History

It is strange how gloomy thoughts vanish as one sets foot in Asia. Only yesterday we were still tossing on the sea of European thought, with its political anxieties, its social miseries and its restless aspirations, the heritage of the unquiet race of Japhet-and now we seem to have ridden into still water, where we can rest and forget and be thankful.

The world, at this late day, expects so little truth about the origin and infancy of man that it extends but a grudging consideration to anything beyond the vaguest surmises and the most shadowy outlines; and is always ready to condemn, what it would call, the credulous temerity of an individual, who ventures accurately to survey regions of investigation which it pronounces inexplorable.

Certainly of all men that suffered from the confusion of Babel, the Egyptians found the best evasion; for, though words were confounded, they invented a language of things, and spake unto each other by common notions in Nature.

THE work consists of a group of Hermetic books, which have been called the Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead. It is not, indeed, strictly a Ritual in the more extended sense of that term, but consists of several Hermetic works divided into separate chapters, each preceded by a title indicating its purport, and each principal section followed by directions explaining its use.

The original source material for the Legend of Atlantis was Plato's Critias dialog. Now get seven translations, paraphrased, and transliterations of this ancient manuscript in one handy volume.

All Hopi priests are very solicitous that sketches of the Patki altar in the Soyaluna should not be shown to Tewa men or women, and the Tewa men begged me to keep silent regarding their altars while conversing with the Walpi chiefs. There is a very strict taboo between the two peoples at the time of the Winter Solstice ceremony, which is more rigid than at other times.

For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common and ordinary thing, for what reason priests lay aside their hair and go in linen garments.