PREFACE.
“Know thyself” is a maxim that grows deep with meaning as we study the human body, not only in its relations to matter but as connected with that mysterious something called the“ human soul.”
That soul and spirit, or that which constitutes the “J,” the “you” or the “me,” are not one and the same is more than hinted at in the scripture which speaks of “dividing asunder soul and spirit ”—and a recent writer upon this subject declares the soul to be the body of the spirit.
Or, in other words, when the incomprehensible selfhood which allies us to the Infinite is clothed with both soul and body we call it a “human being”—a man, woman or child; but when clothed only with soul we call it a “spirit.”
The Bible tells us that there is a natural body and a spiritual body, and also that Death is to be destroyed.
Death, as we understand it, is the separation of the soul and its occupant from the physical body, the latter going to decay and the former passing beyond the ken of our physical senses.
The Christian world has taught the resurrection of the physical body as the abode of its former occupant, but Science has laughed Theology out of countenance in reference to this belief. And yet is it not possible that there may be something which Science has not caught sight of—a wonderful reality lying enshadowed under this old theological idea?
May not the mistake have been more in the manner of conception as to the how than in the matter of fact as to its ultimate reality?
The writer above referred to claims that the soul is matter so refined as to be beyond all known scientific tests and yet a body held together by its own laws, and, as such is the germ of the to-be-resurrected body, says that if by any means this soul—this body of refined matter—should become disorganized, destroyed as a body, then there can be no resurrection for that spirit.
This idea brings the meaning of the death of the soul within the scope of the human understanding, and, being true, would prove that such a being, whatever might be its fate, could have no part in the future glories of our redeemed world, which the Scriptures plainly indicate shall be the inheritance of redeemed souls, or of those who are clothed not only in souls but in redeemed, resurrected bodies.
A venerable thinker and friend of the writer says that love (sex-love) is the bottom subject of civilization —that there is no subject so important and none so little understood; but never having been studied by law-makers nor institution-makers as one of the mighty forces of civilization what can we expect from society but what we see—that there can be no true progress toward general happiness till the true natural relation between the sexes is settled by a pro-and-con. discussion of all its allied topics—that what is wanted is a full discussion and not a skirmish into one department and then into action.
And, referring to what I am now revising for republication, he adds: “When you have mouldered into dust some person will read your pamphlet, and, armed with its truths, will go into the discussion and help to settle it.”
We will hope that in this age of accelerated thought it will not take so long to reach the point as our white-haired friend seems to suppose, and, as he claims that man is not fit to discuss this subject unless he has a profound worship of woman as such, and unless, being beyond the age of passion, he can speak as a philosopher—all of which is true—it follows that women must take the lead in this great work.
Now, it is not proposed to attempt even to grapple with the wide range of thought connected with creative love, but only of that which has a bearing upon the development of the soul, or spirit body, together with its renewing, or regenerating, power upon the physical j and however plainly it may be necessary to speak of life’s relations, my gray hairs, my forty years of motherhood and the importance of the subject must be my justification.
Jesus is recorded as saying: “Straight is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.” It is true; and he or she who seeks sex relations with no higher end in view than pleasure can never enter through the gate to the way of life. Let use be the end and pleasure the incident, and pray that the Divine Master of Life may show you the DIVINEST USES. L. W.
From Generation to Regeneration;
OR, THE
PLAIN GUIDE TO NATURALISM.
“ The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death.”
1st Corinthians, XV: 26
We have in this quotation from what is called “Sacred Writ” a declaration so bold, so startling, that even those who have the most implicit faith in Bible authority have been utterly unable to accept it in its literal sense. They claim that Jesus brought life and immortality to light, but do not seem to have the faintest idea that he revealed a natural law which will finally be the death of Death itself, leaving the race in the possession of perfected and immortal bodies.
With many the declarations of Scripture are without weight—are considered of no account—but the spiritually minded, though repudiating the theologies of the day and rejecting the Bible as authority, concede that it is one of the many books in which fundamental truths find expression, and a few accept as one of such truths Paul’s declaration that Death is to be destroyed; while others, who love to study Nature’s analogies, are tracing her laws to the same grand result.
In elucidating the law leading to regeneration it were well to use both Scripture and analogy, mingling them as they harmonize or as One throws light upon the other. Were we as familiar with the sacred writings of the heathen, so called, as we are with our own, we should doubtless find therein the same truths that we find in the Bible, the difference consisting only in forms and similitudes of speech adapted to people of different customs and habits; while in both they are but the reflex or shadow of truths that exist in Nature’s great volume.
If the reader will study the past history of our planet it will be found that Nature’s efforts are Nature’s prophecies. To illustrate: Men of intuitive souls and practical genius, sensing the uses to which Nature’s forces can be applied, will do their utmost to actualize their ideals. If the right conditions do not exist they strive to change them, working, often for years, with unflagging energy and amid great difficulties, and all for what to the masses is only a dream—a whim of a disordered brain—an impossibility. But he knows better; he has seen and sensed the soul of that which he seeks to embody, to make tangible. He may never be able to reach, the desired end; he may make mistakes as to the method of reaching it j but he knows that it is possible and that if he fails somebody, sometime, is going to succeed—and so he toils on. But would he do this, could he do it, were it not for the sublime evidence of the unseen that is within him? Assuredly not; and every effort he puts forth is a prophecy of what is yet to be.
If man will make no effort in a direction in which he sees no possibility of success shall we accuse Nature, or God in nature, of the folly of doing so I Shall we dare to say that the potent forces which are the life of
Nature give indications pointing to a certain result, when such a result under any and all conditions is an utter impossibility? Rather let us sit reverently at the feet of our common mother, listen to her prophetic words and strive to discover the conditions under which her prophecies may become certainties, and to obey the law leading to their fulfillment.
Yes, Nature’s efforts are Nature’s prophecies. She is. not so blindly foolish as to try to do that which, conditions being right, she cannot accomplish; and, judging from past results, she seems to carry her work to a given point and then to wait for man to interpret her language and co-operate with her in its further development. She commenced making apples, but had reached only to the wild, sour crab apple, when man took hold with her, gave her improved conditions, and he has been richly rewarded. The same is true of the potato and of other articles of food. Man has thus profited by Nature’s hints—but in how few things compared with what he must ere the earth is subdued to his liking, or he himself becomes what he desires to be and is capable of becoming.
Nature does try to renew the cycle of man’s life— tries to reconnect him with the worn and fast-breaking lines which unite him with matter; tries to prevent the crumbling of his physical habitation; tries to make him young again. See, she has succeeded in restoring to that man the clear, active sight of other days; his glasses have been thrown aside and he can read without them—can see as well as he could at twenty years of age. Look, there is another whose hair is resuming its natural color, and another whose teeth are being restored. Only now and then one with faculties so renewed, but enough to show that Paul’s declaration will yet be a reality; enough to show (if Nature’s analogies are not false) that the oft-repeated wish, “Oh, could I begin life anew with the experience I have had,” will yet be realized. Yes, this effort to renew life’s cycle is a prophecy—one of Nature’s hints—an index finger pointing to future possibilities.
As another hint—another finger-board pointing the way—we find a universal desire for continued physical life. This desire has existed from generation to generation and from century to century all through the ages. Desire is prayer j continued and intensified it becomes a hunger so accute that it demands a supply and incites to the effort which eventually brings it. To illustrate this point more fully we will go to the realm of flowers and select its queen, the peerless rose. The parent shrub hungers for blossoms and sends out its magnetic prayer to Nature for that which will bring them. Nature responds to that need and yields a supply. But that shrub, or the life within, does not send out one prayer, one magnetic line, to gather to itself other than that which is needed to develop what it has within itself the power of becoming under right conditions. It never asks for the elements that would make an oak, for it has not within itself that which will enable it to become an oak. It has power to ask for that only which will make it a perfect rose—could not feed upon, assimilate anything else if it were given.
Is this true of vegetable life, and shall we, the human —we, who are so much further advanced in the scale of existence—continue to desire that which we have no power ultimately to attain! This desire for continued physical life is so characteristic of the race that the lack of it is considered unnatural; and if the almost universal belief in and desire for a continued existence after the dissolution of the body is counted among the strongest analogical evidences that there is such a state of existence, why should not this inextinguishable desire for continued physical life be counted as evidence that such continuation is a possibility—is among the things that “eye hath not seen, that ear hath not heard” but is beginning to enter into the heart of man to conceive of as part of our future inheritance? Some believe that it is, and this belief is on the increase. Where there was one who dared to hope in this direction twenty years ago there are perhaps a thousand now who are preparing to do battle with grim Death with the full expectation that if they fail they are so paving the way that those who take their places will finally conquer, and regeneration become a fixed fact. But the regeneration which will put our last enemy under our feet must be reached through the continued action of the same law—through the mingling of the same creative, life-giving elements from which generation comes; otherwise it would not be regeneration—generating anew.
The growing belief in the possibility of overcoming Death is also an indication that the time for the commencement of the consummation is close at hand; in illustration of which assertion let us go again to the vegetable kingdom for corroborative evidence. We find that when a tree commences active life in the germ it goes on for a time developing roots, leaves, branches, till finally, when all is ready, it puts forth its blossoms •as the promise of fruitage. The blossom is its first thought, so to speak, that fruit is a possibility, and immediately it goes to work to embody that thought—to perfect itself by bearing fruit.
Are not Nature’s laws uniform in their action, only varying in modes of expression, as manifest through the different orders of life? If so, then the thought of any form of development, when it becomes a fixed and growing belief, must be to the human what the blossom is to the fruit—a pledge of its possibility, yea, of its certainty, when the right conditions exist. The thought of physical immortality is born. True, it has been blighted again, and yet again, but still it reappears as a sure word of prophecy, to which we shall do well to take heed; for the time from blossoming to fruitage is but short compared with that which precedes it in the development of the tree, and the analogy must hold good of the thought blossoms in the human which are to bring this regenerated fruitage.
