A Christian theological definition of Apocrypha according to CARM - The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:

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Apocrypha

See also: Apocrypha , Christianity, Body Mind and Soul

Apocrypha

(Greek: hidden) It is used in a general sense to describe a list of books written by Jews between 300 and 100 B. C. More specifically, it is used of the seven additional books accepted by the Catholic church as being scriptural.

The entire list of books of the apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The books accepted as inspired and included in the Catholic Bible are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees Wisdom of Solomon Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch.

The Jews never recognized these books as being canonical (inspired). There is no record that Jesus or the apostles ever quoted from the apocryphal books. The Septuagint (LXX) includes the books, not as scripture, but as part of the translation of the Hebrew manuscripts as a whole.

(See also: Apocrypha , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS)

Largest of all off-shoots of the LDS church. When Joseph Smith died, those who accepted Brigham Young as the Smith's successor followed him west to Utah; they are known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

Those who rejected Young and accepted Smith's son, Joseph Smith, III, remained in Independence, Missouri, and became known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). The doctrines of the two groups eventually became radically different. The RLDS have a slightly different version of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, and they reject the Pearl of Great Price as scripture.

The RLDS do not hold to many of the LDS distinctive doctrines, including the polygamy of the 19th century LDS Church and the LDS belief (still held) that God was once a man. In recent years the church has experienced divisions, with more conservative Restoration Branches becoming independent. Historically, the RLDS also have had a leader who was a direct descendant of the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, Jr. Grant McMurray, was the first exception to this practice.

(See also: Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Star of David

(Mogen David) A hectacle formed two interlocking triangles, now accepted as a symbol of Judaism. It was not used as a symbol for Judaism until the late Middle Ages and was not officially accepted as such by the Jews until the 17th century.

(See also: Star of David , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Queztalcoatl

(Aztec - "feathered-serpent")

 An Aztec god of the air or a sun-god and a benefactor of their race who instructed them in the use of agriculture, metals and the like.

According to one account, Quetzalcoatl was driven from the country by a superior god and on reaching the shores of the Mexican Gulf promised his followers that he would return. He then embarked on his magic skiff for the land of Tlapallan.

The Great Bird-Serpent is the most powerful figure in Mexican mythology, and it was known and accepted as a god in ancient Mexico and Central America. Accordingly, he dominated the great early American civilizations, from the land of the Incas in South America, to the Pueblo Indians of the our southwestern desert; from Teotihuacan (Mexico City) on the high plateau to Chichen Itza in Yucatan, he is a prevailing motif on ancient monuments.

Sometimes with his jaws open, bifid tongue, and articulated spinal column, he is easily recognizable. At others, he seems to have been coded in an almost infinite variety of formalized patterns derived from his famous scales, or feathers.

To the ancients, Quetzalcoatl became the force for understanding the universe, as it was known before the introduction of modern religion by the Conquistadors of Spain. The god Quetzalcoatl represented, to the ancient peoples of Central and South America, the very essence of life.

(See also: Queztalcoatl , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

canon: The religious laws governing a sect or a religion. Body of accepted or authorized scriptures.

(See also: Canon , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Theory:

(1) A belief, policy or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action.

(2) An ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles or circumstances.

(3) The body of generalizations and principles developed in association with practice in a field of activity.

(4) A judgment, conception, proposition or formula formed by speculation or deduction, or by abstraction and generalization from facts.

(5) A working hypothesis given probability by experimental evidence or by factual or conceptual analysis but not conclusively established or accepted as a law.

(See also: Theory , Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

APO PANTAS KAKODAIMONES!

False banishing mantram ("Away all evil demons!")

APOCALYPSE

We are aware that the muslims insist that there can be no Universal Eschatonic Implosion until the world has endured "40 years of rain." We would remind them that we have endured *more* than forty years of the "rain" of nuclear radiation and pollution. Aztec prophesies place the end of the world in the 20th Century (who can doubt it?). The Great Pyramid is said to contain, in its mystical measurements, similar predictions in stone of which the last is Sept. 17, 2001 A.D. Two thousand is commonly believed by western civilization to be the year of the Eschaton. The date given by Nostradamus, on the other hand, is slightly pre-millennial: 1999. This is just 13 years prior to the end of the great 160,000-year Mayan Cycle and Terence McKenna's Timescape Zero (based on Ancient Chinese cycles), both at 2012 C.E. And although many others cite 2020, there are interesting reasons for seizing on 1999.

