Ida Craddock

“ If it really be that a wish is granted then more readily than when the seeker is in any other mood, it is probably because the occultist who attains the second degree has to exercise such supreme self-control at that moment that he is complete master of his sub-consciousness, and if he has attained the third degree he is in rapport with Spirit throughout the universe, so that his desire is granted because he desires only what is in harmony with Good and Right. ”

“ If it be a young man who is there alone, the spirit takes the form of a beautiful young girl, inspires him with ardent passion, and exacts from him a promise that he will meet her that day month in the churchyard. ”

“ She must neglect no earthly duty; she must be conversant with the intellectual thought- world of her earthly associates; she must not crush out a single instinct of her nature but properly use every physical appetite and passion to round out a symmetrical earthly life. When emergencies arise on either the earthly plane or on the Borderland, she must never make a mistake, for to do so, will cause the lines of communication to waver and presently to part. ”

“ But, so long as a man is a black magician, he will fail to enter upon the third degree. This last degree is, I am firmly convinced, impossible, whether in earthly or Borderland wedlock, for either man or woman who does not live a pure life in self-control and aspiration to the Divine. And the occultist who seeks to attain to the third degree must first become a white magician.
Nevertheless, as I have said, the initiates in the third degree have guarded this secret most jealously, and apparently for the reasons I have assigned. ”

“ In Oriental countries, however, despite their being "heathen" sex is looked on as holy; in this connection, our phrase, "Give God the glory," takes on itself a vaster significance than is ever taught from our pulpits.
It is no wonder, then, the Oriental occultists should have penetrated at an early date to the underlying principles of marital relations on the Borderland. From their lifelong habits of thought, they viewed sex as simply and naturally as we should view the circulation of our own blood as a curious phenomenon of absorbing personal interest. ”

“ But in this case, what becomes of the scientific basis of such stories as Danae and other virgins who become the mothers of children by a Borderland lover whether earthly double or heavenly angel? There is but one way so far as I see, by which a Borderland bridegroom could beget a child by an earthly woman. The woman must live each moment in strict obedience to the laws of her earthlife and also of his heavenly life. She must be capable of appreciating the intellectual thought of his advanced world. She must understand and live in accordance with the higher code of ethics current in his realm. ”

“ And, because occultists have usually assumed the nearness of a world of devils, rather than of a world of angels, and because they have assumed that depravity and prejudice offer no bar to communication with the unseen, whether good or evil, it was a most natural conclusion that it would be dangerous to entrust the secret of the third degree to a "black magician." ”

“ Though I am by no means a Romanist, I emphatically say, that from the occult standpoint, the immaculate life of Mary for a long period prior to the Annunciation and until at least the birth of Jesus, is the only foundation upon which the possibility of the mysterious conception of Jesus as a Borderland child can rest. ”

“ But the clearest and most convincing manifestations of the objectivity of the heavenly bridegroom always come when the psychic is most clearheaded. It seems, indeed, that it is not even in a trance but only when the psychic is wide awake that the marital union takes place objectively. And this I think will be found to be the case with the witches. When their union with the supposed Devil was based on the faithful tender love of one woman for one man, and its reciprocity, in accordance with high moral standards, then was the union objective and natural. ”

“ That a black magician should be able at such a moment to enter upon harmonious relations with the universe by breathing a curse, seems to me very unlikely. I am of the opinion that this belief is due to the mistaken idea that correct living and clear thinking are unnecessary to establish lines of accurate communication with the unseen world. ”

“ Perhaps when we come into harmonious rapport with the mystical theory, popularized by the school of divine science and other mystics, that each one of us is a part of the universal mind, and that that mind may know all things in the universe we might allow even this on the Borderland. However, the Roman Catholic Church has seemingly provided for the high standard of mentality required from a spouse of Divine Science on the Borderland by ascribing to Mary not only the name, but the attributes of "Mother of God." ”

“ There is little doubt that many of the witches did practice a sorcery of the most diabolical type a sorcery based upon the principles of hypnotic suggestion, and of the willful projection of the astral or double; a sorcery, whose object was to cause evil, and which did cause evil in many cases where the victims were not protected from occult mischiefworking by living pure and upright lives; a sorcery, finally, whose impelling motive was due to insane hallucinations resulting in a very large number of cases from having violated the laws of right living in sex relations on the Borderland. ”

“ The Mohammedan Paradise as well as its Borderland recognizes love between the sexes. And in this it differs from the Christian Paradise as popularly conceived although as I have elsewhere shown, the statement by Jesus that we shall be after death, as regards marrying, like "the angels in heaven," when taken in connection with the next in Genesis about the sons of God who wedded earthly women, shows pretty conclusively that the Christian Scriptures admit the existence of sex and marriage in the world beyond the grave. ”

“ Both the earthly double and the celestial spirit appear to possess this faculty of oozing through blank walls. May they not be one and the same? In that case, we see how easy it may be to confound spirit bridegrooms from the world beyond the grave (who cannot beget children on the Borderland because this would be a violation of natural law) , and astral doubles of earthly lovers who can stimulate the begetting of children upon the astral double of an earthly woman so vividly as to mark the child of her lawful husband and herself with the likeness of the astral lover. ”

“ In time by the workings of the laws of Borderland, she who through natural curiosity and romantic sentiment at first hearkened to the angel lover, and afterward through the failure to live aright or think clearly felt bound to reject him as a devil became subject to hallucinations and also in some cases, to annoying physical manifestations. Some picturesque stories have been told of such women to whom the spirit lover has appeared in the guise of a handsome youth vainly wooing his earthly love night after night. ”