If the position taken is correct, if that which gives generation will finally bring regeneration, then, as the reader will have perceived, there can be no knowledge of more importance than that which pertains to the law of sex; and those who see and feel this must discuss its relations, even though opposed and denounced by mistaken but honest souls who feel that such discussion tends to increase passional desire. If they will study the laws of mind in its action upon matter those who anticipate such a result will find that their fears are groundless.
In trying to understand the nature and quality of food in its relation to health and disease we feel no more hunger than if we had never talked of these things; and a morbid appetite will find relief by placing the sufferer in the midst of food and teaching self-control, sooner than it otherwise can, for the aura given out in process of cooking can be appropriated directly without taxing the diseased stomach with the labor of preparing it for the system, and this law holds good of sex hunger.
In discussing sex, from the intellectual stand-point, we exchange sex aura through the intellect, and the tendency is the reverse of what has been supposed. Beside, if we would save our children from the impure knowledge that leads to an improper use of sex, thus laying the foundation for disease both of body and mind, we must see to it that they are legitimately instructed. We can keep them from the evils we fear only by teaching them that these organs of the body should be held sacred from all improper use; and we should bring to our aid all the intelligence that we possibly can—should strive to place motives before them that will make them shrink from such improper use as they would shrink from burning coals or red-hot iron. Armed with such knowledge our children would be safe and the venders of obscene literature would be forced to desist from their traffic for lack of purchasers.
But however much this discussion of sex and its laws may be deprecated there are those who have caught glimpses of a higher use therein than the propagative, and they will not, they cannot, rest till the mystery of this higher use is solved. Going back to the time when organized forms first existed upon this planet we find that the highest in the scale of development were crude compared with the lowest of today; not so much, perhaps, in form as in substance, while the distance between them and the highest now upon the earth is so great that we are astonished and naturally ask for the law through which this advance has been made. And upon investigation we learn that sex lies at the base of it all—that the masculine and feminine forces are the factors and sex union the steps in the spiral stairway which Progress has continued to climb even till the present hour; and it is hardly supposable that the greatest blessing which can come to the race through the joint action of these factors has yet been reached; and the more especially when we remember that in each succeeding age of the past they have given us better and still better results; and the problem now to be solved is, What is this greater blessing—this higher use?
In seeking for this solution we find in common use among religionists the word “regeneration” and, knowing that something cannot rest on nothing, we infer that it has a meaning rooted in truth; and as generation is a tangible physical fact why should not regeneration be also? Will Nature never be able to gestate from matter an organized form which she can perpetuate to the same indwelling life, instead of through a succession of lives bearing a like form? The redemption of our bodies! How? Through what law is the Christian idea of God the Creator dying to rise as God the Redeemer, the Renewer, the Regenerator, a shadow of the how f Is there a point to be reached where God, in the union of sex, will cease to create and begin to re-create or renew? Nature, or God in nature, creates through sex, and is it folly to suppose that He may yet redeem, renew, save from death through a more exalted action of the same power? Man casts the seed of grain into the earth and there comes forth the blade, the stalk, and finally the ear to ripen in the summer sun; he casts the seed of his own body into the receptacle that divine wisdom has prepared and in due time there comes forth another human body, and yet we know not the how of all this. We cannot understand why each is produced after its kind; we know not what the life is in the kernel that calls to itself that which will produce the ear upon which come many kernels like unto the original. The wisest minds that ever lived are as much at loss here as are the most ignorant.
But we know that from the joint action of the sex forces there comes a life possessing a given amount of power over matter, and which, in spite of opposing forces, draws to itself a body suited to its use; and we see that this power increases in accelerated ratio as we rise in the scale of being, even till man, as standing at the head, holds a greater control over matter than do all the orders of life beneath him.
We find that in the vegetable kingdom the life within controls matter through the law of attraction. It cannot put forth a hand and take that which it needs, but must draw it from earth and atmosphere through the power of what we call “affinity.” During the first part of its existence the central life gathers faster than opposing forces can scatter, and for a time we have
growth j then there comes a balance between the two, succeeded by excess in waste j decay commences, the life within leaves and the structure is taken to pieces.
In the animal kingdom we find forms of life that move from place to place, instead of being rooted to one spot, and that take by a voluntary act that which is needed to sustain them and to supply waste. But their food being once in the stomach, voluntary control Ceases while through the involuntary action of organic laws we have the same process of growth, balance, excess of waste, dissolution. Man follows the same law, but with such added power of external control that, compared with it, that possessed by the orders of life beneath him sinks into insignificance.
It may be urged that man’s power over the world of matter around him comes from the development of his intellect and holds no relation to the organic law of the physical form through which renewal must come, if at all; and that here he is not equal to some of the orders of life beneath him, either in the amount of matter controlled or in the length of time that he can hold it.
Taking only bulk into consideration this is true. A tree has a much larger body than a man has, and some live hundreds, if not thousands of years, and many animals exceed him both in bulk and years, but form and substance are often greatly at variance. Refine those large bodies till fitted for the habitation of a human soul and would they be any larger than a human body! Roses are very delicate in texture, but, measured according to concentrated fineness, an ounce of rose oil is larger than many roses; and there is more matter in a pound of gold than in a cart load of pumpkins.
Neither can life be measured by length of days. What can a tree know of emotions that press an eternity into an hour! or an animal of the joys that expand human souls till they seem to touch the stars! or of misery that makes human bodies grow old in a night? When these come in for recognition we live longer in a day than they do in years therefore when we consider fineness, and the intensity of the friction to which it is subjected, the amount and the durability of the matter drawn to the human germ is greater than that which comes under the control of any other form of life.
And this wondrous change, this advance in the development of matter, or of spirit through matter, is the result of the continued activities of sex; yet we talk of sex and its desires as merely animal; degrade its high office in the human; despise, tread under foot those of one sex who hold within their forms so much of this creative fire that it bursts the barriers our narrow ideas have set for it; blush before our children when the act which gave them being is mentioned; limit its use to the physically propagative, and thus that which is the source through which life is made manifest becomes an element of disease and death.
It is spirit that giveth life—spirit, or the Ego—the I, which is the indwelling God of the human form sending its forces out through the soul to every portion of the body. How, then, can we expect a fullness of life when, so far as in us lies, we separate these spirit forces from the source through which life in the body comes, which we certainly do by looking upon the sex act as simply animal. This Ego, or I, which we call spirit, is self-respecting and will not send out its best forces—its purest life to permeate an act which is regarded as low It cannot, for the thought of the falsely-educated intellect comes between and shuts back this stronger, purer, healthier life force.
But the mere statement that our estimate of the sex act, or of any act, has something to do with its effect upon ourselves is not enough. We must understand why this is so; and for this purpose it will be necessary to examine certain laws in nature which will not at first seem to have any bearing upon the subject under consideration, to wit: the relation of sex to regeneration.
In the vegetable world we find plants giving off aromas, diffusing an invisible aura which can be sensed only by the organ of smell; yet it is matter and is eliminated by the action of the life thereof upon its body or covering. Increase the action by external pressure, or otherwise, and there is an increase of the aroma or aura. Could such aura be sufficiently condensed it would show the same properties as the plant from which it came, but of a finer quality? because of the activities through which it had passed. This aura, radiating from the plant in all directions, forms its sphere, or atmosphere, and such emanations, blending with those of all other forms of matter, compose the atmosphere of our earth.
If earth, plants, animals, have their spheres, how much more so the human. But we are not yet done with the lower orders of life. To bring the analogies suited to our purpose we must examine the law applying to propagation, gestation and growth. We find that flowers are more beautiful and fruits richer grown in some localities than in others, and that soil, climate and culture have each their influence upon them; but perhaps the animal kingdom will furnish what we need in this direction.
That the senses are the medium through# which changes are wrought upon the elements that enter into the propagative act is shown by Jacob’s experience with the cattle of Laban, the young being ring-streaked, speckled or spotted, as was that which the parents—and more especially the mother—looked upon at the time of conception. Only through the law of sex could this have been effected. The animal does not change its own color through the impression made upon the brain from the colors placed before it, but the thought or feeling of those colors stirs the pulse, thus changing the wave movements of the finer elements which go to make up the germ, and this result is unfolded in the offspring, thus showing that, through the consciousness connected with an organized brain, sex secretions become the medium of change in the animal kingdom.
This is an evidence of the close connection existing between the brain and the sexual organs, and an excessive or perverted use thereof cannot fail to affect the brain to its injury. That there is a reactionary power between them there is too much proof to question, and this power, when rightly understood, can be used as a mutual good, sex giving new life to the brain, and it, in turn, imparting the desired character to the sex secretions.
It seems, then, that change, improvement, can become organic only through the law of sex—that which is cultivated in the parent increasing the natural power of the child. To repeat: improvement can become orgamic—and thus the base for still greater improvement —only through the law of sex. There is no other way possible.
As practical illustration of this law it were well to give the thoughtful reader the following facts: A gentleman bought a Newfoundland puppy, and taught it to carry and fetch to and from the butcher’s; but it was a work of time and patience. He appealed to hope by reward and to fear through blows, and many a beating the poor brute got before she learned to let her master’s meat alone and wait for her own. She grew to be a fine, large animal, but this discipline so changed the sex secretions of her body that she brought forth puppies so improved in their nature that they learned readily to do what had cost their mother so much suffering to understand.
How wide the range of possibilities in the animal kingdom we know not, but if it is true of the sensations caused by the action of one brain organ upon the body it is true of them all; and if true of the animal it must be of the human. With an example like the preceding before us we should know that it could not be otherwise, even had we not such abundant evidence in proof.
But in the human we have a much greater number of brain organs to deal with, and each is subject to an equally greater number of modifications. In the animal referred to hope and fear were modified each by the other; in the human this would be equally true, and these would also be modified by each and every other organ or combination of organs in the brain; and, still further, each human being having both its material and its spiritual side, the modifications would be increased by the separate or joint action of all of these, while their balanced or equal action through all the organs of the brain will give the best manhood and womanhood possible.
