Mysteries

HARDLY one person in ten thousand is aware that he or she is enveloped by a haze intimately connected with the body, whether asleep or awake, whether hot or cold, which, although invisible under ordinary circumstances, can be seen when conditions are favourable. This mist, the prototype of the nimbus or halo constantly depicted around saints, has been manifest to certain individuals possessing a specially gifted sight, who in consequence have received the title of "Clairvoyants," and until quite recently to no one else.

IRELAND, whether viewed from an antiquarian or an ethnological point of view, is one of the most interesting countries in the world. It is not the less an object of attention from the fact, that in its early history there are traces of nearly every kind of pagan belief.

Ring the bell, light the candle and open the Book of Shadows -- this has long been the method for seeking arcane lore and delving into the mysterious Powers that rule the Universe. Wizards, Witches, Magicians and Students of the Occult Arts and Psychic Sciences have long sought out the Wisdom of the Ancients, found in the pages of dusty and neglected tomes of hidden and forgotten knowledge.

In the beginning, more exactly... in 1943, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss bio-chemist working at the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel, discovered -- by accident, of course; one does not deliberately create such a situation -- a new drug which had some very remarkable effects on the human consciousness. The name of this drug was d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Tartrate-25

CLOSE to the verge of the immense desert which stretches its arid wastes across the whole breadth of the continent to the shore of the Western Ocean, just at the apex of the famous delta which marks the meeting point of Upper and Lower Egypt, at the very spot where the busy life of the earliest civilization on record was bordered by the vast and barren solitude, stands the most majestic and most mysterious monument ever erected by the hand of man. Of all the other structures which made the marvels of the ancient world, scarcely a vestige is left.

Although appearing in the full light of historical times, Pythagoras has come down to us as almost a legendary character. The main reason for this is the terrible persecution of which he was the victim in Sicily, and which cost so many of his followers their lives. Some were crushed to death beneath the ruins of their burning schools, others died of hunger in temples. The Master's memory and teaching were only perpetuated by such survivors as were able to escape into Greece.

TWO BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME: Containing the history of the true and the false Rosicrucians with an introduction into the mysteries of the hermetic philosophy and an appendix containing the principles of the yoga-philosophy of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists