many aspects of the
infinite subject I am handling tha.t cannot even be
40
BEHIND THE SCENES OF NATURE,
referred to without constant allusion to the unseen

agencies so busily at work, and I propose now to
give some account of the all-important functions
they discharge in Nature, and of the unseen realms
in which they carry on their activity. I say
"realms" in the plural advisedly, because it would
be a fatal mistake to imagine that all" behind the
scenes of Nature" is merely one region stocked
with the whole mass of machinery which produces
the visible effect. There is really region behind
region, stretching up to infinity, for that matter,
and fading away into the incomprehensible, into
that which for ages to come must be the "Unknow-
able" for most of us ; but the fundamental blunder
of primitive thinking in connection with these
profound mysteries is that which divides Nature
into the plainly visible phenomena of everyday life,
and a veiled unfathomable region of causation into
which it is supposed the consciousness of embodied
humanity can never hope to penetrate.
Occult students have penetrated so far into this
region that they, in turn, are liable to fall into the
mistake of thinking that the whole machinery of
the Cosmos is accessible to their investigation.
This is far from being the actual state of the case,
but none the less is the knowledge we are in a
position to obtain so greatly more abundant than
that which lies open to mere physical research, that
we are at least able to feel quite at home in realms
that are, at all events, well behind the scenes of
familiar visible manifestation, and can account for
a great deal that seems at the first glance utterly
beyond the range of the human understanding.
For the present I shall merely attempt to
speak of the region which lies immediately behind
the visible world- just as much belonging to the
world as its atmosphere. That region is spoken
of in occult language as" the Astral Plane." The
term is not a good one, because it seems to suggest
some association with the stars, though no such
meaning is really involved. The phrase, however,
41
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
has been used for hundreds of years by writers on

occult subjects all through the middle ages, and
we cannot throw it aside now. Again, the word
"plane" is not a very happy one, because it seems
to suggest a flat surface, and that idea must be
utterly cleaned out of the mind before we can
begin to think of the astral plane correctly. If
we who study occultism, my readers may ask, do
not like our own phrases, why do we use them ?
The trouble is that the language does not supply
words that precisely fit occult emergencies.
How, for instance, shall we call this region of
Nature, of which I want now to speak, by any
really appropriate name? It is a condition of
things that in some aspects suggests the idea of
an envelope surrounding the earth, but then it
interpenetrates the earth as well as surrounding
it, just as (or much more thoroughly than) water
penetrates the pores of a wet sponge. It is
infused in all matter as a salt dissolved in water
exists in association with all its molecules. An
accepted dictum of occult science tells us that
every particle of physical matter has its "astral
c·o unterpart." It is through that astral counter-
part that all the natural forces controlling its
growth or development, whatever that may be,
are exerted.
For the most part, ordinary people have no
direct consciousness of the astral plane, but
dreams often bring them into some relation with
it. Dreams have, indeed, a very mixed
constitution. When the body is asleep, the
consciousness o-f the person concerned is
really, in most cases, in touch with the
the astral plane, though, unless he is gifted with
'psychic" attributes, he perceives its phenomena
very imperfectly. We all have organisms adapted
to consciousness on, or with reference to, all the
planes of Nature; but most of us at this stage of
human evolution have got no more than an astral
body in an undeveloped state, not much better
42
ready to work with than the body of a blind kitten

.... a few days old is ready to catch mice. The race
will greatly improve in this respect by degrees,
but, so far, the people who can exercise conscious-
ness on the astral plane quite completely are few,
and that is how the many (when, besides being
.·.... backward in evolution, they are conceited enough
to think they are in its van) are so comically
contemptuous about the knowledge that the
(relatively) few possess.
Imagine a country isolated from the rest of
the world, in which all the people from time
immemorial had been born deaf. Life would have
adapted itself to that condition of things. People
would communicate by signs, and would have
become so skilful at that as to be under no sense
of restriction. Then suppose, one by one, a few
of them began to hear. The early possessors of
the incomprehensible faculty would not have a
very good time of it among their friends. If they
pretended to be able to communicate with one
another through an opaque screen, the sober,
common-sense majority would know quite well
that they were cheating, though it might be
difficult to detect the fraud. If they pretended to
" hear" a gun fired at a distanee, the one thing
certain would be-if it turned out on inquiry,
that a gun really had been fired-that they had
bribed the man who fired it to shoot at a pre-
arranged moment. The "hearers" would be
unanimously voted liars or victims of hallucination,
and they would be apt to give up talking about
the new discoveries they had made, until, indeed,
they became numerous enough to laugh, in their
turn, at the old-fashioned deaf mutes, or perhaps,
to do their best to share with the more intelligent
of those same deaf mutes the advantages of their
acquired sense.
That idea would really parallel the present
condition of modern society in regard to the
,. phenomena of the astral plane, and the time has
43
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
happily come when those who have astral faculties