It has been the work of the ages of the past to bring us thus far, and this work will most assuredly go on till such balance is attained; and only as our conflicts, our experiences, our successes or our failures, aid in this are they of any real benefit to us. Indeed, the successes which do not aid but rather retard growth toward this balance are our real failures, while failures that tend to growth and harmony are our true success. The sacred writer declares that u God made man in his own image, male and female, and it is evident that only by the union of sex forces can spirit take a tangible form through which intelligence can manifest itself. If this declaration of Scripture be true, then sex inheres in God—he is its source, as he is the source of all life; and spiritual life, as proceeding from the same fountain, must be dependent upon the same law of inter-action, for its unfolding.
The law of sex is ever true to the conditions through which it acts. Its results are to these as clay in the hands of the potter. If these forces mingle in the pollen of the flower, a flower is the result; if united in the acorn, the product is an oak; if in the seed of an animal, an animal of the self-same species is born. The human follows the same law, with modifications in the result equal to the greater range of powers.
Soil, climate, culture, modify the vegetable; so of the animal; but still more so of the human, for here we must have soil, climate, culture suitable to our mental, moral and spiritual natures, as well as the material, and these must also be composed of the two elements or there is no life-giving power therein. The spheres of men and women, being composed of imperceptible emanations from their real selves, are as much sexed as are their bodies, and as it is these spheres which make up the soil and climate suited to the mental, moral and spiritual nature, it follows that the character of the human must be modified thereby; and if there are no breaks in the universal law—no lost links in the infinite chain—then, as our bodies, Which are the habitation of our souls exist through the law of sex, and as these bodies are the base upon which the mental and moral rest, it follows that they also need the two elements in union for the sustenance that gives growth.
We find also that spirit acts upon matter only through organized forms of matter which owe their existence to this same law of sex; and may we not conclude that it is equally dependent upon these same two forces in union for its growth in the direction of matter?
“For its growth in the direction of matter ! What do we mean by that V’ We will try to tell you. We have said in our preface that when the indwelling life is clothed in both soul and body we call it a human being; but when clothed only with soul we call it a spirit— consequently growing toward matter is adding to soul —increasing its power.
Ice and fire cannot unite j contact must destroy one or the other; and so of the life within the soul and forms of matter that we can see and handle, but with this difference. While in the illustration given it may be either the ice or the fire which will be destroyed, in #he contact of the indwelling life which is sometimes called “the God within” with forms of matter the latter must always yield.
God is called a spirit, and it is again declared that spirit is God. He is also called a consuming fire, and the question is, How can God act through us upon these—our bodies—without destroying them?
Let us see if we cannot solve the problem. Put ice in an iron pot and fire underneath, and the heat walks through the interstices between the particles of iron and mingling with the ice changes it to water.
We may have just enough of this heat to dissolve the ice or it may be increased till it brings the water to the boiling point, but beyond that it escapes in steam, becomes invisible, showing that it can endure only so much of the firy effect without destruction, not only as ice but as water. Now suppose we call ice matter—spirit, fire; let water in its various degrees of heat correspond to manifest forms of matter which, organized, we call soul. Permeate iron with a given amount of heat and it too becomes liquid, but that which would reduce a pound of it to this state would lick up many times its bulk in water, or consume to ashes many times its weight in wood. Even so it may be possible to disorganize the soul through the intense and continued action of superior force, but that pressure which would or could do this would consume, perhaps, a world of forms of matter, such as we can see with the physical eye; consequently the soul is mediator between God and matter, the veil behind which he can hide his face as he refines, purifies and subdues to himself.
But for want of a better term we have called the soul a “condition of organized matter,” and we have made it the channel through which the inmost, the living spiritual identity, can act upon the outmost, the external, the physical world. It follows, then, as a logical sequence that the finer, the stronger, the more there is to the soul the more power shall we be able to exercise over matter, provided we know how to bring the body into harmonious relations with it We begin to perceive that growth toward matter, or adding to soul, means something, and if it can be shown that sex has something to do in this growth it may come to be considered as a subject worthy of investigation even by those who are now so ignorant or so impure that they shrink from it as filthy.
We have found that the different conditions of matter will each permit of a given degree of heat and still remain unchanged, but that beyond this disorganization takes place; this is also true of spirit in its action upon matter—spirit as acting through the great over-soul through which comes to our souls, or through them to us, all that we can know of God.
Each grade of development will mingle with just so much of this spirit and retain its form, but more changes, destroys it. It is said that all matter contains latent heat. Is it not true that all matter contains latent spirit—is not God everywhere? And being everywhere is not the soul which connects him with matter everywhere? Pscychometry connects us with “the soul of things.”
Through the inter-action of soul spirit enters matter no seek its own, and here is where the law of death comes in; the latent element of spirit existing in matter unites with its active counterpart therein and the balance which had before existed is destroyed, but the spirit that leaves the material form has, through its increased covering of soul, grown toward matter. This is true of all forms in general and of the human in particular; for it is our own spirits acting through our souls that gather to ourselves the latent powers existing in matter.
If this can go on forever without culminating in a union in which every particle of matter is perfectly counterparted by spirit, then Death can never be destroyed; but if this union can be reached, regeneration is possible, and through it we shall be able to stand upon the prostrate form of the king of terrors and reign triumphant.
Life, or the base upon which it rests, as we have already seen, comes from sex union, but the character of the life depends upon the nature or condition of the elements thus uniting. Phrenologists place at the base of the brain the organ which represents sex and from which the latter draws its strength; and the brain being double through the right and left lobes we may, if we will, connect all above with all below—may so permeate the sex secretions with the top brain power that our children will rise up and call us blessed.
But this desirable result cannot be reached if we look upon sex as only animal; for as sex life draws its power, but not its character, from its representative brain organ, the latter depends upon those other portions of the brain that are called into action when we think of or enter into the sex relation. The fact that the organ representing sex lies at the lowest portion of the brain is sometimes quoted as evidence that sex love is low. This arises from a mistaken idea of its nature. Being the foundation of all other loves its place is at the base, for the superstructure to rest upon; but so far as the moral or spiritual is concerned it not only has no character but has no regard for it unless so permeated with the aura coming from the upper portions of the brain that they hold the controlling power.
Were this not true, men who count themselves respectable could never mingle with prostitutes and women could never sell themselves for money. We give it its character by the estimate we place upon it. Perhaps it were well to repeat here in order to make the law clear.
Life comes from sex union—all life, mental, moral and spiritual, as well as physical—but the character of each phase depends upon the elements that have been distilled by brain action into the fountain from which any particular sex battery draws its power. In the human this fountain lies at the base of the brain; is placed there in the natural order of development that it may gather from all above it; and if we despise sex love, look upon it as merely an animal indulgence, we, by such estimate, make it such, for we thus shut the door between it and that which could render it otherwise.
It is said, “As a man thinketh, so is he,” and it is in a sense true; therefore, if we look upon sex as simply of the flesh—if in thought and feeling we separate it from reverence, spirituality, all that goes to connect us with things high and holy—how can we expect other than animal results?
The low idea makes the act low and the product low —and the fact of legal sanction cannot change this inexorable law. True, one who has complied with the legal form has satisfied his conscience, and the moral effect will not be as bad as though he had violated it; but the low idea will affect the offspring, making them lower in the scale of development, and it will have the same effect upon the mental and spiritual nature and upon those who drink in the atmosphere thereof.
It has already been stated that our mental, moral and spiritual natures depend for their sustenance upon appropriate soil, climate and culture, as truly as does the vegetable world. The two elements being needed for the sustenance of any life, as well as for the manifestation of the life itself, and our spheres being sexed as well as our bodies, the particular sphere from which we gather the elements that combine with our own is the soil, the general sphere in which we move, the climate, and the use we make thereof, the discipline connected therewith, the culture.
The laws of generation have been studied hitherto almost wholly from the physical standpoint; therefore it becomes necessary to dwell upon their relation through their appropriate brain organ to the balance of the brain, and thus to the mental, moral and spiritual atmospheres which they generate. It is necessary to dwell here—to repeat in different forms—to give various illustrations—that we may lose no link in the chain of causes leading to regeneration; so the reader will please bear in mind the end in view and pardon what may seem needless reiteration.
We are drawn to certain persons—seem to drink a life from their presence that wakes our sluggish faculties, and in the light of the law we are tracing we can see why this is so. They have a grade of development which counterparts our own, or so far counterparts it that we gather life forces from their spheres, and those who are rich in sex-life (in the vitality thus generated) have the more of this life-force to spare.,
We find in society both intelligent and organic benevolence. The first gathers to use for others and the last scatters for others to use. Those in whom organic benevolence is large and who are also rich in sex-life are naturally diffusive—they gather without effort and scatter without thought, and are popular, are loved, not with a self-sacrificing but with a self-loving love—■ are loved as we love rich, nourishing food or as a young child loves its mother.
Happy are they who use this rich sex-life as a base upon which to build intelligently; otherwise they pass through life generally popular, no one knows why, and when the grave covers them they are forgotten.
Swedenborg says that a man is as is his ruling love —that which he most desires to be, and to attain which he will sacrifice the most, deciding his character. But such diffusive lives seem to be like the amative or physical fountain of sex love—characterless; they have no ruling love, no settled purpose of life.
