Gervée Baronte You Have Lived Before

You Have Lived Before

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Preface

Before Pearson’s Weekly had agreed to publish my articles on reincarnation and the reconstructions of previous lives, I had shown my work to certain editors, who refused to consider it because the “public would not be interested.” I have since wondered what these editors would say to a public interest which has produced over 20,000 letters. As these were received, in sacks and parcels, they were weighed. The aggregation amounted to three-quarters of a ton.

I wish to thank the editor of Pearson’s Weekly for having the judgment, the courage, and the imagination to give the public something it wanted, and for giving me the opportunity to help the people who wrote to me requesting the reconstruction of their previous lives and advice which I could, in many cases, offer them. Hundreds of appreciative letters have been received from people who said they always felt that they had lived in the country in which, according to my symbols, they had spent their previous existence.

With certain of the reconstructions appearing in the book, readers of the magazine have told me to use their names. Others have implored me not to disclose their identity. I thought it best to treat all in the same manner and to designate them by their occupations and their birthdates. Do not think your reconstructions might be the same as those of persons having your birthdates. Occupational and dream symbols must be taken into account as well as birthdates. To help my reconstructions my readers have told me their occupations, hobbies, and recurring dreams (if any), together with their birthdates.

During my residence in India I studied the reconstruction of the previous lives of individuals. My instructor was an Indian sadhu (teacher) who had made a life-study of the subject. Certain holy men of India are able to trace the soul’s progress through previous lives. They know that a soul coming into its existence under certain conditions must have left its past existence under certain signs. From these signs under which it discontinued its previous journey they can reconstruct its past experiences.

Western psychologists often seek a motive for some strange twist in a patient’s mind by trying to reconstruct his childhood. In certain cases this is quite useless, because the cause of the undesirable twist occurred in some previous life.

A knowledge of astrology is not sufficient to enable me to reconstruct a previous life. The astrological lines upon which my calculation is started are but a clue around which various factors must be gathered. After the first calculation is made, I proceed with Hermetic and other symbols. Certain of the symbols are known only to my teacher and the Order to which he belongs.

In ancient religions the method of imparting knowledge was by parables and symbols. The Bible, like many other writings on religious subjects, is full of parables and symbols. Religious symbology and the symbology of the Zodiac are closely related. The Kabalistic symbols of the Rosicrucians and the Hermetic symbols are concerned with religion and with the Zodiac. The symbols of the Zodiac contain the circle, the crescent, the triangle, and the cross. The sign which indicates each planet is formed with one or all of these four signs. The circle and the cross represent matter in the grip of the soul. The circle represents the earth and the cross the spirit.

In a very short time one can learn the signs of the Zodiac with their corresponding symbols, but to learn the symbols of nations, individuals, occupations, and dreams requires infinite patience and continuity. The symbols I studied under the direction of the sadhu took in every shape, from dragons and pyramids to a series of tiny dots. Twice I gave up all hope of ever learning how to set up the symbols of a previous incarnation. Only my natural understanding of figures and my refusal to be beaten by an intricate array of signs ever kept me to the study of symbolism.

It was my persistency in obtaining certain facts for my book on Hinduism, The Land of the Lingam, which brought me to the notice of my Hindu teacher. How he learned of my escapades I never knew, but he decided that a woman who could spend all night sitting in the fork of a tree watching certain rites and performances of magic which she was not supposed to see might have the necessary continuity for the study of symbolism.

You will be wondering, no doubt, why a Hindu cared to know one who had exposed the secret and inner rites of his religion. The Indian never objects to the truth. It is when writers, in a spirit of hatred, slander him and his belief that he becomes infuriated and tries to retaliate.

There is much in the Hindu religion which is degrading, licentious, and beastly. And there is much which is beautiful and holy. I would like to see the degradation removed from Hinduism as I would like to see a gangrenous limb removed from a beloved friend, knowing the life of either could be saved only by amputation.

Many Hindus wish to see their religion reformed. Many would see the untouchables given the same chance as the higher castes.

Since leaving India I have experimented, on three occasions, with a clairvoyant. We reconstructed the previous life of the same person. His reconstruction was taken down in shorthand by a friend who listened to it. This was done behind locked doors. I, in another room, set up the symbols. In the three cases we agreed on the principal facts, differing only in unimportant items. May I say (without causing too much of a flutter in certain dovecots) that clairvoyance is nothing more mysterious than the extension of the physical senses? But the knowledge of vision-control and the knowledge of occult science are necessary if one would penetrate the past and the future. I hope some day to get my teacher’s permission to photograph the symbols and to set down their meanings. Then, if you have the necessary patience, you can reconstruct your own lives. Until such time as this can be done, I shall be pleased to reconstruct your previous lives for you.

Gervée Baronte

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Part I

Reincarnation

The nations of the ancient world believed in reincarnation. This was before Western civilization worked out its material philosophy and tried to conquer the world by rejecting the earlier teachings. With the desire for practical demonstration and scientific “facts” to prove the existence of a directing spiritual force, immortality has been either lost sight of or has become nothing but conjecture.

We talk of evolution as if, by simply voicing this word, something is proved. The East has believed in evolution since the dim dawn of history, but the East has never been able to discover any reason why a belief in evolution should disprove immortality. Quite the contrary. The East explains the habits and inclinations of people, animals, and plants by previous environment and the indestructibility of the essential self. We might call it the evolution of individuality. It is the permanent thread running through each separate life. Because we have forgotten the sequence of lives which the essential self has experienced is no disproof of the soul’s continuity.

Certain of our modern psychologists can, by hynotizing a subject, cause his mind to travel backwards through his previous incarnations; and we know that each night we lose all knowledge of our conscious life, but each morning we remember the sequence of our days.

During our present lives our bodies are constantly changing through decay and temporary restoration. Because of this we dwell in many bodies during our life. Many thinkers are willing to admit that we have reached our present existence by an ascent through lower forms. Darwin, standing by the body, disregarded the soul; but had he combined the two, he might have reached more sensible conclusions to his theory of the survival of the fittest and natural selection.

We have examples of great persons who could not have come to the perfection they attained in a single existence. The psychologists would say of such persons, “They are geniuses.” Very good; but what is a genius? What produces him? The word “genius” does not explain Mozart, who could play the most difficult music at the age of five. It does not explain any prodigy. Science knows that we do not transmit our talents, and the tendency of every organism to transmit its own qualities does not explain the transmission of talents.

If we reject the doctrine of pre-existence, we must admit extinction. The materialists reject this doctrine, but the materialists have become back numbers in the face of the “newer sciences.” We know that life is not the result of blind force. We know that millions of souls are born every moment into earthly bodies. It does not seem reasonable that they come “from the nowhere into the here,” or from some remote celestial region.

Nature does not deal death, but a momentary stoppage of life. She quickens all things anew. Death, with her, is but another form of life. Man, who is the highest form of life, cannot, having attained his intellectual faculties, expect to reach perfection by his sensuous existence alone.

According to reincarnation, our present life is the life after death. This belief takes some of the sting out of death. Only the “rationalist” who knows (in spite of the vast amount of hidden knowledge which science has not yet probed) that this is our only existence will refuse to consider this possibility.

Christianity teaches us (according to many of its advocates) that the soul was created for its life upon earth, and that after its lifetime it goes to a realm of perfect bliss and infinite continuance. This future state of bliss, they insist, is the soul’s reward for enduring misery, injustice, and inequality on this earth. This is one way of saying that God’s future administration will be much better than His earthly administration.

A little reasoning should convince us that our present struggle for existence, in which the strongest must win and the weakest must lose, cannot prepare us for a life of eternal bliss.

In the early years of Christianity reincarnation was the prevailing belief, but it had several interpretations according to the early creeds from which it had gravitated. Certain early ecclesiastics believed the soul remained in God’s possession in some celestial repository until He released it to inhabit an earthly body. These men and their followers knew that a body came from a body, but they would not admit that the soul was derived from the soul.

Other early fathers of the Church welcomed reincarnation as an explanation of the fall of man and the means of reconciling suffering with a merciful God. This belief continued with certain of the clergy until Western influence predominated and reincarnation became heresy.

Origen continued to believe in reincarnation after the rest of the clergy decided it was heresy. He insisted that the soul came into the earthly body for purification and experience. The variety of the soul’s experiences and debts, he said, caused the diversity of earthly conditions. True, his teachings were condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 551, but not until they had definitely coloured Christian theology.

Among our present clergy there are men who believe in reincarnation. I reconstructed the previous life of one of these men, who, in writing to me afterwards, said: “If our course is not mapped out before this existence, we can see nothing but injustice in casting noble beings into a life of servitude and degradation. I prefer to think that no Divine Being could be guilty of such cruelty.”

Justin Martyr mentioned the soul inhabiting the body more than once. He further said that souls who had become unworthy in the sight of God joined the bodies of wild beasts. By these statements he defended the lower phases of reincarnation which we know contradict evolution and the soul’s progress.

The Gnostics, a school of eclectics in Alexandria during the first century, believed they knew the mystical truth of Christianity, and that it was too sacred for the masses. They built up an elaborate structure out of Greek ideas and Parsee faith, maintaining that the world was created by some degraded principle which had lured souls from some pre-existent realm into the bodies of men. To oppose their theory that Jesus was one of a vast number of beings the Fourth Gospel was written.

The Gnostic belief penetrated into certain of the medieval sects. Seven adherents to this belief were put to death in Spain in 385. Not discouraged by the fate of the seven, Giordano Bruno tried to popularize reincarnation, but, unable to get followers, he handed it over to the philosophers.

Christianity has passed through many different phases, accepting certain ideas and discarding others. It is still in the process of becoming, for frequently new cults start which claim their inception from the Bible.

In the Hindu mind there has never been any doubt about reincarnation. Many of the higher Brahmans can penetrate the veil which conceals the soul’s progress through body-existence. It is said that when Apollonius of Tyana visited India, a Brahman teacher told him that Pythagoras had taught the truth about the soul. The teacher said that Apollonius had been an Egyptian sage in a previous incarnation, and that he had, in his turn, taught reincarnation.

The Hindu conception of reincarnation embraces all existences---animals, plants, men, and minerals.

According to Chinese writings, Buddha said: “The number of my births and deaths can only be compared with those of all the plants in the Universe.” Reincarnation promotes the solidarity of mankind by destroying all barriers raised by circumstances; by teaching that one person is not born to abasement while another is blessed with special gifts. As a matter of fact, the term “special gifts” is a misnomer, for every achievement, known as a gift, is the result of our labours in some past life. Mental talents and physical blessings are the result of merit. Sorrows and failures are the result of faulty judgment or negligence in the past. Our soul is continually tested until it learns its lessons.

Certain souls take the downward path, others are on the upward road. Every soul has the right of choice. The sensual wreckage at the end of the downward path is necessary to the development of certain souls. Only by taking this pathway can they learn their lesson. We cannot despise those who are tending downward, for who knows but what we have journeyed that way ourselves?

There are but two explanations for human inequalities. Individuals either come into existence endowed with talents, power, and even worldly position, or they must achieve these things by their own efforts. If certain individuals come into existence variously endowed, what is the reason for this divine choice? Such foolish partiality cannot be ascribed to a divine being, or to, what some of us prefer to call, universal intelligence or force. Viewed from the standpoint of divine purpose, everyone must be of equal value. Reincarnation, which teaches that man is the result of his own actions and experiences, is the only logical explanation of the inequalities in human society.

The birth of a genius or of a saint can be explained as the result of previous struggles and triumphs over adversity and temptations---and in no other way. Everything is in a state of evolution, human faculties in the vanguard.

Because the world is made up of individual inequalities, humanity can never progress as a unit. Nations experimenting with mass progression are wasting their time.

In each life we acquire variations which are assimilated or rejected by our fundamental character. These acquired variations account for our progress or retrogression in each successive existence. Creation is everywhere calling for “change.” Nothing is destroyed. Everything passes from one existence to another. The tadpole becomes the frog, the spawn becomes the eggs, the eggs become the fish, the caterpillar becomes the butterfly.

This transmutation accounts for certain of the Hindu legends, especially those in which personality passes through many guises and animals are made to converse with human beings.

The biologist knows that we run through a scale of physical life before our birth into our present existence. In turn we are polyp, reptile, ape, and man. This proves that the body is the result of physical changes. The immaterial part of us requires a development equally great, or we would all be born with the same characteristics.

Nature proves that nothing springs suddenly into existence, but on the contrary every result required a long process of becoming. In reincarnation there is neither “birth” nor “death.” There is the continuity of all the forces. We cannot refer to eternity in the terms past, present, and future.

Karma

Karma, a Sanskrit word meaning action, is the Eastern equivalent to what we of the West call cause and effect. We know that each effect has a definite cause, and each cause carries its own consequences. Karma means that, because of former actions in a previous life, we have made ourselves what we are to-day; and we continue in our present lives to pile up debts and rewards which shall govern our future lives. Salvation or condemnation rests with us: although single observations seem to refute this fact, the trend of life’s long experience verifies it.

A worthy soul struggling against misfortune and poverty is paying a debt for wrongdoing in the past. A vicious soul enjoying a high position and much of this world’s goods is reaping the reward of past virtues. As the soul journeys through existences, it must acquire all the experiences necessary to its progress. Its various lives are like beads on a chain. The chain, holding all the beads, is the essential self which never varies.

A gardener knows that, however he may try to change Nature’s laws by the grafting of plants, mixing of sods, forcing or dwarfing, each seed will ultimately show its ancestry. But the beauty (a gardener usually strives to improve upon Nature) it may have acquired adds to its value. So it is with the soul: whatever it has acquired by way of experience adds to, or detracts from, its progress.

The soul has long periods of rest, or experience, on other planes of existence. This is the reason why many years may pass between incarnations. Again to use the analogy of the seed, dried seed may be kept for many years before replanting it, but once in the soil it quickens into life. It has been said that the barley found in an Egyptian tomb, when planted after thousands of years, grew and flourished.

A certain phase of karmic law permits souls who have a message for the world to pass directly from one life to another. There comes a time when the soul need not return to the world. This is when it has become selfless, when it has ceased to owe karmic debt. In higher justice there is no distinction between the action and the result. If you injure another, you wrong yourself. But linked with the law of Karma is the assurance that we have control over good and evil.

Solomon was speaking of this law when he said, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Jesus referred to the same law when He said, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.” St. Paul indicated the law of Karma with his admonition, “Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

The relentless hand which metes out our rewards and punishments with inflexible justice is our own hand. The Fates and the Furies have been set in motion by ourselves. We reap only that which we sow. So surely as the harvest grows from the seeds which were sown, the condition of our present existence is the result of our previous deeds.

It is Karma that draws us back to earthly life. As Karma is for ever changing, it forbids the long continuance of any condition; consequently we appear and disappear during our earthly journey.

Remembering Our Past Lives

Some few of us can remember our former lives.

Most of us cannot. But we all seem to have known moments when thoughts, springing up from something quite hidden within ourselves, have shown us a glimpse of the past which we have tried unsuccessfully to fit into our memory. Psychology would say it was a flash of something we had experienced in childhood and forgotten. But psychology, in its effort to be “scientific,” is often wrong. Science is trying to get away from its former idea of reality. It is giving up the idea of the concrete which it once adhered to as the ape sticks to his tree, believing it to be the beginning and the end of the Universe.

Science knows now that the world is nothing but mind-stuff projected into buildings, machines, and Governments. The rule of the ape mind still continues, but science is making an effort to teach people that individuality cannot be ignored. It knows that the rule of the unfittest, which we refer to as democracy, can offer the world no enlightenment. We must look to individuals, the right individuals, who arrive in this world with enough mental and spiritual energy acquired in their past lives to act as leaders for a given period. Recognizing that the physical world is our own creation, we need able creators. I do not mean dictators, for no dictator has left the world anything of consequence. A few years of personal aggrandizement, of juggling with finance, of taking land from one nation and giving it to another can make little difference to our development as human beings. Whoever thinks of the ideas and teachings left by Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon? Their glory of conquest held nothing practical. Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed did leave us something practical. Their ideas were not the last word---nothing can be the last word---but they held the germ of truth and beauty, and what is so practical as beauty? We need no more dictators in this post-war, ante-war world; but we could do with a few sane leaders.

When I speak of past lives, I do not wish to mislead you. Past is but a word we use to illustrate the fact that our senses are no longer experiencing something. If we could look down on this earth from one of the stars, we would see, because of the time it takes light to travel, Mary, Queen of Scots, going to her execution. The people looking down from the star would say, “This is the year 1587.” We on the earth would say, “No, this is the year 1936.” Is what they see right, or is what we see right? The people on the star would be right, and so would we, for time has no reality. When we entered our present existence, it was not to begin a new earthly record, but to continue one already started. All the qualities we now possess are the result of earlier opportunities. The momentum of our present state is governed by some ancient impetus. We may have many teachers, but our only teacher is ourselves. No one can judge us. No one can grant us absolution. We are the divinity which shapes our ends.

I have met several people who told me they could remember their past lives. A lady I once met on one of the Greek islands told me she had visited places which she recognized immediately because she had lived in them in a former life. She even remembered certain people she had known in the past, although she could find no trace of them in her present life. A friend knew a child in India who insisted that the woman who was rearing her was not her mother. She knew her mother lived in another village. So persistent was she in this belief that her mother finally took her to the village where she said her real mother lived and asked her to point out her “mother’s” house. The child finally found the house. The woman who answered their knock on the door was astonished when the child called her mother. The woman, after the child’s mother had explained the child’s obstinate belief to her, told the little girl to go home and behave herself, whereupon the child threw her arms round the woman’s neck crying, “I am your little girl. I was burned by the big lamp, and when I was better I was living in her house” (pointing to her rightful mother), “and she said she was my mother.” Then the village woman admitted that her first child---born over twenty years ago---had been burned to death by the upsetting of a lamp, when the child was four years old. In this case less time than usual was spent between incarnations. An Egyptologist, in spite of the laughter and incredulity of his associates, told me of his former existence in one of the earliest dynasties, where he remembered his family and his daily occupations.

I cannot say definitely that I remember any of my former “lives,” but I am convinced that one of my previous incarnations was in Japan. Several years ago, before I studied the reconstruction of former incarnations under the direction of my Indian teacher I visited a Buddhist nunnery in Nara, Japan, with three other ladies whom I met quite casually in Tokyo. The ladies were the sort of tourists who pore over guide-books and gather from any available source scraps of information (more or less reliable) on the places they are visiting. They had “read up” the old nunnery in Nara and suggested our visiting it.

The nunnery, the Hokkei-ji, was built to the order of the wife of the Emperor Shomu in A.D. 735 as a retreat for women. The Empress no doubt took this means of getting her own back on her Imperial lord, who, before his death---the nunnery was built several years after his decease---had caused the Todai-ji, a Buddhist monastery, to be erected, and had forbidden women---even coolie women, who do as much outdoor labour as men---to enter its gates on any pretext.

The little Buddhist nuns, with their shaved heads and ugly costumes of their Order, pattered over the old stone floors on their wooden geta, pointing out the dilapidated beauty of the place and telling us the legends of the convent in their quaint English. According to tradition, the Empress was so beautiful and had such a noble character that everyone who saw her immediately fell in love with her. Certain admiring sculptors had made statues of her incarnating the goddess Kwannon (the Japanese lady of mercy). The nuns pointed to the crumbling figures, imploring our admiration. Most of the statues had been made from brief glimpses of the Empress which the artists had caught when she was walking in the garden of her palace. An Indian sculptor, wishing to capture her loveliness and leave it in stone, had to content himself with the reflection of her Imperial person from the lotus pool. This story was not too difficult to believe, judging by the rather comic proportions of the figure said to have been made by the Indian sculptor.

When the nuns had told us the legends---and most of them were concerned in some way with love, even to the sad fate of a youth who so madly and hopelessly loved the unheeding Empress that, in desperation, he entered her husband’s monastery, stood up on a pedestal, and turned himself into a bronze---they invited us to have tea with them on the floor in true Japanese fashion.

While we nibbled rice cakes and sipped tea from the tiny cups, the tourist ladies, who had been forced into silence while the nuns told the legends of the place, began to tell what they had read about the nunnery. Did I know, one of them asked, that by Imperial edict the abbesses in the early days had been of royal blood? They supposed that things had changed, and that any woman who was willing to shave her head and wear the coarse grey cotton could join the Order now. The nuns sipped their tea and said nothing. Their information had ended with the legends. One of the ladies mentioned the valuable embroideries which were kept in the nunnery. The book said they were the only embroideries of their kind in the world. When she mentioned them I got up from the floor, pushed back a shoji (paper partition dividing rooms), went into a dimly lighted room, and, from an ancient chest, which had been completely concealed by a cover until I removed it, I began to take out the embroideries. One by one I lifted the frames (into frames which seemed to be part of themselves the embroideries had been placed by some forgotten skill) and carried them to the astonished ladies where I put them down on the floor beside the teacups. I rattled off certain explanations about the yarns and the threads, which had been dyed with the fadeless colours, perhaps with the blood, of another age. I pointed out that, while they looked like silk, they were actually made of hemp. I told them of Nara hemp, which was the oldest textile plant in Japan. I described how the ancient people of Nara cultivated and dyed it. I mentioned that no one living knew the ancient process of dyeing. I spoke of the fine glass cloth, like a spider’s web, which had been made into a fabric for clothes for the Empress and for the working of certain embroideries---and then I realized what I was saying, but not why I was saying it.

The little nuns had risen to their feet and were staring at me with eyes which fairly protruded---as much as Japanese eyes could protrude. One of them darted away and returned with the nun who would have been called the Reverend Mother, had she belonged to a Christian instead of a Buddhist Order, and who in intelligence was far in advance of the novitiates. She asked me how I knew where the ancient embroideries were kept, for, she said, “Those are not the ones we show people. Those are not the ones mentioned in the books.” Then studying my face with the fixed intent gaze of a bird, she whispered so that the tourist ladies couldn’t hear, “You belong with us; come back when you are tired of the world.”

All the way back to the Nara Hotel, which is some distance from the Hokkei-ji, the ladies talked of my strange behaviour at the convent. They said I might have read in some ancient book about the early manufacture of the hemp; about the preparation of the yarns---might have read about them and forgotten until, by coming into contact with them, some cell in my brain had remembered. But that didn’t explain how I knew where the ancient embroideries were kept---the ones which were never shown to people.

Slumped down in my rickshaw, I listened to their highly pitched voices coming from their rickshaws, which their pullers were keeping beside mine. I knew I had never read anything about Nara; nothing more than the guide-books tell one about daily excursions to temples and shrines. Deep in my inner mind, the mind we don’t use every day, the thought persisted that the Mother Superior was right---I was one of them; I belonged in the ancient nunnery which the Empress had given to Buddhist women.

Some years later, in India, I discovered why I had acted so strangely in the convent. When my Indian teacher---to whom I had never mentioned the Nara experience---reconstructed my previous life, he found that I had lived in Japan from A.D. 735 to 765, and that I had belonged to a religious Order.