are numerous enough to support one another in
amused indifference to the jeers of the ignorant
"deaf mutes," and sufficiently impressed with a
sense of duty to their contemporaries to describe
their discoveries openly for the benefit of all who
want to grow. For, in truth, the faculties of
astral perception will not grow, as the blind
kitten's eyes eventually open, quite of their own
accord. The appreciative and aspiring mind must
bring certain influences to bear on the process-
but that is, indeed, another story-as long as we
are still standing on the threshold of the astral
plane, realising for the first time, as we look at the
tableau on the stage, that there is a wealth of
machinery behind the scenes by which it is all
brought about.
The first most glaring faet about the astral
plane for those who become endowed with the
faculty of perception with reference to it, is that
there we come into relation again with a large
majority of the people who have recently died.
For them, it is true, it is but an ante-chamber to
higher conditions of existence, but it is an ante-
chamber in which they will sometimes be kept
waiting a long time. The astral bodies in which
they find themselves functioning will be just the
same in substance as those which they possessed,
without knowing anything about it, during
physical life; and at first, truth to tell, for un-
developed people it is a very imperfect vehicle of
consciousness. But for everyone it soon wakes up
more or less, and in proportion to the extent that
this happens (under the mental and moral in-
fluences engendered during life), the enjoyment of
the astral period of existence is very significantly .. \
affected. But I must not be tempted to go into
that matter fully just now, because the main point
I have in view is the justification of the broad idea
concerning the astral plane, with which I sta.rted.
It is the region that may be described as
44
behind the scenes of Nature, not merely because

the actors who have just left the stage are to be
found there, but because there are other-" people"
shall I say?-entities, at all events, who h a ve never
been on the stage at all, but are entirely con-
cerned with controlling the machinery, and these
are known to occultists as "elemental spirits" or
"elementals.'' They are countless as the sands of
the seashore; they vary in efficiency, in degrees of
growth, in individua lity, as widely as the whole
animal kingdom on the physical earth varies. The
elementals are the agencies through whose inter-
mediation much of the work of Nature on the
physical plane is carried out. In some of their
aspects they may be thought of as forces, operative,
with scarcely any individual initiative, modifying
(rather than ~iving rise to) the growth of plants
and the activities of the inorganic world. In the
higher departments of their work they participate
in the guidance of even human affairs ; and in
some cases the human will, developed to the
higher degrees of its potentiality, controls them
in turn, and so brings about the otherwise un-
explainable phenomena concerned with material
objects that so perplex the reason at some spiritual
seances.
Spiritualists generally are apt to attribute
such phenomena to the direct agency of their
departed friends, but this is a mistake that the
more scientific occultist does not fall into. The
departed friend, during his sojourn on the astral
plane, may acquire knowledge, by means of which
he can, within certain limits, induce or control
elemental beings to subserve his wishes as regards
working wonderful phenomena for the instruction
or delectation of his late companions still in the
. •11earth life; but, more commonly, startling physical
phenomena are produced - through elemental
agency-by entities, who, for that matter, may h a ve
been at no very remote p eriod in the past in earth
life themselves, but who- have been regularly
D e 45
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
instructed by higher entities, of whom it would be