One who has a noble purpose may be organically very imperfect—may possess a brain so inharmoniously developed that he seems to fail utterly—may in a moment of frenzy do that which consigns him to a cell or to the scaffold, but still his real character is not changed. An apple may be badly worm-eaten, still it is an apple; and who sinned, this man or his parents? Poor victim, how he suffers; but Nature is a pitiful, loving and just mother; the sphere of his purposes, the aroma arising from his desires for good, remains as an inheritance, exists in forms of beauty and use, is a foundation upon which he can build when the veil of flesh is cast aside j while that generated in the hour of weakness or passion, not having this organic power, is scattered. But those who deliberately commit the same acts will meet a far different result. A fixed purpose is to the result as is the germ to the fruit—destroy it and the result cannot be reached. We may thus see the relation that an intelligent purpose sustains to the law leading to regeneration; we may not be able to reach it from this side of the line, but what we do gain becomes a permanent investment, ready for use when, returning from the other shore, we finish the work through materialization.
But the ruling desire or purpose has its corresponding brain organ, which takes the place of ruler, bringing all the others into subjection as far as is possible. This organ may rule unwisely, so far as obtaining the desired end is concerned: still, it decides the man’s character, gives quality to his sphere.
In one whose ruling desire is to become rich acquisitiveness takes the lead. This may not be apparent, for if the man sees that by showing this desire too plainly he may defeat the object in view he will erect a false flag and keep the true one concealed. This, however, does not change the nature of his sphere, for if he goes into the society of those whose ruling love is benevolence he feels out of place, he cannot breathe freely. Neither party may speak of what they most desire— they may be utter strangers into whose company he is thrown for the time being—may be polite and agreeable, so far as gentlemanly courtesy is concerned, still he is ill at ease; he does not know why, but he will shrug his shoulders with a feeling of dislike and get away as soon as possible—and they will feel the same aversion to him.
Now, where is the reason for this? What is the cause if it be not that our sphere takes character from the ruling love, as, acting in union with its corresponding brain organ, it draws its life forces from the fountain, of sex?
Benevolence and acquisitiveness, as ruling desires, are in positive antagonism. Therefore the spheres of those who are thus differently ruled naturally force them apart, and the only way in which these two brain organs can harmonize is for acquisitiveness to gather that benevolence may use. Genuine benevolence cannot work for acquisitiveness—it is an impossibility, though a seeming, a counterfeit, may be used by the shrewd to hide the real design. Thus you will see that in the very nature of things it is the office of the higher organs of the brain to bless, but not to serve, those which lie at the base.
As further evidence of the continuous action of the male and female forces we shall find that a man whose ruling love is acquisitiveness will succeed better, other things being equal, if in sympathy with a woman or with women whose ruling love is the same as his own than if in sympathy with men only; for the blending of their spheres (it need not be a closer union) gives a life that has an attracting power to the end sought; though the strength of such attraction depends upon, the strength of the sex power and its connection with such other organs of the brain as can be made active and yet take a subordinate place. He may bring so much suavity and secretiveness to bear that his real purpose will not be seen by those who do not look beneath the surface of things; still, the ruling law acts according to what he is instead of what he seems to be.
The absurdity of the idea is so apparent that if we try we cannot imagine reverence, spirituality, conscientiousness, benevolence and the like acting as the servants of acquisitiveness.
The statement that the strength of the attracting power depends upon the strength of the sex life may be questioned j but where is the attracting power of the impotent man or of an ice woman—not an unawakened but a dead woman, so far as sex is concerned!
This may seem a hard saying, but it is true. Not that men and women are attractive only through the animal phase of sex, for it may be so exalted, intellectualized, spiritualized, that our spheres are filled with the aroma thereof, and this aroma blending in mutual sympathy, as we (man and woman) join in working for the same objects, there can be no excess in the physical expression, though the power will still exist and be healthfully active.
Under such conditions the attractiveness increases in sweetness and intensity, and when the parties join in direct physical exchange it becomes the eucharist of the soul. If not thus exalted, if it remains upon the animal plane, it attracts only animal natures; but destroy it and the salt has lost its savor—it is thenceforth good for nothing.
If we change this ruling idea of gain to that of spiritual development, the relation to sex is still the same; but if this is sought we must call to its aid the chemically-analyzing powers of the intellect, or ere we are aware we have developed superstition or spiritual prostitution—perhaps both. When the spiritual and emotional mingle there is often a mighty flame kindled, but it is more likely to prove a consuming than a refining fire.
What is meant by spiritual prostitution? Simply this: the kindling of the religio-emotional nature for the sake of the pleasure produced. Degradation results from living to eat, or from living for sexual pleasure j the combined results are gluttony, libertinism, prostitution—and transferring pleasure-seeking from the physical to the emotional plane does not change the law. This is why the religious efforts of the past, compared to the declared purpose, have been such failures.
True, the moral faculties, acting in a measure in connection with the emotional, have held a restraining influence but whoever has felt both knows that it is the same feeling which prompts lovers to seek each other’s society that prompts to revival gatherings—the same warmth about the heart, the same thrill that comes from the presence or touch of the loved one. As it is the mutuality of the sex aura in their spheres which attracts lovers, so must it be the same mutuality—that of sex spheres which gives the thrill of attractiveness to revival gatherings. This sex sphere is composed first of sex emanations from those in the body, and then, as the strength of the battery increases—as the unseen is invoked—there is added to it the corresponding element from the spirit sphere; and such union gives spiritual health or disease, as wisely or unwisely used, just as truly as does physical union.
Speculative or positive philosophy is good for the head; the warmth of a religion that kindles the emotions is good for the heart; but when united they are better for both, for each tempers the other; and only through such union can the sex fountain become the savor of life unto life.
When there is this union between head and heart, between the intellect and the affections, then the emotions become the fire under the crucible in which the sex forces are distilled, till, rising to the top brain in a rarified form, they take light from the intellectual and new life from the spiritual, and then return to permeate the physical residue pertaining to sex expression. We have thus the light and life of all above blended with all below, and such sex expression becomes a purifier to the physical and must eventually so connect it with spirit that the two are balanced—the union perfect. When this is accomplished redemption will be complete—will include both soul and body.
The statement that the sexual relation can be made a purifier, a refiner to the body, is so foreign to the prevailing ideas upon this subject that it needs further
illustration. In giving form to our thoughts in the sphere of the voluntary we bring to our aid the materials needed for the purpose in view. The thought of. a house gives not only the form of a house, but its quality, to wit, brick, stone, wood or whatever else may be used, and we select just the material we require. So of the shrub, the plant, the tree—each takes from Nature’s laboratory just what it needs—has no power to take more or different elements.
Thought in the human acts both upon the voluntary and the involuntary functions, and we as living bodies take on and throw off continually. We must do this or cease to live. But suppose that which we take on each day is of a poorer quality than that which we throw off, how long would it be before we should become so coarse, so gross that we should hardly know ourselves!
Some people grow repulsively gross from year to year, and it is from the action of invisible essences. Our thoughts help to refine or deteriorate the body through the involuntary attracting power which draws from the elements about us just that which corresponds with the thought itself. The sexized secretions of the human body are its concentrated oils, so to speak; they take a large quantity of the crude material from both body and brain that, when thus separated, must be replaced, and the estimate we have of the sex act decides the character of that which takes its place. Such estimate, if low, coarse, gross, draws that which is like unto itself, just as truly as anything else brings forth after its kind. The process is renewed, more sexized matter is separated from the general circulartion, and its place must again be supplied, and thus year after year does sex life drag the man down; and all because he deems it simply of the senses—counts it animal and low at that. Can we wonder, then, that we find disgusting, detestable old men in society, or that women sometimes grow repulsive, acrid, haggish?
On the other hand, let us take an old man whose vigorous constitution has carried him to four score years, and who has never had a low thought of sex— one who has used these functions without abusing them —and you will find one whose skin is pure and sweet, whose eye is clear and form attractive; one whose presence we feel as a benediction, while we instinctively bless him in return. His thought of sex has made it a refiner, a purifier, while the low thought of the other has rendered him so repulsive that the earth fairly spurns his rotting carcass.
Suppose this sweet, pure old man has a companion like unto himself, and that, as their sex commerce grows purer, sweeter, there comes a time when there ceases to be waste—the relation only quickening, revivifying each the other, even till they commence anew the cycle of life, their bodies growing young again, till all the freshness of life’s morning is added to the rich old age we have pictured. What more could be asked of Heaven itself?
If the blossom is a prophecy of fruit, if the thought exists as pledge of future realization, somewhere along the track of the ages will come this immortal fruitage of human desire—and each step leading thereto rests upon sex as its base. It is even more than this—it is as necessary an accompaniment as is the bass in music.
The higher the key-note and the wider the sweep of the tune, the more necessary the bass to the completeness that will make it acceptable; and so of exalted lives, or rather of lives that have a wide sweep of capabilities alone they shriek out discords, where, with a soul companionship to keep the sacred fire bright upon the altar of sex, they could give music that would charm a listening world.
We speak of life, but do not recognize spirit as connected with the animal kingdom—not because it is not there, but because it has not yet united with enough of that which is latent in matter to permit of organization. There are efforts at such organization in some of the higher animals, but it is not reached till we come to the human. Nature in those efforts prophesied of what was to come. That prophecy has been fulfilled, though at the time there was no more evidence that it would be than there is today that her efforts to renew the cycle of man’s physical life will yet succeed.
In the human we have the breath of life the same as in the animal, but there is added to it a living soul, for spirit has reached a point in its growth toward matter that will permit of its building for itself a habitation. True, it has its own habitation eternal in the heavens,, but it can now build one that will connect it with matter. This spirit body is the result of a fixed law in nature and is not destroyed at the dissolution of the physical body, but while remaining therein it continues to extract from the material covering till the balance between the two is lost and death ensues. The balance that is lost is not the perfect balance which will give regeneration, but that between the spirit and the grade of matter which clothes it.