I believe it would be possible for many people to remember their previous lives---at least to have some inkling of them in their inner consciousness---if they could revisit the scenes of their previous environment. Immortal age is for ever returning on the curve of another youth. Sometimes it returns to the spot where it previously departed, as was the case with the Indian child; but, more frequently, having learned its lesson in one place, it goes to another. In different lives we go through all classes and conditions. We take the sex which is necessary for our work---sometimes we are men, sometimes we are women. We have different strengths and weaknesses by which we are tested; but will power, rightly directed, can dominate those man-made divisions of time we call past, present, and future.

Reincarnation in Marriage and in the Home

We often wonder, many of us, why we are different from the other members of our families---why our mothers and fathers do not see eye to eye with us; why the inclinations of our brothers and sisters are nothing like our own inclinations; why we wish to escape from the paternal roof and found a life of our own choosing.

Others of us are happy only when we are surrounded by members of our families. We would never dream of marrying anyone our fathers and mothers did not approve of. We might even delay our marriage because we would put off a condition in which our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, had no part. Why do we feel these obligations to our families---or the reverse, as the case may be? Reincarnation---and reincarnation only---can answer this. Those of us who believe the doctrine of reincarnation to be rather fantastic may say that filial duty prompts us to remain with our families when we know our rightful place is out in the world attending to our own development. A little thought will disclose the fact that filial duty is a back number in our day and age. The youth of to-day knows that much of the old cant about the child’s duty to the parents has ceased to hold the attention of thinking people. This fact does not disparage the youth. It is an evolutionary change brought about by the conditions under which we live.

The young people of to-day develop more rapidly than the youth of our grandmothers’ time. This is not because we have become obsessed by speed, but because we have acquired more knowledge, and principally because knowledge is now in our cyclic path. It may be difficult for us to believe that we are encountering more and more knowledge when we are surrounded by so much evil. Evil, after we have passed through it, will lead to a greater result than would have been possible without it. It is through mistakes and errors that we shall come to a loftier growth. Who does not know the debt electricity owes to the devastating lightning? Many of our scientific discoveries owe their inception to dirt and disease. I need not go on enumerating the debts we owe to evil and the forces of destruction. The same can be said for materialistic achievements which interfere with idealism. Material achievement is a very important factor in the world’s growth. The danger lies in considering it a finality.

Admitting, then, that filial duty does not keep us with our families, submerging our own desires while fitting our every act to the wish or the whim of some exacting parent, what is it which holds us when we long to escape? The answer is that we are paying a karmic debt contracted in a previous life. The exacting father or mother has done us some great service in a former existence, and the urge within us will not be still until the debt is paid. Only with the reasoning mind do we sometimes resent the payment.

Such is man’s restless pursuit of perfection, he must for ever grope after the larger fulfilment of his development. The discipline of the soul is much more to him (even when he is unconscious of the fact) than the reasoning of his conscious mind. It is only outer man who deteriorated through the experiences of the World War. Inner man has been endeavouring ever since to refind his spiritual equilibrium. His reasoning mind has been telling him that life is worth nothing; that one bullet can end all his hopes and achievements; but his soul, knowing that “death” is simply an interlude, goes on steadily seeking perfection.

We are inclined to pity the woman who grows old in the service of her parents, who is thoughtlessly called “old maid” because she has allowed marriage to pass her by while she devotes her life to the care of an invalid father or mother. She needs no pity. She is following a soul-urge; paying a debt which must be paid.

The ego is drawn to the family it needs for its development. The development may be imposed by a previous debt, or it may be that the family can furnish certain requirements needed by the ego. A person who has been a musician in a previous life may be drawn to a family of musicians who will understand his requirements. On the other hand, a genius may be drawn to a family which can only delay or thwart his development. When this happens, the gifted one owes a debt to some member of the family, and his soul, insisting upon its rightful discipline, refuses to consider its selfish interests.

A drunkard who has allowed his lower mind to lead him into excesses in some previous life may be led to reincarnation in the family of drunkards. In this case the soul is still seeking perfection and the bitter experience is the means to an end.

The Druses, who never had any doubt about reincarnation, record the explanation of a Druse boy concerning his terror at the discharge of a gun. “I was born murdered,” he said. He meant to imply that he had been shot in a previous life. The record says that he was born into a military family. His soul, seeking discipline, wished to overcome fear.

Many unhappy marriages are but the linking together of people who owe each other karmic debts. This does not apply to all unhappy marriages; for there are cases where the marital state is nothing more nor less than an endurance test. For such marriages we cannot blame the law of karma; rather we may say that some economic arrangement, some desire for social position, or some wish to escape from family conditions, has thrown two people together who have nothing whatsoever in common.

The karmic debt often draws a wife to a husband who may become an invalid after marriage; and she may spend the rest of her life as a nurse. A man may marry a woman who is a kleptomaniac. He may continuously suffer the humiliation of her thieving, knowing that, with the exception of this one unfortunate trait, she is an excellent wife and mother. He owes her a debt from a past life when she had to put up with some dishonest trait he possessed---or he may have been intolerant of human frailties in his previous existence, and has to endure them for his soul’s development.

The most common difficulty in unhappy marriage is unsuitability of temperaments. This can occur where love is evident. Many couples who love each other realize the differences in their personalities. Often these very differences are necessary to their development. A karmic debt may be holding them together until they learn the value of tolerance. Do not get the impression that I think no marriage should be dissolved. In many cases there is nothing else to do, for even if a karmic debt is owed, the conditions under which it is being paid is building up additional debts. In such cases it is better to dissolve the marriage and take up the debt again in some future life when conditions may be more satisfactory.

When we think of certain unhappy marriages among our friends and acquaintances, we know the Indians are right to consult the horoscopes of the contracting parties to ascertain if they could live together in harmony. An American friend who owed a debt to her mother decided to escape from the payment of it and marry a man she had known but two weeks. I met her after she had been married for six months, and she told me she had married her mother, as she expressed it, for the man had the same unfortunate fault she had hoped to escape from.

We are apt to condemn a man who leaves his wife and goes away with another woman, when in certain cases he is obeying a karmic law. He owes the woman he has eloped with a karmic debt, or he has met his affinity, “the life, without which life his own is incomplete.” This word “affinity” is very loosely spoken. It is often used in ridicule, and it covers a multitude of sins; none the less there is someone who belongs to us by divine right. There is no excuse for believing that anyone who takes our fancy is our affinity. When we meet our destined partner, the soul will raise no questions.

In some cases the marrying habit of the Hollywood stars can be explained by their former polygamous lives. Some of the Hollywood men lived formerly in countries where the plurality of wives was permitted. Certain of the women stars practised polyandry in the past. This by no means explains the frequency with which many of the Hollywood stars change their partners. This can be put down to the restless age in which we live.

Love is the latest arrival in our emotional world. Until it arrived, passion and expediency served the race. We have not developed love and tacked it on to passion. It is our life lesson, the emotion which raises us to the summit of exaltation, which initiates us into the higher mysteries, which will link us together in understanding. Without it we would be on the level of the beasts with nothing but biological necessities. In his speech on love, Socrates said: “In men of certain constitutions the generative power lies chiefly in their bodies. Such men are fond of the other sex, and procure to themselves, by begetting children, the preservation of their names, a remembrance of themselves which they hope will be immortal, a happiness to endure for ever. In men of another stamp the faculties of generation are of the mental kind. For those there are who are more prolific in their souls than in their bodies; and are full of the seeds of such an offspring as it peculiarly belongs to the human soul to conceive and to generate.” This soul generation is what reincarnation teaches. The soul is for ever reaching out to its affinity, for ever gaining experience from its lessons in life after life.

Looking Backward with Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin was born on August 3rd, 1867. His esoteric symbol is a youth chased by a lion. A lion represents great power, but in this case the power is behind the youth. Power greater than his own has always been pursuing Mr. Baldwin. It has never quite overtaken him and rent him, but he has never dared to hesitate for fear it might.

During his youth, in his present life, the lion took the form of affairs of the heart and caused him much unhappiness. As a matter of fact his youth was not a happy time, for he couldn’t realize any of his aspirations. In middle life it has been a financial-political lion who is never more than a few yards behind. It might not have followed him into a short incarnation in England in 876, Alfred’s time, when he entered existence for only four years; but in Kijath-Hadeshath, the ancient city the Romans called Carthage, I find it still pursuing him in 248 B.C. At that time it was, indeed, a financial-political lion.

Carthage was, without doubt, the richest city of antiquity. Her ships could be found on all the seas. Her commercial interests seemed to be unlimited; but, like all commercial policies, hers served only the period allotted to it. Many and various were her economic dodges. She anticipated our paper money with strips of leather to represent her gold. Her clubs were nothing more than places to discuss politics and financial schemes. Her social life was an incentive to luxury and dissolute living, and not a check upon them. Her religion was the most shocking the world has seen, and her annihilation was a gain to mankind.

In this ancient city Mr. Baldwin belonged to the privileged ranks. His position was a legal one. He could easily have been one of the “Hundred” judges who made the laws for Carthage and her colonies. As is the case in any close oligarchy, superior ability was not so necessary as pull or the means to buy one’s way in. The signs which signify riches were well placed for Mr. Baldwin, and, as in his present life, he had many friends. People who made political mistakes were hardly dealt with in those days. The sentences passed upon them by the “Hundred” were as cruel as those passed by the “Ten” at Venice. Ill-luck in military campaigns was enough to condemn a man to crucifixion.

In spite of the reputation of the “Hundred,” I see nothing to indicate that Mr. Baldwin was cruel. He simply obeyed the law of his party. I also see nothing to indicate that he tried to change the existing law. His lion was still behind him, directing each move, especially those having to do with finance.

Malefic passions rage most violently in strong souls, as the full force of fever displays itself most vigorously in strong bodies. Mr. Baldwin has never been a strong man. He is inclined to deceive himself and to believe what he wants to believe. In his book Our Inheritance he says: “I do not think that anything in my education, using the word in its widest sense, has stood me in better stead in after-life than that close heart-to-heart knowledge that I had of our common people.” In this statement he deceives himself. He doesn’t understand the common people, and in his Carthaginian life he knew nothing about them. In spite of the exaggerated interest the ruling classes of Carthage took in commerce, the actual business was done by the people who were below them in the social scale. The elect couldn’t use anything the people used. Their baths, clubs, places of amusement, were set apart from those used by the people. Mr. Baldwin has never associated with the common people. He observes them and calls it association.

Speaking of Carthage, Cicero said: “Neither could Carthage have maintained her pre-eminent position for six hundred years had she not been governed with wisdom and with statesmanship.” Considering her time, she might have been well governed, but, like all great Powers, she had within herself the seeds of her own destruction---and not the least of them were those sown by the vacillating and half-hearted “Hundred” who let her drift to her doom.

Much travel was indicated for Mr. Baldwin at one period of his Carthaginian existence. Signs indicate that he took part in the Punic wars. No actual fighting was shown for him, but war has many ramifications. He might have sailed round the Pillars of Hercules (as the Carthaginians called the Mediterranean) in the wake of Hannibal, looking after that Phoenician hero’s reinforcements. Doubtless he rejoiced at Hannibal’s victories and lamented at his failures. It is probable he ordered the priests to throw the human sacrifices to their God Moloch (the god the Greeks called Saturn) as an offering for Hannibal’s success.

The religion of the Carthaginians was the religion of the Canaanites of the Old Testament: that is, the religion which, in spite of the efforts of certain Hebrews to establish Monotheism, had a fatal fascination for the mass.

Many of the ancient religions called for, and consecrated, immorality. Carthage was no exception to this custom. Tiberius, a Roman Consul, tried to check human sacrifice by hanging the priests who engaged in it. But he discovered how useless it is to interfere with fanaticism until reason comes into the situation.

The most important factor in the history of a people is their religion. They stand or fall by it. I say this in spite of modern Russia, which has no religion, and other nations who would throw religion on the scrap-heap.

Many women came into Mr. Baldwin’s environment. There were indications that some of them came by capture. He seems to have cared for two only, as he spent much of his time with them. The death of one of these women caused him great sorrow. Her passing was evidently due to child-birth.

After the wars, when Hannibal’s glory was waning, Mr. Baldwin must have been greatly distressed. His money was rapidly diminishing, and his friends had become critical. Carthage was then at the mercy of Rome. Between the second and third Punic wars Rome had advanced with rapid strides on the Phoenicians. The groundwork of Rome was so strong it seemed that nothing could dislodge it. It conquered everything, held everything, ordered everything. But that incipient decay, which gnaws at the base of character when nations have ceased their vigilance, had begun to attack Rome. The heroic quality which had borne such good fruit in the past was weakening. Now that the strain of war was over and victory had been broadcast, lethargy was setting in. Thousands of Italian soldiers had fallen in the battles. Hundreds of towns had been destroyed. The farms of the soldiers had passed into the hands of moneylenders while they had been fighting for their country. The returning soldiers found themselves homeless. In Rome itself the old aristocracy had given place to the aristocracy of money. Everything was judged by the value it brought, and not by its real value. Religion was no longer a faith, but a commodity for gain. No one was far-sighted, and no one cared what became of his neighbour.

As I look at this last paragraph, I wonder if I am writing ancient or modern history. In this degenerate aftermath of war, Hannibal, the greatest military genius the world has ever known, found himself an exile. He had sworn, when he was but nine years old, that he would never rest until he had exterminated the Italians. He had learned that hatred is a useless weapon. Disheartened, he had travelled from place to place trying to find something to feed his violent intelligence, trying to find action for his restless body. Finally, discouraged, he gave up his quest and passed on while still a young man.

About this time Mr. Baldwin’s stars indicated exile. Misfortune was pressing down upon him. His fortune was exhausted, and many of his former friends had deserted him. He must have followed Hannibal, for he leaves his Carthaginian incarnation soon after the passing of the great Phoenician. There were but few friends with him at the close. He was then sixty-eight years of age.

* * *

Looking backward from Carthage, I find Mr. Baldwin in another famous city of the past. He lived in Athens in 410 B.C. There is a tendency amongst historians to jumble all Athenian dates together as if everything had existed at the same time. This is rather careless of them, considering that nearly a thousand years of Athenian life can be accounted for. The period when Athens achieved her greatest glory---in any case her greatest vitality---was from 440 to 330 B.C. At this time her character and thought had not been too adulterated by outside influence.

Mr. Baldwin couldn’t have chosen a better time (although the continuing ego doesn’t choose, but gravitates to the place where its lessons are to be learned) to enter his Greek existence. One would think that this man had something to learn from cities if we judge by his life in Carthage and Athens and his present life in London.

He held some executive position in Athens, but there was still some mysterious power behind him, silently directing every move. Executive offices of those days were poorly paid, so he must have had other means of support, for his signs indicate heavy expenditure. Evidently he gained his official appointment by election, for his friends seem to have helped him to obtain it.

No doubt he kept slaves and entertained his men friends in the Agora (public meeting-place) in the fashion of the Greeks of his day.

During this classical period women were of little importance. Their place was in the home, looking after the children and ordering the various tasks for the slaves. But in every age there are women who are a law unto themselves. Dr. Johnson said that Nature had given women so much power that the law couldn’t afford to add to it. Mr. Baldwin knew a woman who possessed this natural power. He must have loved her, for he seems to have divorced his rather dull mate in order to marry her. Divorce was a simple matter for a man. He had only to hand back the dowry his wife had brought him and ask her to leave. His second marriage, which lasted a number of years, seems to have been very happy. No children were born of the union.

The Athenian of that time worried as much about “death” as the ancient Egyptian. No worse misfortune could happen to a person than to be unhonoured at the end. Neglect when passing on would cause the poor ghost to wander helpless between the confines of two worlds. An Athenian would promise almost anything to a person who would guarantee him a funeral with what were known as “dues” and “rights.”

Mr. Baldwin had his full quota of “dues” and “rights,” for it is indicated that his passing at the age of fifty made quite a stir in Athens.

* * *

Mr. Baldwin possesses considerable charm. His friends would call him a jolly good sort, but he is unfortunate for England.

The lesson he must learn is to stand on his own feet and to put blame where it really belongs.

Looking Backward with Mussolini

I can find nothing to indicate that Mussolini was Augustus Caesar, as many people who believe in reincarnation think. Neither can I find anything to indicate that he was Napoleon, as others believe.

I find him in Rome in the days of Octavian, ere this adventurer, with the title of Imperator, reigned under the name of Augustus Caesar. He was the associate of Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Antony. It is indicated that he belonged to the aristocrats while posing as a democrat to win the applause of the people. He always sought the spectacular movement calculated to impress large numbers of people. The disreputable life led by the Roman aristocrats was evidently not to his liking, but he adopted it as the means to an end. He never permitted his strenuous life to interfere with his apparent pleasure. His lavish entertainments were well staged.

He must have been a Consul for a few years, during which period he used his dictatorship for all it was worth. Doubtless he stood before the Romans, and with the eloquence of Cicero quietened the mob which was for ever shouting “down with this” or “down with that.” He was a master of the prevention of retaliatory forces against his well-laid schemes. He appears to have outlived this talent. His achievements, however, never caught up with his plans and dreams. They are still lagging behind. To be an Alexander and conquer the world must have been his ambition. Perhaps he thought of annexing the Eastern world to Rome, as Gaul had been annexed. The East was teeming with riches; why not have Rome decide how this vast wealth should be administered?

To-day he would annex part of the East and allow Italy to expand. The reason for acquiring Eastern land may have changed, but the desire to acquire it is still with him. Another trait which persists in his character was evident in Rome. He never lowered, in his own mind, the exalted opinion he held of himself. His haughtiness could never have stood, clothed in a strip of goatskin, before the laughter of the people as the rollicking Antony appeared at the Lupercalia. Nor has he ever been able to stand up to ridicule. During his present life, when he sold vegetables in the streets of Rome, his motto must have been no familiarity if any customer tried to be pally. Because of this determination to appear right in all things he has seldom admitted a mistake. Now, as in the past, he will go to great length to cover an error. This self-esteem made many enemies for him in Rome. Certain of these enemies are with him in his present life. He should have propitiated them in his former existence and thereby lessened much of the misery I see in the latter years of his present incarnation.

According to my calculations he had three wives in his Roman life, each chosen with the idea of furthering his position. Children were born to the first two. The last wife appeared in his life when he was well over fifty. Probably she helped him politically. While many women were his enemies, he was never at the mercy of feminine determination to overthrow him. His attitude towards women has never got beyond admiration for their physical attributes. He may admit the intelligence of a brilliant woman, and even seek to decorate her with some title, but he would never admit that she could be quite the equal of man.

His Roman life ended at the age of eighty-four. There is nothing to indicate that the end was violent.

Before his Roman incarnation he must have been the chief of a dark tribe. During that remote life he used magic to gain his desires. The people must have lived in terror of his power. It was then he acquired the leaning towards occultism which has never left him. The magician who terrified his tribe with ghastly rites in the forest at night later paid serious attention to omens in Rome. The flight of birds, the hoot of owls, the way chickens ate their food, the use of the left (unlucky) hand, were portents which brought happiness or fear to the Roman statesman.

Mussolini is still governed by signs and superstitions, and I say, without hesitation, that he continues to practise “meditation” when seeking enlightenment on a problem. I cannot understand why the astrologers who have cast his horoscope have failed to mention his interest in occultism.

During his two incarnations which I have examined I find him controlling vast numbers of people. I find also that people suffer under his power; not isolated people (he can be a good friend), but large numbers of people.

The lesson he must learn is the proper use of power. He is a great soul, and when he learns that self- aggrandizement amounts to nothing, he will come into his own.

Looking Backward with Greta Garbo

How many of us ever see our hidden expression under the face we are so familiar with? How many of us, in the daily monotony of dressing before our mirrors, see the sphinx disclosed? An accidental turn of our head as we hurry to arrange our hair, or, if a man, our tie---and what was that?---that disquieting glimpse of an unknown expression. Each life, as we live it, we feel that we are entirely new, our mind, our soul, our expression---when really we are as old as Time. We may have the same type of face as our forefathers, the family resemblance may be quite pronounced, but under it, and through it, flashes that expression of yesterday, and of many yesterdays. Looking for it, you will not see it, for it is like a flash of intuition, which, for a split second, touches your consciousness and is gone.

I wonder if Greta Garbo has ever seen the nun looking out of her eyes as she slips into the exotic costumes she wears in her pictures, or jams on the shapeless felt hat she wears in the street? The nun is there, watching, criticizing, restraining. She has been there since 1469, when Greta lived in Italy.

I have before me Greta Garbo’s date, September 18th, 1906. Looking backward, I find that her previous incarnation was in Florence in the time of the Renaissance. At that time art and thought were having a rejuvenation. There was beauty. There was gaiety. There was love. Souls were expanding after the Middle Ages. Artists were painting their Madonnas, sculptors were making their statues, printing was being tried. A young Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, had not yet sailed for America. Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici were planning their careers, their invisible reign.

On this stage of art, luxury, and intrigue Greta made her appearance. She came from an obscure family, but she had gifts which raised her to dizzy heights. No doubt she was known by everyone in that society which ruled Florence; for the history of Florence, in her time, was but the history of certain families projected on a background of religion and intrigue. Among her admirers must have been the gayest bloods of the day. Lorenzo himself---Lorenzo the Magnificent---could have been one of her admirers.

It is quite clear that she lived alone, for there are no restrictions such as a Florentine family would have put on an unmarried daughter. At her house men and women gathered to discuss art, politics, and literature. Perhaps the young Botticelli painted her portrait, giving a little time to someone besides his beloved Simonetta. Riches were indicated for her. No doubt she wore the gorgeous brocades and jewels which later Savonarola was to denounce from the pulpit as certain members of our present clergy have denounced the lipstick. Often she must have walked the streets of Florence, past the gloomy palaces with their high rounded windows; or stood on the Bridge of the Goldsmiths to argue about the price of some trinket which had caught her eye; or looking through quaint casement windows at the olive and cypress trees, silver-green in the moonlight, she waited for some admirer who would throw himself and his possessions at her feet. Men were determined in their pursuit of her, for it is indicated that they rained presents and adoration on her.

All this left her cold, for I find her, at the age of thirty, entering a convent. It is not evident that the religious life attracted her. She took it as a means to seclusion, for she has always been a woman looking for a retreat.

She is not a happy woman, she is seldom optimistic. She is interested in results, and waits for results before showing any enthusiasm. That faith which knows some desire can be achieved has never been part of her equipment. Who can say what passed through her mind when she chose the life of the cloister; for who can say what passes through the mind of a woman given to concealment? Every woman lives three lives at once: the one which is forced upon her, the one she, of necessity, decides upon, and the one she dreams of.

In her present life Greta puts fact before fantasy. Her dreams are not light, airy things, but definite plans for a future made secure from want, when she can settle back into the simplicity she loves, have a few friends about her, and study the subjects she has put aside until she can find time for them. Women endowed as she is owe a sacred debt to Fate---their colourful personality is the result of the past.

Her life in the convent lasted for forty-three years, for I find her passing out of her Italian incarnation at the age of seventy-three. She might have been the Mother Superior at the time of her passing. Her ability for thoroughly doing the work which is before her could have raised her to that office.

It is probable that in her present life she has passed through the narrow streets of Florence as detached and disinterested as when she trod them before, and keeping pace with her were the nun and the glamorous woman of yesterday.

About her there has always been something of mystery. It is because of this no character analysis fits her exactly. Her esoteric symbol is a witch laden with hidden knowledge. She came into her present life with many lessons learned and with the capacity for learning anything she wishes to learn. She has no delusions about herself and she is not given to false values.