First of all, there is a scientific reason. As meteorologists have noted, the 11-year sunspot cycles which serve to heat the earth, have not only been increasing in severity, they have progressively exacerbated the greenhouse effect. This resulted, during the drought of 1988, in the first of the summer-long record-breaking temperatures that continue to plague us. In '99 the sunspot activity could well have a cataclysmic effect.

Metaphysically, however, there are more compelling reasons. Since the exact interface betweeen the end of the Christian Aeon of Pisces and the beginning of the Humanist Aeon of Aquarius is impossible to pipoint, we are thrown back on sheer numerology. 1+9+9+9 = 28 = 2+8 = 10; numerologically and Pythagoras-wise ten is the number of perfect completion. In other words 1999 is the natural culmination of the Aeon, whereas 2000 is simply a thousandfold manifestation of the Duality: Two - that epitome of evil amongst numbers (from the cosmic point of view, the end of the world isn't necessarily evil). The date, January 16, 1999 adds up to 9. That date is also Julian Day number 2,451,195, which adds up to 9 as well. Ironically enough, most computer projections of disaster, based on current ecological trends, ozone depletion, demographic patterns, etc. predict the peak somewhere between January, 1999 and September, 2013 - by which time the population of the earth will be nine billion and the "end" of the human yardstick on this planet will have come.

And although the Bible stipulates that "no man knoweth the day or the hour" of the last day, I do not hesitate to name the 9th second of the 9th minute of the 9th hour of January 16, 1999 as the eschaton (or the 9th day of the 9th month September).

As one of the Archons of the Ending Aeon, however, I have chosen 999 as my personal sigil, not 1999, because I want to ally myself with the spirit of the ending process, rather than with the End itself. Moreover, from an opitimistic point of view, 999 is qabalistically virginal - it has nothing written on it. Yet I see no reason to dispute '99 as the Climax of the Apocalypse, and I take that most useful point of the Eschaton as the date of my own eschaton-count. My Newtime (13 month) calendar begins approximately on the winter solstice of 2000 (Newtime Year Zero), displacing Gregorian time forever. Hence I count forward from 1999, calling 1997 "Year Minus 3", etc.

It should be noted that "end of the world" predictions are always cropping up. For instance, there was Rev. Whisenant's eschatonic prediction that September 13, 1988 would be the Great Day. Newspapers were gleeful in reporting that the date came and went. What they failed to realize was that 1988, in fact, the beginning of the end - since it was in that year that the greenhouse effect was finally accepted by the planetary powers and acknowledged as the harbinger of the end. If nothing else, 1988 was the year in which the Shroud of Turin was finally pronounced an error by the Vatican. At any rate, the good Rev's numerology may have been naive and the particular fate he chose may have had little synchronistic sparkle, but his prediction wasn't entirely off the wall. Isn't it always the 11th hour? At least sub specie aeternitatis?

But with the 20th Century we leave eternity behind and enter the dimensional worlds. The date Whisenant gave has another meaning. As you know, we stand in the slough of time and at the perimeters of various magico/religious aeons - including the multitudinous segments of the Galilean era - all of which end at different points. The prophecies are fulfilled at different velocities in different ways. The world "ends" perennially because "World" derives from Anglo-Saxon wer-µld ("Man's Era" or "human time.")

Part of our confusion has to do with the fact that we tend to use "the world" and "the earth" as though they were synonyms. The earth is merely one of the stages on which the drama of the world is enacted. From the Olympian point of view, the end of a world isn't a tragedy. Everything has its ?ld. Even the gods have their time. Even the dinosaurs had an "Age" so the toymakers tell us. The word for "world", in every language, is invariably linked to the notion of time. Arabic duniya, "the present (world)", Hebrew olam "eternity", Latin mundus, originally a division into sections (of time), like the Greek kosmos. Religion is always, sooner or later, part of that chronometry.