To illustrate this idea more fully we will suppose a human body of a low degree of heat but of a good circulation, this heat being diffused evenly through the entire system. But Mother Nature desires to make a change in the conditions, to progress the species, by giving to the body a greater amount of heat, and she commences this change by drawing from the extremities to raise the temperature of the heart to the required point. The result of such a course would be the congestion of that organ. It would be out of harmony with the temperature to which the body was born, and unless restored to its original condition dissolution must ensue. If the heat of the entire body were gradually raised to the same degree that we have supposed the heart to be, the result, though protracted somewhat, would still be death. But if by any means the law of the life becomes so changed that the required heat could be generated as the normal condition of the whole system, then the balance would be attained suited to the new order, and the life could go on from this, instead of from the inferior state from which it had arisen; but in the transition there must come a time when the sex forces cease to act from the old order—cease to create.
This is just what Nature is trying to do with the human race, only the change required is an added intensity of spirit. In accomplishing this the balance between it and the body is destroyed and death is the result; but she continues her efforts and at last she will be able to bring matter up to the point required; then sex must act from the new order of life from the soul, or spirit body, and the result be regeneration. Ere this can be reached the latent elements of matter must all be brought into harmony with spirits then friction will cease—the at-one-ment be complete—Goodman—the union of the two in human form.
That the too-intense action of spirit upon matter tends to shorten life finds confirmation in the remark so often made in reference to those of active brains and feeble bodies: “The spirit is too active for the _ body—it is wearing it out.” Look closely into the lives of such persons and you will find that they have a high regard for the spiritual and intellectual activities, and but little for bodily pleasures, and they try to use up the sex forces in the brain without allowing them to act through their natural channels; but if there ever comes a perfect union between matter and spirit, spirit must descend as well as matter ascend. Spirit must descend and impregnate matter through sex, and this attempting to climb up some other way only defeats its object. Progress does not consist in the ratification but in the clarification of matter; what we want is the warmth of fire, the endurance of marble and the transparency of the purest glass combined.
In the light of this law we will now look at the population question. Judging from the present rate of increase, men of far-seeing intellects and benevolent souls are troubled lest the time should come when the earth will not be able to yield a supply for her teeming millions; and if there is no natural path out of this difficulty—if the unnatural methods that are resorted to are necessary—then Nature’s laws stand impeached
Time was when fruitfulness was counted a glory and efforts to prevent conception unheard of. What is the meaning of this change? False systems of civilization, human depravity and the like may be accused as the inciting causes. But is there not a something deeper still? Does it not indicate that there is a path out of the propagative sphere, failing to find which mankind are trying to make one? and does not this path lie through the refining, spiritualizing influences coming from the recognition of the spiritual in sex? and is not this the reason that human beings hold sex relations other than for offspring? Why should the human female desire this relation when propagation is impossible? Is Nature so false to herself that she prompts to acts that have no use? Not so; and if we teach our children that physical propagation is but the vestibule of sex-use—if we can bring them to recognize this spiritual law—they will refine so fast during the first few years of married life, that after the birth of one, two or three children reproduction will cease; but the office of sex will continue by being promoted to mental and spiritual uses, the propagative life going to fructify these, not by passing directly to the brain but from the magnetic exchange coming from the life battery through sex commerce.
Some fear that this kind of teaching will increase sex desire. But why should it have such a tendency? The idea that the strength derived from food should be used for noble purposes does not make people gluttons. It is a well-known fact that gluttony produces indigestion and unfits both body and brain for action; and one who has the heart set upon the accomplishment of some worthy object will not be very likely to fall into such folly as that. And so of sex relations. Those who are thus taught will know that excess will defeat the object sought.
Teach people to think that pleasure is the legitimate aim of eating and drinking, and there is very likely to be an excess which will finally change the pleasure to suffering. So also let young people think that pleasure is the end and children the accident of sex relations, and that with the sanction of the marriage tie they are allowed to seek all the pleasure such relations can bring, and excess is almost certain to be the result. This is why attraction is so often changed to the aversion that seeks a remedy in divorce and a new union which repeats the excess and the misery resultant. And this sad state of things will continue until the true law is perceived and lived. It is claimed by many that purity consists in the lack of sexual desire, instead of in its right use, and they seek to use up these elements in intellectual labor. But the sex fluid, after being separated from the general circulation, cannot be thus used; it is only the spirit essence, the magnetic life thereof, that is fine enough for the brain to take up, and these need the life that comes from the mingling with the opposite before they can fructify for the birth of higher, deeper truths. If we become so intent on brain labor that sex secretions cease, then they cannot be thrown off for finer to take the place that these have vacated.
If train work only was needed, and the truths already tom sufficient for intellectual action in all time to come and the body of no use, then the brain absorption of this element would be all right; hit as we need a preservative for the body, and as new truths must be born into the intellectual sphere ere mankind can attain to a condition suited to the highest development of their powers, it follows that those who limit the human to sex expression for the purpose of propagation only are entirely in the wrong.
It will be asked: u How can the sex relation become the body’s preservative?” By furnishing sex aura for the use of the soul or spirit body. Remember, it is spirit that giveth life, and spirit can act upon external matter only through soul. But in the transition from the purely intuitional state through all the various stages of growth up to the point where the intellect becomes crowned with divine wisdom, a wisdom that shall know how to meet all the requirements of lover this same intellect must be our leader—stumbling in the path, it is true, but each fall on educational experience; consequently we must look for what we need in the direction the intellect points.
We have not been taught to look for anything in the sex relation beyond the results we can feel and see with the external senses, to wit: pleasure and offspring; therefore, we have not sent our spirit forces into the act to permeate the aura with the life power which, in building up the soul, rejuvenates the body. It has been animalized instead of spiritualized sex aura that we have thrown off; because, in recognizing only the animal therein we have shut the door against the spiritual.
It is very difficult to show just what we mean, as the words “soul,” “spirit,” are used with such different meanings and often interchangeably. We have called the soul an organized body of refined matter connecting the physical body with the “I AM” within, and this identity, together with the soul which clothes it, we have called a spirit; and yet something more is needed to cover the whole ground.
Matter in a certain state of exaltation or purification has also been called “spirit but to use the term as signifying both a state of matter and also an intelligence clothed in spirit matter creates confusion, and to call the soul “spirit matter” is not exactly true.
We know that the finer elements of matter are positive to the coarser, and we know also that all organized bodies are the result of a given combination of the positive and negative elements or forces. Now, in fact, the soul must be that finest positive element of matter sometimes called spirit; combined with enough of the finer elements of that which, being negative, we designate as matter to permit of organization.
From this on, when we say “a spirit” we shall, of course, mean an individualized being, a personality; but when we simply say “spirit” we shall mean the positive element in the soul which, when combined with matter makes the soul or spirit body possible.
Having thus tried to prepare the way we will say:
“Recognize the spiritual and act only through mutuality of feeling and this sex aura becomes spiritualized, goes to build up the soul or spirit body; and through it we can send the forces to the physical body, which will enable us to hold it the longer, and we are thus carried still further toward the point of regeneration; and it is thus that the sex relation can become the body’s preservative.
In mutual blending each of the pair gathers from the other of this sexized aura and the spirit body gains in strength and ripeness from year to year—draws to itself more and yet more of refined matter. This carried forward from one generation to another will at last transfer the power of sex from body to soul—not for the purpose of generating spirit bodies but to exchange with the counterpart—the soul-mate, and thus keep bright the flame of life eternal in our already-regenerated bodies. For, by the constant waste of the body, and just as constant transferring of the refined elements to the soul, in time the soul itself becomes the body.
But where there is life there is action, and with action comes waste; so spirit will continue to gather from the outer world of matter, and matter to draw from the inner world of spirit, and the balance between the two be never more destroyed; and this is life everlasting.
The first body is gestated in nine months, and the period of its growth is from fifteen to twenty years. How long it will take us to gestate through soul the elements that will make it a tangible body we cannot know. No, it will not become gross. Remember that “Progress does not consist in the rarification but in the clarification of matter.” The soul-body will be just as fine, just as pure as is the matter that now clothes the spirit—the I as an inner garment; but it will have gathered to itself and condensed enough of this same element to make a tangible, a glorified body.
Neither can we know just what the chances are that it may be destroyed before the work is so far completed as to render such a result impossible; but this we can see, and say in the language of Scripture, “Straight is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth to life,” and we know further that it has taken ages to gestate from the life forces of matter a spirit body in its present state of development. When the first ripe fruit will come we cannot know; but when growth is fully reached the period of ripeness is not far away.
Perhaps it will be allowable here to bring in a little personal experience: I had seen this law in part long before I could get hold of the separate links and unite them, even as imperfectly as now, and I well remember as I trod the deck of the Constitution out on the broad Pacific on my way to California, how, one moonlight night, as I looked at the moon and stars, the thought flashed over me like a ray of light from a far-off but glorious clime, that, once started in. the work of regeneration we could gather to ourselves the potencies of wind and wave, of sun, moon and stars, and become indeed as Gods.
“He that overcometh shall inherit all things.”
The words of this promise but faintly express the flash of revelation which came to me in that hour. The thought remains, but the light that came with it was but a flash; had it continued it would soon have dissolved the physical form, for none but regenerated bodies could exist under this full and continued blaze of such a light.
It is not strange that those who cannot see the law leading thereto should pronounce such regeneration impossible; but we have already seen that the human germ draws to itself and controls a greater amount of matter than does the germinal life of any other creature, and if this germ—this fine particle of matter— which has such power can be revitalized by the spirit of its opposite, how can it be other than a well of water springing up unto everlasting life? Would it have less power over matter as a renewing element than as a producing one? Please recollect that we have added to this body of refined matter the potent forces of spirit; and it has been shown that spirit acts as a refiner and will continue thus to act till we (the race) shall have perfect spirit-matter bodies; and if the potencies of sex, acting on the animal plane, can give such results as are everywhere visible shall we dare to say that the potencies of sex, acting, through a body that has been made the wedded bride and equal of spirit, cannot regenerate the physical?
The time must come when spirit—the “Holy Spirit“ —will have so perfected its work that we shall have just such spirit bodies (or, rather, soul bodies) perfectly wedded to spirit—perfect channels of communication between the indwelling life and the external universe, and as these bodies unite and embrace in harmony with the laws of so exalted a state the spirit in each quickens, renews the material in the counterpart, and continued life must be the result.
