Seres

“ Marie. 'Tis the moon of the sere, falling leaves. From the heads of the maples the west-wind Plucks the red-and-gold plumage and grieves on the meads for the rose and the lily; Their brown leaves the moaning oaks strew, and the breezes that roam on the prairies, Low-whistling and wanton pursue the down of the silk weed and thistle. All sere are the prairies and brown, in the glimmer and haze of the Autumn; From the far northern marshes flock down, by thousands, the geese and the mallards. ”

“ Let us suppose, then, that we are merely an eye, which, however, as it is not yet either tangible or localized, we shall call the soul the seer. Let this seer be provided with a due complement of objects, which are mere colours in the form of houses, clouds, rivers, woods, and mountains. Everything is excluded but sight and colours. Nothing but pure seeing is the order of the day. Now, here it is obvious that the seer must pronounce itself or its organ to be precisely commensurate in extent with the things seen. ”

“ And, by parity of reasoning, each of these orbs must have its own spiritual world, into which are continually pouring, through the gates of death, the inhabitants of those orbs, the good forming a heaven, and the evil, a hell, of their own. The star Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, the size of which, it has been estimated, cannot be much less than fourteen times that of our sun—what a grand and beautiful system of planets must be sweeping round that brilliant orb! ”

“ In most cases, however, the seer learns by experience how to distinguish, and frequently it will be found that an intuitive impression of the period involved comes with the vision itself. In our own experience the foreground, middle distance, and background, mark off the present, the approximate, and the distant future. ”

“ Frown above the waterfalls
⁠Silver and cold;
⁠Timelessly old:
⁠Not that way.
Not toward Death, who, stranger, fairer,
Than any siren turns his head—
Than sea-couched siren, arched with rain-bows,
Where knell the waves of her ocean bed. ”

“ It is advisable not to sit for crystal reading, or indeed for any order of psychic exercise, immediately after or before a meal. The body should be at rest, and the mind contented and tranquil. Again, the attitude of the seer should not be too expectant or over-anxious in regard to the production of the vision. Let the development take its natural course. Do not force the young plant in its growth or it will come to a premature end. Take time, as Nature does. ”

“ The danger at this supreme moment is that the seer will be surprised into full waking consciousness. During the process of abstraction which precedes every vision or series of visions, the consciousness of the seer is gradually and imperceptibly withdrawn from his surroundings. He forgets that he is seated in this or that room, that such a person is at his right hand, such another at his left. He forgets that he is gazing into the crystal. He hears nothing, sees nothing, save what is passing before the eyes of his soul. ”

“ The Norse called me Midgaard and built their galleys
Like a sea-serpent.
The Egyptians and the Indians called me Ysis
And the Phoenecians Baal.
I am the sea that girdles the world.
I am the first and I shall be the last.
I am the Serpent of the Ages. ”

“ At length Sirius and all the brotherhood of our constellations and the galaxy of our heavens stood far below our feet as a little nebula amongst other yet more distant nebulæ. Thus we flew on through the starry wildernesses: one heaven after another unfurled its immeasurable banners before us, and then rolled up behind us: galaxy behind galaxy towered up into solemn altitudes before which the spirit shuddered; and they stood in long array through which the Infinite Being might pass in progress. ”

“ All the sins, infirmities, temptations, and troubles, of God’s dear people—these are the dust he feeds on. And as it is with the father Serpent, it is with his seed; his offspring a generation of Vipers and Serpents, they have their portion of dust to eat, and they can feed on nothing else—and this every believer has seen to his grief. What in one scripture is called the seed of the Serpent, is in another called the children of the wicked one. First, Because as sinners, they are his offspring. ”