premature to speak more definitely just yet, to play
the part of" spirit guides." The complications of the
subject lead me continually to brush the surface of
fresh mysteries, which readers who follow these
expositions systematically will come to know a
good deal more about in time.
We must not think of the elementals, however,
as being only concerned with working wonders.
They are able to do this because it is their function
in Nature to work out the ordinary processes of
growth, development, and decay, of meteorological
phenomena, of combustion, of earthquake disturb-
ances, of everything that happens in the natural
world. Do not let anyone imagine for a moment
that these results and processes are due to their
volition. The elemental, as a rule, h as no volition.
H e? It? They?-one does not know what pronoun
to employ in dealing with such unfamiliar activities
-are the means by which, in obedience to sublimely-
exalted volition, the business of Nature is carried
on. Occultism does not dethrone the Deity, be it
a lways remembered; quite the contrary. But
suppose some reverent savage were to be content
to say, with r efereuce to a locomotive engine, for
instance, it is the will of the driver that makes
it go! A. more intelligent inquirer would want
to understand how his will was transmitted to
the wheels, and he would find the intermediate
"elementals" in the boiler and the fire-box. That
is the principle on which the occultist studies
Nature, and the boiler is to the engine what the
astral plane and its marvellous population of
elementals is to the world in which we live.
,
CHAPTER VI.
THE SENSITIVE AND THE u O.P.''
What is the difference between persons who
can take up the mesmeric influence and those on
whom it has no effect whatever? The fact that
this difference exists is one of the reasons w by so
many people remain incredulous about the reality
of the effects that seem to be produced on others.
They declare, scornfully, "You can't mesmerise
me ! " and vaguely feel that, in saying this, they
have cast grave doubt on the question whether
there is really anything in mesmerism at all. It is
as though some person, with no more earformusic
than a cabbage, should go away from a concert,
declaring, "You can't make me distinguish any
difference between God Save the Queen and Pop
goes the Weasel." If such persons as he were in the
majority, then the possession by some of a musical
ear would be laughed at and disbelieved just as, in
the present state of common knowledge, the con- -
di tion of "sensitiveness" to mesmeric and other
influences of a similarly subtle character is
laughed at by the Ordinary Person of to-day-the
" O.P.," as we, who have to compare him very often
with others more highly gifted, h ave fallen into the
way of describing him.
I suppose few people are so little acquainted
with the elementa ry facts of chemistry that they
would be surprised to see nitric acid seriously
affecting a silver plate, while it produced little or
no immediate effect on a plate of lead. The silver
is sensitive to nitric acid, and the lead is much less
so. With all the science of the Royal Chemical
Society to help you, you could not come much
nearer an explanation of that state of things than
47
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
the phrase just used embodies. So, in reference to

the more intricate problem why some persons can
take up and be seriously affected by an unseen
influence like that emanating from the hands of
a genuine mesmerist, it would hardly be reasonable
to expect that a fully satisfactory explanation
could be provided. In truth, we can come rather
n earer explaining why some persons are sensitive
to p sychic impressions-including those on the
borderland of the physical and psychic planes-
than we can account for the mysterious affinities
of the chemical elements ; but to content ourselves,
in the absence of any perfect explanation, with
analogies, I would point to the familiar fact that a
sheet of aluminium is a lmost a b solutely trans-
p a rent to Rontgen rays, while a sheet of platinum
is almost a bsolutely opaque. Both metals, to t h e
eye or touch, seem equally solid a nd impervious to
anything we put upon them. Or again, why should
glass be quite tra nsparent to ordina ry light, and
wood, a more porous substance, quite opaqu e to it?
There need be nothing surprising, though there
may_not be a ny conditions quite explica ble, in the
f act that some human bodies are pervious to the
mesmeric fluid, a nd some impervious to it.
As to whet her there is · or is not a fluid in the
case at all, that can only remain in doubt, with the
O.P., by reason of his unfamiliarity with the
evidence on the subject. Great numbers of people
-far more than those who can bear visua l t esti-
mony to the reality of astral plane phenomena-
can see the mesmeric fluid as it streams from the
hands of a competent performer, and floats around
the subject on whom he is operating. In the
middle of the century just past, Baron Reichenbach
devoted himself to that particula r research, and
records experiments with over sixty p eople whom
he found able to see the emanations in question,
and a somewhat similar emanation tha t actua lly
proceeds from physical m agnets. People who
deny the fluid "theory" of mesmerism m ight as
48
.
THE SENSITIVE AND THI! " O.P."
1"-t.
well deny the north-seeking tendency of the
compass needle. There is more evidence for that,
certainly, than for the other fact, but there is
adequate evidence for both.
How many per cent. of the present generation,
it may be asked, are to be regarded as sensitive
and how many as O.P.'s? The embarrassment
here arises from the wide varieties that a re to be
observed as regards the degree of sensitiveness
of those who are not absolutely impervious to all
such influences. In its higher forms of pel'fection,
sensitiveness means a great deal more than the
mere susceptibility of being benefited by mesmerism
in ill-health. I am coming on to these wonderful
conditions later, but keeping just for the momen t
to the subject of cures, these have to do with the
lowest or slightest kinds of sensitiveness. P eople
may be cured of serious diseases by mesmeric
methods who would not be capabl e of going
off into a trance, Ol' of becoming insensible to pa in
under mesmerism. For a lways remember that
senitiveness is not a weakness, but a faculty. Not
to be in any way susceptible of the influence is to
have a relatively dull, leaden, or clod-like con-
stitution. Unhappily, that is the condition of
most of us at present, but I will show directly how
very far it is from being the condition of some. I
Before coming to that, however, it may be
well to speak of the curious development in certain
cases of a peculiar kind of sensitiveness that
renders people able to benefit in ill-health by
pilgrimages to special places. At first sight there
appears to be no connection between ordina ry
mesmeric sensitiveness and that aptitude for
benefiting by the stran ge iufluenc.es brought to
bear on persons visiting such shrines as those of
Lourdes in France, where i t is undeniable t hat
cures, thought to be miraculous, have sometimes
taken place. In such cases there is no apparent f
mesmerism to operate. The patient goes to a
place where it is popularly believed that some
49
I
l
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
supernatural manifestation has promised a healing '

