CHAPTER XIV.

THE SOUL.
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die." — Bible.

I have already defined the soul as a vacuum, and
herein appears the impossibility of it. The sublime
and the ridiculous are so closely united that some-
times one is taken for the other. Modern philos-
ophy, backed by science, says there are no vacuums ;
that "nature abhors vacuums" — thus virtually ad-
mitting their existence ; for how can nature abhor
that which has no existence ? It is not possible to
conceive of a thing which has no foundation or exist-
ence. The supernatural is denied also, and that
shows the weakness and nakedness of philosophy.
x^ The soul is supernatural, and it is a vacuum ; but it
is not given to ordinary minds to comprehend this.
How can the natural mind believe in that which
nature abhors ? We instinctively try to destroy that
which we abhor, and the mind that rejects a proposi-
tion is at variance therewith, and its thought is that
of destruction.

No man can conceive of the supernatural, except
he have a something in himself in harmony with the
idea. The soul is a vacuum — it contains the Ego,

l6o THE TEMPLE OP THE ROSY CROSS.

its maker, which is supernatural, because nature can-
not destroy it ; and that which is hidden is always
superior to that which is visible. Soul corresponds
to the feminine principle in nature, but this corre-
spondence does not make a natural thing of it at all.
It is not a thing, but that which gives birth to things.
Attraction is the feminine of nature, but this is not
the soul, but that which the Ego produces as a
governing law in nature.

In nature, things are moved by contact and by
impact. Operations by contact are always down-
ward. We cannot operate upwards, save as we
receive that which is superior from above by impact.
This is the way of the spirit.

Spirit is natural, unnatural, terrine, and
celestial, and may become supernatural by working
itself out of the laws governing those four grades of
spirit ; or, in other words, by becoming master of all
of nature's methods, operations, modes of action, etc.
This is within the range of man's powers. This
nature in which we exist is not infinite. There are
other natures. This is a peculiar one, in which
motion is the law. Perfection of motion is the ulti-
mate of this nature. Perfection is stagnation, of
which we know little. The perfect union of soul and
spirit is the supernatural, but the spirit is swallowed
up by soul in such union.

This union was called " Nirvana " by Gautama,
which Hardy, the translator of Buddhism, says, means
annihilation.

THE SOUL. l6l

But he mistakes. It is an existence outside and
above all human comprehension. Hence the diffi-
culty of explaining it. All spirit is fire ; but spirit
outside of soul has quality, quantity, sound and
colors ; which are lost in the fusion or oneness of
soul and spirit. " Things of the spirit are nonsense
to the common mind.,, Soul is not a thing, save it
be united to spirit, neither can we conceive of it save
in imagination.
\ To conceive of the soul is to make a thing of it —
thus man creates his own soul as a thing. Without
such conception the soul is formless, and there is no
permanence or reality to its existence, i.e.% it takes
any shape, according to circumstances and conditions.
To give form to the soul, then, is man's highest work.
The souls of vegetation and animals have no fixed or
durable form. The same is true of some men.
\ All perfect forms are spherical, and the Rosicru-
cian symbol of a winged globe is a type of a perfected
soul. Some Rosicrucians claim that the soul is
located, or has its equator, at the pit of the stomach
in the solar and semi-lunar plexus, with one pole in
the brain and the other in the sexual organs. This
is undoubtedly true of a perfected soul. But in its
imperfect state it is in every atom of the body, and
cannot be withdrawn therefrom save by death.

The lungs are the physical representation of the
soul's wings. All flights of thought depend upon
inspiration — a breathing in, as it were, of another
atmosphere from a thought-world. The perfect soul

1 62 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS,

can leave the body at will, and fly away to realms
more vital than this. But the imperfect is held fast
to the atoms in which it is anchored by demerit. The
perfect soul and spirit can make and dwell in any
v kind of a body it chooses, and dissolve it at will.

There is a vivifying and vitalizing, exhilarating and
exalting influence comes by deep and protracted
breathing ; but in thought there is a deeper, broader,
higher, and more profound exaltation, because it
touches the sensorium of the soul itself. Breathing
is physical ; thought is mental ; but meditation is the
poising of the soul's wings for flight.

There are some thoughts which take hold on the
filth of hell, which they stir up to the degradation
and damnation of the thinker; there are other
thoughts which elevate the soul and exalt the thinker.
In neither case does the thinker go outside of him-
self in his thought, albeit he imagines that he does.

