Ida Craddock

“ As I now sit writing I am so literally full that every particle of flesh in my body feels as if it were alive and moving. This extreme fulness in the daytime does not occur every day. It will probably not continue more than eight or ten hours. While I am busy it is not excessively delightful. But if I were to lean back in my chair, or to go and lie down, I should soon be completely deluged with floods of heavenly glory, and be `lost in wonder, love and praise.' The movings of the spirit are usually undulatory. ”

“ How can such a hazy, ethereal creature as a ghost produce objective sensations of touch upon an earthly being? And if possible--as he ingeniously supposes, by such means as air becomes perceptible to us when violently put in motion--how reconcile such phenomena with the belief that sex is impure, and that it does not exist in the world beyond the grave? How could God's angels ever fall so? ”

“ They might, however, become sharers in man's immortality if they could inspire one of that race with the passion of towards them. Hence it was the constant endeavor of the female spirits to captivate the admiration of men, and of the male gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and undines to be beloved by a woman. The object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of the celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became equals to the lover, and both when their allotted course was run entered together into the mansions of felicity. ”

“ The idea that a good spirit may at any moment be temporarily displaced by an evil one, and that the laws of that clearer thought-world beyond the grave are powerless to cope with this annoyance is absurd, and contrary to common sense. The fault of imperfect communication is just as likely to be ours as theirs. Let us but see to it that the lines of psychical communication are laid (on our side of the abyss of death) in correctness of moral living, and clearness of intellectual conception before we rashly assume the fault to be theirs. ”

“ I am inclined to think not, since the double is for the time being on a different plane of matter from the physical body; being, in fact, in the same world as it will be after death; so that it must obey the law of the Borderland quite as much as if it were an angelic bridegroom, which is to sow no seed, inasmuch as no harvest can be reaped therefrom. 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? ”

“ Thus has this sacred inner mystery become degraded by the unworthy, even by the tried and staunch initiate of the first and second degree, unless he holds grace as he enters upon this third degree, unless he holds fast to the teaching, "aspire to the highest". Only in reverent and earnest aspiration to the Divine, to the source of all things, to the Eternal Energy of the Universe, may this third degree be entered upon, either in Borderland or in earthly wedlock. The more intense the emotion, the more absolute the necessity for aspiring with all one's faculties to union with the Divine. ”

“ All of which applies to the earthly partner of a celestial bride or bridegroom, when the laws of correct living and clear thinking are obeyed. Those who know this secret and vigilantly keep it in a pure heart are indeed the heirs of both worlds, for they dwell upon the Borderland, harmoniously adapting their lives to both planes of existence and, being at one with God, they can each say, "If God be for me, who can be against me?" Nor is the reward for making a proper use of this Great Secret confined to Borderland wedlock; its Kingdom may come on the earthly plane itself to worthy neophytes. ”

“ Now, to laugh to scorn the birth of Perseus from the occult union of God with one virgin, and then to accept without question the birth of Jesus from the occult union of God with another virgin, is somewhat inconsistent.
On strictly logical grounds, if one story be false, so may the other be false; if one be true, so may the other be true. But Perseus is only one of many virgin-born heroes or gods. We find these children of a visible earthly mother and an invisible, celestial mysterious father the world over, in all ages. ”

“ But if anyone in the world is entitled to the joys of true Borderland wedlock, it is surely a priest who has kept his vows of asceticism, and who is really pure-minded. If anyone in the world needs it, it is surely the priest who is supposed to stand midway as a bridge-builder between earthly sinners and celestial beings of the unseen world beyond the grave, since it is pretty generally acknowledged that a well-ordered sex life is necessary to the development of a symmetrical character. ”

“ In religion, theories have their uses, but the school of experience is the only school that can be relied upon for instruction in the mysteries and deep things of God. It often seems to me as if the Christian world, ministers included, were looking more to their creeds, and to one another, for their theology, than to the Word and the Spirit. Before anyone can become personally acquainted with the Lord, and with the true meaning of His written Word, he must necessarily forsake every known sin and he must know what it means to live up to every known requirement and privilege of the Gospel. ”

“ No wonder, then, that on the plane of sentiment she should prefer this ghostly spouse to "anie mortall man". And on the plane of physiological relations, I think I have already shown that the husband who is an initiate in the third degree, who has trained his wife therein, can assure her of "connubial bliss which is perpetual". The Borderland bridegroom has this advantage, too, over the earthly bridegroom: being able to read his partner's thoughts, he can adapt himself to her most delicate fluctuations of sentiment at a moment's warning, and so never fail to be truly her companion. ”