“ The seal, then, is the water: they descend into the water dead, and they arise alive. And to them, accordingly, was this seal preached, and they made use of it that they might enter into the kingdom of God.” “Why, sir,” I asked, “did the forty stones also ascend with them out of the pit, having already received the seal?” “Because,” he said, “these apostles and teachers who preached the name of the Son of God, after falling asleep in the power and faith of the Son of God, preached it not only to those who were asleep, but themselves also gave them the seal of the preaching. ”

“ Then the Seers ordered the sacred plants to be burned in homage to the Unseen Cause of growth; the masses made an idolatrous ceremonial out of the very act of destroying a sacred Symbol. The Seers would seem then to have turned from the vegetable, which only grows, and whose growth can only be inferred, not seen, to the animal, in which the life-process reveals itself by visible motion. To the medical priest, who, by dissecting a ram's heart, has caught the secret of the throbbing of his own heart, the ram is henceforward a sacred object. ”

“ It is probable, says this German physician, that the Serpent had his cavern under or about the tree of knowledge, and this tree became scientifical by way of transplantation from the Serpent, that is, this tree and its fruit had both the spiritual essence and the spiritual virtue of the Serpent Communicated to them, and impressed in them, by virtue of the Serpent's cohabitation with them. For in nature we find that many bodies do not only by their qualities affect their adjacents, but also infuse their virtue into them, and endue them with the same faculty. ”

“ And the inspired seer unveils the secrets of creation, showing to us the breath of God moving over the chaos, as he separates the solid earth from the waters, points out to the moon and the stars their orbits, and commands the elements whither they should fly and what they are to seek. ”

“ A special kind of divination, which has at times been evidenced in certain parts of Europe, and is not unknown to our North-western Indians, consists in the perception of contemporaneous or future events, during a brief trance. Generally the seer looks with painfully raised eyelids, fixedly into space, evidently utterly unconscious of all around him, and engaged in watching a distant occurrence. ”

“ Ceres tended and blessed the fields of grain, and Venus, clad in beautiful garments by the Seasons, expressed the desire of the nations, of dumb beasts and of all nature for love.
There were many more than these, making the great immortal family of the gods, like men, but different in their higher understanding of life and its meaning. ”

“ These two types—of which there are many varieties—achieve their psychic development by quite opposite means. The positive seer works with effort, throwing out the soul-images by the power of his will, perceiving them with more or less accuracy, and thereafter turning them over in the mind, reasoning and questioning concerning their import and meaning. The passive seer, on the contrary, works not at all and makes no effort, the visions coming slowly, almost imperceptibly, and in most cases having a literal interpretation. ”

“ You are to go to the kingdom of the Great Sea Serpent who dwells in the depths of the seas and ask him to give you some of the darkness of night that his daughter may not die here amid the sunlight of our earth land. ”

“ The seer from the East was then in light,
The seer from the West was then in shade.
Ah! now 'tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright
The man of the bold West now comes arrayed:
He of the mystic East is touched with night. ”

“ I discover that there is such a goddess as Ceres. These long grain-fields which you must respect,—must go round,—occupying the ground like an army. The small trees and shrubs seen dimly in its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an inundation. ”

“ The Ray may be split up into sequence, but the colours belong to it all the same, and by a perfectly seeing eye would be known and recognised without the help of the spectroscope.
The true seer is the one who sees the cube of your life; before whom it is spread out, without Time Separations, into planes of experience. This is the real secret of all foretelling. Such people, when honest, have some amount of access to the cube of earth life, some more, some less.
Many mix up and confuse what they see; but they do see beyond the plane section which Time gives to the normal human being. ”

“ The Magi of the East had stood at my cradle and endowed me with the noble gift of the Seeress.
The power of reading the future does not belong to the Northern people. It is the darkest and deepest well that reflects the star above it ”

“ In this kingdom Sero guarded;
Longed and panted for admission,
Toiled and labored for a passport,
Fought and battled for a title
To this realm where trouble is not,
Till they had become the victors,
And were waiting now to enter.
Throughout all Nimæra’s kingdom
Warning heralds Sero sent out
To implore the heedless people,
Raising thus their warning voices:
“Turn, ye people, turn from evil,
Know ye that the day is nearing
For the long and weary journey
Through dark valleys and wild passes
To the lands of the hereafter. ”