In order to become an epitome of all, man must
pass through all, which can be done mentally, for the
true man lives in his mind. He must dissect him-
self, and analyze all his passions, motions, emotions,
motives, etc., and master them all. They are the
steps in his ladder of progress. He must begin at
the bottom to climb. The sexual and love nature are
at the foundation of existence. God has so ordered
it that man's greatest happiness, as well as his great-
est woes, spring from this source. If there is any-
thing impure about it, it is in the mind of him who
so estimates it.

\

THE SOUL. 163

Of all acts the sexual is the most potent, for herein
man approaches the nearest to the portals of Divine
creative energy. Here, in the veiled temple of
woman's body, God baptizes matter with his Spirit,
and lo, it becomes an immortal being, having in
embryo all the powers of God himself. Is there any-
thing degrading about this ? The true man and
woman love their children. The great solace and
pride of their lives are offspring ; they are a result of
this relation, of which we may only speak in whis-
pers, and over which a pall must be spread. As if
God has made something of which man is ashamed.

In this relation soul meets soul in an ecstatic
blending of Spirits, and a watchful God bending low
from on high " broods over the Holy of Holies " in
the temple, and accepts the sacrifice, consumed with
fires of love, and entering in, is born of woman.
" The Immaculate Conception " is the result of a
perfect union of man and woman. The resulting
child must, of necessity, be superior to the parents,
for such is " the Christ, the Son of the living God,"
not of a dead one, for dead Gods produce half men
and women — devils in human form. " We are dead
in trespasses and sins."

A virgin typifies purity of Soul. "The Holy
Ghost " is "the Holy Spirit," or a pure Spirit.
Now, the union of such produces " the only begot-
ten Son of God;" for God cannot be incarnated in
impurity, save as a progressive being. The only way
God can be begotten of man, or in man, is through

1 64 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

purity. But what is purity ? What is sin ? Dis-
obedience of law is said to be sin. Without law
there could be no sin, for there would be no standard,
or regulator of action. This is an idea as true as
nature, and as old as humanity. The writer of
Genesis expressed it in an allegorical manner, or
as a fable or parable. Law is, after all, only a mode
of action. But of what action is sin predicated ?
Sexual action ! Nothing more, and nothing less.
Strange idea ! And wherein is its truth ? A virgin
is pure ; but a mother — a fully developed woman —
one whose love-nature has had full expression, is
impure !

I am not one to scoff at an idea hoary with age,
which has had the respect and reverence of the good
and great for untold centuries. This vague legend
or tradition, of the fall of man, must have a founda-
tion in truth, for it belongs to all races and nations.
And this is also proven by the present condition of
mankind, which I have set forth under the head of
The Unnatural. It is a matter of little or no con-
sequence, how it happened, but it is of vital importance
to know wherein the fall consists.

The ancients wrote allegorically. The fundamen-
tal truths were not for the multitude, hence they were
hidden away in parables, or conveyed in language
intended to mislead. All knowledge of value was
fast locked in the temples, and taught only as mys-
teries to the initiated. But in their writings the
truth is manifested occasionally, especially to him who

THE SOUL. 165

has " the keys." The ancient wise men, seers and
prophets, were deeper versed in the mysteries of
nature than we are, hence some of them stood nearer
to God, and received truth more in its purity and
simplicity.
v The fall of man was the fall of the soul from its
perfect spherical form to a diffused or atomic state.
To a perfect soul the emotions are perfectly subject
to the will, and any part of the system may be affected
in any manner desired, without the provocation of
contact with objects. Before the fall woman was a
subjective or spiritual being (taken from Adam while
.in a trance, as I will more fully explain hereafter) —
a materialized spirit, with whom Adam copulated,
thus preventing her return to a subjective condition.

When the soul fell to an atomic state, subjective
things became objective, and contact of things became
necessary to produce emotions of pleasure and pain.
Adam did not need the contact of copulation to pro-
duce ecstasy, for it could be produced without — by
will, and that without waste of virility. And the
command was that he should not copulate. Such,
evidently, were the views of the ancient philosophers,
as I will try to explain further on.

The scientific world is mad with evolutionism.
Darwin has sunk modern thought low down in the
mud ! Protoplasm is God ! It appears to sense
that out of mud come flowers and fruits. This ap-
pearance, however, is the same as that the sun rises
and sets — the earth flat, etc. It is a delusion.

