GHOSTS FROM DREAMLAND 



been made to suffer by the visions from dreamland; 

 man's relations with his fellow man have been all 

 along compromised by the beliefs in question. Go back 

 into history and you will learn that the old Babylonians 

 and Assyrians and Egyptians lived in ghost-haunted 

 worlds. Necromancy, conjuration were rampant, and 

 the non-existent effigies conjured from dreamland 

 held as important a part in the life of the people, as 

 did the actual personages of waking life. 



When an Egyptian died, his friends must on no 

 account fail to have his physical body preserved by 

 elaborate processes of embalming, that it might await 

 the ghostly spirit which in due course would return to 

 re-inhabit it. 



If an Egyptian fell ill, he believed that some enemy 

 had practised a magical curse upon him. He believed 

 that even inanimate things have ghostly attendants; 

 and that by fashioning a likeness of his enemy in wax, 

 any indignities practised upon this waxen double would 

 result in like injuries to the enemy himself. 



The Egyptian believed equally in a ghostly super- 

 sensual part of animals and birds; he worshipped a 

 sacred bull, and practised the art of embalming upon 

 the bodies of ibises and cats with a solemnity that seems 

 amusing to those who have become skeptical regarding 

 the immortality of these creatures, even though these 

 same skeptics still accept the Egyptian conception as 

 applied to the human spirit. 



From the ruins of the cities of Babylonia and Assyria 

 have been exhumed tens of thousands of tablets graven 

 with inscriptions. A host of these are omens and 



