36 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have looked into the phenomena of haunted houses. These elemental 

 artificials are embodiments of man's will and thought. Once wrought 

 together by longing, fear or crime, they may last for ages. An 

 elemental, it has been wisely said, is a perfect storage battery from 

 which there is practically no leakage. After a thousand years, a con- 

 ception carefully worked out and firmly wrought together exhibits un- 

 impaired vitality. In a famous case, such an artificial still warns the 

 direct descendents of Sir Godfrey de Gespensterheim of their approach- 

 ing doom by repeating in their ears the strange wailing music which was 

 the dirge of his beloved son, Sir Lienhardt, seven hundred years ago in 

 Palestine. 



When these artificials are formed consciously and purposely they 

 may be made the engines of tremendous power. Occultists of both the 

 white and the black schools use them frequently and no influence in all 

 the psychical universe can be so potent. But the evil use is not so com- 

 mon as it would be were it not that the highest occult power is granted 

 only to the virtuous, and the black magicians are often torn to pieces by 

 fiends of their own raising. Thus cast back into Devachan, their former 

 power is lost to them and their reincarnation as dogs or monkeys by way 

 of purification is extremely probable. This accounts for the multitudes 

 of these animals in the streets of Benares and Constantinople. It is 

 their nature to haunt the scenes of their physical exploits. To make 

 artificials of extreme virulence and power has been the work of the sect 

 known as the Lords of the Dark Face. Among other things they 

 formed ' wonderful speaking animals who had to be quieted by an offer- 

 ing of blood lest they should awaken their masters and warn them of 

 impending destruction.' From creatures of this type, created for a 

 special purpose and afterwards neglected by an overworked magician, 

 the race of parrots is descended. The devotees of the ghostly goddess 

 Kale once performed rites too horrid to describe, and the results of 

 which were the submergence of the continent of Lemuria with the loss . 

 of sixty-five million, two hundred and eighty-five thousand human 

 lives, besides several myriads of promising anthropoids only lately 

 condensed from Devachan. Even Bam, a mere Swami who has been in 

 Nirvana only as a mahatma's honored guest, could speak a word which 

 could blast your mountains, blight your fruit or growing grain or 

 flood your valley with the waters of the sea. Such mystic words there 

 be and Ram knows them. Barn's finger could point unerringly to 

 the limitless fountains of gold in your hills. But Bam stays his voice 

 and withholds his hand, for his life is a life of meekness and self- 

 renunciation and these things must not be. 



It is in the formation of artificials that a man's real character 

 appears, whether" on the physical earth or in Astrum or Devachan. 

 The true adept forswears all that may be harmful to others. He may 

 not use his power for his own advancement, hence his vow of poverty 



