ANTHROPOLOGY loi 



body and the liviDg astral form, and this relationship 

 continues to exist until the period of the natural life of 

 the individual has expired, or until the substances com- 

 posing his body have been entirely dissolved into their 

 elements.^ The remnants of such bodies, the corpses of 

 persons that have committed suicide or died by the hands 

 of an executioner, have therefore great occult powers. 

 They do not contain life, but the balsam of life,^ and it 

 is very fortunate that this fact is not publicly known, 

 because if evil-disposed persons knew these things and 

 the use that can be made of the corpses, they might use 

 them for sorceries and evil purposes, and inflict much 

 suffering upon others.^ 



If we would burn a tree, and enclose the ashes and 

 the smoke and the vapour, and all the elements that 

 made up the tree, into a great bottle, and plant a living 

 seed of that tree into the ashes, we might resurrect the 

 same kind of a tree again out of its ashes, because there 

 would be a centre of life, to which all the elements that 

 were before necessary to form that tree could be again 

 attracted to form another tree of the same kind, having 

 all the characteristics of the former; but if there were 

 no seed, there would be no tree, because the character of 

 the tree is neither in the ashes nor in the vapour nor in 

 the smoke, but in the Mysterium magnum^ the eternal 

 storehouse of life, from which it will be attracted again 

 by the seed, and be made to live in a new form endowed 



* Spirit-communications from suicides go to confirm this fact. 



* The vehicle of life (the astral body). 



' The Eastern esoteric doctrine teaches the same : The astral form, or 

 Caballij of suicides, or of one who died an unnatural premature death, 

 cannot immediately be dissolved, but will linger and wander in the 

 earth's atmosphere {Kama-loca) for the period that was allotted to its 

 body's life by natural law. The astral bodies (spirits, so called) of suicides 

 are those who appear nine times out of ten in spiritual stances, when they 

 will assume any celebrated name, or even the appearance of certain well- 

 known persons, whose images are well impressed in the aura around those 

 present. They are the most dangerous of all the Elementaries. See 

 •• Key to Theosophy." 