She might have acquired her accuracy in Egypt, for, as I still probe into the past, it is indicated that she lived in Egypt at the end of the XVIII Dynasty. The Egyptians of that period were very accurate. Their architecture shows that they went to great lengths to obtain symmetry. Their drawings and embroideries show a fine sense of balance.

Greta must have come on the Egyptian scene during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, who seems to have been the first woman suffragist---in any case the first woman who attempted to rival man in his own spheres of influence. Whatever came after the reign of this brilliant Queen---she no doubt weakened Egypt’s military position in Syria---she devoted herself, during her reign, to architectural works, to restoring the temples, to art and to literature.

The signs at the time of Greta’s birth would have placed her in an important family, in the service of the Queen, or in the service of the temples. It is also possible that the men of her family might have been engaged in the production of literature, for that was the Middle Kingdom, the classical period of Egyptian literature. While her birth signs indicated artistic ability and the hidden knowledge which belongs to her symbol, she could not have engaged in any of the arts, for, with the exception of the great Queen, women had few interests outside the home. Married women, however, could live in their father’s home instead of the house of their husbands. Greta was married, and no doubt lived in her husband’s house. Two children were born to her---one must have died in infancy. Even at that remote age her hidden power was evident. It is indicated that she advised someone, her husband perhaps, or it could have been one well placed in the Government. The self-sufficiency which is the keynote of her character was as clearly marked then as now. Emotion has never betrayed her. There seems to have been a dispute about property before she passed out of her Egyptian existence. In certain circumstances the women of those days were responsible for their husband’s debts. She might have refused, and it would have been like her, to pay the debt of her erring lord; or, as it was customary for the creditor to claim the person of the debtor as security for the debt, she might have taken the opportunity of being alone for a while, and permitted the creditor to carry off the protesting husband. She must have paid the debt in the end, for heavy expenditures and losses are indicated.

Custom would have demanded her to worship at the temple, but I see nothing to indicate that she was interested in religion.

At twenty-eight she was a widow, and she seems to have remarried almost at once. Doubtless she married her brother-in-law according to the law which governed marriage. She lived with her second husband only a few years, for she is not quite thirty-two when her Egyptian incarnation closes.

* * *

We all know Greta Garbo, the witch of the screen, who fascinates us by her acting, her clothes, her personality. We know she is not beautiful, but she has something much better than beauty. She has that magic which the Fates bestow on a woman but once in a thousand times. Few of us know the other Greta Garbo---the woman who never uses make-up in the streets, who has such a passion for privacy she will permit no one to see her at work, who wears sports clothes, a rough overcoat, and a shapeless felt hat, and is frequently not recognized by the employees of the studio; who enjoys long solitary walks and who learned to speak English fluently in six months. Both women are the result of past experiences, and both are touched with magic. Neither one needs to disarm rivals, for she is too elusive to arouse jealousy among the people she works with.

Looking Backward with Bernard Shaw

Bernard Shaw was born on the 26th of July eighty years ago, yet no one dreams of calling him elderly. As a matter of fact, no one would dare to call him elderly, for he lets it be known that birthday cards or anything reminding him of his age are strictly taboo. Ignoring our age does not help most of us in our struggle to appear youthful.

To ignore his age Bernard Shaw does not take off a few years or count his birthdays, as certain women do who are never more than thirty-two. He can ignore his age by drawing on his youth, for he is young judged by the standard of physical fitness. He can tire out many of our young men in any test of endurance. If we judge age by vitality and not by years, Bernard Shaw is one of our energetic young men.

I have looked in vain among my signs and symbols to find something (how he will hate me if he sees this) which would indicate that his vitality is assumed, as his satire sometimes is; but I can find nothing to indicate a pose. I have heard it said that “only the successful artist can pose before himself”; but the man with a sense of humour, however successful an artist he may be, cannot deceive himself about his value. Bernard Shaw is not deceived about himself. He knows he has a scintillating mind, an indomitable spirit, and an amazing vitality.

This is not the first time he has been born with these attributes. They were standing by him in Russia, where I find him in 1553 in the reign of Ivan “the Terrible.” It is indicated that he saw the grim and sardonic humour in this period of blood-lust, cruelty, and intrigue. He was then, as now, the observer of life, the chronicler, not the man passionately obsessed by the conditions under which he lives.

Ivan, on the other hand, had brooded over the conditions of his life when, as a lad, his mother, the bloodthirsty Helen, had been proclaimed Regent. She left the ruling of the country to her lover, whose diplomatic skill surpassed his discretion. Even in Moscow, where cruelty was the order of the day, Helen was called “The Drinker of Blood.” It is not surprising that Ivan, sensitive, nervous, and highly imaginative, surrounded by such a grisly environment, should have later become “The Terrible.” All the evil propensities of his nature were not only given free rein, but were also encouraged. An adolescence untamed, violent, and licentious could produce nothing but depravity in adult life.

When he took command of the nation, he alternated his licentious inclinations with the contemplation of religion. He visited shrines and monasteries and worshipped his conception of God with the same passionate frenzy which, in another mood, made him slay every obstruction in his pathway.

In spite of his violent character he was one of the best-read men of his time. Not satisfied with portions of the Bible, he read it all, including the Greek translations. He spent much time in studying the Old Testament and in searching out any text having to do with authority and obedience, for his mind was filled with his own power and the subjection of his people.

When seventeen years of age he had himself crowned Tsar. His was the first coronation in Muscovy. To further increase his importance and the importance of his dynasty, he ordered a genealogy to be made to trace his mythical descent from Augustus Caesar. It is indicated that Bernard Shaw was employed at this task; for his signs were set for advancement in literature by royal favour. Can’t you see the Shavian cheek protruding over the tongue as G. B. S. studies the documents, searching out clues which, under his expert handling, could be bent into some semblance of Roman descent? So good was the result of his labours that the Church supported Ivan’s claim.

Splendid material, if gruesome, came Bernard Shaw’s way in those days. The famous fire of Moscow, in which hundreds of people lost their lives; the fire which was said to have been caused by witchcraft in the Tsar’s family, and which marched the infuriated populace towards the palace to massacre the Tsar and his dependants; the fear which brought the terror-stricken Ivan to place himself, momentarily, under the protection of the Church and the brutish criminal debauch which followed his lapse into religion. Thinking of this material, we are sorry Bernard Shaw wrote no plays in his Russian incarnation. Had he been writing plays, it is doubtful if he would have cared for this vivid material. It would have been too highly coloured to fit itself to the restraint he likes.

In his Russian days, as in his present life, dreams came out of his mind in well-ordered sequence. Nothing ever gushes out in flaming colour. There is nothing of the poet about him. He is the student of life and not the dreamer of dreams. He uses a lot of grey and brown in the painting of life’s scenes. He could never take some dazzling image from the semi-conscious state and set it glowingly before us, as certain writers can bring their dreams up through the depths of the subconscious to the shallows of the conscious mind. Rather he is the literary surgeon who performs a delicate operation on facts, giving the prosaic and the commonplace a new and lively importance. In certain of his writings there is still the atmosphere of the Russian Steppes---the cool, clear brilliance of the snow, the searching white-light of the moon, and the brittle snap of things broken by the frost.

In his Russian incarnation he married a lady far above himself in rank. She belonged to the nobility, and it is indicated that she was twelve years older than her husband. He seems to have been happy with her. One child was born of the union, a daughter, who resembled her father in character and ability. Publicity sought Bernard Shaw out in his previous life, as it has in his present life, and also in his Greek life, which I shall describe. Money and honour were the rewards of his literary labours in Russia. It is indicated that he was at one time the confidant of Ivan, and that much of his time was spent at the palace.

He was full of years when he left his Russian existence. His amazing vitality was remarked then as it is now. Active to the last, he passed on very suddenly. His wife had “died” twenty years before, and his daughter was then the wife of a military officer in Ivan’s army.

* * *

The symbols indicate that he lived in Greece before he appeared in Russia. He was born in 480 B.C. the year Euripides was born. As a matter of fact, he was Euripides in his Greek incarnation.

Bernard Shaw has been engaged in literature in many lives. Those of us who believe in reincarnation know that one life could not produce a Michael Angelo, a Dante, or a Bernard Shaw. We come slowly to perfection, and the genius who bursts upon the world fully fledged, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, has passed many incarnations in pursuit of the knowledge which astonishes us.

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedians. Aeschylus was forty years old when Euripides was born, and Sophocles had been famous for twelve years. Whether the mother of Euripides was a vegetable peddler, as Aristophanes says, or whether, as certain professors of our day insist, she was a woman of noble family, she was sympathetic and kind to her son. No doubt she sold lettuce and tomatoes from door to door, as Aristophanes, being a contemporary of Euripides, said. Whatever she did in her girlhood, she married Mnesarchides and became the mother of Euripides. Mnesarchides must have been fortunate in certain business deals, for Euripides had tutors whose tuition fee was extremely high. Among his intimates was Socrates, whose father was a stone-cutter and whose mother was a midwife. I have never been able to see what possible difference the parents’ occupation can make to a soul seeking incarnation other than to furnish the opportunity for the soul’s development. Bernard Shaw, or Euripides as he was called then, possessed the same marvellous vitality which he possesses to-day. At seventeen he thought of becoming an athlete, but when the third prize was given for his play Pleiades, he set his course for literature. He was the first dramatist to depict the minds and emotions of women and to deal with the intricate problem of sex relationship. At this period of his development he exhibited a greater knowledge of female psychology than he has since shown.

Unlike his predecessors, Euripides depicted mankind as it was, not as it should be. He introduced novelties of views and manner. He left the lyric to the older men and devoted himself to the dramatic. In those early days the seeds were sown which were to bloom in his Socialistic ideas to-day. In his hands the slaves and the common soldiers, who had never been anything else but a background for the rich and prosperous, became individuals with attractive parts to play. Persons of legends, whose characters were fixed in the past, were overhauled and given a human role. The stateliness of his predecessors was deserted by Bernard Shaw for the reality (tinged with satire when he would press an idea home) which is the keynote of his work to-day. Many of his tragedies were really comedies which the people didn’t understand at once because the new treatment rather annoyed them.

Only four times did he manage to obtain the first prize. I wonder if he will ever create another character as good as Medea. She is so magnificently drawn that improvement would be impossible. Does the drawing of her place his best work behind him in the dim past?

He was married twice during his Greek life, and scandal was busy with the names of his wives, but there could have been little truth in the slander or Aristophanes would have pointed it out. At times Euripides was spoken of as a woman-hater, but this was because he gave more time to his work than to his home. At no point in his journey through incarnations has Bernard Shaw been unduly interested in women. He could be a woman’s friend, as he could be the friend of a man, but his mind is not obsessed with the opposite sex.

Like all successful playwrights, he is unscrupulous when handling a situation. In his Greek days he was the greatest of the tragedians, for he insisted upon depicting life as it is---and what can be more tragic? Personally, I agree with Sophocles, I would like to see life depicted as it should be, for only when we depict it (and live it) as it should be are we learning the lesson which reincarnation teaches.

Bernard Shaw passed out of his Greek incarnation in 406 B.C. at the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia. As in Russia, he was the friend of royalty. His habits in Greece were those of a scholar and a recluse. They are still the same.

His popularity increased after his death in Greece. The number of his plays which have survived is greater than those of his two predecessors. The popularity of his present work may not increase in the coming years, but it will not decrease. He travels with the passport of continuous fame. His name, in one form or another, will be known in each halting-place along his journey.

Looking Backward with Hitler

We all know Hitler as the young carpenter in Munich, as the boy who, discouraged when he could not become draughtsman to an architect, sank deeper and deeper into pessimism; as the soldier who, concealing his Austrian nationality and his intense dislike of the Habsburgs, enlisted as a volunteer in a Bavarian regiment; as the man who was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in a fortress, and whose warden made a courtesy call on him (almost an apologetic visit) when he was released; but do we know why Hitler was destined for these experiences? We might think that his humble origin in Austria (a fact he sometimes foolishly tries to conceal) was responsible for his early struggles in Munich; or that in a moment of desperation he submitted a petition to King Ludwig to join his regiment; or that the “fatal fluency” of his endless speeches had landed him in the fortress; but our deductions would be incorrect.

We must go back to 1526, when a Bohemian prince, during the internal decay of his people, saw his estates handed over to the Habsburgs. The decay of Bohemia and Hungary offered the same perplexing problem to the prince as it has offered to modern history. That Bohemian prince was Hitler. The esoteric signs which announce royalty were badly aspected at his birth in Bohemia. Loss of property and prestige was indicated, together with unfortunate signs in the houses of family and friends. Intrigue was the order of the day, and Hitler has never been able successfully to cope with intrigue.

As a young man he might have tried to discover why Austria understood political strategy better than any of the states she had incorporated. Perhaps it did not occur to him that the shortcomings of rival states were responsible for Austria’s position, rather than any superior insight on her part. His natural honesty and the desire to see the good in a person or a condition stood in his way of analysis. Even then he had the habit of skipping over things he didn’t care for, like all people who are eager for quick results. His mind was on reform in his Bohemian incarnation, as it has always been. The existing thing has never appealed to him.

He tried political and religious reforms, but the people would not gather round his eloquence as they do to-day. There were signs to indicate that he tried teaching, but with no better result. He must have blamed his misfortunes on the Austrians, for at the age of twenty-five he seems to have plotted against them and landed himself in prison. His incarceration did little to ease his resentment against the Government, for he still tried to plot against it with the help of friends.

It is indicated that he turned his attention to religious reforms when he was released from prison. The older religions were waging one of their perennial wars against the introduction of Luther’s ideas. It is difficult to say on which side Hitler stood. Bohemia was nonconformist, and her nonconformity no doubt helped to increase his dislike of the Habsburg religion. At this time he seems to have turned against the aristocrats and cast in his lot with the people. It is even indicated that he joined up with the army of another nation to fight against the Government he detested. It is probable he fought with the Turks who, in 1526, invaded Hungary.

Later, after his experience as a soldier, he is living alone and the signs are set for literary pursuits. It may be that his writings at that time are still extant. It would be interesting to compare them with My Struggle, which he wrote when he was serving his prison sentence a few years ago. My Struggle is a strange book covering no end of surfaces, skilfully skipping over what it doesn’t care to reveal. It lacks tact, but it is filled with Hitler’s abounding vitality and fascination.

At various times during his Bohemian incarnation he gave his attention to building. He might have tried his hand at architecture. He has definite talent in this direction. He is always the builder: building one thing or another. There was no woman in his life in Bohemia. He was friendly with women. Women have always admired him. In his present life, when he dismisses their cause without a thought, they are still fascinated by him. His character is strangely celibate. I do not wish to give the impression that he has never been in love; for he has loved frequently; but there is that about him which inclines to personal isolation. He can be one of thousands and maintain an inward feeling of separateness; not that he is snobbish, for he can be hail fellow with everyone, but his best friends cannot contact the real self of him too intimately. He has been called illiterate, small-souled, brazen, and abrupt to the verge of rudeness. These accusations might be justified one moment and false the next, for he is for ever in the process of change. No one knows his shortcomings any better than Hitler, and no one is more determined upon self-improvement.

His Bohemian incarnation ended at the age of fifty. He seems to have been the victim of some epidemic, for many deaths are indicated at that time.

* * *

Much of his hardihood and powers of resistance he took from a previous Teutonic incarnation, for, looking farther backward, I find him in Central Europe in 58 B.C. He must have belonged to one of the German tribes described by Caesar which seemed to be quite different from the Gauls. These tribes cultivated land for a few years and then moved on. I find Hitler continuously moving on, trying to better his condition.

These nomadic people had no cities, but their villages, while they occupied them, were well looked after. Hitler is still the man of the village. Villages can be studied in their entirety. Cities, on the other hand, must be divided into portions and administered by Governments. The apportionment of certain duties to various people annoys Hitler, who has little capacity for detail, and is better able to judge a thing when it is finished than while it is in the process of being made.

In his early Teutonic incarnation I find him more adventurous than warlike. The austere climate, the insecurity and violence of those days lived in forest and swamp taught him to cope with adversity. It would be difficult to find a man who can work better than Hitler in adversity. It is then his real character flashes out and stands alone in the storm.

In this wandering life he must have been the chief of his tribe, for the office of chief was hereditary, while the war-leaders were elected. The signs indicate a position by inheritance. Human sacrifice was practised in those days, and also the sacrifice of the horse. Hitler seems to have brought the same fanaticism to those ancient sacrifices as he now puts into his denouncement of the Jews. Neither love nor marriage came his way in the tribe. A high price (in horses or food) was paid for brides by members of the tribe. Hitler may have felt that a woman was not worth the price, or he may not have cared to assert his right as chief and order a woman to share his lot; or, again, he may have turned deliberately from love, the better to pursue his wandering life. It was in that life he became obsessed with the Nordic or Aryan idea which has pursued him ever since. People who dislike him say, when they hear him loudly praising the Nordic, “But he is not Nordic. Why should he exaggerate the importance of the Nordic and belittle the Slavs, the Latins, and the Jews?” He is Nordic, however, the same as he is Bohemian and Austrian. The essential self does not change with the body it inhabits. Hitler may yet occupy the body of a Jew.

There are no dramatic incidents in his early Teutonic life, unless a passion for religious sacrifice could be called dramatic. The wandering life of a tribal chief, even with the adventures accompanying primitive conditions, must have been rather monotonous. In everything he seemed to he does now.

He passed out of his Teutonic incarnation at the age of sixty-two. It is quite clearly shown that an accident caused his death. I think he must have had a fall or have been attacked by an animal, for I find him quite alone at the end.

I cannot trace him again, after the century preceding the Christian Era, until I find him in Bohemia. In that period of change which followed his Teutonic incarnation, when the Roman defences at last gave way and the people of Central Europe ranged over the territory of the former conquerors, it is evident he had no part.

* * *

Few lives I have examined show such a definite line of sequence as Hitler’s. He has been mentioned as greater than Bismarck, as a man of very small calibre, as the saviour of Germany. As it has ever been with dictators, he has his admirers and defamers. An unlimited personal magnetism, together with untiring vocal ability, is apt to blind us to many of his faults. His passion for reform at times overrides his judgment. He has ruled out religion in his eagerness for the betterment of his country. He would have Germany become immortal as a nation, ignoring the fact that salvation is won by the individual and not by the state. His hatred of the Jews is a plank in his platform. He doesn’t really hate them. “Down with the Jews!” was the cry of his associates when he was casting about in his mind for a “purpose.” He fastened on the idea. He expresses the growing restlessness of the age which must have something new. The world has lost its former spiritual anchorage, and until it finds another it will drift, steered this way and that by any captain who can force his will on a temporary crew.

* * *

The lesson he must learn in this life is thoroughness, and he must realize that produced hatred doesn’t make for progress. He will learn his lesson. He will emerge from a welter of abstractions, slogans, and fine surfaces to face facts.

Looking Backward with Haile Selassie

Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Abyssinia, was born July 23rd, 1890. He came into this incarnation with an unfortunate inheritance from his previous life spent with the Aztecs in Mexico. He was an Aztec in 1325, the year in which his gloomy, cruel people founded the city of Tenochtitlan, now known as the City of Mexico.

At that time Mexico was governed by an elective Empire. The chosen Emperor, who ruled for life, had to be a tried warrior. Haile Selassie was Emperor of Mexico for twenty years. Be it to his credit, he did not care for this despotic position, and it is indicated that he tried to force his brother, also a warrior, to accept the throne. Evidently the people would not consider such an arrangement, so Haile Selassie reluctantly consented to govern according to tradition.

He has always been a puppet of destiny. This man, whose soul yearns for peace, whose inner nature detests cruelty, has been forced to live with people, during his last two incarnations, whose manner of living was little better than that of savages. He will be forced into this experience until he learns the lesson it has to teach him---to have the courage of his convictions, and to stand pat when he knows he is right.

Without interference he watched his feudal vassals in Mexico exercising their brutal authority over the peasants. He permitted all crimes, however slight, to be met with capital punishment. He changed no law when the slaves were beaten until they died of the injuries. In bored conformity he visited the temples of Huitzilopochtli, the Mexican Mars, where the imposing altars were drenched with the blood of human sacrifice. Complying with Aztec tradition he stood with his people while the victims of sacrifice were borne in triumphal procession to the summits of the pyramidal temples where the priests stood with knife in hand to slash open the victim’s breast and tear from it the bleeding heart, which, held for a moment before the gaping crowd, was tossed to their god of war. With inner horror, but with outer calm, he permitted 20,000 victims, including children, to be annually immolated to propitiate the rain-god.

He knew his people made war on surrounding territories to supply victims to appease the blood-lust of their beastly gods. All these revolting practices he allowed to continue, hating them, dreading them, but never dreaming of ordering their cessation.

Starting with little but the City of Mexico, the Aztecs had, by the time the Spaniards arrived, annexed most of the surrounding territory. Some of this territory was added during Haile Selassie’s reign.

The signs indicate that he had two wives. The first died during the second year of his reign. His second Empress survived him by several years. His marriages were affairs of State, for there is nothing to indicate that they were inspired by any tender emotion. It seems that he cherished one woman in his heart, but she played no prominent part in his life.

The women of Mexico shared in all the occupations of the men. They were taught reading, writing, ciphering, singing, and dancing, and if they exhibited any unusual ability, astronomy and astrology.

The second Empress was a very intelligent woman, and she seems to have had something to say in the government. The Emperor feared her. No doubt he thought he might be suddenly despatched by poison, as this method of fine terminations was quite the order of the day. The Empress had two sons; one the Emperor feared as he feared his wife, the other was his confidant.

A part of the palace, furnished in the gorgeous barbaric splendour of that day, was given to women whose official rank was much the same as the concubines of a Chinese mandarin. Wealthy men kept them as men of to-day keep a racing stable, to heighten their prestige, and to give the world an idea of their economic importance.

The Emperor cared little for these overripe, sensuous women, who attracted with the body and repelled with the mind---whose dreams centred round accepting and whose conversation and caresses were given to extract presents and money. His fiercer mistress, War, who had helped him to his position on the throne, had deserted him. The very position she had obtained for him had ruled her out of his life.

It is indicated that he was extremely lonely and unhappy when he closed his eyes on his Mexican incarnation at the age of fifty-two.

* * *

Still looking backward, I find him in Peru---not the Peru of the sculptured monuments, the archaeological discoveries, but a prehistoric Peru existing in the dim past, and which I shall excavate with nothing but my esoteric symbolism.

It seems strange that so much time was spent between the Abyssinian Emperor’s incarnations, but I can find him in no existence between his Mexican and his Peruvian.

The first duty of the Peruvians was to the State. In Empire discipline they were much like the modern Japanese. Law, such as we know it, did not exist in ancient Peru. Everything was left to arbitration. The arbitrators consisted of a group of judges chosen by a system of voting. Haile Selassie was an arbitrator. Each province had its own arbitrator, whose duty it was to apportion certain tasks to each person in his province. The arbitrators developed a complete form of registration. The name and occupation of every inhabitant was set down.