It amazes me that people, especially gullible Xtians, can be so blind as to expect everything to go on as it has done for millions of years when the end has, in fact, arrived. By now it should be clear even to rotting elephants and establishment flakes that the fulfillment of the prophesies is at hand. Even technocratic corporationism concedes that any time between now and the early 21st Century pollution, population, drought, disease and famine will have hit their strides (the "four horsemen" as the four elements: polluted air, sewage-laden water, barren earth, radiocative fire). Therefore 2000 also marks the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and the official end of the Piscean "Age of Jesus". After that date the Christians (all of whom by then will have been swept up into the arms of their Redeemer) will find themselves, or so asserts self-styled Neo-Xtian, Constance Cumbey, "preserved in their own bubble of spiritual sterility on the dimensional shelf of an alternate reality," where they may eternally contemplate the wonder of their salvation. Meanwhile, mankind's post-holocaustic, enlightened remnant (should such a remnant, by any miracle, remain) will be free to move ahead...to? Incidentally, by the word "holocaust" I do not refer to war but to the destruction of the biosphere by the ravages of unchecked human growth.

For remarks on the return of Christ or "Second Coming" (see PAROUSIA). Meanwhile, the elect, who are still being sacrificed, already inhabit the New Jerusalem. The safe and sound remainder are not saved at all, despite their belief. They call themselves Xtians, but they are Philistines. The zealous guardians of the faith are precisely those about whom Matthew was shouting: "Not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!", and of whom Mark said, "But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Those who remain are increasingly damned to the hell that earth is henceforth becoming. September 13, 1988 was the last day before it would be too late to begin the task of repairing the biosphere and reversing daily descent to terracide. So the jubilant laughter of Whisenant's scoffers begins to sound increasingly hollow, doesn't it?

 Obviously, there are many of us who, though raised in the Xtian tradition, can view the Apocalyptic experience which the world is undergoing even now, without falling gibbering to our knees in a final paroxysm of millennial conversion. . . No matter what happens henceforth, will retain our Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Pagan allegiances and avoid the horror of "Salvation."

Other cultures are more confrontational. Coinciding with the Xtian Apocalypse is the Hopi ending of the "Fourth World". In their system, evolution produces new strengths but also creates new bad habits which must periodically be burned away. Those who have not been corrupted will become the seed people of the next world. Hindus and Yogis (q.v.) rather than living in the world, tend to think of themselves as living in an "age" - at present, that age is the evil "Kali Yuga" (quite similar, in fact, to our own "apocalyptic era" and not necessarily lengthier). The Chinese also live in an older world. As of this writing (1988), this is the year 4686 for them. And for the Jews it's 5748. But the Mayans (q.v.) dwell in almost inconceivably vast ages, called baktuns and the current one ends in 2012, our time. The "Harmonic Convergence" of July, 1987, marked the entry, for the Mayans, into the final lustrum of the penultimate 20-year period, before the "hotting up" time of 1992, which is the beginning of the final 20 years of a 160,000 year cycle!

The "world" is, in a very real sense, however, the creation of those who inhabit it. Thus, when our forefathers created the United States, they quite deliberately and correctly referred to this as a "new world" and gave the Great Seal the designation NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM ("New Order of the Ages"), which you can still read on every dollar bill. But every maker of a "new" world, whether secular or religious, brings in his own "Age." The makers of the R_publique Fran_aise, after the Revolution of 1789, even came up with a brand new calendar to mark their "new age," complete with new names for the months. Anton LaVey, high priest of the "San Francisco Church of Satan", proclaimed 1966 as the beginning of the "New Satanic Age". Jesus Christ, arriving at the beginning of the Piscean Age, brought with him an automatic 2000-year non-renewable lease on time, which runs out in this century, the beginning of the Aquarian Age. Magicians also fabricate their own elaborate times - Aleister Crowley, for instance, began his "Age of Horus" in 1904. Moreover, although it might be expected to have ended at his death in 1947, his followers, seeing him as an immortal, still maintain Crowley's "Thelemic" calendar in that system, 1996 C.E. would be AN 72.

Crowley's aeon was itself superseded in 1947 (the year of the saucers) when the doorway to the Hell of Universe B was opened by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, whence the "Forgotten Ones" are now penetrating this world.