1 66 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

That which appears is not the whole truth ; the most
vital truths do not appear to observation. A plant
or tree grows up out of the mud, but the flowers and
fruits descend. There is a descent as well as an
ascent, and at the point of union there is generation.
This is nature's copulation. Plants, flowers, fruits,
living things, eyes, ears, thought and feeling, do not
ascend out of the ground, any more than the stars or
the sun-light does. There is a mystery connected
with all things which is insoluble, and the ancients
deserve as much respect for their effort to explain it
as Darwin and Huxley.

Man grew, and still grows, as plants and animals
do ; but who knows how they come, or from whence ?
If thought lies perdu in the mud (as a flower), is it
any less an unfathomable mystery, or any less worthy
of adoration than if it be enthroned in the stars or in
a God ? It is just as logical to suppose that sense
makes the mind as that mind evolves sense.

Far away in the dim and shadowy past some one
conceived an idea, and wrote that God said : " In the
day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Is it
not true ? Is this life ? If so, I do not want more
of it ! But this is more death than life. The loftiest
mind has not yet conceived of real life. This is,
indeed, one long-drawn sigh of anguish ; a mad dance
of demons ! A scramble and a rush after toys. If
this is life, and all of it, then, indeed, is God or
nature a demon, enacting an awful tragedy, for 'tis
worse than a farce.

THE SOUL. 167

Man dies for lack of vitality ; which, indeed, is
virility, and virility springs from love, wherein it is
generated. So all diseases, pains, and death itself,
spring from an abnormal, or unnatural action of love, or
the sexual nature. Undoubtedly the ancients under-
stood the "fall of man" to be a. fall of the blood.
The laws of Moses support this conclusion. The rite
of circumcision — the rites of purification — the sacri-
fices with fire> and the shedding of blood, and the
obscure narratives of the old Testament show that
they considered sin as sexual. The same idea seems
to have been entertained by Jesus, for he said :
"Woe unto you/1 etc., "verily I say unto you the
harlots go into the kingdom before you." Why were
harlots named instead of other criminal classes ?

And again : " Some men are bom eunuchs ; others
are made so by men ; others make eunuchs of them-
selves for the kingdom of heaven's sake." This,
when rightly understood, does not mean castration.
The Buddhist priest who has attained the power of
"Irdhi," (the power of levitation, of walking upon
the water, or of passing through the air, or of visit-
ing at will any of " the three worlds," or " the Brahma
Lokas,") has no sexual desires at all, and is as incom-
petent as an eunuch ; but he has all his organs per-
fect. He has, by a certain course of training, turned
his virility upward and inward, instead of allowing it
to flow downward, and outward, in the commission of
what St. John calls sin.

Turn to the first Epistle of John, iii, 9, and you will

168 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

find the real definition of sin, " Whatsoever is born
of God doth not commit sin ; for his seed remain-
eth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born
of God." Loss of virility, then, must be sin. The
first sin ! The monster sin of the world, out of
which all others flow — as water from a fountain.
Connect this with Gen. iii, 1 1 : "I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his (?) heel." (Heel here means something
else.) The word "his " here means her. (It has not
yet been settled what the serpent here spoken to
means. Theology calls it "the devil;" but the ser-
pent is the symbol of wisdom.) Seed here spoken
of must mean the same spoken of by John, for the
bruising of it is all too apparent in all the hospitals
and medical museums of the world.

Read God's admonition of Cain prior to the mur-
der of Abel : " If thou doest well shalt thou not be
accepted, and if thou doest not well sin lieth at thy
doory and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt
rule over him." Strange language to use in order to
deter one from doing wrong, to tell him he should
become ruler by sinning. " Onan " was slain by the
Lord, because sin lay at his door — i.e., wasted (Genesis
xxxviii. 1 1). What is a door but a place of egress ?
Let him who reads think. But we are not dependent
upon the Bible and conjecture for what we believe
upon this subject. Buddhism, five hundred years
older than Christianity, numbering 369,000,000 ad-

THE SOUL. 169

herents, containing all the principles that Jesus
taught, and much more, teaching the way to super-
natural power and "Nirvana," is sexual from the first
to last. All birth is sexual, hence "the second
birth" spoken of by Jesus must have reference

s thereto.

x* The curse put upon the woman : " I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception" was a sexual
penalty, showing that "the fall" was a fall of the
blood ; and in corroboration of this idea, nature weeps
tears of blood periodically from the mysterious re-
cesses of woman's body. Woman, of all God's crea-
tures, is the only one so accursed. The atonement
is of blood and of love. Through woman came the
fall, and through the virgin soul must come immor-
tality. Salvation is woman's work.