influence to those who shall seek it in a devout
spirit. In Roman Catholic countries it is generally
the Virgin Mary who is supposed to be the author
of such promises. Anyhow, people go in full faith,
and are in some cases cured of their afflictions, but
not in all. What is the meaning of it? The
explanation has to be sought partly in the sen-
sitiveness of those who are benefited, and partly
in the agencies behind the scenes, which then take
the place of the mesmerist.
The problem brings us into relation with the
benevolent side of what I have been talking of so
much lately-elemental influence. Never mind
what may be the real originating force animating
the benevolent elementals concerned, the force has
been actuated somehow, and then the result
follows for any persons who are in any degree
sensitive. They may think the result due to a
direct interposition of Providence. The restoration
to health is really as much due to the operation of
natural causes as though they had been mes-
merised back to h ealth, or had b een successfully
treated by purely physical means. And, difficult
though it may b e to follow the train of causation,
the same thing, with modifications, has to be said
of those cases in which cures are effected by the
people who call themselves by the doubly-
11 inappropriate n ame, "Christian Scientists."
It is utterly foolish to ignore the dazzling
/1 . results these people sometimes obtain, however
i little their proceedings may seem to fall within any
definite category of intelligible mesmeric method.
I know of half-a-dozen cases in which serious
internal troubles, for which ordinary doctors could
prescribe nothing short of formidable operations, '..
have been decisively cured by the Christian '
Scientists. Because such people often fail and
take money for trying their best, the suspicious
O.P. regards them as conscious impostors, to whom
criminal penalties ought to be awarded. They
so
THE SENSITIVE AND THE " O.P."
seem to be working in the dark, and without any

clear understanding of the conditions of sen-
sitiveness, and so they do not know in any given
case whether they will succeed or fail. But
however tainted all proceedings of this kind
become when mixed up with pecuniary interests,
the rough and brutal behaviour the Christian
Scientists are apt to encounter in cases of failure,
are more discreditable to the intelligence of the
period than their own highly unscientific methods
are discreditable to them.
But now let us turn from the purely medical
aspects of m esmeric practice to those of far greater
interest for the student of Nature's mysteries,
which link the phenomena of mesmerism with the
inquiry into the loftier possibilities of human
consciousness. Mesmerism is what one of the
early medireval writers on occult subjects has
called "the Open Door to the closed palace of the
King "-in other words, the ea siest method at our
disposal for investigating the natural laws govern-
ing the superphysical world. As soon as we find
a subject of really fine sensitiveness, we are
introduced to psychic phenomena of the most
enchanting order. I will begin by describing a
few of these that have come within my own
experience. The possibility of rendering a mes-
meric subject, once put into the state of trance,
insensible to pain, leads us on to a very pretty and
highly instructive phenomenon. Having put my
subject into a trance, and having shown her friends
that she was entirely insensible to pain by running
a needle into her arm without causing her to move
' a muscle or an eyelash, I have given the needle to
one of her friends and have said: "Now, at your
own discretion, prick me a nywhere, and you will
see he1· give the start." The result has come off
precisely in that way.
By-the-bye, having used the pronouns "her"
and " she " in the above statem ent, let me explain
,, ' that the finer kinds of sensitiveness are more often
SI
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
found in women than in men, not, as the mistaken

