THE PLANE OF ETHER 33 



necessary while the matter is arranged, lest by a touch of the Devachanic 

 plane the waiting ego be swept by irresistible current into the line of 

 normal evolution. In some cases, to avoid this strange accident, in- 

 comprehensible to you who have never left the limits of Alcalde, and to 

 escape the trouble of a new birth, with the pains of teething and the 

 other woes of childhood, the adept will enter some adult body, aban- 

 doned temporarily or permanently by its former tenant. The ad- 

 vantages of remaining bodiless are, however, considerable, as this avoids 

 the hampering possibility of fatigue while retaining perfect conscious- 

 ness. The disadvantage is that as nothing can touch the being in ques- 

 tion, it can touch nothing for itself. Here, too, gather many of those 

 who have abandoned the physical life, to be returned to it, in reincarna- 

 tion, not having perfectly achieved higher possibilities. Most of these 

 remain, however, on the astral plane, never falling below the density of 

 shades. 



The third class, known as ' shells,' are soulless bundles of qualities 

 fastened together by will or thought and so retaining a human re- 

 semblance though all vestige of humanity has departed. Such, when 

 seen by the canny, are recognized as ghosts. In writings of adepts you 

 will find accounts of psychically developed persons, that is, persons 

 possessed of second sight, who have seen about cemeteries ' hundreds of 

 these bluish-white misty forms, hovering over the graves where are laid 

 the physical vestures which they have recently left,' These shells may 

 be galvanized into a very horrible form of temporary life, but this is 

 only done by the loathsome rites of one of the worst forms of the black 

 magic, which you of Alcalde, most of you not even initiates, much less 

 adepts, could never be made to understand. 



Still more unpleasant are the incubi, or clusters of wicked qualities, 

 wrenched by violence from their possessors as a stone is torn from an 

 unripe fruit. These take a fiendish delight in exercising the arts of 

 delusion which the higher plane puts in their power to lead others to 

 the excesses which proved fatal to themselves. For such a one to meet a 

 medium with whom it is in affinity is indeed terrible, for by such means 

 its existence may be indefinitely prolonged. Still worse are the vampire 

 and the were-wolf, which we of the Fifth Eoot Race now seldom en- 

 counter, but which, to Slavic and Germanic adepts of the earlier cen- 

 turies were objects of fear and danger in the astral regions and even as 

 high upward as Devachan. All these are human in their origin. Not 

 so the fifth class, the occasional visitors from other planets. Of these- 

 wonderful creatures we know nothing, for only the highest of high 

 adepts have the power of moving from planet to planet, and even I do 

 not understand how it is performed. When these visitors appear, they 

 choose a body temporarily created out of unused ethereal matter be- 

 longing to the earth. Over this they wear a distinctive badge, a ring 

 indicating Saturn, a series of belts indicating Jupiter or a tiny flaming 



VOL. LXIX. — 3. 