"^ By the shattering of the soul into atoms, it lost
control of the vital essences, nerve aura, or fire of the
body ; hence man fell under the control of his pas-
sions, and love became inverted. Hence man is the
reverse of what he primarily was, and disease takes
the place of that divine ecstasy which is his heritage.
"The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children
to the third and fourth generation." No sins but
those of the blood are so visited. Love is the life of
the blood, hence in the Scriptures blood typifies love.
The blood of the sacrifice, of the lamb, and of the
atonement, all refer to love. Man's passions are not
love, but its lowest expression — its inverted expres-
sion.

170 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

To attain to life and love in its purity the founda-
tions of God's Temple — man — must not be rotten.
If rotten, it must be made new. How Herculean
the task ! How gigantic the work ! No wonder
Jesus said : " Except a man be born again he cannot
see the kingdom of God ! " None but a God could
reveal these things of the soul to man !

As I said before, I say again — meditation is the
poising of the wings of the soul for flight, and the
most potent meditation is that wherein passions are
crucified. Man is an angular being, and in order to
attain perfection these angles and triangles must be
worn off. Your character and disposition (not your
reputation) is indicative of the form of your soul.

The man who revolves through life like a jagged
rock — crashing, knocking, bumping, grinding, flay-
ing, and demolishing objects that stand in his way, is
far from being a true soul. True, he may get the
angles knocked off ere he gets through his journey ;
but the journey of the soul is infinite, and it takes
countless ages of experience to round out a soul to
a durable and permanent form, and then, when all
the angles and corners are chipped off, it may be a
very small thing, scarcely possessing any conscious-
ness at all. But whatever its size may be — provided
it is not a monad — it retains its form, and in the
lapse of time and the increase of consciousness, the
dim past becomes more and more vivid and real, till
at last all previous stages of existence become a
matter of memory. In whatever form it may be im-

THE SOUL. 171

prisoned, the character manifested will be harmonious
and peaceful. The true rounding off of angles is
done by the chisel of thought from within. We are
the architects of our own selves. We build by our
thoughts and acts the temples or hovels we inhabit.
Some, indeed, live in caverns, or, reptile-like, in holes
in the ground. Some inhabit the great deep, and lie
in the slime at its bottom.

^ Soul orbits differ as the orbits of the planets;
hence the ages of souls are not alike. Some revolve
in small orbits ; they make a revolution with great
rapidity. Others, again, revolve in orbits so vast
that millions of ages are as a second of time, or a
degree of distance as from one universe to another.
Stations there are on the way of the soul, where rest
is taken, and new forms made, mysteries explored,
other laws learned, and the soul enlarged.

There is no end save to weakness ; the downward
terminates at the centre, where no forms exist — the
above has no limits — universe after universe stretches
away illimitable. Sense makes boundaries ; but soul
overleaps or breaks down all barriers. A mere crea-
ture here ! A nothing, to be scoffed at, doubted, and
destroyed by sin, it becomes in its flight stronger and
stronger, larger and larger, till it becomes a creator
and governor of worlds, and the architect of universes
and of other souls.

We are merely halted here on our eternal voyage
to learn of this peculiar nature — to master its secrets
and mysteries. When we have done so, we will go

172 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

on our way. Some souls are older than others ; but
no soul can leave this earth unfledged. You cannot
leave till you have learned all that is to be known of
it, and mastered all its creative forces and laws.

True, we have a rest occasionally, of a few thousand
years, in some of the heavens or hells of spirit-land
or the GoD-worlds, from which return is not only
possible but certain ; not merely to communicate, but
to be re-incarnated. We 'sometimes leave our bodies
in deep sleep, and visit strange places, see strange
faces, and learn many new things, which we bring
back in part to our waking state. Waking state?
Indeed ! The real waking, conscious, living state is
when this physical is in a deeper sleep than the
deepest trance. The more globular the soul is, the
more easily it may detach itself from the atoms first,
and then and lastly from the body. This detaching
is a drawing together, or contraction, or abstraction
of itself, in which is health.

Sleep is better than medicine. The cause of dis-
ease is the close relation, or contact of the soul to
the atoms of the body. The withdrawal of the soul
permits the spirit to enter any diseased part and re-
store it. The soul is foreign to nature, and its
imprisonment therein corrupts nature. It abhors
nature as much as nature abhors it, and it is bound
to get out of it, in one way or another — either by
growth or decay, or by both.