In 1980 Mickey Mouse and Jesus joined forces to end personal liberty in the United States (the end of the Democratic Party forever). In 1983 the Hopis announced the end of the 5th World - henceforth man would be obliged to boost his own stock, somehow. In July of 1987, the world entered the final lustrum of the penultimate katun of the Mayan aeon - another time of tribulation. 1992 was the beginning of yet another 20-year battle of armageddon. On January 6, 1999 Julian Day 2,415,195, the world will end by Nostradamus's calculation. Few will notice, perhaps, sind the "end" refers merely to the official passing of the Galilean Age and the world will be so desperately struggling to survive that there will be little time for outmoded messiahs.

Zoroaster, who died in 1000 B.C., will be reborn and complete the end of futility and Ahriman's rule. His seed at the bottom of a lake, it was prophesied, would thrice conceive maidens at three millennial points. The final chapter in the Zoroastrian cycle and yet another eschaton in our time.

Finally, it should be noted, in 2012, Terence McKenna's Timescape reaches Absolute Zero, the point of infinite novelty (See AUTOPOETIC LAPIS). And, interestingly, Jung also predicted the outer limit as occurring approximately fifty years after his death, which was in 1961.

You will understand that these 'end of the world' dates constitute a map of reality, but are obviously not Reality itself (apart from the fact that there is no "reality", as such). One doesn't necessarily visit every town on the map. We can choose to live out our allotted span to 1999 or 2012, and perhaps save the world, after all, or we can commit mass suicide beforehand in any of a hundred different ways, thus escaping the horror that is building up. The date of the Apocalypse isn't important. What matters is its immediacy. We have to understand that we've reached the outer limit of our dimension - THERE IS NO FUTURE - or at least very little. Like the amoeba in his drop of water it's time to turn away from the edge and move back to the center.

At any rate, by now it should be clear that we're moving quickly, not only metaphysically and synchronistically, but literally into the charged nexus of all the "ending aeons", into a kind of central transformer which is approaching its limit like an overworked fuse. The task of the archons of the ending aeons is to guide the confused through the wreckage of our disintegrating society.

(See also: APO PANTAS KAKODAIMONES! , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Siddhi

Siddhi literally means absolute or total understanding; enlightenment (a state of being "Buddha", also called "Siddha"). Additionally, the word is frequently (Siddhis in plural) used to mean the paranormal powers possessed by saints, mystics, mantriks, and tantriks. The origin is from Sanskrit. [The word is accepted in New English Oxford Dictionary].€€€

(See also: Siddhi , Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Science:

Accumulated and accepted knowledge that has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work, life or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound or philosophical knowledge, especially knowledge obtained and tested through the use of the scientific method.

(See also: Science , Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Christianity

Major world religion whose development was begun by Plato 300 BC in the School of Philosphers in Athens. It was more fully developed in the fourth century AD when the Emperor Constantine established a universal (Catholic) church. At this time, the belief that Jesus the Nazarite was the promised Messiah or Christ of Israel was accepted, along with a set of books, known as the New Testament. (See Christianity)

(See also: Christianity , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Evolution :

Evolution

As the word is used in theosophy it means the "unwrapping," "unfolding," "rolling out" of latent powers and faculties native to and inherent in the entity itself, its own essential characteristics, or more generally speaking, the powers and faculties of its own character: the Sanskrit word for this last conception is svabhava. Evolution, therefore, does not mean merely that brick is added to brick, or experience merely topped by another experience, or that variation is superadded on other variations  - not at all; for this would make of man and of other entities mere aggregates of incoherent and unwelded parts, without an essential unity or indeed any unifying principle.

In theosophy evolution means that man has in him (as indeed have all other evolving entities) everything that the cosmos has because he is an inseparable part of it. He is its child; one cannot separate man from the universe. Everything that is in the universe is in him, latent or active, and evolution is the bringing forth of what is within; and, furthermore, what we call the surrounding milieu, circumstances  - nature, to use the popular word  - is merely the field of action on and in which these inherent qualities function, upon which they act and from which they receive the corresponding reaction, which action and reaction invariably become a stimulus or spur to further manifestations of energy on the part of the evolving entity.

There are no limits in any direction where evolution can be said to begin, or where we can conceive of it as ending; for evolution in the theosophical conception is but the process followed by the centers of consciousness or monads as they pass from eternity to eternity, so to say, in a beginningless and endless course of unceasing growth.