“ No psychic's testimony can be considered reliable so long as she fails to distinguish between genuine and illusory touches. So long as she is lacking in any of these essentials to the wife of a heavenly bridegroom, just so long will her guardian persist in putting her through a course of training a training which she must undergo until she passes her examination and is promoted into a higher class, there to take up still more advanced lessons in psychic discrimination and psychic self-control. ”

“ If we are to regard the ordinary meaning of the words, we need only turn to human laws and we shall often meet with a greater degree of elevation * * * * Every word of the law contains a deep and sublime mystery. ”

“ Rationalists have tried to explain the spirit bride and spirit bridegroom as a nightmare arising from a plethoric condition of the body. An explanation which has force only when the spirit is an incubus and not a succubus and when the earthly psychic (man or woman) is asleep or dozing. ”

“ It was precisely because Mohammed was at that time living a fairly well ordered and self-controlled life, that he was enabled to learn sufficient of the world beyond the grave to assert that love between the sexes survives death and is one of the potent factors in social life there, as here. ”

“ It rarely, if ever, seems to have occurred to people in those days that a virtuous woman, reasonably clear-headed, is a being who is under especial angelic protection, and that when such a woman was persistently singled out by a spirit for lover-like attentions, it must have been owing to the favor of Heaven, and not to the malignity of devils. ”

“ Now, because sex is distinctly emotional in its manifestations, there is always a tendency, with failure to reach the highest, to allow the emotions to slump down, as it were, to a lower level. Few natures are so supremely self -controlled as to say, at a critical moment, "the highest or nothing. ”

“ And not only must she learn to distinguish thus between real and unreal sensations, but she must also learn to resist all hypnotic suggestion to feel sensations which do not exist or which are unlawful. No psychic can be considered thoroughly self-controlled who has not acquired this power of resistance to hypnotic suggestion of unlawful touches or of unreal things as real. ”

“ When one (1) considers that every woman who enters a convent is pledged to a mystic union with a heavenly bridegroom, denominated Christ; (2) that the union more often than the public is aware, becomes so objectively real that the confessor feels obliged to term it "Congresus cum daemonis"; (3) that ignorance on the men's part of Borderland laws will render her experience fantastic or diabolical ”

“ Heaven, as is well known, abounds in love-making, beautiful women called Houris attending upon the risen soul of the male Mohammedan as he reclines at feast. It is true that apologists have suggested a figurative sense in which the accounts of Mohammed's Paradise are to be taken. ”

“ The closing paragraph becomes significant, when we reflect upon the danger which the initiates feared would accrue to those still in the heyday of manhood's passions, if they proved unworthy of the Great Secret. The expression "The secret of the combination by twos and threes" has probably a double meaning here the esoteric meaning turning upon the two kinds of marital partnership; known to the initiates; husband and wife being the "combination by two" (in the second degree) ”

“ Having once attained this high plane, it is unlikely that she would ever descend to a lower plane afterward: so that, accurately speaking, the Roman Catholic doctrine of her immaculate life must have been absolutely perfect on all points, or she could not have conceived a child by the spirit of God; for God does not break his own laws. ”

“ Ill-temper, then, morose broodings over wrongs, general sourness of spirit, were not the least important of the causes which turned those earthly partners of angelic bridegrooms into devil-handed witches.
Another cause seems to have been their failure to think clearly and without prejudice. Poor creatures! They were nearly all of them prejudiced (i. e., "pre-judgers") from beginning to end. They pre- judged angels to be the Devil; they pre-judged the monsters imagined by their own sub-consciousness to be real; they pre-judged the wedlock into which they entered on the Borderland to be sinful ”

“ Nevertheless, most Americans and Europeans, whether men or women, failed to penetrate beneath the surface of this markedly symbolic dance, owing to the occidental habit of thought which sees naught but impurity in the most important and sacred function of our nature. ”

“ There is a belief among some occultists that an earnest wish breathed at that time, when husband and wife are one, it will not fail to be granted. This opens, it is said, the door to those who practice what is called %lack magic," and enables them to work harm upon other human beings. ”

“ That the Devil or one of his imps at times visited her in the guise of some animal a dog, a cat, even a huge butterfly, to suck some part of her body, and that, whatever the part of her body chosen, it and no other spot was always resorted to by the impish creature thereafter Sometimes witnesses testify to seeing these animals familiar as in the case of a witch ill in bed who was being closely watched. ”

“ There were men, who did a business in discovering witches by pricking a suspected woman's body all over with a pin until they found some place insensible to the pain of the prick, when they would triumphantly announce this to be the "Devil's Mark;" ”

“ That others since then claim from time to time to see these fantastic creatures does not prove that they exist In psychical matters nothing is more common than for people to see ghosts at a given time and place when their imaginations have been worked up to the expectation of seeing one then and there, of a certain predetermined type. ”

“ A gentleman who was intensely dark, of a Spanish type, was in love with a girl of the true blonde type. They never married but later on she married someone else and moved to another part of the country. ”

“ The Shiqq is another demoniacal creature, having the form of a half human being (like a man divided longitudinally) and it is believed that the Nasnas is the offspring of a Shiqq and a human being * * * * The Nasnas is described as having half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg, with which it hops with much agility. ”