idea sometimes has it, because the woman is the
weaker vessel, more easily dominated by another
will, but because women, other things being equal,
are the superiors of men in respect to the delicate
faculties that are required for sensitiveness. It is
a great mistake to suppose that the person who,
in the ordinary affairs of life, may be domineering
and obstinate, has a "strong will" for mesmeric
purposes. He may be as feeble as a child that way,
and a meek, submissive woman mi~ht have fifty
times the mesmeric force. But agam, it is not in
the mesmerist that the conditions exist that are
important in producing striking results. These
depend, in a far greater degree, on the character-
istics of the subject.
Well, in the absence of occult knowledge, I
think it would be safe to defy anyone to give any
plausible explanation of the needle experiment I
have just described. But it falls into its place
quite naturally when we have the advantage of
considering it in the light of occult knowledge
concerning the superphysical principles of the
human constitution. The mesmeric fluid, spoken ·.
of above as emanating from the mesmerist and
floating round the subject, is identical in its nature
with the subtle essence that permeates the nervous
system, and is, in point of fact, the medium of
communication between different parts of the
body and the brain. The O.P. physiologist thinks
the nerves themselves, that he can dissect out
with instruments, are the telegraphic wires that
perform this function. So, originally it used to be
thought that the copper wire of an ordinary
telegraph was the conductor of the electricity; but
Modern Views of Electricity (Sir Oliver Lodge's
book on that subject) holds, rather, that the real
channel of communication is the ether surrounding
and interpenetrating the copper. I am inclined to
think that the right view in regard to physical
electric circuits, but assuredly the corresponding
sz
TH£ SENSITIVE AND THE " O.P.''
.)
view is the right one in regard to the nervous

system and the brain. Occult students call the
subtle fluid in question (when considered in
reference to this function) the "nerve a ura."
Now, this nerve aura in a sensitive is very
'I
mobile. The mesmeric process drives it out and
replaces it with the nerve aura of the mesmerist
The two auras are for a time blended together
especially linking the two brain systems. More-
over, by reason of the condition of perfect trance -
established, the soul of the sensitive h as drifted
away from the body, and exists outside that body
-perhaps close by, perhaps a long way off; but
that is another story-in the astral vehicle, or
sheath, or body, whatever you like to call it.
Now, the alien nerve aura in the subject's system
·r forms a very imperfect medium of communication
between her limbs and brain, and this is why she
does not feel pain when herself pricked, but there is
a very good conductivity in the mass of nerve aura
connecting her brain with that of the mesmerist.
So, when he feels a prick-in the hand, let us say-
his own nervous system conveys news of 1 that
occurrence to his brain, and a simultaneous im-
pression is instantly conveyed to hers. Her brain
is affected exactly as it would be in ordinary life if
her hand were pricked, and so she gives the start,
and, as I have seen in such cases, will make an
automatic movement of the hand itself.
..,!./
.
I
CHAPTER VII.
PHOTOGRAPHING THE UNSEEN.

Probably almost everybody who may read
these lines will have heard, one time or another,
of what are called " spirit photographs." These
represent, in a more or less sh adowy fashion,
beings, spirits, ghosts, or astral entities-call them
what you like -that are perfectly invisible to
ordinary eyesight. The simple reason why such
appearances on a photographic plate are not over-
whelming in their effect on popular incredulity is
that such photographs can be very easily " faked,"
or fraudulently imitated. Nothing is easier than
to dress up a living person in floating drapery, to
give a momentary exposure of the plate with this
imitation spirit focussed upon it ; afterwards to
use the same plate f or an ordinary sitter, and so
obtain the semblance of a ghostly form standing
by his side. The value of a spirit photograph
depends entirely upon the perfect bona fides of
the whole operation. And innumerable private
photogmphers, also spiritualists, have taken such
photographs themselves, and, knowing that no
improper trickery had been concerned with the
results, have obtained photographs of spirit faces
I
on their plates.
li I suppose there are few professional photo-
graphers who, if they told the truth, would not
have to confess tha.t sometimes strange effects
come out on their plates that seem to represent
I! something " supernatural." But it would not be
good, in the present age of the world, for an
ordinary photographer's business that he should
54 •
be supposed to dabble in such "uncanny" achieve~

