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THIRD SECTION.

MAGIC AMONG THE ISRAELITES.

THE most perfect and reliable history of divine and human nature, of divine revelation and influence through divine or pious god-like men, is to be found in the records of the ancient Hebrews in Holy Writ.

The Bible has with truth been called the Holy Scriptures, for it contains the knowledge of that which is holy, agreeing as it does with immoveable laws, and combining and interweaving deeds and laws, words and actions. It shows the true connection of man with the Almighty; it has the most intimate connection with the profoundest truths of the intellect and the senses; it speaks of the origin of the universe and of laws, according to which all things were created; of the history of man before and after the Deluge; of his future destiny, and the means of attaining to it; of the living and invisible agents which God employs towards the great work of salvation; and lastly, of the highest of all beings, the Saviour, who combined in his person all divine powers and actions, whilst those who had gone before him were but the representatives of single powers and perfections. It shows to fallen man the light and radiant goal of his life, and prescribes all the various actions of purification and regeneration.

Having seen among the nations of the East the stages of magic, the degrees of development in somnambulism and clairvoyance, and the most varied modes of producing unusual effects, we shall now see all this among the Israelites, but in a perfectly different character. In the former it was self

and the present; in the latter it is no longer the individual which is influenced by magic, but humanity and the future: there the light shines from the natural powers of man, though often excited by artificial means, even of the lowest description; here a pure, unclouded, calm light is seen, gently influenced by the breath of God, and illuminating the future, to which all life and being tends. To the Israelitish seer the fate of individuals was not only revealed, but of whole nations, even of the human race, which is guided, as it were, in a magical manner to its development, and the great end of reconciliation with God, which in the old covenant takes place in an almost instinctive somnambulic manner. In regarding first of all the history of the old covenant, we see this remarkable people standing alone like a column of light in the obscurity of Pagan night.

If we find in the noblest men who, in other nations, strove to attain to perfection, uncertainty and doubt, the men of God show the impression of confident truth, representing the higher powers by living words and deeds, by proofs which separate life and death, truth and falsehood; and where the remains of other nations show only theories or adaptations, we find here a continuous chain of events and actions, a living and divine assistance. The sacred writings speak of all this with a connectedness, with a dignity and perfection, that no other nation's history, interwoven with fables, can show. The Bible contains the light which shines through all the clouds of life; it is the foundation of all human actions, the guiding star of the earthly to eternity, of material to divine things, the means and end of knowledge. It is the first of the three great lights which guide and rule our faith. The Bible is also of greater weight to our subject than all other records; and I shall therefore quote some of the passages which have reference to the principles as well as the practice of magnetism, especially as regards the healing of the sick according to biblical precepts. Those regarding dreams may be first mentioned.

A. The Old Covenant.

The dreams mentioned in Holy Writ are extremely numerous and remarkable; for those voices with which God spoke

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to the chosen men and prophets were usually heard during sleep thus, as Moses shows, the visions of the first men were during sleep. Numbers, xii. 6: "And he said, Hear now my words. If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream." Job, xxxiii. 15: "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed." 1 Kings, iii. 5: "In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give thee." Genesis, xx. 3, 6: "But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold thou art but a dead man for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife.... And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me; therefore suffered I thee not to touch her." Genesis, xxxi. 24: "God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad." Joseph's dream concerning his brethren is very remarkable. Genesis, xxxvii. 5 : "And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren; and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed. For behold we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo! my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves stood round about and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold I have dreamed a dream more: and behold, the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father and to his brethren; and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth ?"

History proved that Joseph, after he had been sold by his brethren to the Egyptian merchants, was in reality, at a later date, their king at the court of Pharaoh. Joseph's power of expounding dreams is shown by his explanation

of the dreams of the king's cupbearer and baker, as well as Pharaoh's dreams of the seven fat and lean cattle, and the seven full and withered ears of corn. In the New Testament instances of dreams in which God spoke to the faithful are not wanting. Thus, an angel announced to Joseph in a dream that Mary had conceived, and would bear the Saviour of the world; and afterwards that he should flee to Egypt with the child, to escape the murderous designs of Herodias. God also commanded the three wise men to return by another way from Bethlehem, and not to see Herodias (Matthew, ii. 12). Visions often appeared to the Apostles by night: for instance, that Paul should go to Macedonia; and Acts, xviii. 9, we find: "Then spake the Lord to Paul in a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold

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not thy peace. There are many similar passages-Acts,

xxiii. 11 xxvii. 23, &c.

Let us commence with the Mosaic account of the creation. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In this is contained the original principle. God is an uncreated being; the heaven and the earth were first created; the contrast being created by God. As of a second creation, Moses speaks of light and darkness: "And God said, let there be light; and there was light." Here, too, light is spoken of as being created, but having its opposite in darkness. The ancient Egyptian belief regarded night as the commencement of all things, and the words used by Moses express a similar idea: "And darkness was upon the face of the deep." But if the Egyptian belief is to be regarded as of very early orign, the error must have arisen from the fact that they imagined the night as actually having existed before the day, as the Persian regarded the light as having been created by God before darkness. The light was created with the darkness, as its natural contrast, as Moses clearly says: "And God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night." The Bible shows another contrast in the first forming of the world, namely, in the water and the spirit. The water as matter, as the germ of organisation, and the spirit, the elohim, the fructifying principle. "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." One-sided views on this point

have led the earliest philosophers to many errors and false explanations. Thus, Thales imagined everything to proceed from the water, and overlooked the spiritual activity, which from his time all the defenders of materialism have also done. The other view is to consider everything to be spiritual, and matter as but a dead weight: this has been the case with all spiritualists and defenders of the world of spirits from the earliest ages. Moses, therefore, shows that he is raised far above all disciples of the Egyptian templeknowledge, or the modern theorists, as, illuminated by the divine light, he does not regard the subject from a distorted point of view, but represents it in its true form and worth; he places the spirit beside matter. Moses has, moreover, excellently described the creation, as the separation of the water and the dry land took place; the gradual growing of herbs and plants, which propagated in the earth, of fruitful trees which carried their own seed; of the living creatures which inhabited the waters, and the birds under the heavens, and the beasts of the earth, each one according to its kind. How God made man: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

The Mosaic Eden is the habitation of the original, purely created man, within whose reach grew the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The symbol of the serpent shows the nature of man's fall. I have already spoken of the original purity and natural wisdom of man, when treating of his life in God. This is the place to make a few observations according to biblical principles. For this purpose a mystical, interesting work will be useful, from which the following is taken. It is called "MATIKON; oder das geheime System einer Gesellschaft unbekannter Philosophen," printed at Frankfort in 1784: it is a scarce book, and its theories have much similarity with the Brahminic doctrines.

"Through this divine origin as the immediate reflection of God, Adam was not only the highest step of creation, having precedence of all others by the impress of divine power, for his being was not derived from any mother; but he was a celestial Adam, created by God himself, and not

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