This double action, each benefiting the other, is true of all mutual relations, and as the soul develops this mutual benefit increases, provided the harmony of the relation remains unbroken.
It has been already shown that it is because of this mutual benefit that human beings hold commerce other than for propagation, and it is because this need is not understood and the conditions are violated under which it can be satisfied that so much domestic trouble arises between married people who were at first real lovers. As before said: Nature seems to carry her work to a given point and then to look to us for cooperation, and refuses to go on without it.
In the efforts of spirit to form the desired union with matter this point has in many cases been reached—the spirit body being so far developed as to feel a hunger for it knows not what, neither can it know till the intellect can discover and enlighten it. This hunger continues, intensifies, and men and women seek in each other’s embrace a something to satisfy it; but the effort proves like drinking salt water to quench thirst; and at this stage of their development it cannot be otherwise till there is a recognition of the spiritual therein. Thus they, in their ignorance, devour each other, or one the other, till hatred takes the place of love—then they recoil, and the result is an earthly hell or a separation.
But while this ignorance of the true law remains the new alliances that such hungry souls are very likely to form only go through the same round of hope and disappointment. Not that all cases of discord are of this nature, for from ignorance, false motives, outside pressure and the like parties often unite who do not belong together, and the sooner they separate the better for all concerned. The wrong was in the attempt at a union which in the nature of things could never become real. But that it is the true cause of much of the unhappiness in marriage is quite certain, for a strong physical attraction between somewhat-spiritually-developed natures is a sufficient base for permanence if the parties are wise enough to build intelligently thereon.
It is not the most-animal natures that are becoming dissatisfied with the marriage relation, but the most-spiritual. It is spirit seeking through matter its counterpart spirit, while the only door through which it can come is ignorantly closed. This hunger has gone on till it has burst the bonds of religious teaching and of public scorn in its persistent efforts to find. Some seek in sexual excess and in change, some in the wine-cup and some in other ways, and our teachers are blind guides falling into the ditch in the midst of their followers. We have excess, irregularity, waste of forces, crime on all hands; while those who know nothing of this hunger, or, knowing, are so held by conservative religious teachings as to ignore it as a temptation of the flesh, are seeking through legislation to hold the multitudes in the path of rectitude. As well attempt to bind the winds and restrain the thunderbolt. What should we think of a nurse who, when the child screamed, tried to secure quiet by forcing her handkerchief into its mouth? Yet this is just what our moral nurses are trying to do.
Much ridicule was heaped upon the man who called sex desire “hungering and thirsting after righteousness,” but it is true; not of that kind of moral righteousness which the Bible denominates as filthy rags, but of the physical righteousness which will bring the perfect union of spirit with matter, as the only base upon which a true moral righteousness can rest.
The words of St. James are applicable to the present condition of things, though “desire” used in the place of “lust” would better express the meaning:
“Whence come wars and fightings among you? “Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in “your members? Ye lust and have not; ye kill and “desire to obtain; ye fight and war, yet ye have not “because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not because “ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your “lusts.”
This passage, used in reference to the question under consideration, might be worded thus: Matter and spirit are not in harmony in your own bodies and the conflict within; the hunger (the desire of the spirit, which is not appeased by your present methods) produces conflict without. You hunger even till you devour each other, and yet you do not obtain, because, not knowing that spirit must gestate from matter food for the spirit body, the hunger of which is driving you to desperation, you do not ask it; still you seek in sex relations, ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss —seek simply to consume upon the altar of unspiritualized desire.
We sing:
Refining fire go through my heart,
Illuminate my soul.
And the Bible declares God to be a refining fire. In the life of sex He touches matter creatively and also as a refiner, and this great truth should be clasped so reverently that the intellect can thereby illuminate the soul, thus diffusing spiritual light through every portion of our being, sanctifying and making pure the entire structure, which we are taught is the temple of the living God, and whoever profanes this temple by violating the laws of being him will God destroy. All have done it so far, or, as the apostle has it, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and all die. “What sign showest thou?” asked the Jews of Jesus. “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up again in three days.” “But he spake of the temple of his body” —that body which was so perfect in its union of spirit with matter that the potencies of spirit streamed through him upon the multitude, healed the sick, made the lame to leap for joy, fed thousands with five loaves and two small fishes, and he was the first born among many brethren. In the light of the wondrous law we have traced all this could be and still violate no law of Nature. But if, from Nature’s laboratory, spirit, acting through the human form, could thus create that which feeds human bodies, shall we say that in acting upon another human form, through the creative organs, it cannot regenerate, recreate, create it anew?
But we must not forget that spiritual development does not necessarily include either intellectual or moral development; and on the other hand people may be very moral and very intellectual and yet have but little of spiritual growth. We need the harmonious development of all three. Still it may be necessary to largely develop spirit in the direction of matter before the best moral individuality can be reached.
In the light of the law we are tracing we can see how the words of Jesus may yet be fulfilled—how it may become possible for human beings to drink deadly poisons without injury. When spirit so permeates matter as to make it immortal it follows, as a logical sequence, that nothing beneath it can have any power over it.
It will be asked, What of those who have died or who are to die before this state of development can be reached?
They must connect with matter and complete the work from the other side, where they wait the redemption of their bodies, and must continue to wait till we learn to use sex aright j till we learn to so connect it with spirit that we shall no longer cast forth its life upon the animal side of ourselves, thus intensifying the life beneath, but, on the contrary, shall so fill the atmosphere with its spirit aura that those upon the other shore can gather and reclothe themselves through its chemically-attracting power over matter.
Dwelling upon these points serves to show the necessity of a proper understanding of sexual law and of purity in sex relations; and we need to know in what purity consists. There is nothing so important to the young as a correct knowledge of and a deep respect for sex; and how can this be impressed so fully upon them as by leading them through the physical to spiritual uses? Not by discarding the physical, but by elevating, sanctifying it. All should feel this, but it is of vital import to those just stepping upon the stage of manhood and womanhood that they never unite in this most sacred of human relations under conditions in which they cannot respect themselves.
And can there be stronger motives presented to the human mind to prevent the forming of wrong marriage relations? For who would place riches or position before a true attraction if they knew that they thus jeopardized such an immortality as this f The law leading to regeneration is plain enough when we once get hold of it aright; but it was impossible to formulate this truth till the laws of mind and matter were better understood than they have been in any past age.
Sex, then, in its uses is, first, propagative; second, refining; and, lastly, regenerative. As a race we, as yet, have recognized only the first. A few have passed into the second with realizing that such a thing can be, and perhaps one in a hundred thousand fully senses the second and has caught a glimpse of the crowning result.
“But coming events cast their shadows before.” Having sensed a radical change in the uses of sex some have attempted to attain by will power that which, as a permanent good, can only be reached by natural growth. The retention of the waste occurring in sex commerce through the power of the will may be temporary benefit; so is fasting in cases of dyspepsia, but both are exceptions that have been made necessary through transgression, and either case proves the rule that the demands of a natural appetite indicate the true law of advancement.
Retaining by will power the waste of those fluids which will eventually be retained in the system naturally, is an attempt to pluck the fruit before it is ripe. Job says: “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come;” and so must we. We must live for it, reach toward it, but we must be content to wait till we reach it naturally, be it four-score years here or four-score thousand on the other shore. The work will take its own time and will not tarry, will not delay because weary, or for the sake of delaying, and there are indications that the consummation is nigh, even at the door.
I am aware that those who embrace simply for magnetic exchange will declare that it is a physical benefit, and that it is better than total abstinence is in a sense true, but not in the sense of preparing us for regeneration. Only obedience to natural law and an intelligent recognition of the spiritual in sex can do this; and the waste that occurs in sex commerce cannot be retained in the system for any length of time without injury.
“When the sex fluid is separated from the general “circulation it is sexized and can be of no further use “to the body unless revitalized by the spirit of its “opposite.”
This sentence, quoted from another, and which cannot be changed without weakening the force of the truth contained, is axiomatic. Reiterating this physiological law, we say that, when once secreted, the sex fluid must be thrown off before reabsorption can take place, or it remains in the system as an element of death instead of life. When through the recognition of the spiritual in sex the balance is attained which brings regeneration this waste will cease naturally.
The spermatoza of the male, from which the female builds another human being, will live for a time, but it cannot return into the general circulation alive, and returning dead it must eventually become the source of disease. This is also true of the sex waste of the female. Neither can this fluid become sufficiently revitalized by the spirit of its opposite to enable it to regenerate the physical till such spirit is so blended with matter as to form a spirituo-physicai body that is so sexually mature as to permit of the direct impregnation of matter by spirit.
In regeneration the sex fluid of the male returns into the general circulation as the elixir of life; and so of the monthly waste of the female; it does not become a dried-up but a revitalized stream, building anew the waste places of the human temple, instead of being lost as now.
In view of the law that leads to regeneration it will be seen that all efforts to prevent conception are unnatural and, of course, deleterious, and the only way in which excess of population can be legitimately prevented is for the parties to sex relations to respect the creative act by recognizing the spiritual therein, thus drawing to themselves spiritual elements to supply material waste, till the refining process takes them out of the propagative plane by placing them squarely in the road that leads to regeneration.
Facts will be asked for in confirmation of this theory. They exist, but those who are spiritual enough to perceive the law and fortunate enough to be happily mated by following it out will soon find that their own experiences are sufficient; and to give the experience of others to those who cannot trace this law would be of but little use. However, this much may be said: The indications are that woman first reaches the plane from which she can give of the spirit to her companion, and he, having caught the spark of immortality, soon develops to the point from which he can return it to her.
Is this the reason why man seeks woman so persistently and then, oft times, turns against her so cruelly?