From my boyhood I studied and practiced phre-
nology, and studied myself closely. Wishing to make

THE SOUL. 173

the most of a defective organization, I strove to cul-
tivate myself to the utmost of my abilities. But
knowing my many defects, I felt often discouraged
and dissatisfied with myself. One night, in deep
sleep, I was outside of my body. There it lay before
me, a mere lump of plastic clay. I said : — oh, you
defective thing ! If I had had the making of you, I
would have made that head far different. A voice
said : " Fix it over to suit yourself." I immediately
went to work upon the plastic head, and moulded it
to my notion, and then got into my body and tried
it on. It did not suit me. Again I got out and re-
modeled it, with the same result. Time after time
I essayed to make it over to my notion, but without
success, till at last the head was all out of shape;
in fact, it was no longer human. And the joke of it
was that I could not get it back to its original shape.
In my perplexity the voice said : " Trust in creative
power ! Make the best use you can of your head,
and by and by you will have a better one." Then I
awoke, and since then I am content to work and
wait in harmony with nature, and not find fault.

Some of us, at least, are double at times. Nature
is not partial to individuals. The way to power is
open to all. " Many are called, but few are chosen ! "
Why ? Because few choose to struggle up the stream,
when it is so easy to float, like drift-wood, downward.

To crucify the loves is a superhuman task, and so
repugnant to man's everyday life and thought that
most men will turn aside from my book in disgust

174 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

and contempt ; and yet there is so much talk in the
churches about " taking up the cross *' ! Alas for
unbelief !

Whence comes the celibacy of the Catholic priest-
hood ; the asceticism of India, and the peculiar tenets
of the Essenes, — amongst whom, it is said, Jesus
was "developed." They did not marry, and held
property in common, as did the early Christians.
They held, as we of the Rose Cross hold to-day,
that marriage, as now understood and practiced, is
unnatural. The asceticism of Catholicism, if it was
not borrowed from Buddhism, is synonymous with it,
which existed long before Gautama's time, who lived
five hundred years before Christ. But no matter
how old asceticism may be, or how much it may have
been practiced, or how much spiritual power may be \/
attained thereby, it is the exoteric of religious ideas,
as much so as any of the forms and ceremonies. The
esoteric has never been, and never will be, given to
any but the initiated. It is the much-talked-of "Phi-
losopher's Stone/' and "Elixir of Life" — the
least of all known. This subject, however tedious it
may be, is intimately connected with the soul, for it is
the soul of Rosicrucia, as well as all religious sys-
tems. It is not asceticism which gives purity — it is
only a method for its attainment. It is from the
thought that all things come.

" Not that which goeth in at the mouth defileth a
man, but that which goeth out." Sin defiles, for it
"layeth at the door." The greatest sin a man can

THE SOUL. 175

commit is the waste of the life a good and beneficent
Creator has given him for his use, and not abuse.
- Promiscuity is a mockery of God. The awful diseases
that spring from it show the nature of the sin com-
mitted — its defilement, and its curse. As the very
ground withholds its rest, peace and strength from a
murderer — as God said it should from Cain — so
woman withholds her spirit from the debaucher.

The painful or pleasurable action of any part of the
system is due to the presence of the soul in that part. *
If the soul be withdrawn from any part, that part has
no sensation, and the spirit, taking the place of the
absent soul, builds anew the part afflicted. If the
spirit be overcome by a strong magnetizer, and
the soul thus driven back, repelled or forced out, the
body has no sensation, and amputation or other pain-
ful surgical operations may be performed without the
subject being aware of it. This fact is well authenti-
cated.

This power of withdrawal of the soul resides in
every one who has a will. It does not depend upon
the magnetizer at all, but upon the well-regulated
action of the will. Self -magnetization is a well-known
fact among spiritualists, and practiced by all mediums
to a certain extent. But it is too limited to be pro-
ductive of the results above spoken of. Paralysis is v"
the obstruction — through insulation — of the spirit
in its free passage through the system. The soul is
left alone in a paralyzed body or limb, without the
spirit to give life and power — as all power depends

176 THE TEMPLE OF THE ROSY CROSS.

upon movements of spirit, which is effected by its
union with the soul. Mind is merely the connecting
link between the two. The partial withdrawal of the
soul is indicated by vibratory motions in the nerves,
which, being extended, produces ecstasy, then trance,
or insensibility. Those who follow sitting in circles
are aware of this.

MIGRA TION AND TRANSMIGRA TION. 1 77