Every member of the community, slaves and slaveholders alike, had to work so many hours a week to cultivate the public land. The revenue yielded from this labour was sent to a king, who dispersed it in the provinces for the building of waterways, for education, and for the purchase of bows and arrows. It was before the day of money, but since the beginning of time there has always been some medium of exchange. Haile Selassie’s principal work was to see that everyone---each slave-holder, together with his slaves---was well housed.

The houses were constructed of earth piled up to a desired height. The earth was then squared off. On three sides and on the top the builders put crushed stones, which were held together with some form of cement. When the stone covering had sufficiently hardened, they scooped out the earth through the uncovered side, leaving enough earth to form an interior wall. The floor they covered with mats made of hair and grass. Several squares or rooms could be placed side by side, making a structure of any desired size. Small windows were made by measuring the openings required and framing them with the crushed stone. Many of the houses in which Haile Selassie’s people lived in Abyssinia were not so well made nor so comfortable as these prehistoric Peruvian homes.

There was no poverty in Peru. Each slaveholder was responsible to the Government for the condition of his slaves. There were but two classes---the slaveholders and the slaves. The Peruvians were quite advanced in agriculture. The arbitrators issued an official almanac each spring, which arranged for planting operations and for the breeding of animals.

Their literature was made up of psalms of praise to the King and their Government. They used metals, which they knew how to mine and fashion, for their spear-heads and to decorate their gods. It is indicated that Haile Selassie was happy in that simple life; but he accepted whatever came to him, then as now. The Government modelled his life, and he lived according to plan.

In spite of the arbitration, the Government was nothing but an inherited formula. It has always been Haile Selassie’s fate to live according to some already-existing formula, which he has neither the power nor sufficient inclination to interfere with.

The women of Peru had equal voice with the men in all social matters. A form of monogamous marriage existed, and divorce was unknown. Haile Selassie was happily married according to the reckon ing of his time. He had three daughters and two sons.

The Peruvians believed in the immortality of the soul. They worshipped the sun and moon. The priests were divided into groups according to the temples where they officiated. Each group studied various branches of science. There were the medicine group, the crops group, the irrigation group. The priests instructed their followers at their temples. A child was taught the religion of his temple, simple calculation, and how to read their script. As in the early days of China, duty was given a place out of all proportion. Every child had to know his list of duties.

The worship of the gentle gods of Peru in no way fitted the Negus for his religious life with the Aztecs. I cannot say at what age he passed out of his Peruvian incarnation, for reckoning then was done by a different calculation from the one we use to-day, but he was well along in those measurements of time we call years.

* * *

His symbol is the setting sun. This signifies waning power; a peaceful fade-out, complacence---and also an after-glow dyeing the surrounding country with rose and amber and a lingering haunting beauty. Which is it to be?

From my symbols I have reconstructed prehistoric Peru as a background for Haile Selassie. Perhaps some archaeologist, with bits of pottery and other finds to guide him, will tell me if I have reconstructed Peru as he has.

Looking Backward with Amy Mollison

Was it the wander-lust of the world’s greatest traveller, Marco Polo, which fired Amy’s imagination when she lived in Venice in 1290? In that year she was fifteen and Marco Polo was thirty- one. Everybody was talking of the adventures of the famous Venetian explorer, many with their tongues in their cheeks and sly winks in their eyes, for the stories Marco told of Kublai Khan’s gorgeous court put too great a strain on the credulity of the Venetians.

The Polo family had returned from the splendour of the Mongol court to the cold shoulders and sneers of their native city. Like Ulysses, they were not recognized by their kinsfolk, who sometimes, with good Venetian Billingsgate, showed them the door. This reception didn’t worry the Polos, who had brought back their wealth in the form of precious stones. They established themselves in a palazzo on one of the smaller canals and Marco began to write his amazing journal, which takes everything in its stride, from the tree-bark money of Kublai Khan to the tailed men and the trees which yielded wine.

Amy heard her family and her girl friends discussing the romantic tales which the other members of the Polo family continued to circulate while Marco wrote his journal. No doubt she cherished a wish to visit the countries which the Polos painted in such glowing colours; but she never could have mentioned her wish to anyone, for the Venetian girls of her day and class knew that travelling was a man’s privilege.

Her family belonged to the aristocrats, which class, through the person of their Doge, ruled Venice with a rod of iron.

The fall of Acre sealed the doom of the Christian power in the Holy Land, and the Venetians, whose interest in the Crusades had always been a commercial one, turned the new situation to their own advantage. Business flourished in Venice, and the aristocrats, whose affairs were in the hands of hirelings, became richer than ever.

It is indicated that Amy’s family became very prosperous about this time and that her father fitted out ships for the never-ending wars with the Genoese. Marco Polo downed his pen, and with money produced from the sale of Kublai Khan’s jewels, he too bought ships, which he offered, together with his services, to his city. His journal was to be finished later in a Genoese prison.

Amy was twenty when her father’s ships sailed eastward to overtake the Genoese fleet. It was then that, for some political reason, she and a substantial dowry were married to a man much older than herself. She must have ranged up and down the emotional scale from entreaty to defiance without making any impression on her father’s will. She pleaded the cause of the man she loved, but her father turned deaf ears to her supplication. The man she loved could not have furthered the political cause for which she was sacrificed.

Amy of to-day would walk out of such a situation because the force of woman’s acquired freedom would be on her side. She has never been the pioneer who opens up new pathways and follows them. I say this in the face of her record-breaking Australian flight. She is a dreamer with delicately balanced nerves. Her courage is poised on the fine edge of fear. She has no wish to live dangerously. The success of her Australian flight surprised her as much as it surprised the rest of the world. She knows the risks she takes, and the very fact that she takes them shows the quality of her spirit. One often hears the expression that So-and-so “has no nerves.” “He is afraid of nothing.” This is another way of saying that he is an utter dullard, that he has no imagination; that he is dead to all the finer emotions of life---and, above all, that he has no courage; for courage cannot exist without imagination.

Think of Amy on her flight to the Cape, sailing through the skies at night, alone in another element, not even the contact of the earth to cheer her---nerves tingling---imagination racing---listening to the deadly monotony of the buzzing engine---knowing that if her vigilance ceased for a moment she was doomed---and ask yourself if a greater exhibition of courage could be imagined? But we must not lose sight of the fact that this daring woman of the skies is not the real Amy. The real woman wants to travel and be at home at the same moment---to wear becoming clothes---to have a few good friends, and to wrest from life her portion of happiness without paying too dearly for it.

The Amy who lived in Venice had the same desires. Why shouldn’t she have the man she loved? No doubt she stole out of her house at night when her husband was absent and crept into her lover’s gondola. They would float through that city of soft sounds and sudden bridges, along the canals which rayed out like the sticks of a fan holding the glistening silk of night. They would tell each other the old, old story. These stolen moments didn’t satisfy them, for it is indicated that she eloped with him and came to England. Misfortune must have followed them in the shape of her father, for I find her again in Venice living with her family. Her life seemed to be very unhappy after her return. It is indicated that for a year or two she planned ways and means of escape, but without success. She must have become resigned to her lonely existence, for she was seventy-four years old when the earthquake of 1348 upheaved the lagoon, bringing a seven-months’ pestilence in its wake. Many Venetians passed on at that time. She was among the number.

* * *

Looking backward from Venice, I find Amy in Naishapur, in Khorassan, in A.D. 180. She lived in the golden age of Islam, when the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid ruled from his capital, Baghdad. His was a richly endowed dynasty. Science and culture were making progress, and religion was respected. Haroun took part in everything from war to letters, and he encouraged his subjects to do likewise. The brutal side of his character was not yet evident, and everything was prosperous under his reign.

Amy was a secluded woman then, married to one of the Caliph’s Governors. She was not his chief wife, but because she came of a noble family she was given many privileges which the lesser wives could not share. The privileges would be nothing considered from a Western standpoint, for the Persian women had no voice in economic or social arrangements.

Across the wide, flat plains of Naishapur Amy was carried in her litter by her slaves. The curtains were closely drawn. There was nothing to see if she had peeped out but the sun-blistered plains and the pathetic gardens. Only in the songs of the poets have the Persian gardens been beautiful. The nightingale sang to the rose only in the minds of Hafiz and Sadi. Actually the Persian gardens have always consisted of orchards and poplar groves. Amy’s city, which was later to produce Omar Khayyam, was not beautiful. It is doubtful if the Persians ever appreciated beautiful scenery.

Amy had three children, who, bedraggled and happy, played about on the sand with the children of the lesser wives. Her husband spent much of his time away from home. His work must have frequently taken him to Baghdad, where he was received at the voluptuous court of the Caliph. Perhaps Amy accompanied him sometimes, for it is indicated that he loved her more than any of his other wives.

Did she watch the Sovereign’s infernally magnificent banquets through some hole in the curtain? What did she think as the gorgeous pageant took its place at the tables, having made its obsequious salaams to the Caliph? Did the voice of some foreknowledge whisper to her as she watched the poets, the magistrates, the gallants, the philosophers, the bankers, the money-changers, the rich mawaris of India, the debauchees, and the favour-seeking princes of many lands that these pageants would yet be sung in the Arabian Nights, together with the fame of the magnificent despot who staged them? Is it possible some hidden memory tried to reach her conscious mind when she alighted from her ’plane in Baghdad on her flight to Iraq? It might have tried to evoke the palace of her former days with its moss-soft carpets on the marble floors, its canopies of rich velvet and brocade, under which cushioned sofas awaited the exhausted revellers.

It is indicated that her husband passed out of that existence during one of his visits to Baghdad. Perhaps he “died” of the Caliph’s lavish entertainment. She returned to her city of the plains and lived for many years with her children and the members of her husband’s household. She was sixty-two when she passed on.

* * *

To outer appearances her lives have not followed in sequence; but outer appearance has never been a guide to Amy. Her personality has not changed. The woman who looked through the curtain at the Caliph’s banquets and the woman who eloped with the man she loved in Venice is with us to-day. Her present life is full of the same unsatisfied longing. Happiness is still hiding round the corner. She has learned many lessons and she has many yet to learn. She will learn them. The fickle adulation of the world will never turn her head, for this little lady has a true sense of values, and a spirit which will soar triumphant over all obstacles.

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Part II

Parts of the following reconstructions have been published in Pearson’s Weekly under the caption “Readers’ Letters.” People wanting reconstructions told me their birthdates, their occupations, their hobbies, and, when possible, their recurring dreams. From this data I arranged their symbols and reconstructed their former lives. The reconstructions are herewith published in the same form, second person, which was sent to the people requesting them.

For obvious reasons their names are not mentioned. They are designated by their occupations.

A Landscape Gardener

This reconstruction is that of a landscape gardener. His hobby is working with sharp tools. His dream is of hidden treasure, which seems to be under the floor of an outhouse. His birthday was July 5th, 1879.

Reconstruction of Two Former Lives

Looking backward six hundred years, I find you in Arabia and its environs. During your wandering life you visited many places on the Arabian and Syrian Deserts. You were a nomadic Arab then, the leader of a caravan. It was your own caravan, for the signs indicate wealth, reckoned according to the values of your time and place. You owned many camels and horses; you probably sold goats, sheep, and dates from your own estates, together with silk, cotton, gold, and silver ornaments, pottery, camp utensils, and all the merchandise of the bazaar.

Your principal estates were in Hadramaut, on the south coast of the Yemen (the land south of Mecca). Some day, when the archaeologists excavate in and around Mecca, they will find the tombs which will piece out a part of Egyptian history which now puzzles them. Also that country is rich in silver. Even in your day silver was taken from the mines of Hadramaut. But then, as now, labour could not be guaranteed, as the desert Arab worked when it suited him; so nothing much has ever been done with the silver mines.

You knew how to manage your caravan servants. You allowed them to sell the loot of other thieves’ chances. When on trek across the desert, you gave them the freedom of the camp, and when they wanted to go to Mecca to supplicate Allah with the devilish cunning of their petitions, you fitted out the expeditions. It wasn’t diplomacy which made you adopt this course, it was the understanding of man and man. You were the wild desert man yourself. You saw no harm in looting another caravan, or in driving the sheep of another tribe towards your enclosures. The duty of the Bedouin ends with his own tribe. To it he displays a loyalty unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

His character is strongly complex. With courage, violence, and rapacity are mixed imagination, love of poetry, and a keen appreciation of beauty and music. All the tribes which settle, such as the Fellah and Hadesi, are despised by the Bedouins. This is because the settled tribes can be exploited; but the wild heart of the Bedouin has never been tamed.

In the ancient days before the coming of Islam to Arabia the history of the Arabs was bound up with the love songs of their own and the Persian poets; with blood revenge and the blood-covenant. The Prophet’s religion has taught them to add prayer and fasting to the desert pageantry.

Because you were wealthy you lived in a house in Hadramaut. Your servants lived in tents of woven goat hair in some near-by oasis. During the heat of the day, when the merciless sun baked the face of the desert, you stayed indoors---if you were not on caravan march---eating the rice mixtures and the sweetmeats which your wives and the slaves had prepared for you; reading, perhaps, the songs of Hafiz and Sadi while some semi-nude boy fanned you with a bit of palm leaf.

In that soft hush they call the Arabian twilight you went to the roof, stretched out under the first faint stars, and watched night fall round you like dark hair on a girl’s white shoulders. Was your latest wife with you then reciting poems or singing an Arab love song?

You had many wives; but there was one you loved with all the Arab violence and jealousy. Her signs indicate beauty and a clever mind. You never subdued her as you did the others; it is possible you never cared to. She is at present in incarnation, possibly here in England. During this or some future life you will meet her again. Most of your wives had children. The Arabs are very prolific.

You made the pilgrimage to Mecca and became a Haji after bathing in the sacred pool. Your beloved Prophet Mohammed had been a member of the Koreish Tribe of Mecca. The year of his birth the Abyssinians had made an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Mecca. Because they brought elephants to the siege, the year of the Prophet’s birth was afterwards called, in sacred writings, the year of the elephant.

Can you not picture yourself kneeling on your prayer-mat, which had been thrown down on the sand; your face towards Mecca as the sun rose and set over Arabia, beseeching your Allah to grant you success on your wild, rapacious journeys---or imploring him to further bless you with sons for the honour of your tribe?

At one period during your Arabian life you lived in Palmyra, that famous city of Queen Zenobia on the northern edge of the Arabian Desert. Tradition says that the city was founded by Solomon, but you knew that it had been an ancient Arabic settlement which linked up the great caravan route between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.

Palmyra had begun to sink into decay. Its decline after the fifteenth century was very rapid. In your time it was still an important place on the caravan route. The Palmyrenes tanned leather and worked in gold and silver. You must have found business very good, for it is indicated that you stayed in Palmyra for some time. As a matter of fact, you passed out of your Arabian incarnation during one of your visits to Palmyra. You were forty-five years old at the time. Only your men were with you at the end. You must have engaged in a violent quarrel shortly before your “death,” for the signs indicate that you were stabbed.

* * *

Still looking backwards, I find you in Rome in 258 B.C. At that time the “Imperial City” was mistress of the Mediterranean and she owned more colonies---which she had taken by the right of conquest---than she could administer properly. It was not the Roman custom to weigh carefully every point of a situation and try to arrive at a logical conclusion. The Roman made the best of things and, with as little change as possible, he rearranged pre-existing systems. In this way the Englishman resembles him; in fact, in many cases the Englishman is the Roman of yesterday. The Roman Empire, not being acquired by any special policy, was not governed by any special system. Various conquered peoples accepted Roman alliance on various terms.

You were one of the administrators of public expense. Money had to be found for the Army, for ships that were being built, for expeditions to foreign lands, for roads, and for the beasts provided for sacrifice. You, and the other administrators, must have managed rather badly, for Rome, at your time, could not balance her budget. The public treasury, which was situated in the Temple of Saturn, saw many ups and downs. The Romans, however, true to their conquering spirit, could close their eyes to the budget deficit if money was forthcoming for their wars.

You must have found sufficient money to satisfy the Romans’ blood-lust, for you held your position for thirty years. It is indicated that, in spite of the duration of your appointment, you cared little for your job. Your love of beauty, which flames up in each one of your incarnations, resented Roman ugliness. The Romans of your time had no taste for art or architecture. They were quite content in their houses of unbaked bricks with thatched or shingled roofs. The interiors could be as bare as a country barn without annoying them. Even their religion could be satisfied in a rustic shrine.

You found no fault with this ugly Rome, but your spirit yearned for beauty.

It was the day of acquiring an enormous estate without giving much thought to what could be done with it. You acquired an estate and a wife. Both were as drab as Rome. Your wife came from a noble family, but she was the typical Roman matron, conventional, hard-headed, and austere. You were not in love with her. Many other women flitted in and out of your life. One stayed longer than the others. Only “death” removed her from you. She came from one of the lower grades of society, but for a few years she was upheld by your love. Her passing caused you much sorrow.

It is indicated that you travelled extensively in the Roman colonies. Your work could have taken you on these journeys---or you could have fled from the boredom of the narrow grey streets---the iron-barred windows, the cellar-shops; mere holes where little lamps guttered and smoked---the men drinking at rough wooden tables---the gaping troughs between the cobbles where horses waited, held by huge bronze rings to a tethering-post---curses---smells---discussions---all the dreary picture driving you to distraction. You closed your eyes on it all at the age of sixty-one. Your wife outlived you by a few years.

An Aviator

His hobbies are outdoor sports and books. He never dreams. His birthday was May 21st, 1910.

Reconstruction of Two Former Lives

Your previous incarnation began in South Italy, in a small town near Naples in 1190. This was a short time before the Norman rule ended in South Italy. That came to an end when Henry VI married the heiress of Sicily. The Normans had been faithful allies of the Popes, a fact which displeased Henry, and which he at once tried to interfere with. He lived but a short time, and soon after his death his wife acknowledged the Pope as overlord. So complete was her conversion to Papacy that at her death she left her son to Innocent III, who was then Pope.

The Papal territory had become extensive and had succeeded in establishing itself in many parts of the world. It had established a Latin Empire at Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, adding further prestige to the Roman See. By such additions the Latin Empire became supreme ruler in the Levant.

Frederick II, the child who had been left in the care of Innocent III, was crowned Emperor in 1220. This made him King of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany, Burgundy, and Jerusalem.

At the time of Frederick’s coronation you were thirty years old. You had then a very good military record to your credit. You had already fought in Jerusalem and Constantinople with the Crusaders. You had carried the banners of the Pope through the Levant and through South Europe. Your courage was then much the same as it is now---of the reckless quality.

Soon after Frederick came to the throne he was excommunicated by the Pope because he did not hurry his departure to the East with sufficient speed to please the Papal dignity. Frederick cared very little for the Pope’s opinion of him. He finally went to Jerusalem and had himself crowned there. The independence of his spirit acquired for him many enemies at home as well as in the Eastern capital, and he was constantly having to defend himself in both places.

It is indicated that your fortunes were more tied up with Frederick than with the Papal rule. You were with him when he was in Jerusalem, and no doubt helped him with many of his ideas of reform. His mind inclined to many things besides reform. His affairs with women and his quarrels with the Government required careful handling. Diplomacy has never been your long suit, but you fought for your King, and conditions that would not yield to the sword you managed by coercion. Your own affairs of the heart occupied much of the time you could spare from the King’s business. It is indicated that you married, while in Jerusalem, a girl of good family. I cannot trace any deep emotion on your part, so I conclude you must have married her for financial or State reasons. You were not following your usual career---war, so no doubt you were restless and looking for excitement. The narrow cobbled streets of Jerusalem, with their everlasting flights of stairs, did not appeal to the man who longed for wide open spaces and an enemy to fight.

The churches of the city, built to Papal orders, did not attract you. You were rather a swashbuckler in those days, like the rest of the crusaders, for those warriors, fighting to extend the faith of the Holy Roman order, lost very little time in practising the faith.

You had two children by the woman in Jerusalem, a daughter and a son; but I cannot find them, nor their mother, when you returned to Italy; so you probably left them staring after your departing banners from some verandah in Jerusalem.

Frederick was harassed by constant plots when he returned to Naples. Soon after you returned I find you in Florence, where you must have gone to negotiate for Frederick with some of the northern rulers. Florence was expanding, like all the other communes of Italy, by the annexation of castles and territory. The castles belonged sometimes to princes and sometimes to rival towns. After wars which had lasted for many years the Florentines controlled Arezzo, Fiesole, and a portion of Sienna. Each fresh acquisition of territory brought an increase of nobles, until the Government of Florence was administered by the aristocrats, who organized themselves into clans in much the same way as do the Scotch Highlanders. One clan was for ever hostile to another, which made the daily life of Florence very exciting.

It is indicated that you engaged in many of the factional fights by way of keeping your hand in. War became so habitual that the citizens and nobles fought one day and ate and drank together the next, while boasting of their deeds of prowess. Peace came at last, produced by exhaustion, but that was long after your time.

You fought all day, then returned to some spacious apartment in one of the old palazzos---some high chamber with painted ceiling and hooded stone fireplace. It would have been partially furnished with pieces which had stood in their same positions for generations. It would have given space and reason for further accumulation, and no doubt you carried to it your own spoils of war and the trinkets which you had bought from the goldsmiths. Dusty and happy, you would plump down on a chair and call lustily for bread and the good wine of Florence. It would have been brought to you by some dark-eyed peasant girl, whom you would have kissed and bullied to your own satisfaction.

But you were not always the untamable soldier---there were times when you brought dash and delicacy to your pursuit of women. You must have brought skill too, and in one case love, for I find you with a woman of the people, refusing to leave her for anything---even for your King; for it is indicated that you stayed on in Florence after your mission was finished. You had chosen love instead of your fiercer mistress, war. You let the citizens and the nobles fight while you walked on the Lung Arno with your signorina, pointing out to her the ancient palaces converging towards the Ponte Vecchio, while you told her the secrets of the princes who lived in them. Behind all, like the painted drop of a stage curtain, gleamed Fiesole among the Tuscan Hills---green, mauve, cream---brilliant as the sky above it. You left this idyll only when you heard your King was dying; worn out with plots and the treason of his people.

You must have returned to Florence after his death to rejoin the woman you loved, for you spent the rest of your incarnation with her, living to a ripe old age in the Tuscan city. You had three children by her, two daughters and a son. It was her hand which held yours as you closed your eyes on the “City of the Lily.” She was your affinity; but often we search several incarnations in the vain hope of finding that being without whom we never know what love really means. The Tuscan woman may be in incarnation now. You may have met her again; if not, you will meet her at some future time in this life or in some other existence.

* * *

Still looking backwards, I find you in India 1,016 years ago. You belonged to the Vaishiya, the merchants’ caste. You were very wealthy at that time, for it is indicated that you owned vast estates. You lived in the north, near the place which is now called Lucknow. In your time the Great Moguls had not yet come to Lucknow, bringing with them their lavish splendour and their Islamic culture. You dealt in silks, metals, cotton, gold and silver ornaments, and spices from the south. Your goods were distributed by caravans, which trekked over the hills and the Sind Desert on their way from Lucknow to ships which awaited them on the Arabian Sea.

You had several wives and many children. The women associated freely with the men of the household, for Mohammed’s invading troops had not yet made it necessary to conceal a woman’s beauty. The Eastern women were a biological necessity. Love was not taken into consideration when they were chosen. Passion scarcely had a part in the transaction. They came as the animals to increase their species and increase the status of their lord and master. Being wealthy, no doubt you decorated your women with costly trinkets---but this was to add to your own prestige.