ment, so, when the strange results come out, the
ghost is treated as a defect of the plate, and is
suppressed accordingly. However, unless the
sitters or the photographer, or both, are mediums,
such results are unusual. On the other hand,
when the photographer is a medium, and lays
himself out for the unusual effects, they are ex~
ceedingly common. I have seen an immense
number of such spirit photographs taken under
conditions that have made me quite sure they
were genuine, and very recently I have obta ined
a series under conditions that make any question
as to their authenticity altogether absurd for me,
and equally so for any other persons who are
capable of understanding that I am telling the
truth.
I went to a photographer who had been
successful in obtaining several such photographs
for friends, and, with his cordial concurrence, took
precautions which put all possibilities of fraud, on
his part, out of the question. I should like to
remark that these precautions would have been
unnecessary for my own satisfaction, first, because
I , the honesty of the man and his sincere interest
in the whole matter make his bona fides perfectly
obvious to any rational person having to do with
him, and, secondly, because I was accompanied
by a lady of my own acquaintance, gifted with
clairvoyant sight, who could see the spirits being
photographed. But, in order that I might have
an answer for people to whom I might be inclined
to show the results, and who might not be able to
attach importance to the ideas I have just ex~
. pressed, I took my own packet of plates-purchased
the day before at Whiteley's-went myself into
' , .. the photographer's da rk room, put my initials on
the corners of the plates, and arranged them
ready for use, saw the first put into the dark slide,
, . and came out with it into the studio, sat, and
and afterwards saw the plate developed under
55
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
my own eyes. It bore a spirit form, as did all the

others u sed that morning, more or less completely.*
In two cases the faces of the astra l ent ities are as
.clearly defined as if they had b een physical sitters.
In some the pla tes are marked wit h blurs of light,
representing an unsuccessful att empt, on the pa rt
of some astral person, to m a teria lise sufficiently
for the purpose in view. The fa ilures are as
interesting as the successes, almost, for the student
of the se problems, as they help us to check our
theories as to the way the effect is brought about-
but of that, more directly. Before going into
theory I want to record a few more facts.
A lady of my acquaintance, wishing to obtain
spirit photographs, arranged a series of private
sittings with a few congenial friends; u sed her own
camera, and, after a few failure s, obtained some of
the desired effects. But then a very wonderful
development ensued. The spirit friends present
said (for be it understood that in this case the
sitters included some who were clairvoyant and
"clair-audient," so that they could converse with
the visitors from the astral plane): "Do not bring
your camera any more. Merely sit in the dark
with a photographic plate in your hand, and we
will do the rest." Following these instructions, the
lady used to take her plates to the seance, unfasten
them in the dark, hold them by the corner for a
minute, . wrap them up again, take them home,
and develop them in the ordinary way. Under
these circumstances faces used to appear on the
plates, together with a quantity of curious and
unintelligible markings that covered the rest of
each plate; but the faces are in all cases quite
distinctly recognisable-in some cases as those of
departed friends. I have a collection of prints
from these extraordinary negatives by me as I
write, and they are a defiance of what ignorant
*The annexed illustration reproduces this photo~aph
quite correctly, thou~h with less -delicacy than the original
prints from the negative still in our possession.
S6 •
•
.'
•
materialistic people call "the known laws of