“ Where the earthly partner in these unions was a woman, and a nun at that, pledged to unfaltering obedience to her official superiors, it was probably an easy matter for her confessor to lump all her experiences--veridical as well as illusory--under one heading, that of subjective. A virgin is usually, by reason of her environment as a woman, so ignorant of the physiology of marriage that it is difficult for her as a psychic to distinguish what is real from what is unreal until she has been a Borderland wife for some time. ”

“ Especially, you must have such high and clean thoughts about sex that you can think about it, read about it, and talk about all the details without agitation, without grossness of thought, and with as impersonal a state of mind as if you were discussing the circulation of the blood. And you must learn to recognize the educational value of sex attraction in the evolution of humanity from savagery into civilization. Chiefest of all, learn that sex is holy before God and the angels. During this preliminary training, all sex union must be refrained from absolutely. ”

“ At times, when love seems to predominate over truth, the divine proceeding that streams forth upon me appears to my spiritual vision like the golden beams of autumn sunset, but when truth predominates over love, they appear like streams of white light reflected from burnished silver. At times I am consciously alone with the Lord. At other times I am consciously in the presence of angels. ”

“ The angels are so thoroughly honest, so perfectly free from all false modesty and pretended humility, and are so free from all formality and human ceremonies, that the presence of an angel is always elevating and refreshing. The Lord touches me consciously now through the medium of His Written Word... When I read the Scriptures my whole `spiritual body' can feel the touch and power of the Living Divine that flows through its words and sentences, just as plainly and unmistakably as my natural body can feel the touch and force of the wind. ”

“ All unaware of the law by which her own failures and peccadilloes bring about subjective hallucinations which mislead, she ascribes to her angelic bridegroom 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 holds 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 Beauty in the fairy story did from the husband whom ignorant outsiders had led her to look upon as Beast. ”

“ 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; but night and the marriage couch cause him to materialize in his true shape. ”

“ If our inferiors in the animal Kingdom reveal such marked superiority to ourselves in sensitiveness to vibrations, is it unlikely that our former equal, now our superior, the deceased human being who has passed out of earth-life into a wider realm, shall also acquire sensitiveness to a wider range of vibrations? The ghost probably senses all things on our plane, plus a great many more things on his own. Our sensations are included in his, but his extend far on each side of our own. ”

“ In solar myths, the dawn is often typified as a maiden, the sun-god being her lover who pursues her vanishing form through the heavens--an idea picturesquely brought out in the myth of Cinderella. If these two stories really are a bit of sun and dawn folklore, then Urvasi and Psyche must each be the dawn-maiden, and Pururavas and Cupid must be the sun-god on whose glorious form, unveiled by any clouds, the dawn-maiden dare not look, for, as she looks, the two lovers become separated--i.e., the dawn vanishes before the rising sun. ”

“ Why with dressed hair, as if she either had or sought for a husband? 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The poor creatures, indeed, had not our advantages in the perusal of records of hypnotism and of the Society for Psychical Research, and would have been sadly puzzled to draw the line between subjective illusion and objective materialization. Nevertheless, her angel lover was with her when she thought him the Devil. He comforted her in her poverty and loneliness (many of these witches, remember, were old women, whose lives had been the bare, dreary lives of the terribly poor) and he promised her such influence among her neighbors as she longed for most. ”

“ All occultism, by whatever name it is called, however imperfect in deductions, learns at last to beware of the occultist who breaks the moral law, or who, whether wilfully or carelessly, through prejudice or through crafty desire to advance his own selfish interests, closes his eyes to the truth. In other words, clear thinking and correct living are the only passport to trustworthiness in an occultist.
It is true that there are many psychical phenomena which at first sight do not seem to require any special exercise of morality on the part of the percipient. ”

“ To another class he comes and says, `You are religious; but it is your soul with which you can serve God; all you can do with your body is to punish it, and destroy it by slow degree.' Many look upon this as religious heroism; but it is as much a lie to the truth of God as is the grosser misuse of the body for lust or appetite. God comes with his glorious claim, `the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ”

“ If it be asked how a misty, vaporous being, such as a ghost is popularly supposed to be, can sustain an objective marital union on the Borderland, I reply that the ghost is not mist-like in reality, but only appears so because he is in a new world of matter, with a more extended scale of vibrations per second for the various forces of sound, heat, light, and electricity than obtain upon our earthly plane. ”

“ But the clearest and most convincing manifestations of the objectivity of the heavenly bridegroom always come when the psychic is most clear-headed. 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. ”