Growth is the key to the real meaning of the theosophical teaching of evolution, for growth is but the expression in detail of the general process of the unfolding of faculty and organ, which the usual word evolution includes. The only difference between evolution and growth is that the former is a general term, and the latter is a specific and particular phase of this procedure of nature.

Evolution is one of the oldest concepts and teachings of the archaic wisdom, although in ancient days the concept was usually expressed by the word emanation. There is indeed a distinction, and an important one, to be drawn between these two words, but it is a distinction arising rather in viewpoint than in any actual fundamental difference. Emanation is a distinctly more accurate and descriptive word for theosophists to use than evolution is, but unfortunately emanation is so ill-understood in the Occident, that perforce the accepted term is used to describe the process of interior growth expanding into and manifesting itself in the varying phases of the developing entity.

Theosophists, therefore, are, strictly speaking, rather emanationists than evolutionists; and from this remark it becomes immediately obvious that the theosophist is not a Darwinist, although admitting that in certain secondary or tertiary senses and details there is a modicum of truth in Charles Darwin's theory adopted and adapted from the Frenchman Lamarck. The key to the meaning of evolution, therefore, in theosophy is the following: the core of every organic entity is a divine monad or spirit, expressing its faculties and powers through the ages in various vehicles which change by improving as the ages pass. These vehicles are not physical bodies alone, but also the interior sheaths of consciousness which together form man's entire constitution extending from the divine monad through the intermediate ranges of consciousness to the physical body. The evolving entity can become or show itself to be only what it already essentially is in itself  - therefore evolution is a bringing out or unfolding of what already preexists, active or latent, within. (See also Involution)

See also: Evolution , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Alchemy:

An ancient "psuedo-science" commonly recalled for experiments to transmute base metals into gold, the formulation of a universal cure to remedy all known diseases, the indefinite extension of life through chemical and magical means, and the production of artificial life forms in a laboratory setting.

Richly illustrated in symbolism and steeped in arcane traditions, the practice of alchemy eventually led to the formation of accepted sciences such as chemistry. Today, sometimes regarded as a symbolic philosophy for the evolution of the human spirit from 'base man' to 'enlightened man' through the use of alchemical symbolism and imagery.

(See also: Alchemy , Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

Subconscious In The Secret Doctrine, used for a degree of consciousness less evolved than that with which we are familiar. Generally today, psychic researchers and psychoanalysts define it as a kind of mental action not yet revealed to ordinary consciousness and not easily apparent to introspection.

Our own consciousness is known by experience; that of others is inferred from analogy and from its results. In the same way, our conduct is found to be largely influenced by something which we must presume to be a conscious intelligence, yet of which we are not aware by actual experience.

We cannot get a clear definition of this until we have analyzed the concept of consciousness more fully, as is done in Hindu systems. But, as a practical question, our mental nature includes a far larger field than that occupied at any one time by the focus of attention. Subconscious may merely mean behind conscious; but if it taken to mean below, the expression is unfortunate as implying lower and more sinister regions of our mentality; and this indeed is actually the region studied and accepted by prominent modern psychoanalysts.

(See also: Subconscious , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

A Dream Dictionary including dreams about:

Cries, Criminal, Crippled , Crochet Work, Crockery, Crocodile, Cross, Cross Roads, Cross-bones, Croup, Crow, Crowd, Crown, Crucifix, Crucifixion , Cruelty, Crust, Crutches, Crying , Crystal, Cuckoo, Cucumber, Cunning, Cupboard , Curbstone

For more dream interpretation, see: Dream Dictionary

For more about dreams, see: Dreams.

Agastya: (Sanskrit) One of 18 celebrated Saiva siddhas (adepts), and accepted as the first grammarian of Tamil language. He is said to have migrated from North India to the South. His name appears in the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas and was known to ancient Indonesians. See: siddha.

(See also: Agastya , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Mukti - liberation from material existence.

There are five types of liberation:

·      sarupya (obtaining the same form as Bhagavan) ,

·      samipya (living in close proximity to Bhagavan) ,

·      salokya (living on the same planet as Bhagavan) ,

·      sarsti (having the same opulence as Bhagavan) , and

·      sayujya (becoming one with Sri Bhagavan either by merging into His body or by merging into His brahma effulgence).

The last type is vehemently rejected by the bhaktas.