Nature." But, at the same time, they are facts,
like Nelson's Column at Charing Cross, and human
beings capable of reason have got to revise their
views of Nature's laws accordingly.
Now the spirit photographs obtained with a
camera like those of ~y recent series are produced
in one way, and the photographs without the
camera in another which is less easily explicable;
but still I hope to give the reader a clue to the
comprehension even of that process. There is
really very little that is truly mysterious in the
camera spirit photograph. But it has nothing
whatever to do with the method by which the
unseen in astronomy is photographed. That process
is one which should be understood by anyone
wanting to understand the spirit photograph, only
that it may be put aside as inapplicable. It is
interesting enough in itself, and has given us
knowledge concerning some phenomena of the
heavens that could not have been obtained in any
other way.
If you look with the eye at the constellation
called the Pleiades, for example, you see a certain
number of stars. If you look with a telescope, you
see more; but, however many you see in either
case, you do not see more by continuing to look.
Now, take a photograph of the Pleiades with a
short exposure, and the plate will show you much
the same effect as the telescope, but the longer you
let the camera look at the constellation, the more
it will see. That is to say, the very faint light from
small stars, or nebulous matter surrounding the
stars that are not bright enough to be seen with
the eye, produces an effect on the plate by degrees.
'· · The effect of the light on the sensitive pla.te is
cumulative, and in this way we have come to know
that the whole constellation called the Pleiades is
surrounded by a wonderful nebula of colossal
magnitude quite too faint to be seen by any
telescope.
• • 57
I
NATURE'S MYSTERIES,
Again, there is another variety of the unseen

that can be photographed on different principles.
The peculiar kind of light called the Rontgen ray
is not perceptible to the eye, because the vibrations
of the ether which constitute that variety of light
are too rapid and minute to suit the mechanism of
the eye, delicate as that is. Everyone knows that.
there are sounds too shrill to be heard, and just in
the same way-to put the idea paradoxically-there
is light too bright to be seen. But the camera can
see that sort of light. In other words, the sensitive
plate can be impressed by it; hence we get our
radiographs of people's bones and all the other
phenomena of X-ray photography. And hence
a lso, for the matter is not more complicated than
that, do we get our spirit photographs of the
ordinary kind-those which are taken with the
camera. The spirit may be in a vehicle of conscious-
ness that is not of a kind to impress ordinary vision,
and yet it may impress the photographic plate.
How, then, ~oes it happen, an intelligent in-
quirer may ask, that we do not get superphysical
effects on every photograph taken, since we are told
that the astra l plane is a ll around us, and the
whole of another world a lways in sight if we could
only see it? Just so, but the light emitted from,
or reflected by, astral matter does not affect the
plate. The spirit or astral entity who wants to get
himself photographed-and nobody ever yet photo-
graphed a spirit who did not want to have his
portrait taken-has to suffuse his astral body with
matter of a somewhat different kind, in order that
its shape and appearance may become visible to the
- plate. The matter in question is spoken of by
students of occultism as "Etheric," and it exists,
though unseen by the eye, in the constitution of
every human being. From the constitution of some
it is very easily withdrawn by astral spirits who
want to borrow it, and susceptibility to that sort of
treatment is one of the attributes that go to con-
stitute a medium. Such withdrawal is a weakening,
ss • •
~
nfeebling process, and that is why mediums often
eel very much depleted and exhausted after seances
at which materialising phenomena have taken
place. The materialisation of the spirit sufficiently
for the purposes of the photographer nE!ed not be
carried nearly so far as that which aims at making
.t he spirit actually visible to ordinary eyesight; a ll
the same, it is still more or l ess of a strain, and
spiritualists, generally, who do not study the science
of their own experiences, are often foolishly reck-
l ess about strains of that sort themselves- indeed,
lonly one kind among many perils that beset the

practice of mediumship.
I said the met.h od of X-ray photography was
the same as that by which we get the portraits
of spirits. That is because the X -ray is really an
emanation, from the "cathode" or negative pole of
the electric circuit in a vacuum tube, of etheric
matter. Ordinary science has not yet realised this
fact, for in many ways it lags behind the knowledge
gained by occult r esearch; but such is the fact, and
many other interesting possibilities of the future
l h ang on to that fact. To see astral matter, a

p erson in the physical body must have an a ltogether
new sense developed ; but to see etheric matter, it
is only n ecessary for the present eyesight to be
improved, as already it is improved for some few
persons. The eye is an instrument of very varying
capacity. This may be illustrated by an interesting
- experiment with the spectrum.
} If we a rrange things so that a solar spectrum-
the rainbow-coloured band of light-is thrown on
a sheet of paper or a screen, it will be found that
lsome people can see colour beyond the violet tint

