Ida Craddock

“ To these same myths, I take it, belong all those fairy stories of which Beauty and the Beast is the type. Here, a maiden noted as a rule, for her amiability and gentleness, is served each day by invisible hands, and at night receives her lover, in the form of a handsome prince. By the ordinary light of day, he is a monster, appalling to behold, or, in some of the stories, he is invisible ”

“ Neither blind people nor deaf people are hindered by their respective infirmities from marrying in this earth-life and on the Borderland a psychic may be clairvoyant and clairaudient to only a limited extent, and yet be a partaker in connubial joys. For the Borderland husband must materialize more or less fully to enable her to understand the relation clearly upon the physical side: Whereas for most men this is unnecessary, and the spirit bride may remain in all save a few essentials, invisible, inaudible, intangible a veritable "woman of air." ”

“ Finally, her family and friends themselves quite outsiders as to these experiences work upon her feelings and make her believe that this union is evil (in occult parlance, it would be termed diabolical) and she breaks off her connection with him. In the end, true love triumphs, and the lovers are reunited under happier auspices, that is, in the fairy story; in actual life, it too often happens that Beauty and the Beast are permanently separated by meddling outsiders who ignorantly assume that everything which they cannot understand comes from the Devil. ”

“ We do not find any such wholsesale charge brought against spirit husbands of portraying evil dreams as is brought against Lilith. The imaginations of men's hearts must indeed have been evil in those days and their brains beclouded or the difference between a materialized spirit bride and the subjective phantasm of an amorous dream would have been more sharply defined. The psychic who conforms two separate planes of existence has forsaken the path of selfcontrol and clear-headedness, and has entered upon the path whose end is insane delusion. ”

“ It is worth noticing in this connection, that the young man had been living a temperate and self-controlled life when he was first approached by this Lamia or Lilith, so that he was evidently found worthy to taste the joys of affectionate connubial intercourse with his mysterious bride. Here evidently, the young man is not strong enough to endure the training required to consummate Borderland wedlock. ”

“ On the other hand, the men of our Western civilization are mostly superior to our women (of the virtuous classes) in the ardent, dramatic and artistic expression of love for the opposite sex a desirable qualification in the romance and uncertainties and trying ordeals of Borderland wedlock. If, therefore, the propositions which I have laid down as to the necessity for self-control in occult investigations be correct we need not be surprised that the spirit bride is ere long denounced as demoniacal and seducing. ”

“ Heavenly bridegrooms it will be noticed, predominate over heavenly brides in Borderland traditions. The reason, I take it, is that women, because of their social environment, usually lead a more self-controlled and temperate life than men do, and thus are in most (though not all) respects more worthy of marital union with an angel. Custom allows men more freedom a privilege which the masculine sex is not slow to avail itself of, especially in the direction of wine, women and tobacco. ”

“ All unaware of the law by which her own failures and peccadilloes bring about subjective hallucinations which mislead, she ascribes to her angelic briedgroom a tendency to evil which he does not possess, and finally comes to shrink from him as demoniacal. And the laws of Borderland forbid his undeceiving her so long as she hold fast to her prejudice as if it were gospel truth. Thus Beauty too often turns away from her princely lover forever, so far as this earth-life is concerned, as Beautyin the fairy story did from the husband whom ignorant outsiders had led her to look upon as Beast. ”

“ The poor earthly psychic has so constantly dinned into her ears the fact that her mediumship has revealed glimpses of monstrosities and deceptions, that she comes at last to fear lest her invisible visitor be in truth the evil demon which at times, by the sober light of day, he seems to be. ”

“ This is probably a Beauty and the Beast myth on the masculine side, Apollonius playing the part of the outsider who separates the lovers by harping on the things which are illusory and monstrous in the young man's psychic manifestations. ”

“ This woman from the unseen world is credited with being a seducer and a devil.
5. She bears no children save demons and is reputed to destroy children.
6. She causes men to dream evil dreams at night. Lilith is evidently the complement of the tradition
about angelic bridegrooms. That the typical spirit bride should have so much more unsavory a reputation than has the typical spirit bridegroom of nowaday. The masculine nature is proverbial for its lack of self-control where women are concerned: and in this it has usually contrasted unfavorably with the self-control of women in similar cases. ”

“ These three dissipations not onlyexhaust the nerve force of men, but blunt both their physical and their moral sensibilities; so that the man for whom, in all possibility, his angel mate may be waiting upon the Borderland, may find himself handicapped at the outset, should he ever essay an adventure into Borderland romance while still on the earth. ”

“ In this connection, we may remark that in India, where the attempt to obtain a spirit wife is said to be of common occurrence (and it would appear often rewarded with success) we find a nation singularly gentle and peaceable in disposition, unaccustomed to drunkenness until taught it by outside peoples (there is a proverbial saying among the Hindus "as drunk as a Christian") and endowed by nature with a tendency to aspire to union with God. Last, but not least, it is a nation whose religions, for the most part, recognize the truth that sex is holy ”

“ Lilith is said to come to young men's bedsides at night to seduce them, under the aspect of a beautiful and finely dressed woman with golden hair. And, afterwards she strangled them, and they are known to be Lilith's victims because one of her golden hairs is found tightly wound around the victim's heart. In the Zoroastrian legends, she is much connected with night and night-dreams; and men are cautioned not to sleep alone for fear of the evils of Lilith. She also lies in wait for children to kill them if they are not protected by "Amulets." ”

“ A young man on the road near Corinth met a charming woman who invited him to her house in the suburbs of the city, and said that if he would remain with her, "he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him ”

“ Another says that Adam kept himself apart from Eve for a hundred years in order not to fill hell with their offspring; but that in a weak moment a female devil, called Lilith, seduced him and became his wife, and from their union arose devils, ghosts and evil night dreams ”

“ He also, evidently, does not have his sub-consciousness well under control, but allows it to run away with him. Mastery of self in every possible aspect, physically, intellectually, morally, affectionally is one of two requisites for sustained marital relations on the Borderland ”