Although the other four types of mukti are sometimes accepted by bhaktas as they are not entirely incompatible with bhakti, they are never accepted by those who are fixed on attaining unalloyed love for Sri Krsna in Vraja.

(See also: Mukti , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A dictionary of Parapsychology. Please note that words in grey are hyperlinked to a corresponding archive with articles related to that particular topic.

A Dream Dictionary including dreams about:

Archbishop, Architect, Arm, Aroma, Arrested, Arrow, Art Gallery, Ascend, Asceticism, Ashes, Asia, Asp, Asparagus, Ass , Assassin, Assistance, Astral, Asylum, Atlas, Atonement , Attic, Attorney, Auction, Augur, August , Aunt, Aura, Author, Automobile, Autumn, Awake, Axe

For more dream interpretation, see: Dream Dictionary

For more about dreams, see: Dreams.

St. Germain, the Count of. Referred to as an enigmatical personage by modern writers. Frederic II., King of Prussia, used to say of him that he was a man whom no one had ever been able make out. Many are his "biographies", and each is wilder than the other.

By some he was regarded as an incarnate god, by others as a clever Alsatian Jew. One thing is certain, Count de St. Germain - whatever his real patronymic may have been - had a right to his name and title, for he had bought a property called San Germano, in the Italian Tyrol, and paid the Pope for the title. He was uncommonly handsome, and his enormous erudition and linguistic capacities are undeniable, for he spoke English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Swedish, Danish, and many Slavonian and Oriental languages, with equal facility with a native.

He was extremely wealthy, never received a sou from anyone - in fact never accepted a glass of water or broke bread with anyone made most extravagant presents of superb jewellery to all his friends, even to the royal families of Europe. His proficiency in music was marvellous; he played on every instrument, the violin being his favourite. "St. Germain rivalled Paganini himself", was said of him by an octogenarian Belgian in 1835, after hearing the "Genoese maestro". "It is St. Germain resurrected who plays the violin in the body of an Italian skeleton ", exclaimed a Lithuanian baron who had heard both.

He never laid claim to spiritual powers, but proved to have a right to such claim. He used to pass into a dead trance from thirty-seven to forty-nine hours without awakening, and then knew all he had to know, and demonstrated the fact by prophesying futurity and never making a mistake. It is he who prophesied before the Kings Louis XV. and XVI., and the unfortunate Marie Antoinette.

Many were the still living witnesses in the first quarter of this century who testified to his marvellous memory; he could read a paper in the morning and, though hardly glancing at it, could repeat its contents without missing one word days afterwards; he could write with two hands at once, the right hand writing a piece of poetry, the left a diplomatic paper of the greatest importance. He read sealed letters without touching them, while still in the hand of those who brought them to him. He was the greatest adept in transmuting metals, making gold and the most marvellous diamonds, an art, he said, he had learned from certain Brahmans in India, who taught him the artificial crystallisation ("quickening") of pure carbon. As our Brother Kenneth Mackenzie has it: - "

 In 1780, when on a visit to the French Ambassador to the Hague, he broke to pieces with a hammer a superb diamond of his own manufacture, the counterpart of which, also manufactured by himself, he had just before sold to a jeweller for 5500 louis d’or". He was the friend and confidant of Count Orloff in 1772 at Vienna, whom he had helped and saved in St. Petersburg in 1762, when concerned in the famous political conspiracies of that time; he also became intimate with Frederick the Great of Prussia.

As a matter of course, he had numerous enemies, and therefore it is not to be wondered at if all the gossip invented about him is now attributed to his own confessions: e.g., that he was over five hundred years old; also, that he claimed personal intimacy "with the Saviour and his twelve Apostles, and that he had reproved Peter for his bad temper " - the latter clashing somewhat in point of time with the former, if he had really claimed to be only five hundred years old. if he said that "he had been born in Chaldea and professed to possess the secrets of the Egyptian magicians and sages ", he may have spoken truth without making any miraculous claim. There are Initiates, and not the highest either, who are placed in a condition to remember more than one of their past lives.

But we have good reason to know that St. Germain could never have claimed "personal intimacy " with the Saviour. How ever that may be, Count St. Germain was certainly the greatest Oriental Adept Europe has seen during the last centuries. But Europe knew him not. Perchance some may recognise him at the next Terreur which will affect all Europe when it comes, and not one country alone.

(See also: St , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)