Is it the unconscious power of that inner sense which feels what he must receive from woman but has not yet learned to know what it is? Is it not the mute language which says to the ears of those whose understanding is open?—
“ I am starving—starving for that which will help “me to grow toward life. I felt that I should find “what I need in this woman. The attraction said ‘Yes’ “the facts said ‘ No.’ She has deceived me and I hate “her.”
More likely the attraction told the truth and that the facts are of your own making. In your rude eagerness you, doubtless, shut the door against yourself— crushed the germ that would have ripened into the bread of life for you. There are many ways in which conjugal happiness can be destroyed. Some men throw off all delicacy and deference as soon as the nuptial knot is tied and rudely ravish the being who has trusted all in their keeping. Heaven pity the woman whose dream of happiness is thus rudely broken in upon. Such a course is sure to repel all but the grossest natures. Let the young husband make no claim, but wait patiently for the welcome indication of reciprocity. Do this with a thoughtful, deferential tenderness and if there is a congeniality that warrants the holy relation the reward will be ample. The self-control thus exercised will endear him to her immeasurably, provided that Nature sanctions the union; and if not thus sanctioned—if, upon the freedom consequent upon marriage, the wife’s feelings do not respond— better a thousand times leave her as you found her, for a consummation under such circumstances is destructive to the spiritual nature of both.
In reciprocity the danger is in excess. That which is natural, spontaneous and mutual will be a blessing to both; but beyond this such high-wrought nerve action is injurious, exhaustive, and must, soon or late, destroy all power of enjoyment. Pleasure is as great a tax upon the system as is pain; and we are more in danger of being injured thereby, from the fact that we court its stay, while we rid ourselves of pain as soon as possible. We have a right to all the pleasure that comes from right action, but when we prolong the act for the sake of the pleasure the injury is proportionally as great as when the act is excited prematurely— that is, before the body has so matured as to make sex commerce legitimate—an evil into which thousands of our youth are falling because not properly taught.
The effort to retain sex waste through will power has already been spoken of as an effort to pluck the fruit before it is ripe, or, in other words, before such a state is reached naturally. There may be times when a moderate magnetic exchange that stops short of the ultimate is a benefit, but the habit of prolonging the act through the exercise of the will, for the sake of the continued pleasure and a more intense ultimate, can only result in evil. It is a robbing of the system of needed vitality and creates an unsatisfied feeling, a gnawing hunger that demands it knows not what and is very likely to drive men to stimulants, while women become irritable, nervous, unhappy, and the same condition is transmitted to the next generation, thus visiting the iniquities of the parents upon the children— I should say “of the fathers upon the children,” for this is a masculine sin. The love that seeks adaptation to the mate is commendable and should ever characterize the manly heart; but beyond this a deliberate prolongation of this intense sacrament is a violation of Nature’s laws which she will be sure to punish. She will allow certain variations and adapt herself thereto, does not withhold her gifts because of unavoidable interruptions to her regularity, but attempt to extort from her more than she cheerfully bestows and her vengeance is terrible. For illustration: If circumstances deprive us of a meal she will allow us to make up the loss without injury to ourselves if we will take time and be moderate about it, though she prefers regularity; but if we make a business of over-eating because of the pleasure of taste, if we stimulate and tempt the stomach to the utmost, we shall soon find that she will not put up with such abuse. Our pleasure will end with the taste, while the outraged stomach will fill the system with pain in its vain attempts to satisfy the perishing body. The analogy holds good of sex hunger, only that these organs are even more sensitive than the stomach, and sex commerce under the deranged conditions caused by trying to force Nature beyond her normal action is like drinking salt water to quench thirst; and yet, for lack of instruction, our young people ruin themselves the first few years, if not months, of married life. Then, not understanding the cause of their unhappiness, they quarrel, part,, and thus we have wretchedness, ruin, where there should be happiness, spiritual growth, heaven.
How souls hunger for loving, harmonious companionship, and how wretchedly they murder their own joys! Oh, for the power to reach every youth and maiden in the land! I do not expect to benefit those of the old who have sinned away their days of grace so far as this life is concerned, but Heaven help me to do something toward saving the young! I am well aware that this is a delicate subject, but the more delicate the more necessary that it be understood, and unless woman comes to the rescue man, in his attempts to meet the demand for knowledge in this direction will, for lack of skill, only shock and repel. In order not to be misunderstood it will be necessary to speak again of the exercise of the will in sex relations. In condemning the determined prolonging of the act for the purpose of extorting greater pleasure therefrom no reference is had to the natural quiet communion which does not make haste. In such communion, if left to Nature, the impulse after a time will often recede instead of going forward to an ultimate j under such circumstances to use the will and continue the efforts that bring culmination is a sin against the holy spirit of life that is thus striving to gradually pave the way for regeneration.
Paul speaks of those who partake of the Lord’s Supper unworthily as eating and drinking damnation to themselves; it is equally true of those who profane this holiest of all sacraments, the life sacrament. A Boston physician, in a private letter to the writer of this, says:
“The treatment of chronic diseases of women revealed the fact that sexual weakness is common to “all and I was compelled to study the subject. The “conviction was thus forced upon me that sexual transgression and hereditary consequences lie at the foundation of almost all physical disease and moral obliquity. While I believed some things there “were others I knew, and I knew I knew them; but “the general thought on this and other subjects led me” to go on quietly till I have proved, beyond a doubt, “not only that materialization cannot be perfected but u that we cannot have perfect health, intellectual vigor, “spiritual clear-sightedness, or even moral integrity, “in the highest sense, till God can reveal to us His “idea of sexual purity and use. We do not want the idea of evil the most advanced spirits. (Their “ideas of earth life do not include what you wisely call Higher Uses of Sex Power.’) What we want is a “divine idea adapted to our spiritual nature, that we “may do God’s will on earth in the use of this central “faculty of our being.”
To the above I can give a hearty amen, and would ask the reader: What more divine idea can we have than that through its right use we may attain to physical immortality—to the re-generation that will inherit all things?
THE
SEX QUESTION
AND
THE MONEY POWER.
HOW SHALL THIS POWER BE MADE TO SERVE INSTEAD OF RULING US?
A LECTURE
DELIVERED BT
LOIS WAISBROOZER,
AT JACKSON, MICH., SUNDAY, DEC. 14, 1873,
AND PUBLISHED AT THE TIME BY REQUEST.
The following letter speaks for itself.
L. W.
“Sister Lois: I am glad to see, in the last number of Our Age the names of so many who wish you to u publish your lecture delivered in Jackson December “14. Add my name to the list of supplicants. Your “ideas upon ‘The Money Power: How shall it be “made to serve us?” are grand beyond a mortal’s tell “The lecture was deep, logical, argumentative, “and should be sent broadcast all over the earth.
“M. L. Sherman, M. D.,
“Adrian, Mich.”
The lecture has been changed just enough to take out what was local or applicable to that particular time.
L. W.
The Sex Question and the Money Power.
HOW SHALL THIS POWER BE MADE TO SERVE INSTEAD OF RULING US?
This is an important question—one that is worthy of our best thought. That the money power is almost omnipotent is well known; but what connection it can possibly have with the sex question may not be quite so apparent.
Money or its equivalent rules; this no one pretends to deny; and rules, too, where it should, in justice, serve. In vain the benevolent man regrets this state of things; in vain the tears of the widow or the cries of the orphan. The plea of suffering is as vain under the shadow of the tall steeple as it is in the by-ways of degradation, for this power pervades every avenue of human life.
The head, the heart, the hands and the feet of the people are in its toils and forced to do its bidding.
We may assert our allegiance to humanity, to the divinity of love, to the guidance of wisdom; but hunger and cold are potent weapons and used as relentlessly as ever bigot drove the stake or piled the fagots.
We have failed, utterly failed, more than failed, in attempting to deal with the effects of this tyrannical control—have failed in our every effort to dethrone this selfish deity. But because we have thus failed shall we cease to struggle? Shall we give up in despair and say that there is no hope?
Shall we, with folded hands and benumbed brains, yield the conflict to the quiet of a grinding death? Shall we permit the heart’s best blood to congeal a frozen river over which the triumphal car of this demon power shall pass without even a jar?
Shall we? Your response is: “No—a thousand times, no.”
But what next? What new thing shall be tried; what new movement made? It must be something new, for there is no hope of the old. It has been tried and failed; “weighed in the balance and found wanting”; has been written against all its methods. Yes, we must have something new; but what shall it be?
Religion is powerless; Politics “a poison upas” (to use the language of one who was himself a politician, when arguing against woman’s entering this field); Philanthropy can only paliate the sorrows of the living and help to bury the dead; Morality is but a gilded name to attract wealth; and the fear or the love of God, whither have they fled?
The Alcoholic demon stalks through the land gathering in his harvest of victims and each or all of the above combined are powerless to stay its march.
Mother-love agonizes and father-hearts groan in smothered anguish, but still sons continue to stagger into drunkards’ graves. Wives and children are made desolate by myriads, while this fiery demon sucks away the life blood of husbands and fathers. He fires the heart of the otherwise peaceful man with feelings of dire revenge, till red-handed Murder shrieks in the midnight air, and still there is none to rescue.
None can stay the havoc of his tread, for the power of Wealth sustains him; the money king has set his seal upon high, demon though he be, and, riding over your tall steeples, he intercepts your prayers to heaven or consumes them in the blue blaze of alcoholic fire.
Governments fail to enact just laws, or, having enacted, fail to execute, for the hand of the money king is upon the mouths of the witnesses; he bribes the jurors, sways the judge, fees the lawyers against the truth, and even buys the lawmakers themselves.
Invention fails, for the telegraph, the railroad and all the grand achievements of mechanical art, the result of brain-work, intended to lessen the labor of the poor while bringing them greater returns—these, all these, have been confiscated to this money king and are being used to fill the coffers of the rich. The poor gain nothing; their children and themselves are hopeless, grow more so each succeeding year, while the children of the rich ruin themselves and all with whom they come in contact, wherever Wealth can corrupt or Virtue be driven to the wall; and the 60 thousand of the so-called ministers of the eternal God bring us no relief.
