Ida Craddock

“ This is an important point—the testimony of a Christian Father of a tradition that human beings (not created angels) who had once inhabited bodies, could beget children on the plane of the astral unless prevented by the direct prohibition of Heaven. If it be objected that the author refers to giants still in earthly form when he speaks to "those who survived in the world" I am sure that the statement follows a remark about the Deluge and that in that case the surviving giants must have been Noah and his family. ”

“ In Berlin, Germany, the idea is more fully worked out; and not only is the sad message given to every bee-hive in the garden and every beast in the stall, but every sack of corn must be touched and everything in the house shaken, that they may know the master is gone. And we all know that even an intelligent nineteenth century man is not above administering an angry kick to a chair against which he has bruised himself. ”

“ An "angel" is simply a vehicle for a message in the original signification. Let us glance in passing at the accounts of materializing through the psychic power. In this sense a pearl materialized through the psychic power of so reliable a modern medium as the Rev. Stainton Moses, plainly by occult means might be called an "angel"–i.e., the means by which the message from the unseen reached the sitters. ”

“ Since marriage on natural grounds was thus depreciated by the early Church as impure when occurring between earthly men and women, we need not wonder that she viewed with horror the very thought of wedlock with an angel in as much as angels were supposed to be above earthly weaknesses. ”

“ It is a point which has never been so much as raised. His life has been of a kind not to be called in question–obscure without mystery, dignified without pedantry, lived in the sight of just that class of the public which demands the strictest respectability of conduct, the most unequivocal correspondence between life and profession. ”

“ When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies I find 'the sons of God.' What is meant by the Spirit, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Saviour Himself ”

“ As for the giant offspring said to have resulted from these unions offspring which in the male line became evil-doers, and finally demons on the astral plane if the reader will consider that necessity to which I have referred for correct living and clear thinking on both sides of the abyss of death, if the bridge of communication is to hold, he will see that if these "giants" continued to influence the world from the astral plane they could not be evil demons, but must be beneficent helpers of mankind. ”

“ Let none of you think that if she abstain from the care of her person [compositione sui] ; she will incur the hatred and aversion of husbands. Every husband is the exactor of chastity; but beauty a believing [husband] does not require, because we are not captivated by the same graces which the Gentiles think to be graces. ”

“ As to the frightened horse, and to the ignorant savage, inanimate things seem to be alive, so may the precious objects which materialized at those prehistoric seances have seemed to the beholders to be living creatures, in as much as they sped through the air without .visible support. If alive, they surely (so would argue the witnesses) must be angelic beings since they were said to come from heaven and the attendant phenomena of the seance no doubt would increase the awe with which these "angels" were received and treasured. ”

“ One tradition, as we have seen, makes a vague allusion to the sin of Sodom in connection with the intercourse of angels with women.
3. That an angelic woman should seek in honorable marriage, especially an earthly woman, it would appear, was reckoned a sin. When asked why, we find that the Church Fathers, one and all, treated marriage as a mere expedient. Tertullian said that the reason why 'marrying' is good, is that 'burning' is worse. ”

“ But if it is thought that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic and jug glery, who taught the women the motions of the stars and the knowledge of things celestial, by whose power they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness came to its heights on the earth, until God decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the Deluge. ”

“ When we remember that early Christianity sets its face like a flint against all delights of the senses and that this extreme reaction of the spiritual against the sensuous has largely shaped our social customs of today, we begin to see how important and far-reaching were these opinions of the Church Fathers that feminine adornment had been taught by angels who had sinned in wedding earthly women, and that it was therefore a sinful thing in that it has emanated from a depraved source. ”

“ The spirit of this remarkable procedure reappears in the old English law (repealed in the present reign) , whereby, not only a beast that kills a man, but a cart-wheel that runs over him, as a tree that falls on him, kills him, is dead and is given to God, * * * * forfeited and sold for the poor * * * * *. The pathetic custom of "telling the bees" when the master or mistress of a house dies, is not unknown in our own country. ”

“ Ambition plays a prominent part in the traditions, it will be noticed. It is said that these angels were ambitious for earthly power and exacted libations and sacrifices; and also that they were the beings whom the heathen ignorantly supposed to be gods.
But if the reader will recall what I have said about the misleadings in spirit manifestations when the psychic starts from a false premise, he will understand how possible it is that we have to deal here with subjective illusions, and not objective realities ”

“ The Sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose.
Genesis 6:2.
IN one place Justin Martyr speaks of "evil demons" who "in times of old, assuming various forms, went in unto the daughters of men." Elsewhere, he also speaks of these demons manifested as apparitions that misled boys as well as women. ”

“ Does it not seem as though we had here a survival of Animism—a state of mind frequent among savages, children and animals in which an inanimate object which moves without visible cause or manifests in any peculiar way is thought to be alive. A horse is often terrified by a piece of paper blown in front of him, evidently he takes it for a live creature. ”

“ Very different is the view taken by a more modern writer, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici who, advocating the doctrine of this celestial guardianship over marriage on earth, observes: "I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions, have been the courteous revelation of spirits ”

“ Then, "having assumed these forms, they convicted as covetous those who stole them, and changed themselves into the nature of man, in order that, living holily, and showing the possibility of so living they might subject the ungrateful to punishment." ”

“ A court of justice was held at the Prytaneum, to try any inanimate object, such as an axle, a piece of wood or stone, which had caused the death of anyone without proved human agency, and this wood or stone, if condemned, was with solemn form cast beyond the border. ”

“ Savages speak of the sun and moon as living individuals because of their apparently voluntary journeys through the sky; [among] the Kukis of Southern Asia * * * * * if a man was killed by a fall from a tree, his relatives would take their revenge by cutting the tree down, scattering it in chips. ”

“ The instructions of Commodianus in favor of Christian Discipline against the Gods of the Heathens, 59."
Let us remember that these and similar teachings by the early Christian Fathers have laid the foundation of our present marriage customs. The theory that a woman sins in adorning herself to please a husband (whether present or prospective) , and this theory is still indescribably popular among devout Christians.
Commodianus ascribes the teaching of "arts, * * * * * and the dyeing of wool, and everything which is done," not to the angels but to the giant progeny. ”

“ Having come into this earthly life, they became either the lovers or the husbands of women, whether beguiled thereto in part by the Devil, or wholly by the women or, partially or wholly by their own desires, the traditions again do not agree. ”

“ Rather let her dread to please if she is a virgin * * * * * * * * * It is not right that a virgin should have her hair braided for the appearance of her beauty.
Cyprian on the Dress of Virgins, 5.
"You are bound to please your husbands only. But you will please them in proportion as you take no care to please others. Be ye without carefulness, blessed [sisters] ; no wife is "ugly to her own husband." ”

“ To them, when they died, man erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of an evil seed, did not approve that, when dead, they should be brought back from death. Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies, and it is such as these especially that ye this day worship and pray to as gods. ”