visible to all. That is because the eyes of such
persons are enabled to cognise vibrations of a
higher order than those which are perceptible to
the rest of us. Persons who can see a good deal
further in the spectrum than others will proba bly
be able also to see the Rontgen ray. That is to
say, such persons have, in a greater or less degree,
+
• • 59
NATURE'S MYSTERIES.
the etheric sight. When this is perfectly developed,

the possessor of such a faculty can ~ee through
opaque matter of some kinds-of thoRe kinds which
the Rontgen ray penetrates-and are thus endowed
with a species of clairvoyance, not of that kind
which is the true clairvoyance of astral sight, but
of a sort that seems very wonderful, nevertheless.
Novv:, as to the rationale of the spirit photo-
graph taken without the aid of the camera. To
explain that, I must refer to a phenomenon almost
as wonderful, but of which I have had abundant
experience. It is possible for the few who not
alone can see with the astral sense, but can make
use of some of the elemental forces belonging to
the asteal ~plane, to produce writing on paper
without the aid of pen or pencil. This is done
sometimes at spiritual seances even, and it is not
understood in the least by the ordinary spiritualist,
but it is done by a process called in occultism
"precipitation." On the astral plane thought is
a creative power. Your thoughts, if they are
sufficiently intense and clear, form images there
which are perceptible to others. If you form a
thought image of the words you wish to write, and
know how to materialise the image by means of
etheric matter, you can condense it on paper.
Nothing I can say here will enable anyone to do
the thing, but m.any things we cannot do ourselves
may, nevertneless, be intelligible as do-able by
personA adequately" gifted. Now, that which seems
to take · place when a photogeaphic image is
produced on a sensitive plate without the aid of a
camera is analogous to the precipitation of writing,
only the thing precipitated is not visible matter,
but a chemical influence. The whole idea is
extremely subtle, but there is the accomplished
result lying before me, and the solution I have
suggested seems the only one available if we want
to do something more than gape at it as an
inexplicable wonder.
6o

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T ' •

OF TTFE :'!!'!E.S- No. V .

PRICE 6D. nett.

I. Achievements and Limitations of

THE SIN G.A.PO?-E LOD~

The collection of Essays, published in 1001, under

We can find out the rate at which electric

though these will probably undergo considerable

the difference between the dead body and the

and can act independently of it-can be conscious ·~

I is a separable something which can exist in full

the other hand, while the rank disbelievers in

only dazzle it if we talk of the figures concerned.

.. Some of us have recently been interested in

This new development of scientific knowledge

other end of the scale. Instead of breaking up a

fashioned conceptions relating to the constitution

with which the deeper mysteries of matter will

The term " clairvoyance " means, of course,

gifted person may be able to see what is at a

which such civilisation may, at a given period,

parts of the world were in touch with each other

place. Ordinary geology, as I have said, makes it

. at the time I am speaking of made a huge belt

become a desert, then the Nile resumed business as

li The real, grand, early civilisation of Egypt was

But though that crossing means that, the earth is

answer is, that if we had a flat map of that spherical

miles are as nothing compared with the distances

as superstition if they did not fit in with knowledge

certain that experience had shown them to be on

of the child. The idea is so difficult to understand

sizes and another for distances. Anyhow, the

• close to the sun that it is inside the orbit of Mercury.

another business. For that, an astrologer has

perhaps, resemble a mass of letters jumbled

theologians-represent a woeful mixture of good

I was writing about in the last chapter-the

would be the future of "Mr. Disraeli," as he was

employed would be of very little use in the hands

old who watched the flight of arrows (Belomancy),

way. I n that state of consciousness which we call

prophecy. It merely puts the person concerned to

out a maid-servant in some serious delinquencies.

to be engaged in the investigation of such problems

referred to without constant allusion to the unseen

has been used for hundreds of years by writers on

ready to work with than the body of a blind kitten

happily come when those who have astral faculties

behind the scenes of Nature, not merely because

instructed by higher entities, of whom it would be

the phrase just used embodies. So, in reference to

supernatural manifestation has promised a healing '

seem to be working in the dark, and without any

found in women than in men, not, as the mistaken

view is the right one in regard to the nervous

PHOTOGRAPHING THE UNSEEN.

be supposed to dabble in such "uncanny" achieve~

my own eyes. It bore a spirit form, as did all the

materialistic people call "the known laws of