You lived in a large house having marble floors covered with the carpets of Khorasan, for the art of carpet weaving was old even in your day. Not much furniture adorned your house. Not much was necessary in a land where doors and windows opened on gardens of unbelievable beauty. You wore the dhoti---a cloth twisted about your waist and falling to your knees. Your hair was long and well oiled. You would not cut it because that would offend your gods. Perhaps you had made a vow that if one of your prayers were answered you would sacrifice your hair on the altar of Siva. You worshipped the lingam (phallus) in your temple, and brought your goat and your sheep to the blood sacrifice, for your god was a bloodthirsty god. Sometimes he demanded a human sacrifice, and then you said good-bye to your son or your daughter, assuring them that great was their privilege, being allowed to die for the god. You donated your money to the temple and you subscribed to improvements for your caste. You were a good citizen and your power waxed great in the land.

You left that incarnation when you were full of years and good works. You were seventy-five when your body was placed on the Indian funeral pyre and your soul started again on its eternal pilgrimage.

A Timber Merchant

His hobby is motoring. In his dreams he fears meeting someone in an empty palace. He has the royal symbol. He has belonged to royalty in the past. He will again achieve a high position in a future incarnation. His birthday was March 22nd, 1875.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

As you probably know, the highest caste in the Hindu social system is the Brahman, or twice-born. They are the real rulers of India, or were, until British rule robbed them of much of their power. The Brahman believes that this is his last incarnation before his absorption into eternal spirit. So holy did the Brahmans consider themselves that they were unable to rule, because that would bring them into constant pollution. For this reason they appointed the Kshatrya, which comprises the ruler and soldier castes, to rule in their stead.

You were a Kshatrya, and it is indicated that your domain was in that part of India now known as Rajputana---probably near Udaipur. Even then your impatience had to be curbed. If Brahman domination irked you, you hated and feared the onslaughts of those fanatical followers of the “Prophet”---the Great Moguls.

According to my esoteric symbols you were Maharana Udai Singh, who, in 1559, founded the “City of Sunrise,” which to-day is called Udaipur. Let us hope you were weighty of person, for the heavier the ruler, the happier the Brahmans. At your coronation durbar you were weighed against gold and silver and your weight was distributed amongst the Brahmans.

Your symbol is the midday sun, which signifies celestial magnificence. You certainly lived up to your symbol in those days. Did you choose the site of the new city you founded---the site around which that glamorous lake city (often described as the Venice of the East) has grown---or did that dark-eyed beauty, a member of your zenana, inspire you? It is indicated that she was not your wife, but your inspiration. She was not even of your caste. This fact is not important, for no man is polluted by his sexual relations with a lower caste; but a woman is.

The wife chosen for you by your family and your caste was nondescript. She meant nothing to you, but she was the mother of your four children, one of whom was a male child; so you respected her. But it was with your inspiration you rowed upon the lake and watched the sun set over the Pichola or supervised the feeding of the wild boars. It was she who led that bevy of beautiful girls, encircling the goddess Gangour, when that goddess, bedecked in gold, silver, and precious stones, was ensconced on a sumptuous throne during the yearly spring festival. It was she who, in the frenzy of despair, cast herself in suttee upon your funeral pyre when you closed your eyes upon that incarnation at the age of seventy-two.

This Lady Has “No Occupation”

Her hobbies are “reading all sorts of books.” She cannot remember her dreams. Her birthday was April 25th, 1902.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

The France of your day was a country of elegance and intrigue. Louis XIII, with the help of his mother, Marie de Medici, had married Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain. This marriage maddened the Huguenots. They started the religious war against the Catholics which was to end disastrously for them.

Few intellects of the day (shall we say of any day?) could hold their own against the subterranean brilliancy of Richelieu, and he stood for the Catholics. Subtly he worked his will on the mind of the weak King, who became of age soon after his marriage. Marie de Medici had been clever enough to play into Richelieu’s hand when she arranged to have her son marry the Catholic Anne of Austria. The war which resulted from this marriage lost all the Protestants their places and restored Catholicism in France.

Your husband was one of Richelieu’s men. His mind was but little less astute, but little less cunning than the brilliant Cardinal’s. Surrounded by such intrigue, realizing that life was maintained only by flattering those in power, you existed during your French incarnation. You had little love for your husband because your marriage had been a political arrangement.

You were the daughter of a palace favourite, and your husband had married you, to further his own interests. Especially was your father a favourite of Marie de Medici, the mother of the King.

You had no voice in the matter when your youthful beauty was passed over to your husband to further the Catholic cause; but soon after your marriage complaint came into your voice, even if the pitch was subdued and clandestine. Your lover was a Huguenot, and love called forth all your cleverness successfully to manage the affair in the face of your Catholic and legally minded husband. Your love for the Huguenot, could it have been above-board, would have been one of the famous love stories of that period. It is indicated that the man you loved was killed during the capture of Rochelle, when the Catholics overthrew the Huguenots. Your grief was the more poignant because it had to be secret. You had no friend to share it, as your own and your husband’s families were rejoicing at the overthrow of the people your lover had fought for.

After his passing you braced yourself and smiled into the eyes of your Catholic husband. Like the Spartan boy who allowed the fox under his robe to gnaw at his vitals rather than to admit he had stolen the animal, you concealed the grief which was sapping your heart and soul. You became interested in the music and letters of your day, and you even made a good show of embracing the Catholic religion. Even the watchful eye of Richelieu could have detected nothing rebellious in your attitude.

Like his father before him, your husband became one of Marie de Medici’s men. Intrigue and the elegant cruelty of the day promoted him to one position after another. It is indicated that he, with the Cardinal, advised the King. They represented the Government. The weak Louis was but a figurehead.

No affairs of the heart are indicated for your husband. Politics was the mistress he worshipped. Like your Queen, Anne of Austria, who was married twenty-three years before she presented the King with a son, you were married eighteen years before your son was born. He was your first child, and your health, after his birth, became rather precarious. It is indicated that long periods of rest in the country and the best medical minds of the day did little to restore your well-being. You were a semi-invalid the last ten years of your life. Your son resembled your husband in character and mind, and with him you had very little in common.

You closed your eyes on the intrigue and elegance of Louis’ court when you were fifty-eight years of age. Your husband outlived you by fifteen years, steadily mounting the political ladder. Your son was twenty years old at the time.

Mother’s Help

Her hobbies are hiking and reading. Dreams about wild animals. Her birthday was July 22nd, 1888.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

You lived in the time of Nero, A.D. 54-68. At this time Christianity was trying to overthrow Roman paganism. Nero, the Emperor of Rome, was not in favour of Christianity; in this respect he was not any worse than the gentle Marcus Aurelius, who ridiculed the teachings of Christ. We are inclined to think of Nero as an old despot who gave lion parties to his friends and lived in a continuous state of drunkenness. This calumny is not well founded, for Rome prospered under his reign.

Your husband's position would have been much the same as the rank of general to-day. He had an exalted position in Nero's armies, and he received, as was the custom of the day, a large salary. That was the day of magnificence and heavy expenditures. You probably lived in one of the marble palaces of Rome which fell into ruins under the march of progress, and what we are pleased to call civilization. Your husband was in charge of the British campaigns, and he came here to England to subdue our savage tendencies and to instil into our minds and actions a system which passed as Roman peace. His valour and genius for war were praised in Rome, and he was decorated by the Emperor. Much of your pride (and you know you have this trait) dates from your life as a Roman matron, when the lower classes meant little to you, and luxury was the order of your day. If your husband wished, you accompanied him to the arena, where the Imperial thumb in a downward gesture condemned some Christian prisoner to the lions. Nero's box can still be seen in the Roman ruin from which he ordered the Christians to be thrown to the lions. It is a dreadful thought for us to-day, but we are looking at it with 2,000 years of Christian teaching to prejudice our mind.

The Emperor wrote poetry and stories, and frequently read them to his friends. It is quite possible your present love of poetry had its inception in Imperial Rome. That remote period had its poetry societies and its clubs and its lecture halls. As a matter of fact, a "friendly society" flourished in Rome under the patronage of the man we are inclined to think of as a wicked tyrant. Naturally, the "friendly society" of Nero would have no such mission as the friendly society of our present day. The latter has the endorsement of Christianity, but it is difficult to say what policy the former had.

It is indicated that your husband was with Nero at the time of his (the Emperor's) death. It might have been your husband's hand which helped to steady the knife when Nero's courage was less than his desire to die like a Roman. Your husband survived him by a few years and then fell on a British battlefield.

You lived to be quite old. Your son had entered the Army, and your daughter had married before you closed your eyes on the Roman scene.

An Artist

Her hobbies are painting and “mysticism.” She does not dream. Her birthday was July 14th, 1891.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

You lived in Memphis when Amenhotep III, the “establisher of law,” reigned over Egypt. It was a period of prosperity. Justice was brought into the courts, and punishments were inflicted upon corrupt officials who robbed the poor. For the first time in history the Nile-dwellers were not at the mercy of every whim of the official classes. It was impossible to weed out every case of bribery, and some of the smaller courts oppressed the poor man if his opponent happened to be rich; but generally speaking, Amenhotep III was gradually bringing law and order out of former chaos.

Your husband was one of the scribes in charge of the royal estate. He collected the grains of gold and silver, the oxen, and the chests of linen which were given to the vizier every year, to be turned over to the Pharaoh. It was he who, with the scribes, had charge of the reports made out each month by the officials in charge of the treasury. He held also the records of the temple estates.

Landed nobility had disappeared in the Imperial age, and a middle class, much like our middle class to-day, came into being. People who could afford them still kept slaves; but a man of unusual ability could reach the top of the social ladder regardless of birth.

Your husband came from the priestly class. This class had much to say in the courts and in politics. The State religion---the worship of the Sun---was established on an elaborate scale. The wealth gained by foreign conquests enabled the Pharaoh to endow the temples with riches which were unknown in former days. The temples grew into palaces where the priests lived like princes. Their chief wives were the concubines of the god, while their own consort was the Queen herself.

In one of these gorgeous temple-palaces your husband was born. You came from the military class, which class was but little lower in the social scale than the priestly class. You were the only wife of your husband. You had two children---two boys---who became priests in one of the palaces.

You spent much of the time in the temples, not engaged in the religious worship of Amon-Ra, but as one of the singing women whom the Queen led in certain of the gorgeous rituals.

You had many friends in your Egyptian days. Some of them you have met in your present life. In Memphis many men admired you, but you cared nothing about them.

You were seventy-five years of age when your name was written on the inside of your coffin, and your scarabaeus was inscribed with the charm: “Oh, my heart, rise not up against me as a witness.”

Your husband outlived you by a few months, and your sons by several years.

This Lady Lives “At Home”

Her hobbies are reading and competitions. Her dream is climbing hills after a quarrel. She is always “tired” in her dream. Her birthday was November 22nd, 1884.

Reconstruction of Two Previous Lives

You lived in the reign of Henry VII, in Cornwall, probably in the neighbourhood of Camborne, for your esoteric symbols are bound up with tin and copper. From this I conclude that your husband was connected with the metal mines of that county. It is indicated that he was not actually mining the metals, but was more interested in the extraction of the metal after the ore had been mined, probably in the washing process.

This industry was of national importance, especially to the shipbuilding and armament industries of the country. This fact caused the suppression, with ruthless (although the King was not usually ruthless) severity, of the insurrection of Perkin in Exeter. The Government could not afford to have the mines of Cornwall isolated from the centres. It was largely due to your shrewdness that your husband was prevented from joining the insurgents. It was you who kept him loyal to the King’s cause.

These miners of Cornwall have always been a rough crowd; good fellows all, great-hearted and generous. Your husband was typical of the type. It was that complex nature of yours---strong in those days---which enabled you to cope with these men. Outwardly responsive to your husband’s wishes, you had that gift of getting your own way through “femininity.” But there was one period---it would have been about your twenty-eighth year---when you had a violent love affair. You managed to keep your husband ignorant of the liaison, which burnt itself out from the heat of its very intensity. It would be to this period that your persistent dream refers; walking or climbing over the Cornish hills would naturally tire you, especially after some emotional outburst with your lover. I think, if you could trace the persistency of the dream, you would find that it recurs just previous to the new or full moon.

You had one child, a boy, who was more in accord with your husband than with you. His difficult birth should have been a lesson to you, but somehow your shrewdness forsook you, for you passed on in childbirth at the age of thirty-two. The child, a girl, was buried with you.

* * *

Still looking backward, I find you in India, in the sixth century, during the reign of the Brahmanist King Vikramajit. This King overthrew Buddhism, which had held the Hindu passions in check for centuries, and reinstated Brahmanism, with its caste distinctions and its blood sacrifices. The religion of the gentle Buddha was no longer practised. His followers were expelled or amalgamated into the fiercer tenets of Brahmanism.

You were born into the Kshatrya, the military caste. At the age of ten you were betrothed to a man twenty years older than yourself, who held what today would be comparable to the rank of captain in the King’s army. Your engagement meant nothing to you, as you had never seen the man. Hindu girls saw their husbands only at their weddings.

King Vikramajit had placed Indian civilization six hundred years back, and to the present day it remains where he placed it. You were married when you were twelve, and then began for you the usual Hindu life of rearing male children and dedicating them to your husband and to your caste. Fortunately for your status as a wife you had three sons. These won for you the respect of your husband and his family. You had a daughter also, who attracted little attention until your husband decided she should be dedicated to Siva and follow the life of a temple prostitute, thereby winning honour and renown for her family. Prostitution has always been an honourable profession in India if it is practised in the name of Siva. Your daughter was permitted to live at home, attending the temple as necessary to minister to the desires of the priests and their followers. I am sure you rejoiced in her calling, for Christianity had not yet entered India to offer its glad tidings of emancipation and peace---an offering which is still to be justified.

Your present point of view would consider your Indian life very monotonous, but your Hindu mind accepted it without complaint. Marriage for the Hindu woman is a termination like death---everything ends with it.

From your sheltered verandah in Ujjain, in the Vindhya region, you watched the little motes that dance in life’s sunbeam---watched without seeing them. Your hair was oiled and scented, your nails were tinted with henna, your toes were covered with silver rings, and a sari, like a woven cobweb, draped your slender form. You were a rose-and-saffron doll moving in and out of circumstances---unheeding, little caring while slave-girls hurried to the task of answering your caprice.

You might have been thirty-three as you watched the men at work in the rice-fields, naked save for the knot of cloth which confined their manhood, their bodies fanned by a scented breeze bent junglewards. At thirty-three you would have been considered old and you would have been left in peace while your husband took a younger wife and re-began the propagation of his species.

Your sons were old enough then to go to their sadhus (teachers) to be taught the religion of the Vedas and the duties required of husbands. They might have learned something about astronomy and literature, for Vikramajit, not giving all his time to the routing of Buddhism, had advanced the study of astronomy, medicine, and literature.

You visited the temples, offering Kali and Vishnu plates of vermilion-coloured rice. You draped garlands round the neck of Krishna and his lotus-born wife Lakshmi. You poured melted butter over Siva’s phallus while blessing the creative principal with a prayer as old as the surrounding hills.

With your family you went at night to watch the river come down with a lion’s roar soon after a blood sacrifice had been made in its dry bed. Did you wonder then why the spilling of blood could bring the water rushing into the dry bed of the river? I am sure you knew your god had released the water. The power in united thought had not then occurred to your consciousness.

You were sixty years old when your emaciated body was carried out by your husband and placed on the ground under the bauhinia tree, where you passed onward according to Hindu rites. Your sons were then in the army; your daughter was charming men’s senses in the name of Siva, and your husband had been, for many years, retired from the service.

A Book-Keeper

His hobbies are reading and designing. His dream is of being confined in a small stone-walled room and not allowed to escape. His birthday was October 13th, 1894.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

You lived in Citta Vecchia, the ancient capital of Malta, when the Arabs controlled the island. You, an Arab politician, had arrived at Gozo, the near-by island, and had with the Arab army watched your chance to cross the narrow straits and take possession of Malta. You helped to direct the slaughter of the Greeks who were then in occupation. Men and women alike were put to the sword under the order of your Arab Emir. Greek children were sold for pieces of gold, and the island became a veritable bedlam.

It must be admitted that your Emir tried to bring order out of chaos by placating the Maltese inhabitants. It is indicated that you were one of the legal men appointed by the Emir to instruct the Maltese in the intricate series of prohibitions known as Arab law. You proscribed Christianity and taught the people to worship your prophet Mohammed. Being a true son of Islam, your method of furthering the word of the prophet was well coloured with cruelty. As a result of it the Christians were obliged to worship in crypts and catacombs. The catacombs, which can still be seen at Citta Vecchia, were excavated during your enforcement of Arab law.

In order to protect the Great Harbour, your countrymen erected a castle on the site of the present Fort St. Angelo. Watching the construction of this building, you had no idea that one day you would be imprisoned there.

It is indicated that you had something to say about the Arab coins which were struck by order of the Emir.

One lasting memorial remains to the honour of the Arabs and somewhat to your genius. It is the Maltese language. All its words, with the exception of a very few, are purely Arabic and conform in every respect to the rules, even to the anomalies, of the Arabic grammar. It is indicated that the arrangement of the language was under your direction.

You wanted to fly high in those days. You have since learned the folly of such flights.

Rulers and subjects alike sallied forth from the numerous harbours of the island bent on piracy and plunder. This was one of the means used by you to acquire personal wealth. You acquired a vast fortune, which enabled you to live in luxury and to accept the servility of the Maltese.

When you were well established you gave your attention to marriage. I cannot call it love, for it is indicated that your wife brought you still greater wealth. Her health was never very good. The invalid symbol is shown, also the signs which prove that she was childless. Until the time of your internment there was no unhappiness in your married life. Your wife stayed at home while you carried on your operations in the Government and conducted your plundering expeditions.

So persistent were these piratical excursions that they finally attracted the attention of Count Roger, the son of Tancred de Hauteville. Count Roger had successfully expelled the Arabs from Sicily, so he thought he would do as much for Malta. He arrived, with his army, on the island and was welcomed by the Christians as a deliverer. After a short siege the capital fell into his hands. The terms of surrender were that the Emir and his people be allowed full liberty to leave the island with a certain portion of their property. This arrangement did not appeal to you. You thought more of your fortune then than of your liberty.

Certain subterranean movements of yours were discovered by Count Roger, and he ordered your arrest and imprisonment.

You remained in the prison for fourteen years. When you were released you were a broken man. Your property had been confiscated and your spirit had lost its former defiance. You passed on soon after your release at the age of sixty-three. You were alone at the time, for your wife and friends had departed from the island with the followers of the Emir.

* * *

So severe had been your lesson that you came into your present existence under the symbol of the scale which weighs the spiritual against the material. You have acquired a sense of values. Your present actions are carefully thought out and considered. The brilliancy of your mind in former days is still with you, also the determination to succeed.

A Secretary

Her hobby is reading. She has no recurrent dream. Her birthday was April 19th, 1898.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

You lived in Egypt in the XIXth Dynasty during the reign of Rameses II. History cannot truthfully say that Rameses was a great ruler, but it must admit that he was one of the world’s greatest builders. The remains of his work are found in every important place in Egypt.

It is indicated that your husband was one of Rameses’ architects. He probably draughted the plans for the famous temple of Abu Simbel, and no doubt directed the carvings at the entrance, which are still the largest colossi in the world. The store-houses in the city of Pithom (now called Tel el-Maskhuta) must have been designed by him, for he seems to have been one of Rameses’ most important architects. His symbols indicate honour and decorations.

The position of women at that time was high---as a matter of fact inheritance descended through the female line. You were the daughter of a nomarch of the army, as your signs indicate birth in a military family of high rank. Under the reign of Rameses the local militia had developed into a standing army of considerable importance. It fought valiantly to win back Syria, which had been lost by Akhenaton, whose zeal for religion closed his eyes to the material welfare of Egypt.

Brothers and sisters married at that time if they belonged to royal or important families. A father was permitted to marry his daughter if he cared to, and several reigning monarchs of Egypt raised their daughters to the dignity of Queens and placed these girls on the throne beside them. Although you came from an important family, you were related to your husband only by marriage.

Your daily life was quite simple. Anything in the nature of work was undertaken by your slaves. You learned to listen and to talk intelligently about your husband’s work; you worshipped your gods in the temples. Being a typical Egyptian woman, you probably spent much of your time worshipping the little goddess of the toilet, by keeping your eyebrows extended, your eyelids darkened with green paste, and your entire body scented.

You were fond of music and poetry, and many of the songs in Egyptian folk-lore must have been sung by your waiting women. It was unnecessary for you to go to places of amusement, for the jugglers and the dancers came to your house, also the players of draughts, dice, and mora. Your husband attended the bull-fights alone, for, while there were no restrictions on your freedom, women never watched these brutal sports.

You closed your eyes on the even tenor of the Egyptian scene when you were forty-eight years old. Your death was caused by an infection, presumably the bite of a poisonous insect. Your husband and children outlived you.

A Housewife

Her hobbies are knitting and sweet-making. She has no recurrent dream. Her birthday was August 15th, 1884.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

Your previous life was passed in England on the south coast, probably in or near Rye. Rye at that time was a coastal port: the sea had not then thrown up the barrier which has now placed this town some three miles inland. It was a more flourishing centre in those days, as it held a key position in the naval defence of this country, and a very prosperous trade in shipbuilding was carried on there.

The vacillating policy of James I made life very difficult for those connected with the Church. The King’s favour seemed to have alternated between the Anglican, Roman, and Nonconformist parties. For this reason the finances of the clergy were chaotic. I do not think you were in straitened circumstances, but it is indicated that your husband drew a large portion of his income from the sea, and from my symbols I conclude that much of the good cognac and possibly much of the heavy wine of Spain found its way into this country through the vicarage without the knowledge of the King’s excise men. It was a common practice of the day, and who less liable to suspicion than the vicar?

That pride which has always been with you enabled you to stand aloof from your husband’s activities, but in your inner mind you were fearful of the results: fearful for your two children---a boy and a girl---more than for yourself. You had not then learnt the lesson of tolerance---you have still to learn it. Each one of us is our own destiny---no one of us can dictate another’s life. That your fears were groundless is evident, for when your daughter married a local farmer at the age of eighteen, she took with her a considerable dowry. Your son---much to your disgust---joined the Navy, but his success did much to alter your views.

Your husband died some fifteen years before you, and you passed the later years of your life in your daughter’s house. You passed away quite peacefully after a short illness at the age of eighty-five.

A Publisher

The reconstruction of the previous life of a publisher. His hobby is photography. His dream is of being lost in a strange country. His birthday was October 30th, 1853.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

Psamtik I, who was governing Egypt at the time you lived there, was trying to organize what to-day would be called a “come-back.” At various times in history, people more under the influence of romantic idealism than good sense have tried to bring back an ancient civilization and place it in a modern setting. This can never be done, for evolution is a fact we must reckon with. Conditions only seem to revert to some previous type. The fundamental background never changes, but on this fixed canvas different scenes are continuously painted.

