Legend
< An Oriental Trance Medium (continued from page 3-174) >
again, they had benefited any by good deeds, and had been just and holy, they were rewarded according to their deserts. Of those who died very young, and lived but a little time, he related other things not worth mentioning; but of impiety and piety towards the gods and parents, and of suicide, he told the more remarkable retributions. . . . . . . .
After they arrive here it is necessary for them to go direct to Lachesis. Then a certain prophet first of all ranges them in order, and afterwards taking the lots, and the models of lives, from the knees of Lachesis, and ascending a lofty tribunal, he says :— “ The speech of the Virgin Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity : Souls of a day ! The beginning of another period of men of mortal race. The demon shall not receive you as his lot, but you shall choose the demon ; he who draws the first, let him first make choice of a life, to which he must of necessity adhere. Virtue is independent, of which everyone shall partake, more or less, according as he honors or dishonors her : the cause is in him who makes the choice, and the Deity is blameless.” When he had said these things, he threw the lots on all of them, and each took up the one which fell beside him, except himself, for he was not permitted ; and when each had taken it, he knew what number he had drawn. After this he placed on the ground before them the models of lives, many more than those we see at present: and they were all various, for there was lives of all sorts of animals, and human lives of every kind : and among these there were tyrannies also, some of them perpetual, and others destroyed in the midst of their greatness, and ending in poverty, banishment, and want. There were also lives of renowned men, some for their appearance as to beauty, strength and agility ; and others for their descent, and the virtues of their ancestors. There were the lives of renowned women in the same manner. But there was no disposition of soul among these models, because of necessity, on choosing a different life, it becomes different itself. As to other things, riches and poverty, sickness and health, they are mixed with one another, and some were in a middle station between these.
At that time, therefore, the messenger from the other world further told how that the prophet spoke thus :— “ Even to him who comes last, if he chooses with judgment, and lives consistently, there is prepared a desirable life, and by no means bad. Let neither him who is first be negligent in his choice, nor let him that is last, despair.”
Of the water of Lethe all of them must necessarily drink a certain quantity, and such as are not kept by prudence drink more than they ought, and he who from time to time drinks forgets everything. And, after they were laid asleep, and midnight was approaching, there was thunder and an earthquake, and they were thence on a sudden carried upwards, some one way and some another, approaching to generation like stars. And he himself was forbidden to drink of the water. Where, however, and in what manner he came into his body, he was entirely ignorant, but suddenly looking up in the morning, he saw himself already laid on the funeral pile.
Revivals: Their Cause and Cure
...
An Ancient Tablet
The National Library in Paris has a sandstone tablet said to have come from Thebes, from the temple of the god Khonsa, the second person of the Theban trinity. The illustrations art the king offering incense to the ark of the god Khonsa, borne on the shoulders of twelve priests, sandalled for a journey, and a priest receiving a similar ark on its return. The god is called the driver away of demons. The king is Rameses XII., who flourished about 1200 B. C.
“The inscription, which is long, states that the Princess of Bekhten (probably Ecbatana) being the younger sister of Rameses XII’s wife, Sun-of-the-Graces, and a malady having penetrated her limbs, her father sent to the King of Egypt for a doctor. Throth-in feast was sent, selected from the college, and the mystery doctors of the palace, He found her seized by a spirit, and he, himself, unable to fight with him, the father sent to the king again. The king went to Khonsa, and prevailed on him to have one of his forms sent, first giving this form his divine virtue four times (a figure four times repeated resembling as much as anything an old fashioned S, with a long loop above and one below). This sign comes as near magnetism as anything; it represents the spine; guardian gods exert it upon kings and other respectable people. After a year and five months traveling with one large and five little arks, a chariot and many horsemen, this god arrives; the father goes out with nobles and soldiers to meet him, and falls even on his face with appropriate speech. This good goes to the Princess, exercises the power according to this form for her, and in a moment she is well.
“Then this spirit,” (the characters indicate that he is glorified or illuminated and august, holding in his hand the whip of rule,) “who had been with her, saith before Khonsa, ‘Thou hast come in peace, great god, who drivest out the demon (or diakka). Thine is the land of Bekhten, thy slaves its men; I am thy slave, I will go to the place whence I came to set thy heart at rest as to thy coming to her. Will thy holiness order a feast day to me from the Prince of Bekhten?’ Then this god deigned to say to this prophet, ‘Let the Prince of Bekhten make a great offering before this spirit.’ While Khonsa was doing these things with the spirit, the Prince of Bekhten stood with his soldiers, terrified exceedingly. Then the Prince of Bekhten made a great offering before Khonsa and the spirit— made a feast day for them. And the spirit went in peace whithersoever he pleased, by the order of Khonsa.
“The Prince thought first he would keep so useful a god, but after three years and three months, seeing him in a dream coming out of his shrine as a hawk of gold, and flying away into Egypt, he thought better of it, and sent him back with many presents, troops and horsemen.
In the British Museum is a large stone tablet with thirty-six lines of hieroglyphics, one side broken off two-thirds of the way down. These are mainly invocations to divinities or genii, that the departed one may be preserved from all sorts of malevolent things in that under sphere which is so well described and depicted in the Book of the Dead and on the better sarcophagi, as to remind one of Dante with Dore’s illustrations. At the twenty-third of these lines begins an invocation to a sacred ‘Lamb, son of a ram, who art sucking thy mother sheep, let not the departed be stung by any serpent, any serpentess, any scorpion, any reptile; let not any one of them master his limbs; let not any death, any deathess enter into him; let not haunt him the shadow of any spirit.’
“The dead Egyptian either rose again, like the sun, or he was struck with the second death, (compare Rev. ii : II) according to the Book of the Dead, after which he was called a death, or a dead spirit The Book of the Dead has prayers to prevent this second death. Although these deaths suffer flame, tortures, and their bodies are pastures for demons, yet they may enter the bodies of others. There are prayers against this in the Book of the Dead, and elsewhere.
“On the twenty-sixth line of this tablet we read: ‘Oh thou who enterest, enter thou not into the limbs of the departed,’ and in the thirty-first, ‘Let not haunt him the influence of any death or deathness.’ These amiable companions are also mentioned in the incantation on the first page of the Papyras Ebers. In line thirty-second of this tablet is an exorcism, ‘I have repeated the words over the sacred herbs put in all the comers of the house. I have sprinkled the whole house with the juice of these herbs during the night; when comes the dawn the person buried is in his place.’ This is the way we now protect a house against spirits: Last Spring, in Florence, a priest came to the house and sprinkled it with holy water, ‘repeating words,’ and so laying the ghosts.”
Editor's notes
Sources
-
Spiritual Scientist, v. 4, No. 15, December 14, 1876, p. 164