“ To hear the seer explain their monarch's dream.
Beside the royal throne he sits supreme
Among the seers, the Sar, his scribe commands
To read his dream recorded as it stands
In Erech's Gi; [2] who reads it to the seer,
Who answers thus:
"In this there doth appear
A god, whose ardent love will lead to deeds
Of hate against thee, Sar; thy present needs
Are great, O king! as fire this love will burn
Until the wicked seven [3] on thee turn;
And blood, alone, will not their fury sate:
The gods will hurl upon thee some dread fate."
In silence, Izdubar the warning heard ”

“ Occasionally, with prophetic burden, the stern seer into the future denounces a curse forever to rest upon this land, evoked by the silent, spectral forms of the vanished red men over whose hunting-grounds and graves in the hands of the spoiler no permanent blessing can ever be enjoyed. ”

“ The pure and radiant star of Christian love has risen in the place of the dim nebulous mist of Serapis; and just as the moon pales when the sun appears triumphant, the worship of Serapis has died away in a thousand places where the gospel has been received. ”

“ These seals are chiefly designed to show that during the period in which Christ is carrying forward his conquest unto [pg 130] victory, both trial and suffering in this world form part of the divine purpose of discipline for his people which cannot be escaped from but should be endured with patience and hope. The last three seals relate to the things of the spiritual life, of which three is the symbol, and point forward to the future and great reward in the world to come which is about to be realized by those who are faithful. ”

“ Thus the Seer, With vision clear, Sees forms appear and disappear, In the perpetual round of strange, Mysterious change From birth to death, from death to birth, From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth ”

“ At last they considered, God without all question begin their Guide, that Nature had for every seed a Vessel of her own, and that all her Vessels were but several sorts of Earth: For example, The Vegetable Seed had the Common Earth for his Vessel, for therein Nature did sow it. The Animal Sperm had the Flesh for his, and flesh is but a soft animated Earth, as it appears in the Dissolution of the Body. ”

“ We may imagine the seer—perhaps some aboriginal patriarch, long before the time of Moses—perhaps the first man himself—wrapt in ecstatic vision, having his senses closed to all the impressions of the present time, and looking as at a moving procession of the events of the earth's past history, presented to him in a series of apparent days and nights. ”

“ Until definite and satisfactory results are obtained, not more than two persons should be present at the sittings, and these should be in sympathy with the seer and each other. When the sitting is over, it will be found agreeable and useful to discuss the results obtained; or if none are elicited, the seer can give an account of his or her impressions and feelings during the sitting. ”

“ Accordingly, the robust-bodied and slender-limbed yet big-fisted and big-footed Seri seem to be adjusted, so far as several of their more striking somatic characters are concerned, to distinctive habits themselves reflecting a distinctive habitat; and the coincidences appear to reveal and establish the law of interaction between the human organism and its environment—an interaction effected through the habits and hence through, the normal functioning of the individual organisms as constrained through their collective relations. ”

“ The yearly season of the rites of Ceres 632 is come: my mistress lies apart on a solitary couch. Yellow Ceres, having thy floating locks crowned with ears of corn, why dost thou interfere with my pleasures by thy rites? Thee, Goddess, nations speak of as bounteous everywhere: and no one is less unfavorable to the blessings of mankind. ”

“ It is important that all persons sitting in the same room as the seer should be at arm's length away from him—farther if possible. Silence should be uniformly observed by those present. A recorder should be at hand to set down everything the seer may give voice to. If any questions are addressed to the seer while the sitting is in progress, they should be spoken in an undertone and as nearly a monotone as may be so that the seer is not suddenly surprised into consciousness of his surroundings, and the psychic thread thereby broken. ”