Psamtik I endeavoured to bring back the Egyptian scene which had existed nine hundred years before his reign and place it before the Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty. Even the ancient mortuary texts of the Pyramids were revived and added to the Book of the Dead to befuddle the brains of future Egyptologists. It is indicated that your work as irrigation scribe was judged by former standards. You must have been glad that you were not a Saite scribe who had to revive the archaic writing. There is a certain unchangeableness about reservoirs and wells which must be reckoned with. In sharp contrast with the restoration was the foreign policy. Coupling the modernism to deal with foreign affairs on to a previous civilization was difficult, but Psamtik seemed to be equal to the task. Foreign policy necessitated arteries of trade and an elaborate irrigation system to deal with the raising of food-stuffs for export. The signs indicate that you were chief scribe of this newer system, which was to borrow nothing from the past which did not further its utility. At one time you seemed to have been quite wealthy. This was near the end of your incarnation. Your daily life was very simple. You saw to it that your slaves planted and harvested your fields of barley. You practised the religion which had been projected out of the long-forgotten past; and no doubt your son was commissioned to revive the ancient tomb-chapel reliefs. At thirty-eight you had an affair with a Greek woman which might have ended quite disastrously had not Osiris intervened. The woman passed on, as the result of an accident. To-day we would call it the result of blood-poisoning. You passed out of your Egyptian incarnation at the age of seventy-nine. Your wife and your son outlived you.

A Teacher

This is the reconstruction of the previous lives of a teacher. Her hobbies are walking, climbing, and reading. She has no recurring dream. Her birthday was October 6th, 1901.

Reconstruction of Former Lives

In your previous incarnation, the last before the present one, you lived in China in the beginning of the Han Dynasty. The Han was the great dynasty which lasted from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220. China saw much progress under the “August Emperors” of the Han. You were fortunate to have lived in this great age, when architecture, literature, painting, sculpture, husbandry, commerce, and mechanical invention rose to a peak not again attained, even under the Manchu-Tartars.

Before the Hans came into power the Feudal Principalities had ceased to exist. In 221 B.C. China had become an Empire, governed by a central power. This central power appointed Governors, or Ti-pans, as they were called, to govern certain cities and districts.

It is indicated that your husband governed Peking---the north capital. For this appointment he must have been of very high rank amongst the mandarins and sash-wearers, as Peking and Nanking, the south capital, were the most important cities in China at that time. The Emperor himself lived in Peking. While the seal of the Wi-cha-poo, central Government office, had to be placed on every edict, the Emperor left the actual administration of the country to his Ti-pans. Your husband must have signed the architects’ papers for many of the temples and altars in and around Peking. In his day prayers were said in the spring and autumn at the Grain Temples. Magnificent festivals accompanied these prayers. Once a year the Emperor went to The Altar of Heaven to pray for abundant crops. You were carried to these ceremonies in your red-lacquered chair, with its swaying tassels, for your “lily-feet” and your rank made it impossible for you to walk.

You were the chief wife, so consequently the concubines had to obey you. You ordered the worship of the household gods and the worship of the ancestor tablets. Your word was law in all social matters, and it is not unlikely that you dictated to your husband, as Chinese women have always done. Chinese women have never been relegated to obscurity as have the women of other Eastern nations. You could order the concubines to leave your husband’s protection, and you selected, in many cases, the concubines he married.

It is indicated that you exerted your power, and even intrigued in the Government from your entrenchment behind the scenes. Because of your husband’s rank you were permitted to enter The Forbidden City on certain occasions. Behind the walls and the willow trees of The Forbidden City you listened to secrets, stowing any information you gathered in your mind to repeat to your husband or to use in some scheme of your own.

In a way you have always been master of your fate: when you were surrounded by wealth and luxury, when slaves rushed to carry out your slightest wish, when the social order of China gave men a position in advance of women, you were living your own life in your own way. Art and the pleasant amenities of life always attracted you, and it is indicated that you surrounded yourself with the art and beauty of China, which, in delicacy and perfection, no nation has ever surpassed.

The treasures of the artists and the merchants were brought to you---silver and ivory ornaments, carpets woven and dyed by forgotten Eastern magic, embroideries made by a people who could leave the feeling of heat and cold or the flutter of an evening breeze on a piece of silk or a bit of old rice-paper. You bought ornaments to decorate your long dark hair---trinkets carved by some devilishly cunning goldsmith, who, little caring, sold himself and his art for his wine and his food.

You inclined to religion, so you must have made pilgrimages to the temples in the western hills, where in the silence you could worship Shang-Ti, the spirit of your god. In the evening you had your chair carried on the top of the Wall which surrounds the city while you listened to the words of some admirer who walked by your chair. I doubt if you cared much, for you were used to adulation. I think the beauty of the evening meant more to you. From below the Wall came the sound of the evening symphony, made of joy, misery, and the laughter of children. That symphony is as old as Time. Even now that the legations have stretched out on the ancient path at the base of the Wall where the camels once passed on their way to the Gobi Desert, one still hears the same song like some especially loud note in music.

In the Han Lin Yuan you might have listened to the recitations of the men who had received literary distinctions, for the Han Dynasty was lavish with its prizes for literary merit.

You had two children. You had considerable to say about their education, for even then you had your own ideas about education. You passed out of your Chinese incarnation when you were still very young. China has advanced rapidly in many ways, but she has always lagged behind other nations in the science of medicine. She suffers from devastating epidemics. You died during an epidemic. Your son, who was then, eight years old, passed on but a few days before you. You were thirty-two years of age.

You lived in a country where demonstration of personal feeling was taboo, where a kiss would have been considered vulgar, where one person never touched another when contact could be avoided; but your husband loved you in that deep and sincere inner way known only to the Chinese. The taboo on contact may have had something to do with your untimely passing, for the beat of a lady’s pulse was counted from a thread which had been tied to her wrist and passed into the next room where the doctor waited. In some life you will meet your Chinese husband again. His nationality may have changed, as yours has, for the soul is not interested in the body it inhabits.

* * *

Still looking backward, I find you in South India in 750 B.C. You were a Brahman then, one of the “twice-born,” and while you were not wealthy, as you were to be in your Chinese incarnation, you were of high rank---or considered of high rank by your caste, for all Brahmans consider themselves the chosen people. You and your husband---you were married when you were twelve years old---lived with your husband’s family. During your long life in India, from the time, as a child-bride, you went to your husband’s house, until you were cremated according to Hindu rights at the age of sixty-five, you seemed to be quite happy.

Your husband was a painter, and he must have belonged to the Persian School, for Persian influence is indicated in his work. You loved each other with warmth and affection I did not find in your Chinese incarnation. You were the only wife of the Hindu, which is rather strange for a Brahman of his time. This alone is proof of his love for you.

You spent much of your time in the temples worshipping Siva, for Siva was really a southern god who was taken to northern India and given a place in the northern Pantheon. It is possible you received an income from the temple, as many families did who were not so well blessed with this world’s goods.

The Indian women had not been veiled in your day. The Mohammedan invasion first caused the veiling of Indian women. You were allowed certain freedom, and you could speak to men if you wished. Your life was very simple. You had no books, but you had the vina and other musical instruments which most Indian women of your time could play.

You attended the thousands of ceremonies; the bloodthirsty and the beautiful were all taken in your stride. It was the day of the meriah rite (human sacrifice), which meant no more to you than the worship of trees and cows. From the marriage of two trees, the fig and the nim, you could go to the human sacrifices without seeing anything strange in either ceremony. The human mind becomes accustomed to the happenings of its day and environment. To-day we have grown accustomed to the human sacrifice we call war.

You were a very picturesque figure in those days, with your long shimmering sari, your fingers and toes covered with rings, dozens of bangles on your arms, your nails touched with henna, and jasmine and champa flowers in the blue shadows of your hair; perhaps your youngest child was slung across your hip as you watched some wedding or funeral procession pass.

You took rice and ghee (melted butter) to the temple and placed it before the goddess who gives women children, for the begetting of the male child was the beginning and end of a woman’s duty to her husband and her caste. You had five children---fortunately three of them were boys, so your husband could not be driven out of Siva’s heaven because he had no son to light his funeral pyre. He passed from the Indian incarnation first. The symbols which indicate his passing are puzzling. I think he continued one of the religious fasts over an extended period and his health would not stand the strain. No paid mourners could take the lament caused by his passing away from you. It is indicated that you wanted to place yourself and your grief on the suttee (funeral pyre) and give yourself to the flames. Your mad sacrifice was stopped, and you devoted the rest of your life to your children. Widowhood was not a disgrace in your time, as it is now. You left that life at sixty-five. You died on the ground, as a Hindu should, and immediately afterwards your body was given to the Hindu rites.

A Mother and Son

Reconstruction of the previous lives of a mother and son. The man is a civil servant. His hobbies are stamp collecting and chess. His dream is of flying. His birthday was September 13th, 1889.

His mother’s hobbies are reading and travelling. She has no recurrent dream. Her birthday was June 8th, 1859.

Reconstruction of Their Previous Lives

When I found you in Palestine in Herod’s time, I should have mentioned that I referred to Herod the Great, as Herod was the name of a family of Judea responsible for the destruction of the Jewish nationality. It was before Herod was appointed procurator of Judea by Julius Caesar that you lived in Palestine. But you know Herod did not wait to become procurator before starting his career of bloodshed and tyranny.

You were a trader, but, like many traders of your time, your work brought you into contact with people in authority. You must have dealt in marble or stone as well as metals and fabrics, for it is indicated that you supplied some of the materials for Herod’s numerous architectural schemes. The only thing to the credit of this ancient despot was his love of building and the degree of magnificence evinced in the monuments he ordered.

As your mother was your sister in those days, I shall bring the reconstruction of her former life in with yours. I find a very close bond between your mother and yourself. You belonged to a wealthy family of Jerusalem. At that time your sister was younger than you by four years. Your father and two brothers were in the same business. This was apt to be the case with families of Jerusalem at that time. Members of your family had access to the palace to exhibit their wares.

It was the day of astrologers, when everything was carried out according to prediction. Let me say right here that this art, which we first hear of with the Chaldeans, is being revived. Science, that lead-footed dullard, is beginning to realize that the planets must have an effect upon our lives if the sun and the moon have. When the Wise Men of the East predicted (by the stars) the birth of the King of the Jews, Herod was fearful of the waning of his power, so he ordered the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem. You were called into his military service at that time. Whatever you did you were but following the order of your ruler. At what time in the world’s history have not the innocents been destroyed by the order of the ruling powers? Innocents of all ages have been sacrificed to satisfy the blood-lust or to protect the property of tyrants or deluded maniacs---and the sacrificer has been as much a victim as the innocent. You lived in a violent age, when jealousy was an excuse for any crime. Nothing escaped Herod’s jealousy---the members of his household and even his wife Mariamne and his two sons were all murdered to appease it.

With such an example it is not strange that the men of the day were ruthless. You did not hesitate when people stood in your way to brush them aside. Seldom you despatched them according to Herod’s example, but you saw to it that they did not interfere with your schemes and your desires. The man who tried to interfere between you and the woman you married was brushed out of the way. I see no crime connected with the affair, but I see your definite triumph. You loved with all the jealousy and violence of your time. It is indicated that the woman belonged to a family in high position. Your sister helped to further your affair with the girl you finally married.

At that time your sister was married to a man in the Government---in the civil Government. She had two sons, one of whom achieved success in the arts. At one period in your career you tried to emulate Herod’s success with women. I suppose you thought that if your ruler had ten wives, you had better see what you could do to follow his example. It is not indicated that you married again, but you must have caused considerable scandal in your immediate set.

In spite of your violent nature you had a love of beauty. Many times you must have stood on your hill in Jerusalem looking across to the Mount of Olives, watching the dawn and the twilight touch with delicate vermilion and gold the trees and the ancient temples. What thoughts must have come into your mind then---thoughts that no Western brain can compass---mysterious beyond present calculation.

You had a daughter, so clever and beautiful, she must have killed all your desire for another child, for no other children are indicated.

Your sister was quite equal to the intrigue of the day. She steered her course so carefully in and out of jealousy and deceit that she managed to exalt her husband’s position and to win certain honours for her sons.

At one period you were wealthy in your own right---quite apart from your family---but the life you lived, your lavish entertainments and the splendour of your women, exhausted your fortune. Your death was quite in keeping with your life. You passed out of that incarnation one night after attending a banquet. Your sister outlived you by ten years. Her passing at the age of fifty-two was quite tranquil, and she was mourned by many people in Jerusalem.

A Reconstruction of Affinities

The boy is twenty years of age in 1936. He is occupied as a draughtsman. His hobby is reading “heavy” literature. His dream is of temple gardens.

The girl is nineteen in 1936. She is a shop assistant. Her hobby is studying astrology, occult science, and philosophy. Her dream is of temples and gardens.

She tells me that she is interested in studying astrology, philosophy, and occult sciences. I know she is only intrigued by these subjects. She is much more interested in love and the pursuit of happiness. She has acquired a fair amount of shrewdness in this life, but the tendency to extravagance she has carried over from the past. I hope she can overcome it as time goes on, for circumstances have changed. How they have changed!

He occupies rather a lowly position now. I say lowly position, because the world would consider it such, but I know that position and circumstance are nothing more than lessons and experience on our pathway. He likes to read “heavy” literature. He is not being sarcastic and poking fun at many of the books written to-day, for he loves to probe into the more serious writings. He loves knowledge for its own sake; but more than knowledge he loves beauty. Anything ornamental and colourful appeals to him to-day as much as it did when they lived in India in the time of Sha-Jehan, and, according to my symbols, in Agra, the city of Sha-Jehan. He must have lived in the palace, and it is indicated that he helped older architects with their plans. Perhaps he made suggestions to the Persian architect who designed the Taj Mahal---or, I should say, to the genii who inspired the Persian architect, for we all know that some genie produced the Taj with his magic in some soft velvet night, and the people found it standing on the banks of the Jumna in the rose of some Indian dawn. No doubt the boy used to sit on the balcony of the palace working on his designs while the old Emperor’s flaming court walked in the gardens below or rested in the shade of the tamarind trees. Was the Emperor sitting beside him weaving his dreams of the Taj Mahal, which was to be the tomb of his Mumtaz, his favourite wife?---for the Emperor’s love of his beautiful “pride of the palace” redeems the rest of his dissolute life.

Surrounded by this sensuous Eastern beauty, the boy lived and loved. The girl was his wife. They were scarcely more than children; but in India boys and girls marry when they are fourteen years old or under. She, veiled and scented, lived in the hareem and met no man but her husband. Some people have a wrong idea of the hareem. They think of it as the place where an Eastern potentate keeps his favourites. Hareem is the word which describes the women’s quarters, to differentiate them from the salaamlik, the men’s quarters.

They had many interests in common: music, poetry, painting. Philosophy didn’t intrigue her then, but she listened to the other women talking about their horoscopes, for everybody had a horoscope in those days, and nothing was done without consulting it. Perhaps she sat in the moonlit compound with her husband, her veil thrown back, playing the vina and singing love songs while his sensitive hands stroked her dark scented hair.

They hadn’t long to enjoy their happiness, for his Eastern incarnation closed when he was but twenty-six. She lived many years after he passed on. She was sixty-two when she left the hareem for the Mohammedan funeral rites.

Now they have met again to renew their happiness. Circumstances are different, experiences are different, but they are the same.

A Salesman

This letter explains the following reconstruction:

“Funny you striking China as the land of my previous incarnation. Since boyhood the name Chang-Sun has always been heard clearly in my dreams. Also I nearly always dream about monks.”

This reconstruction was made simply from the birthdates. Neither hobbies nor dreams were mentioned by this applicant. His birthday was August 29th, 1900.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

The T’ang Dynasty which was in power when you lived in China 1,316 years ago was one of the Imperial dynasties. The feudal system which had governed China for thousands of years had passed with the entrance of the Han, or Great Dynasty, which changed the existing laws in 206 B.C.

The T’ang Dynasty saw a great advance in culture, science, and art. The ruler followed the ancient custom of retaining the sage to advise him in religious matters.

The religions of Confucius and Buddha maintained their temples and taught their followers. You were a Buddhist monk in the Yellow Temple near Peking. This temple, which is situated in the western hills, has always been inaccessible. Even to-day one must climb the narrow stony hillside paths to reach it. The temple priests to-day will meet the weary pilgrims and offer them the austere hospitality; but the priests of your day kept to their Viharas, where the contamination of the world could not reach them.

Within your sacred precincts you sat in daily meditation, your mind against anything which would interfere with the blessed course of nothingness. At night you slept on the stone floor of the temple verandah, your beads and your rice bowl beside you.

The temple bells you hear in your dream are the silver-toned gongs of the temple court. The voices you hear are the chants of the priests. Do you ever drift on the drone of the chants back to your old environments? Do you ever hear the songs of the bamboo and the pine---airs that only the Chinese night can sing when it is happy and untroubled by wind and rain? Do you see the moon climbing higher and higher to make a pathway into the pine grove---the pine which for the Chinese signifies longevity and peace?

I wonder if the thought ever brushed your consciousness as you meditated in your courtyard that the extreme harmlessness of your belief arrested the instinct of self-defence, as devotion to any excess, whether good or evil, is sure to do? That spirit of abnegation is still with you, halting your progress to-day. You must overcome it. You must learn that spiritual lethargy means defeat.

You lived for many years with the monks. Sometimes, driven by necessity, you stole down the stony paths into old Peking, where you begged for alms for your order. Your life was a spiritual nebula floating somewhere between the maze of Buddhistic heavens and the boundaries of your ancient temple.

One night your beads slipped from your fingers, the stars ran together in a bewildering dance of fire, your head fell backwards on the stone, and your spirit left the courtyard for ever. You were seventy-five years old when this happened. In the morning the monks lifted your body, embalmed it with the process known only to themselves, and placed you, sitting upright, in your jar beside the other jars which held the bodies of former members of your brotherhood. Your jar is still there at the Yellow Temple, collecting the dust of ages. The pines still sing above it and the gongs still call your brothers to prayer.

One of the Unemployed

This letter explains the following reconstruction:

“Please tell me if I have the essentials to become a monk. I am single, not attracted by the opposite sex. My aged father is still working with me, otherwise I haven’t a friend in the world. I have tried for four years to find employment. I have had no success. When I am left, I want to go into seclusion from this kind of life.”

His birthday was May 22nd, 1906.

Reconstruction of One Previous Life

Your previous life in England was lived in two historical periods---under the Stuarts and during the Commonwealth. It was in the former period that you moulded certain traits in your character which are alien to the versatility of your essential self.

The commerce in which you engaged with partners was not actually, but very much allied to, shipping; and although a Royalist at heart, the shipping tax, instituted by Charles I, touched your pocket and your firm’s profits. This tax threw you on to the side of the Parliamentary party, and it is indicated that you fought for them on two occasions during the Civil War, but rather half-heartedly, more to please your partners in business than as a matter of conviction. You took the line of least resistance.

You were married. Your wife was of your own class: respectable middle-class English, whose conventionality rather bored you, although you respected her sterling qualities and loyalty. It might have been boredom which made you join in the Civil War.

You “died,” at the age of fifty-three, after the Commonwealth had been established, of a chest trouble, probably pneumonia.

I cannot advise you to become a monk; for I see behind your desire the acknowledgment of defeat and the wish still to take the line of least resistance. You other than boredom and discouragement. The passionate adoration of God is not what you are seeking. You are not overcome by the wickedness of mankind

You cannot dodge life. You must accept every experience it offers. You must grapple with it, pay the debts you owe it, pick yourself up when it knocks you down, and try again, richer in your soul for the encounter. The lesson of life is experience, bitter until we understand the chords of adversity in the great harmony---until we know that the deep bass notes are as necessary to the melody as the joy in the high allegro.

Let us go back over your life very carefully. Your symbol is the painter’s canvas, requiring the hand of the artist to give it life. You have never developed the sense of proportion justly to paint the canvas of your life. In your impressionable years you tried to copy the traits of others to fashion a character for yourself. You could find nothing to give you expression because you were using the wrong material. Later you were bound to show that which most impressed you, whether good or bad; whether weak or strong. Your mind is given to portrayal, and now you would portray discouragement by sneaking away from life’s lessons.

Life will pursue you and make you learn some time. Why not learn now? For four years you have tried to find employment. Try again with the determination to seek until you find. Take anything to get a start. Later you can choose, for one thing grows out of another. You say you have not a friend in the world. If you deserve friends, they will appear. Nothing you have told me shows your low state so much as the admission that you have no friends.

I want to hear from you again. I want you to tell me that you are facing the music of life. I await the good news.

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Part III

Looking Forward with Cleopatra

It is amazing the number of women, believing in reincarnation, who think they were Cleopatra in some former existence. I have met Cleopatras in Europe, America, and the Far East. Chaste women who would run to cover from the least breath of scandal, women seeking adventure, and mothers of stolid business men have told me, in moments of confidence, that they were Cleopatra in their previous lives. An aged wisp of a woman, the head of a dull religious cult in China, told me she could endure the religious austerities of her present life because she had once been the glamorous Queen of Egypt.

Any of these women would have been horrified if she had been charged with Cleopatra’s deeds or accused of possessing her character; but somewhere in her inner consciousness every woman cherishes the image of allurement.

In her secret soul woman prefers admiration to respect. I can hear the clamour of loud protesting voices at this statement of mine. I can hear women saying, “I have no time for admiration.” “I am too busy bringing up my children to think of admiration”; but in spite of all protests I shall keep to my statement. Every woman is interested in admiration, be she the emancipated woman of the West, the subjugated woman of the East, the doting mother, or the defiant suffragette.

It was the allure of Cleopatra, that won the admiration of men, which draws women to her until they see themselves living her life. Their mind cannot rest in the sphere of abstraction. Their desire to emulate her mounts higher and higher, until it unites with the belief that they must have been the “laughing Queen.”

* * *

Cleopatra’s birthday is not known. She was born in 69 B.C. Plutarch says her birthday occurred somewhere between March and July. According to my symbols it occurred on the 21st of May.

Cleopatra was a Greek, a true daughter of the Ptolemies, yet there was nothing of Greece in her temperament nor her behaviour. Greece stands for youth, for spring, for laughter; her very gods are young. Cleopatra was old in the way the Orient is old. She represents the eternal feminine, the eternal East; a woman weighted with passion, fatigued by love, weary of luxury; but constantly rejuvenated by her will to power.

She was not beautiful, but her personality and charm and the quality of her musical voice captivated any man whom she believed could further her plans. She looked men over as the entomologist looks over his insects, cherishing the rare specimens, but giving little time to the common varieties.

She must have been quite small, for a slave carried her on his back, in an empty bed-sack---a sack used for carrying bedclothes in those days---through the palace into Caesar’s presence, where she went to lay her claim to the throne of Egypt before the dictator. There is a bust of her in the British Museum which is not very complimentary. Her nose is out of proportion, and her mouth has a definite slant. Various writers have described her colouring. It ranges all the way from reddish-blonde, through a scale of browns, to dark brunette. She was probably an artificial blonde, for her city, Alexandria, copied the Greek and Roman fashions of the day. The Greek gentlemen preferred blondes, for there was at that time a Greek expression which meant “to become blonde.”

The history of her family, the Ptolemies, reads like the record of a lunatic asylum. It was not disease but delirium which lowered the morale of the Ptolemies. Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XIII, nicknamed Auletes (the flute player), murdered his eldest daughter, Berenike, and Cleopatra murdered her sister Arsinoe. She is accused also of murdering her brother-husband, who shared the throne with her. The Ptolemies were for ever despatching each other when one wished to occupy the other’s place.

With such a family Cleopatra had to be ever watchful if she would protect her life. The city in which she lived was the gayest and most dissolute of the age. Licentiousness had created Alexandria in her own image. The brilliant city was the centre of the world. Its voluptuous arms embraced alike the bondman and the free, the European, the Asiatic, and the Negro.

Cleopatra added to its decoration with temples and palaces. On a clear day, when the sea is calm, some of the tiles of one of her palaces can still be seen under the water near Sidi Gaber. I wonder how many of our men who saw service in Egypt noticed them when they were bathing before the Frères School?

It might be argued that Cleopatra had to live in the manner she did against such a background of murder and debauch. To keep her throne she appealed to the Roman dictators. The Romans were very susceptible to the charms of women. An Englishman could never follow a Roman in his pursuit of women. I doubt if any Englishman can understand how Antony could give up everything but his Roman citizenship to follow the fortunes of Cleopatra---or how Caesar could have delayed so long with her in Egypt, neglecting his duties in Rome. Cato, understanding the weakness of his countrymen, said: “Everywhere else women are ruled by men, but we, who rule all men, are ruled by women.”

Perhaps Cleopatra, given less impressionable material, would not live in history as the greatest enchantress of all time. But we must give her credit for her splendid discernment. Before the cultured Caesar, who was versatile and elegant in love, she was the woman of restraint, of hidden fire, of delicate grace and appeal, the linguist, who, in striking contrast to the rest of her family, could talk with anyone in his own tongue. With the boisterous Antony she was the hoyden, the madcap, the woman of violent passions who could drink all night and with her lover visit the slums of the city to throw stones and stare in at people’s windows.

She could be all things to all men when she wished to gain a point. It is doubtful if she ever loved anyone but her children. No one can deny that she had maternal qualities of a high order.

After Caesar’s death she turned the full force of her charm on Antony. She wanted to find a man of her own calibre, a ruler. She would have succeeded with Antony had he been Caesar. Any man with the resources which Antony had at his disposal should have conquered the world, and, with Cleopatra, ruled it.

Theirs is called a great love story. It has been sung, painted, filmed; but it contains nothing great, and had it not been played on such a gorgeous stage it would have been forgotten long ago.

Cleopatra was the final product of a corrupt and wealthy family. She was well equipped to conquer the conquerors. She was willing to sell her wares in the market-place if the sale furthered her ambition---but to say her appeal was merely sensual is absurd. She was greater than the men she dealt with. She could at least lay claim to patriotism; and at the end of her Egyptian incarnation her courage never faltered. Pride stood by her, urging suicide in preference to being dragged through the streets of Rome, jeered at by the Roman mob, while the smiling Augustus accepted the plaudits of his people.

* * *

In Cyprus, where she appeared six hundred years later, her courage was grappling with poverty---dull immovable poverty which would not yield to her assault upon it.

Her husband was a metal worker, working with copper and bronze, his wages barely enough to support himself, his wife, and their two children.

Christianity had come to the island, in consequence of the alleged discovery of the Gospel of St. Matthew by a shepherd near Salamis. The wife of the metal worker had embraced Christianity, and she was bringing her children up in the Christian faith. In her Cyprian life she was still the devoted mother, sacrificing and making plans for her children.

The gift of tongues was still with her. She made the acquaintance of the various people who migrated to the island and learned their languages. Her natural intelligence was probing into the mysteries of religion and trying to explain them to her children.

She had carried over none of the brilliance and the grandeur of her former life. Her soul had been tested by wealth and position and found wanting. Now it was being tested by poverty. Some of the people she had formerly known were with her.

It is indicated that her beloved daughter was Arsinoe, the sister she had murdered. This daughter caused her much grief, for she left home when she was twenty years of age and was not seen again by her parents. It is indicated that her younger child, a boy, was burned to death. The loss of her children hastened her own passing, for her Cyprian incarnation closed less than a year after the death of her son. She was thirty-nine years of age at the time. Her husband survived her by many years.

She never knew the irony of her Cyprian birth. The island had always been the bone of contention with the Ptolemies. Could any inner voice have told her that her former father, Auletes, once ruled the island where she had known such poverty and heartache?

* * *

This woman of Egypt and Cyprus is now living in New York. According to my symbols she was born on the 18th of November twenty-five years ago. She has learned many lessons, but she has many yet to learn. Her American mother has passed on. It is indicated that her father is blind. She is married, and once again she is linked with the past. Her husband is the roistering Antony, tamer now, but still a victim of his old weaknesses. The past debt has brought them together again, for debt is as strong a tie as love.

Antony is a young soul. Unlike Cleopatra, his American incarnation is his first earthly appearance since, as Roman dictator, he governed the world. His buccaneering spirit has found an outlet in crime since his American birth. He has belonged to various gangs whose political and financial interests have stopped at nothing. Assassination and bribery have come his way, and he has twice served sentences in prison.

Many of his Roman friends are with him, plotting against the Government, acquiring wealth by any means whatever, as they did in their previous lives. The flower of crime has sprung from an ancient sowing of which they have no conscious memory. These evil experiences will produce the knowledge and the desire for good as their souls circulate through many earthly lives.

Several times Cleopatra has had sufficient reason to divorce Antony or to desert him, but she is held by the ancient tie of debt. She is paying now with heartache for the days when she bent him to her Imperial will. He will learn few of his lessons in this life; she will learn many of her lessons.

The children for whom she tried in vain to hold the throne of Egypt are not with her now, but the tie of love will draw them to her in another life.

Looking Forward with Napoleon

In an unpretentious house in one of the narrow side-streets of Moscow lives a boy of fifteen who is eager to grow up and govern his country. He feels ardently his own importance. He knows he could do better than any of the men who are governing Russia to-day. He pores over the lives of the Roman heroes, the campaigns of Frederick the Great, the history of Carthage, the history of England, the story of the constitution of European countries; astronomy, geology, the growth of population, the statistics of mortality.

Many years ago he studied the same books in the garden of a school in Brienne, studied them with the same purpose: to gain knowledge which would enable him to govern his countrymen and teach them to throw off the French yoke which menaced his beloved Corsica. The brooding lad who fenced off a portion of the Brienne garden and dared any of the other students to enter it was younger by three years than the Russian lad who dreams of being another Caesar, another Napoleon. Napoleon fires his imagination more than the other heroes. There is nothing surprising in this preference, for he is reading of his own deeds, his own life. This Russian lad is Napoleon Bonaparte.

According to my symbols his father is connected with the police. No doubt he is one of the dreaded O.G.P.U. His mother could be an interpreter meeting foreign tourists, for she seems to have something to do with languages and translations. He is their only child. His individualism is a great source of worry to them, for Russia is not interested in the individual.

The books which Russia permits her people to read to-day do not interest him, so he reads the books from which he had previously drawn inspiration. He makes the same sort of statements to-day as he made to his Corsican father, to whom he once said, “I would rather be the first among the workmen in a factory than the last among the artists in the Academy.” His Russian father shudders when he makes such statements, and reminds him that the new “collective man” is to rule the world, the man who thinks the same thought with a thousand brains, and roars the same slogans with a thousand throats. The boy does not believe in this man. He sits down to write his objections in his copy-books as he wrote in the Brienne garden when he filled more than four hundred pages with his ideas, his desires, and his hatred of a people who made him one of a conquered race. He knows that external man can conquer nothing by organization. He knows that a nation which has discarded religion and which ridicules the soul cannot prosper. He knows that a race interested only in its physical functions can achieve no millennium.

He learned many lessons in his former existence when he was Emperor of France. When he waited for “death” at St. Helena he examined his life and realized many of his mistakes---but the greatest mistake of all he has not realized, for he would go out again in the role of conqueror.

He will play this role again. The next time it will be on the Russian stage. His part of conqueror will be played without war or bloodshed, for this Russian lad would be greater than the heroes he studies. In the Brienne garden he studied them to copy their victories. Now he studies them to improve upon their methods.

His parents belong to the people, to the “collective man” of Russia. They have neither will nor voice of their own. Their son attends the school which produces this man who would supplant the individual. But the son knows that it is only in rage that this new being can show his strength, and because of this he knows him to be a primitive force and not the harbinger of a newer culture. This thought he turns over in his mind, hating this force as he once hated the rule of the French in Corsica.

As he walks through the streets of Moscow he watches the usual scene, but he sees something better in its place. Men and women dressed in anything procurable with down-at-the-heel bespattered boots he sees well dressed in becoming clothes. Frowsy women with shawls over their heads he sees wearing hats beneath which their hair is tidily arranged. People carrying parcels with the contents exposed seem to have their purchases neatly wrapped. The ramshackle motor-cars acquire graceful lines and the people driving them observe sensible traffic laws. He knows what his country needs. It needs a man like one of his heroes---like Napoleon. Later, when he is older, he will govern it as Napoleon would have governed it---with a difference.

* * *

No one is with this young Napoleon to-day who was with him in his former existence. It is indicated that he will meet Josephine again in about ten years’ time when he is again playing a leading part in the world’s history. Letizia, his famous Corsican mother, who carried him into battle with her when he was an unborn babe, will meet him again, but as a man, for her sex has changed in her present life.

This woman, who was a heroine in battle, a thrifty housewife at home, whose sense and ability directed the fanciful temperament of her husband when he would have devoted his time to dreaming instead of to looking after his family, shaped the life of her son, inclining his mind to courage and the desire for power.

I can find no trace in the present incarnation of Napoleon’s son, “The Little King of Rome,” for whom Napoleon gave up the woman he loved. No Brahman, who must have a son to light his funeral pyre if he would go to any of the Hindu heavens, ever desired a son more desperately than Napoleon. His will to power---the power he expected his son to perpetuate---was greater than his love of Josephine; greater in the heyday of his glory when he believed himself invincible. But the “dying” Napoleon called for Josephine. The soul, leaving its earthly bondage, called for its affinity.

Napoleon, during his last delirium, had made a will bequeathing the lands and property he didn’t possess to his son; but in that one moment of consciousness, before the soul takes its departure, he had called for his mate. This man, who had women of all classes, whose affairs were so numerous they couldn’t be estimated, never loved anyone but the faithless, rather frivolous, Josephine.

You may wonder why he loved such a foolish, weak woman. He knew that her very weakness was strength where he was concerned. After their parting, when she was living at Malmaison, he wrote to her:

“I should so much like to pay you a visit; but first I must know if you are a valiant woman or a weakling. I am weak myself and I am suffering greatly.”

* * *

It was the prolific quality of the Habsburgs which attracted him to Marie Louise. When he learned that her mother had given birth to thirteen children, he was determined to marry her. There was something very pathetic about this marriage, arranged to immortalize the name of a man who would have lived in any case. Marie Louise does not figure again in Napoleon’s life. She will not be called upon again to safeguard a dynasty.

The Russian lad reads the life of Napoleon. He learns that his hero twice placed a crown on his own head. This fact does not appeal to the greater sense which the youth has brought into his present incarnation. His inner mind knows that immortality is not achieved by deed or fame, but in spite of this knowledge he would again do great deeds, he would again achieve fame.

* * *

In ten years the Russian boy will begin to achieve his desires. In twenty years he will again be a world figure.

Looking Forward with Queen Elizabeth

There are people who pass through several incarnations without paying their karmic debts. By their actions they but add to their debit entry in one existence after another. Their debts must be paid some time, but they put off the payment until disaster, in the form of creditor, overtakes them. There are others who from necessity or spirit-willingness pay something on account in each existence. Not only our debts, but our desires, talents, aspirations, and personality are carried through that intermediate realm where the soul rests and recuperates.

Queen Elizabeth is living again in England, and we may say that her spiritual luggage is much the same as that which she carried in the past. She has to temper her pursuits to the rules of the present day, but her inclinations are still the same. Her desire to acquire power is modified by her present status, for her position in the world to-day has been obtained by her own struggles and achievements. There is no royal inheritance to serve her now as there was formerly. She was born of very humble parents in one of London’s slums. As of old, she acquired her education on her way to power, assimilating what would serve her purpose, and discarding that which she considered unnecessary.

Still the histrionic type, she continues to deceive herself as she deceives others. She has the same contempt for truth when a lie will serve. She is still using that apparent indecision which is a ruse to delay agreement until intuition comes to her rescue. Her luck has always been the luck of the clever schemer, and not that momentary good fortune which sometimes follows the fool and the visionary.

Her most outstanding characteristic is her intelligent interest in finance. She has acquired a large fortune by managing several sorts of business at the same time, and by surrounding herself with people who would work under her direction without question. Circumstances forbid her to appear in the role of pirate to-day, for there are no Spanish ships whose money she can conveniently borrow, but she has managed to acquire tidy sums with the present-day manoeuvres which are used in the place of former piracy, and franked with the honesty of the times.

In business the present Elizabeth uses her feminine guile to forestall any masculine decision she wishes to avert. She is still the auctioneer awaiting the favourable moment to lower the hammer. Sometimes she miscalculates, because there are many things to consider which needed no consideration in the past; but usually her business “deals” are successful.

She is manufacturing commodities for women’s consumption. She knows that women are greater buyers than men, and she also knows that something which appeals to their vanity sells much better than something which is simply utilitarian. It is indicated that she is trading on her knowledge of femininity.

She herself exhibits the vanities which she exhibited in her former life. She has the same love of clothes, jewels, and pageantry, and from my symbols I should say she has much the same colouring---the auburn hair and dark eyes. She would be stouter in this life and a little less active physically. It is indicated, however, that, were physical action necessary, she would acquit herself creditably in any endurance test. Her language at times has the same robust quality which distinguished it in the past.

Business is her first consideration, but she has many other interests. She is interested in the health of the masses, in the study of crime, in literature, and in politics. The courage which has never deserted her in any of her incarnations is evident in her pursuit of politics; and once again she has won the esteem and respect of a large number of people. In former days esteem and enmity were the prerogatives of the Catholics and the Protestants; to-day the emotional decisions are determined by the people who agree with her political ideas and those who do not.

The former Elizabeth inherited many of her father’s traits and tendencies, but not his interest in theology. The present Elizabeth has shown interest in various cults at various times. It is indicated that she has cultivated the advocates of the cults and has considered their doctrines quite seriously.

One of these advocates is John Dee, of Mortlake, her former astrologer. In the reign of Mary, he was cast into prison for calculating the horoscopes of the King and Queen and of Elizabeth. When Elizabeth became Queen, he was brought to her attention by her favourite, Robert Dudley. The Queen employed him to cast horoscopes and to advise her on occult matters. Throughout her previous life Elizabeth’s interests in John Dee persisted. In her present life she continues to be interested in his arts and discoveries, although his power has diminished; and in his eagerness to recapture it he has employed certain fantastic methods. We can but think that her interest in him to-day is inspired by their previous relationship and not by his present attainments.

In the past she upheld celibacy with the same force as Pope Gregory VII. She would not permit the statute in force in Mary’s reign forbidding the marriage of the clergy to be repealed. It did not worry her that her refusal placed the wives and children of the clergy in an invidious position. Her refusal was prompted by her abnormal attitude towards marriage, and especially by her (self-inflicted) inability to marry Robert Dudley, her affinity.

Wherever this man did not match her character, he supplemented it. His mind received impressions quickly; he was interested in scientific and classical learning, he had an iron nerve, and as a schemer he was quite her equal. The planets which were operating at the time of their births indicated harmony between them, and disclosed the fact that they had been together in many lives.

The present Elizabeth has been married twice, but neither husband was Robert Dudley. It is indicated that she was devoted to her second husband (who has now passed on), but her devotion contained nothing of that hidden fire which was kindled by Robert Dudley.

Love was for Robert Dudley and Elizabeth something outside their natures. They could have laughed at love if they had been honest with themselves. The tie which bound them together was a fierce tie of common interests, of desperate possession. It contained little tenderness or sentiment. It was a link forged in primitive times. But while it

“Was not fashioned to endure
The flame that burns the spirit pure,”

it was fashioned to endure by the similarity of desire, by passions seeking the same end, by the inexplicable design of karma.

Her former mother, Anne Boleyn, is now her sister. She never did anything to clear her mother’s name when she, at the age of twenty-five, became Queen of England. She still does not trouble herself about the tragedies or misfortunes of her relatives or friends. She is self-sufficient, as she always has been, and she has nothing but intolerance for people who cannot successfully manage their affairs.

Her interest in humanity has nothing to do with individuals. She would see the unit progress by clever statesmanship, for it has never occurred to her that man-made government is useless to human progress.

She will meet Amy Robsart in this life and she will pay the debt which Amy has the right to demand. By interfering with her plans Amy will attack her on her only vulnerable point.

She will not meet Mary Stuart in this life. She owes Mary nothing. Mary’s death was a political necessity which required the overwhelming evidence of Mary’s complicity to force Elizabeth to order her execution. Added to this, Mary had poisoned Elizabeth in their previous incarnation in Rome.

Elizabeth will have some position in a local government during her present incarnation. It will not add to her happiness, as it will be less than she expects. She will continue to acquire money, and when she passes on she will enrich the country by a substantial death tax.

She came into her present existence under the sign of Leo. She is now fifty-six years of age.

Looking Forward with Oliver Cromwell

Every man who issues from a revolution has, of necessity, a fatal destiny. The very cause which brings his force and personality into the political limelight tends to rend him in the end. More than two and a half centuries have passed since the “death” of Oliver Cromwell, but the passionate party feelings inspired by his dictatorship have scarcely died out.

He seems to have no impartial biographers. Carlyle would have him something of a demigod, while Ludlow considers him a demon. He was neither a demigod nor a demon. He was a restless fanatic, seeking to justify his acts of violence by quoting verses from the Bible; by obtaining the support of the people. More than once England has been saved by a wave of Puritanism, only to be ruined by it later when reaction has set in.

It was one of these Puritanical outbursts which gave Oliver Cromwell his chance. The Pilgrim Fathers, rebelling against the religion of England, left for America, to establish there the Puritan austerity which still distinguishes the New England States from the rest of the United States.

Oliver Cromwell had decided to cast in his lot with the men who were going to the colonies. He was actually on the boat, waiting for her to sail, when a decree from the King prohibited the emigration.

Many stories were circulated as to why the King had refused to allow his subjects to depart. The most likely was that these departing emigrants were tax-payers and the ever-increasing needs of King Charles demanded the financial support of his subjects.

By this act of detention the King was to place his sceptre in Cromwell’s hand. Materially-minded people who believe in the operation of the law of chance would put this down to coincidence. Coincidence is a word beloved of people who know there is no law beyond the physical.

There was nothing of coincidence in Oliver Cromwell’s detention. Once again he was to be a dictator as he had been in the past. He was to have another opportunity to direct and instruct a nation in desperate need of guidance. That he did not acquit himself creditably was largely due to conditions over which he had no control. The revolution had given him his opportunity, but it was ever critical, ever ready to denounce him. Power for ever exceeds the consciousness which is able to guide it.

Oliver Cromwell was thirty years of age when he made his first speech in the House of Commons. The speech concerned an obscure preacher who was carrying out some papistic propaganda. He denounced the preacher in strong language. The House listened. Cromwell saw his opportunity. History says he knew how to use his tongue and his sword. He decided to use both. For two years a violent struggle had been going on between the King and the Commons. Daily some incident took place which widened the breach. Citizens arrested by order of the King were liberated. Parliament, seeing its acts supported by the people, became more and more independent, and finally demanded a constitution to determine the powers of the Monarchy and of the Parliament. The entire country was interested in the dispute, and divided itself into two parties. The King was accused of attempts against the liberty of the constitution. The orators were numerous and violent. Cromwell was amongst them. He had no idea at that time where his oratory was to lead him; but, like many others, his experiment with power was his own undoing.

In a life such as his there always comes a time when self-preservation must be considered. His sanguinary experiences in Scotland and Ireland were inspired by self-preservation. His well-planned and insidious incitement of the people against the King was also a form of self-preservation. If the people supported King Charles, Cromwell knew his own day was over.

He needed a platform to further his cause, so he chose Protestantism. He dreamed of a Protestant world opposed to Catholicism, a world willing to fight its way through coercion and bloodshed to reach its goal. His speeches were little more than denouncements of Catholicism and verses from the Bible.

In the London of his day two hundred and forty-six Protestant religions were willing to denounce the Pope. He was constantly persuading the people to live according to God’s laws. To render his persuasions more effective his voice would tremble and he would weep over the sins of others. This was not play-acting. When the passionate fervour was on him he really believed what he said, as he believed that killing and ordering “death” in the name of God was justified. That Providence did not approve of his dictatorship was evident at the time of his “death,” for he “died” without achieving any of his dreams. His Commonwealth was at an end, and the world was as far from being united in Protestantism as it ever had been. The only Biblical verse which fits his passing is Solomon’s---“Vanity, vanity; all is vanity.”

* * *

Oliver Cromwell has reincarnated again in England. He is still interested in religion. As a matter of fact, he is writing books on various phases of religion. The violent Protestantism of the Pilgrim Fathers does not interest him now. To-day he knows that science and religion are one; that there is nothing to combine.

He has forgotten the deeds of his former life. Deeds in themselves leave no trace of good or evil. It is the motive alone which counts. When an experience is absorbed into the soul, its purpose is accomplished. His soul has had many experiences, in his many fives, for he has lived many times on this earth. In the intermediate state, on its way to reshaping for another existence, his soul has discarded the old delusion of power.

His daughter Elizabeth, whose passing caused him such pain in his previous life, is with him again. She is his sister now. One of his sons (the sons he did not consider strong enough to inherit the glorious position he had made for himself) is with him again---this time as a friend.

He is not married in his present existence. In his youth---he is now forty-five years of age---he loved a young lady who preferred another man. In his former life he would have sent the man out of the country or, on some pretext, condemned him to death, but he has acquired wisdom in the passing of time.

He has the same firmness and tenacity of purpose which he had in his former life, but these qualities now inspire admiration instead of fear. He can still be severe, but he can accept opposition without feeling rancour towards his opponent.

That he still knows the strength and weakness of the English character is shown by his writings. Where he was formerly the riding-master using his whip whenever he thought it necessary, he is now the psychologist stressing a point here, concealing (by clever writing) a barb there. He knows the same trait exists in the English character which made the people of his former day accept the austerity of life and customs and caused them to venerate external morality. He is a serious writer, but, like all serious writers who have anything to teach, he tries to make his work as attractive as possible. He is not a famous writer. He is writing for a small group. He knows that all religions have started with the few and reached the many later. He also knows that there are certain secrets in most religions which do not become public property.

There are many religious workers in the world to-day, men and women who are genuinely trying to help humanity, who were once leaders of the Inquisition. There are religious workers with us to-day who once helped the Moguls to torture Christians to ease their Mohammedan fanaticism. Their souls have had these desperate experiences and have learned their lessons.

Oliver Cromwell’s previous life was an illusion---the history of a man who believed that a nation should accept the welfare which tyranny promised it. He believed that every adversary should be treated as a heretic. He fought for a dream which he never realized, and left behind him the hatred of a people. His present life is no gentle repentance. He is experiencing the blessedness of defective memory which Montaigne mentions in one of his essays. He cannot remember the past. His soul remembers, but he cannot tap the soul’s memory. To certain advanced beings the complete course of their careers can be revealed. This happens very seldom. Many people get flashes from the depths of their past, but they cannot explain these flashes of soul-memory.

The flash of memory which is supposed to show a drowning man every scene in his life is simply a glimpse into the storehouse of the past. The materialist cannot explain memory. He knows that it is something apart from the brain, but his explanation of the brain cannot dispose of memory. Even the psychologists admit that memory is an enigma. The person who believes in reincarnation knows that while records are obliterated from our ordinary memory, nothing can disappear from the soul’s memory. This is because it cannot be called memory when applied to the soul; rather it is reality which lies outside our conception of time.

Oliver Cromwell is not an advanced soul in spite of his many incarnations, but he is making progress in his present existence.

Looking Forward with Joan of Arc

There is a young Jew living in Palestine who is determined to see his people return to the land of their fathers---the land of Israel (Palestine). He knows the ancient prophecies have promised the return of the Jews to Palestine, so he is doing all he can to arouse the Jewish consciousness and to rekindle an interest in Judaism. This young Jew was once known as Joan of Arc.

The spirit which now inhabits the body of a man is the same which left its earthly tenement burning at the stake in the old Market-place of Rouen on May 30th, 1431. He came into his present existence on September 25th, 1916.

This young Jewish boy will be a disappointment to many women who believe in reincarnation, for the women who know they were Joan are second only to those who know they were Cleopatra.

The boy has read the ideas expounded by Theodor Herzl, who established Zionism at a Jewish conference held at Basle in 1897. He knows that nothing practical followed Herzl’s dream, even when Herzl passed on and left it to Max Nordau, the German alienist.

The boy knew his countrymen were scattered over the world. In England they had become Englishmen, in Germany they were Germans, in America they were Americans. They had neither national feeling nor pride. Who could expect them to have pride in and affection for something that did not exist? They had no nation and they were trying to forget Judaism. Communism and Fascism were willing to absorb them The political policies of these two parties had developed the passion and fanaticism of holy orders which admitted members at the point of the sword and the edge of the axe.

The boy knew his countrymen could never be permanently absorbed into these orders, but this knowledge gave him little encouragement, for there was the cosmopolitan Jew to be reckoned with; the wandering Jew who was more interested in the adventures of the intellect than in the less-exciting adventures of the spirit; who shouted long and learnedly on materialism; who knew that religion was nothing more than the projection of one’s own feelings on to the society in which one lived; who had taken psycho-analytical methods for the working out of all human problems. What couldn’t be explained by sex could be explained by some unfortunate incident in childhood. The boy knew that under this defiant intellectual attainment was the longing for a national home; for soul-preservation. He knew that the Jew, to keep his race and his soul intact, must return to Judaism. He must have some religion. While he was willing to feed his mind on Christian culture, he had never cared for the Christian religion.

The boy decided to work for the cause of Zionism with the same fervour which had previously led him to the victory of Orleans and later to the stake. The voices which spoke to Joan still speak to the boy. He calls it the voice of intuition now, but he is still clairvoyant, as he was in his previous incarnation. He knows that we are given a free will and we must use it. He knows that every act has its consequence. His soul knows that God heeds not the voice crying from the stake or the voice crying from the cross. Every act has its punishment or its reward. Reincarnation teaches us not to cry out at the consequences of our acts.

When Joan saw her King crowned, the voices deserted her. They did not tell her to push on to Paris. She took her magnificent courage in her own hands and used it to put life and enthusiasm into the army. In her male guise she is using it to-day to reestablish the Jewish culture.

The boy has watched the Jews driven out of Germany. He knows the exodus was not inspired by the Aryan or the Nordic dream we hear so much about, but by the self-preservation of the German. The Jews held many posts in Germany which could be held by Germans. It never occurred to anyone to inquire why they held them. They were held for the same reason which will enable the Jews in future to hold Palestine against the Arabs, which has kept the Jewish race intact in the two thousand years of its wanderings---intelligence to cope with political and other situations.

Aristotle was right when he said man is a political animal. But man is more than animal, although his animal traits so far predominate. When his spiritual character comes into the ascendant, he will be human rather than political.

The boy is not the prophet of lost causes, for no cause could ever be lost to his enthusiasm; rather he is one who revives hope, who never admits defeat. The siege he terminated in his previous existence had been going on for a hundred years. The religion he now espouses has been waning for two thousand years.

He is a bold youth to attempt the restoration of it, but when has he ever lacked boldness and daring? He has to break down the acquired prejudice of the Jews who have decided that their home is their material and not their spiritual home. He must grapple with the new morality which cares little for spiritual development, which lives from moment to moment, which puts physical comfort before everything. He knows that the soul needs discipline, that it learns its lessons only by discipline. He knows that the spirit is deathless, and he would teach his people the words of their Talmud: “Life is a passing shadow, the shadow of a bird in flight.”

His father is a merchant in Jerusalem. He is in accord with his son’s efforts to re-establish Judaism. He would do all he could to encourage the Jews to return to Palestine. Hebrew is spoken by the family, as it is by many of the families in Jerusalem. The boy has but recently completed his studies (his education, like the education of any thinking person, never can be completed) with his Hebrew tutors.

It is indicated that he has a certain amount of literary ability, which he is trying to develop. It is not to be expected that he would have much talent in this direction, as the girl Joan could neither read nor write. Her gift of verbal expression is still with him, and he has a keen appreciation for the finer things of life. He has the gift of prediction and must occasionally startle his family by foretelling events, as in his former life.

His mother passed on soon after his birth. His sister, who was fifteen years of age at the time of his birth, looked after him, and, with the assistance of a servant who had been in the family for many years, brought him up.

The signs indicate that his sister also is devoting herself to the cause of Judaism. During the recent Arab riots the family must have realized how difficult their task is, but they know that mind must triumph over physical might. They console themselves with the thought that 90 per cent. of the Jews of Jerusalem are literate, while the Arabs are only about 10 per cent. literate.

No doubt the boy dreams of a culture as great as the culture of Israel coming again to his land---of great poets like those who wrote the Twenty-third Psalm, the most beautiful hymn the world has heard, or the Song of Solomon, the most passionate of love songs. Does he dare to hope that some Jewish writer will again give the world anything as magnificent as the books of Ruth and Job?

It is indicated that the boy’s name will be known before his present incarnation closes. He will be known as one of the sincere workers for the re-establishment of the Jewish Faith. His work will be greater than Herzl’s, greater than Nordau’s. Celibacy is indicated again, for the virgin Joan still persists in another guise. One of the most striking figures that ever crossed the stage of history must fulfil the destiny which was interrupted in 1431 by political intrigue. It took five hundred years for the world to realize that a saint had been burned at the stake. It may take the Jews many years to realize what the boy is doing for the salvation of his race.

In the eyes of the world and the reactionary Jews he may seem to be an anachronism, a survival of some outmoded superstition, but in the eyes of his understanding kinsmen he will be the loyal Jew working for the immortality of his people.

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Part IV

Dreams

I have received many letters asking me what connexion dreams can possibly have with reincarnation.

I must admit that few dreams have any connexion whatever. After opening thousands of letters in which dreams are described, I have read less than fifty dreams which have any bearing on reincarnation.

In the average dream the dreamer dramatizes himself. He is the central figure. He is a hero, an arch-villain, a king; or he is chased by a bull and barely escapes with his life, or he is gathering roses in a beautiful garden. These dreams originate in a desire for self-expression, which expression circumstances deny the conscious ego. The subconscious mind, which stores all desires and experiences, expresses itself during sleep. Such dreams have no bearing on reincarnation. The lady who mentioned that she continually saw an injured white horse in her dreams was describing a Chaldean symbol. The man who told me he saw a courtyard where monks were passing back and forth, where temple bells were ringing, and where he heard certain phrases, was describing an ancient Chinese symbol. The dreamer appeared in neither of these dreams. The man heard the phrases, but he took no part in the ceremony. These dreams tie up with symbolism and furnish a clue to the reconstruction of a previous life.

It is possible for all of you to trace your previous incarnation through the dream state if you will be very patient and pay attention to fragments. Write down the apparently unimportant dreams in which you are not playing a part. Keep a record for two or three weeks, and you will see a thread of sequence running through these dreams. Put the fragments together as you would fit a jig-saw puzzle, and the result will frequently furnish a clue to your previous existence. Remember that dreams in which you cannot eliminate yourself are useless for this experiment. We pay too little attention to the meaning of dreams and too much attention to the picturesque dream. It is true that to obtain a working knowledge of dreams we must study dreams in the dream state of consciousness. Certain Indian sadhus are doing this now. They have discovered the key with which the conscious mind can unlock the subconscious. Science is discovering that dreams are not caused solely by indigestion and aborted sex desires. Freud delayed, rather than advanced, the knowledge of dreams. He talked a lot about “complex,” forgetting his own complex. No matter what image one saw in a dream, it, according to Freud, indicated some phase of sex. Anything seen in a dream, from a forest fire to a blade of grass, had some bearing on sex. The only hour that ever struck for Freud’s dreams was sex o’clock.

Few advanced students of psychology pay much attention to Freud to-day. They admit the importance of sex, and they realize that it means much more than the propagation of the species; but they know, that, excepting in certain definite expressions, it has little bearing on dreams.

Paracelsus, covering a wider field of investigation than Freud, attributed dreams to several causes besides the physical. He said dreams could have mental, spiritual, and astral causes. He tried to place dreams on a scientific basis, but the world was not ready to accept his knowledge.

Many who write to me fling the subject of dreams aside with an airy, contemptuous gesture. They say, “I pay no attention to dreams.” “I am a good sleeper.” “I never dream.” To this last statement a man added, “Thank God.” People who say they never dream are admitting their lack of imagination. They are also admitting a definite gulf between their conscious and subconscious minds.

The ancient Persians judged men by their dreams. A good dreamer was blessed, and his position was advanced by royal order. The Persians interpreted dreams by their astrological significance. To dream of an eagle on Monday meant something very different from dreaming of an eagle on Saturday. The Persians forbade the telling of dreams to anyone but the interpreter. It was considered very unlucky to tell your dreams. The modern Arab has the same belief. He further extends his secrecy to cover his desires and matters relating to business. He never talks until he has accomplished what he set out to do, or failed in the trial of it, as the case may be.

Many religions have been founded upon the interpretation of dreams. They played a part in determining the belief in the soul’s existence after death. Joseph and Daniel found the shortest road to royal favour was through the interpretation of dreams. In Chapter 3 of the first Book of Kings we are told that the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said: “Ask what I shall give thee.” Solomon, being blessed with everything else the world could bestow, asked for wisdom. Dreams and symbols are continually being mentioned in the Bible, and yet Biblical students deny the occult significance of the Christian writings.

In former days dreams decided the destinies of nations and of individuals. The ancients had a goddess of dreams who was worshipped at Delos. The Odyssey refers to dreams as demons. The Greeks and the Romans slept on skins in special places to induce dreams which the oracle would later interpret for them. There is a megalithic temple in Malta where the oracle once stood in a circular opening to interpret the dreams of the people who went there to sleep on special stone slabs which they believed would induce dreams. This temple existed in the Stone Age. It was built with flint implements before tools were thought of.

The ancient Indians, rather than admit their inability to dream, took soma, the juice of the moon-flower, which promised heavy visions. They believed that dreams, instead of disturbing sleep, were the guardians of sleep.

The dreams of savages have objectified in many of their weird ceremonies. The grotesque figures which they use in their marriage and devil dances, and worship as their gods, are distorted things seen in the dream state.

Distortions occur in dreams because the subconscious is given to exaggeration. The slamming of a door may suggest an explosion to the subconscious mind. The sting of a mosquito may suggest a surgical operation. It is because the subconscious is given to such exaggeration that we can never hope to interpret the dream through the medium of the conscious mind.

We must follow in the footsteps of the Indian investigators and acquire another form of consciousness---a consciousness in the dream state.

In spite of the exaggerations we never dream anything we have not seen. We may not have seen it m the form presented in the dream; but in some form we have seen it, or parts of it. In “The Brush Wood Boy,” Kipling describes a dream in which someone sees a boy walking along with flower-pots attached to his feet. We have never seen such a sight in our waking consciousness, but we have seen boys, and we have seen flower-pots. If this dream occurred several times in various forms, the dreamer might discover which was of the greater importance, the boy or the flower-pots.

This is the reason I am suggesting that a record should be kept of the dreams in which you are not simply dramatizing yourselves. Remember the form of the dream is not so important as its constituent parts. Take one special part of your dream and see how frequently it occurs in subsequent dreams. After a while you will find that this part is a key to something in your subconscious mind, and that something may have been carried over in your deeper memory from your previous life. Gray, in his Theory of Dreams, written in 1808, calls the dream “the work of the mind, deriving its materials from experience.”

No conscious experience is ever lost. What seems to have vanished has passed into the subconscious and hence into the essential self. Dreams are but the recurrence of conscious experiences which have passed beyond our reasoning mind.

Magic

We are too ready to brand many of the ancient beliefs as superstitions, ignoring the debt which science owes to alchemy, astrology, and chiromancy. Our present chemistry is an outgrowth of alchemy; of the belief held by the ancients who sought the efficacy of the philosopher’s stone. Astronomy owes much to astrology, and the fingerprint system for detecting criminals is a development of the much-ridiculed chiromancy.

As we can reason only within our element, we refuse to believe that unknown forces exist all round us simply because we cannot see or hear them. The fish doesn’t know that there is snow on the mountain tops. He doesn’t realize that there is such a thing as land surrounding him, because his element is water. We on the land, reasoning within our element, refuse to believe that we are surrounded by the unknown forces. If we would give a little thought to the subject, we would realize that one thing interpenetrates another. The caterpillar contains the butterfly, the milk contains the butter, the wood contains the fire. The ancients discovered this by rubbing two pieces of wood together. I could go on enumerating examples of nature demonstrating reincarnation---one thing continuously released from another and existing in another form.

Of all the beliefs which have driven mankind into the practice of magic, the most potent is the belief in the evil eye. Each country, at some point in its history, has held to this belief. It is as vital in some Oriental countries to-day as it was thousands of years ago. The oldest mention of it is found in the texts which the Babylonians wrote in cuneiform upon clay tablets. The Assyrians believed that the evil eye could look upon a village and cause a pestilence. It is referred to in the Old Testament---Prov. xxiii. 6: “Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats.” Solomon in his wisdom mentions it; and it is spoken of in Mark vii. 22, and in Matt. xx. 15. St. Paul referred to it when he said to the Galatians: “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?”

Certain Arabs and Indians still make the sign which is said to overcome the baleful glance. This is made by extending the fore and little fingers and closing the second and third fingers in the palm of the hand. Many Indian shopkeepers will remove an article which a customer has run down or spoken of disparagingly, so that ill-luck will not come upon it. Objects upon which the evil look has fallen are shunned by many Easterners, and I have known Western people being affected by them.

Why the baleful look should fall more readily upon jewels than other objects has never been explained. The famous Hope diamond was shunned by everyone to whom it was offered until a lady in Washington summoned up the necessary courage to buy it. Ill-luck pursued her, it was said, soon after the purchase. I have had experience myself in selling famous jewels, and I knew a certain monarch who refused to touch a necklace because he believed the “evil eye” was on it. Southern Italians wear a coral hand to keep off the evil eye. This is usually done by the peasants, but I have met people in the intellectual and artistic circles who have concealed the hand in their pockets or purses.

The belief in the evil eye is not so foolish as it seems. The tremendous power in the eye is not yet understood. Certain phases of it we call hypnotism. I can imagine psychologists who use hypnotism in their daily practice refusing to believe that their “science” is an outgrowth of the belief in the evil eye. But such is the case. It should be apparent that, if the eye has the power of evil, it has also the power of good. Experienced oculists know that the eye is an integral part of the mind. Faced with this fact, how can we deny that the eye can send out good or bad forces? The Arabs called the evil eye the eye of envy. I am sure that most of us have felt uncomfortable at some time or other when envious eyes have looked at us. The eye of envy is really the evil eye, for there is no more damaging force than the force of envy.

Indian mothers often go to extremes when belittling their children. They will tell you their child has the eyes of a goat; that it can’t hear; that it is tongue-tied. These statements are made to keep the eye of envy from resting on the child. The Abyssinians have always dreaded the evil eye. To overcome its influence they wear amulets which contain pictures of the eyes of the Persons of the Christian Trinity. These amulets must have lost their power recently, for the eyes of envy did effective work upon their wearers.

When I was living in India I heard one morning a strange chanting in my compound. On going to the door, I saw my horse standing under a peepul tree with the servants in a ring about him. Around his neck hung a garland of flowers, and leaves, woven together, rested on his head. His sides had been touched up with red paste. The cook’s wife was carrying a pot, held straight out in front of her, while she described circles round the horse. It was her chant which attracted my attention. I counted the number of turns she made round the animal and wondered what sort of witchcraft I was watching. After the cook’s wife had executed seven circles, the gardener’s wife stepped forward with a lighted candle and began to circle the horse in a similar fashion. After the women had made seven turns each the horse was divested of his decorations and led back to his stall. When questioned, the cook’s wife explained that someone had put the evil eye on the horse. He would not eat and he was getting very thin, and only the evil eye could account for his low state; so they had decided to perform arati---the Indian performance which removes the damage done by the evil eye.

In certain parts of India many failures in life are attributed to the evil tongue. The evil tongue means harping on misfortune, talking evil of others or telling secrets. There are several magic formula for removing the effects of the evil tongue. One is to make a mud figure and place thorns over its mouth. Those who have suffered from the evil tongue walk round the figure beating their mouths with their hands. The greater the noise, the sooner the tongue is silenced. Cutting a chicken’s neck and allowing it to flutter about is another way of silencing the tongue. Still another way is to make out of clay an effigy of the person who possesses the evil tongue. The tongue protrudes from the mouth of the effigy, and after it is spat upon by the infuriated crowd it is hacked off with a knife.

The criminal classes of India have their own code of magic. The eighteenth day of the month is the luckiest day for committing crimes. For burglary to be successful it must be done during the new moon. Friday is not a good day for breaking into the home of a rich man. To be sure of good results the burglar performs a ritual before breaking into a house---a long strand is pulled out of a broom, and at the end of it are tied several smaller strands which have been dipped in oil. If the strand floats on water there is no need to worry; but, if it sinks, the burglary must be postponed.

I watched a scene one night in South India where rival magicians pitted their powers against each other. Heavy bets were laid by partisans of the rivals. A large circle had been outlined on the ground with chalk, and in the centre a sandal had been placed by one of the magicians, who defied the other one to move it. The man who was trying to move it strained every muscle. His half-naked body moved with great physical exertion. The challenger was quite calm, but his body glistened with perspiration. The man who was trying to pick up the sandal advanced and strained, retired and relaxed, for more than an hour. He couldn’t pick it up because the challenger had made him believe he couldn’t. The strongest power in the world, the power of mind, was against him.

Indian magicians can produce showers of stones inside a house without any apparent cause. A friend, whom I have reason to believe, told me that this happened in her bungalow. She afterwards discovered that the power was worked through one of her servants who was in league with the magician. The servant took no part in the rite; but it could not have been effective without his presence. He was the unconscious tool of the magician.

One evening I stopped my car on an Indian road while my man changed a tyre. Leaving him at work, I strolled along the road. When I returned some ten minutes later I found the car abandoned. Fortunately the tyre had been changed. Grazing by the side of the road was a black goat with a yellow cloth tied over its back. After calling my man and getting no response I drove on, wondering if I would overtake him. I did, a mile or two farther on, and upon questioning him he began to whimper, “The goat, the cholera goat.” He finally explained that cholera must have broken out in one of the near-by villages, and instead of sending for the sanitary officer the local magician had enticed the cholera demon into the yellow cloth. In such case the cloth already contained grain, cloves, and lead. The animal was chased beyond the village boundaries to carry the epidemic to another village.

Love potions are frequently used by the Orientals. This is especially true of the Javanese. The principal ingredients of these philtres are the hearts of chickens pounded to a paste. The paste is mixed with leaves said to contain magical qualities. Chickens’ hearts are avoided by the Javanese, as they are supposed to make those who partake of them chicken-hearted. This is why they are used as love potions. The lover who administers the potion to his loved one finds her soft and pliable to his will.

When the death of a person is desired by the Javanese magicians, it is necessary to draw forth the soul and imprison it in herbs and leaves, which are put in an earthen pot and hung above a slow fire. As the leaves dry up, the man or woman chosen for the death sentence withers away.

I knew a Dutch doctor who, when he was very ill in Java, was visited by an old hag who told him she could cure him at once if he would marry her daughter. The doctor, having tried everything he could think of, unsuccessfully, to regain his health, consented. He was up and about in three days, and his health was completely restored. He married the girl, but soon afterwards he left the island and has never returned. Doubtless he believed the woman could cure him, and consequently the cure was effective.

The Voodoos and Obeahs of Central Africa and the West Indies often appear before their victims and tell them that they will die on a certain day. The victim believes them and dies at the appointed time. This does not explain the rites which are practised without the knowledge of the victim and which are effective. They are explained by the release of evil thoughts which catch people off their guard.

The use of wax figures is very ancient. A description of this magic has been found on an Egyptian papyrus. It tells how Apep, the God of Evil, wished to destroy Ra, the Sun-god. To punish the wicked one a wax figure of Apep was made by the priests and his name was inscribed upon it in green ink. The figure was then thrown into the fire, and whilst it was burning it was kicked with the left foot of the operator.

In medieval times wax figures of kings’ enemies were placed in cases and burnt. Alarm was caused in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth because a wax figure of the Queen was found in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with a pin stuck in its breast. Dr. John Dee, the famous magician of that day, was summoned to the Queen’s presence to overcome any mischief which had been done.

The Arab, when a wax figure is not available, makes a sketch of the person he wishes to destroy on a piece of paper. He nails the paper on a door and recites incantations before it. Then he takes a red-hot needle and pierces the paper with it. The person whose figure is represented on the paper is supposed to feel the stab in his body, and suffers agony until the needle is removed from the paper.

The belief in witches has perished in Britain, with the exception of a few outlying districts in Ireland and Scotland. The belief in witchcraft is a different matter. Hell-broth is no longer dispensed in the West, but traditional superstitions are still exercised over civilized folk.

The witch of the East is still a force to be reckoned with. Anyone who has lived in West Africa or in certain parts of India and Malaya cannot help believing that witch-doctors possess a knowledge of magic unknown to us.

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Reincarnation teaches that the practice of any form of magic delays our progress. As a matter of fact, there is nothing which delays our progress so much as interfering with another person’s life. Everyone must live his own life and pay his own debts. If we interfere too much with another, we take on his debts as well as our own. We need not go to such extremes as certain Indians do and refuse to save a drowning man because it is his karma that he should drown.

Forcing our will upon others or holding envy in our consciousness destroys us body and soul. Has anyone ever heard of a good-looking witch? Has anyone ever known an envious person to make a brilliant success of anything? The only magic we dare to consider is that of the “good little people” of Norway, who shoe the horse and bring in the wood. This magic, called “white magic” by certain writers, is not dangerous. It is the release of helpful thoughts, which the world could do with at present.