At the command of this tyrant the father forgets his home or remembers it only as a place to board and lodge. He buries himself in his business and leaves his children to go to moral ruin, that he may gain the wealth which will show to the world that he stands among the lords of this terrible king’s court. The wife forgets her babes or murders them before birth,
and all to the same end. Dress and show, parties and travel, stopping at first-class hotels, riding in first-class cars and paying first-class bills—all this that they may belong to this king’s retinue; while the laborer, the honest toiler, is but the serf, the slave who bears the burdens of all above him.
How shall we dethrone this usurper who thus rides over hearts, grinding them into dust! How shall we escape the power of this bloated monster who feeds upon all beautiful, all holy, all divine things as his natural food?
“Money,” you say, “is a good thing; we need wealth to carry forward the necessities of a growing civilization.”
True, we need money; but shall it be as servant or master? We need fire. In a climate like ours it is an absolute necessity; but let it get control and then see the result. So of the money king.
Go, gather the hearts made desolate in a single year by his relentless power. Look at the mighty army of prostitutes—of homeless laborers made destitute and driven to? desperation by financial crashes. Look at them as they plunge into crime and are then shut up in prison. See the poor needle-woman, as she stitches away her life to adorn the garments that are to cover the courtiers and mistresses of this king. Listen to the little ones as they cry for bread, while this king and his retinue waste the products of their fathers’ toil. Gather them all together—all the victims. Let them stand out before you in all their misery. Look into their hollow eyes; mark their pale, sunken cheeks j note their ragged garments and the shiver which runs through their frames as the chill breath of Autumn tells of Winter. Great heavens! look at them and then tell me if there is no way to save this motley host from an earthly hell—no way to remove the causes which have made them what they are.
It is for these that we toil. It is for these that our hearts agonize. It is for these, all these, and millions more who must follow in their track if we cannot bring about a different order of things, that we ask you to aid us in our work—to devote time, talent, means, all, even as we are doing. Is not the object worthy?
Methinks, as I lay my ear close to your beating heart, that I can catch the faint flutterings of hope; methinks I can feel the motion of a thought which says: “Surely, there must be some way of escape; but how, where, in what manner? Only show us and we will follow you, even unto the ends of the earth, if need be.”
Well, listen, and I will tell you will reveal what I have agonized in soul for years to learn; but let me whisper it in your ears, for if I do not Mother Grundy will make such a clattering that you will lose the weight of the proof I have to offer in defense of my position.
The key that will unlock the door which leads to the guarded chamber of this monach lies concealed in this vexed sex question. He draws his life-power from the sex fountain, and this fountain must be closed against him and open only to the demands of love, ere his reign will cease.
Yes, I know just what I am saying, and my position is as impregnable as are the axioms of mathematics. Solve the sex problem, free woman from her thraldom here, and Money, instead of being (as now) a tyrant king, will henceforth be the servant of Love.
I have made the assertion—stated the fact—and you ask for proof. Follow me carefully in the arguments I have to present and you shall have it. Yes, I will give you the proof, but to do so I must state my premises and reason to the conclusion; and, further, my premises must be such as to so commend themselves to the soul-consciousness that no honest man or woman can object thereto.
Swedenborg says that every one u is as is the ruling love.” No matter how imperfect the results as to the carrying out the legitimate ends of that love, the love which rules decides the character. Is there any thinking man or woman who will deny that this is so?
Are not all our decisions as to the real character of an individual based upon the motive which prompts to action, rather than upon the result of the act itself? The man who gives a hundred dollars that he may win the applause of the world and the man who gives five that he may bless another—is it the sum given, the amount of good resulting, or the ruling love that prompted the givers, which decides their characters? There is—there can be no difference of opinion here.
Another point: All the forces, all the powers of the being will be used (wisely or unwisely, as the intelligence of the individual shall determine); but all will necessarily be used, so far as they are used at all, to forward the objects of the ruling love. There can be no difference of opinion here; the statement has only to be understood to command assent.
Still another point: It has been demonstrated beyond the power of contradiction that without the union of the two forces known as masculine and feminine there is, there can be no form of life, of growth. And, still further, the nature of all forms of life is decided, first, by the ruling force or element of said compound; second, by the degree of the development of the elements entering in the compound.
I wish to state the above in still another form, for sexuality has been so degraded, so spit upon, so despised, that I sometimes wonder that we have not been permitted to fall into annihilation; and but for the continued action of this sex-law we should have done. I repeat: It has been demonstrated beyond the power of contradiction that without the union of the two forces known as masculine and feminine there is, there can be no form of life, of growth. Or, in other words,’ sex-union is the fountain from which springs all life— not merely human life but all forms and states of life.
When I speak of the sex fountain I do not mean an inactive, a stagnant fountain, neither one of which there is unnatural action; for the first is ice-bound death and the last putrid death. I mean a fountain in which there is the natural ebb and flow of reciprocal action between the positive and negative, the male and female forces, of which it is constituted.
Life is power: consequently the fountain of sex, if the source of all life, must be the source of all power.
The degree, the range, of the life resulting from sex-union depends upon the channels through which it acts. If the two forces blend in the mineral kingdom we have iron, lead, silver, gold, the diamond, pearl, etc., and each pure, free from dross, just in accordance with the strength and purity of the different blendings; and so in the vegetable, the animal, the human, or the angel kingdoms.
It matters not whether this sex blending gives an embodied form of materiality or sets free an element which goes to vitalize the air we breathe, with that upon which the intellectual and the spiritual in nature, in human hearts and brains can grow and thrive. The form of that life, that growth, the direction which it takes, depends upon the ruling element in the compound.
Or, in other words, the predominant feeling, the ruling love, takes control of, shapes and directs the life-power which flows both from sex-union and sex-blending. By “sex-blending” I mean that blending of sex atmosphere which takes place without sex contact.
We find, then, that character—both that of individuals and of communities—is as is the ruling love.
Now, what is the ruling love of society today?
Need we ask? Need we stop to inquire, when we feel the pressure of its power on every side? when without it we are the slaves and with it we are masters of the situation?
Money has hitherto been spoken of as u king.”
We will now take still stronger grounds and assert that, to all intents and purposes, “Money is god!”
Yes, Money is god—and all the people obey. Love, Tenderness, Charity, Religion, all—all! are bond servants to this money god—chained to his chariot-wheels —and crushed by his relentless tread if they dare to put themselves in his way!
But we must remember that all life, all activity, is generated by the union of the two forces known as masculine and feminine.
One may have a large, well-balanced front and top brain, but without a corresponding back brain there is but little power. Such persons resemble (in the organs of the brain) a splendid train of palace cars with too small an engine or insufficient fuel—powerless, or nearly so, for use, but nice to look at
The life of the ruling power in individuals and in society must come from the back brain, while the organs of the front or top brain (to which the creative force of the back brain gives the most of its life) rules the others and through them the entire being.
Carrying out the proposition to its ultimate, the greatest number who are ruled by—whose creative life-forces go to invigorate the same front or top-brain organ, these constitute the majority and rule society, and, having seized the throne, force all the others to aid them in maintaining it.
We find that not only are certain forces necessary to the organization of individual life and of society life but that that upon which said life is continued must possess the same elements. The man whose ruling love is money is not at home with those whose ruling love is benevolence, for the atmosphere generated by the latter does not furnish the element needed to enable the money-love to hold its supremacy, and, being the ruling love, it takes the man to an atmosphere generated by the money power, for there only can it breathe freely.
But remember, the back brain gives its creative forces to that organ of the front or top brain which rules, gives character to the others; and, further, that every individual carries about him or her an atmosphere like unto themselves—generates said atmosphere from the active forces of their own being. But said atmosphere is not fitted to aid in perpetuating its own kind of life unless it is made up of both masculine and feminine elements.
In other words, the man whose ruling love is money cannot breathe freely, cannot have an atmosphere suited to the supremacy of said love unless he mingles with women whose ruling love is also money; and he must not only mingle with them fraternally but sexually—that is, either directly or indirectly.
You will ask: “How can there be sex association indirectly?” Whenever we appropriate the magnetic elements of one of the opposite sex whose ruling love is like unto our own we associate indirectly; for their sex-life, permeating their ruling love, is given off in their magnetic sphere, and in appropriating that magnetism we use that element which is like unto ours in character and opposite only in its sex, thus fitting it to blend with ours in making our ruling love fruitful in the realm of active life.
We have seen that the ruling love of society, as it exists today, is the love of money; that this love, to hold its place, must have its proper element of sustenance; that said element, to give life activities, must be both masculine and feminine. Consequently, so long as the money power is in the ascendency woman must of necessity be mercenary in her love; and, if not naturally so, must be made and held so by the force of circumstances; and in no way could this have been done so effectually as it has by making her subject to man in the matter of sex—dependent on him for support, protection.
Woman’s whole being is subject to man, in the present order of society, just so far as that which constitutes her woman affects her life or happiness. She must wait till man asks her to be his wife. She must not herself make a movement looking in that direction or she is considered unwomanly. So she must wait her natural life alone or accept something short of that which is recognized as marriage; and, if the latter, then she is ostracized, shut up to the merchandise of herself for support.
Man has control of the avenues of wealth and will hold woman’s wages to the lowest point possible—that is, the wages of labor—while he uses the money that has been wrung from the virtuous woman’s toil to pay for sex gratification. He does this at the command of the ruling love, which is that of money, and, true to the universal law (which demands two forces in union in order to obtain active, successful life), he tempts woman to a mercenary use of her sexual nature — tempts her from one direction and drives her from another—forces necessities upon her through the control of the wealth of the world and then tempts these necessities with money rewards.
Man’s natural sphere is that of the accumulative, and it is right that he should gather, but not to abuse.
Yet just so long as he controls as well as accumulates just so long will Acquisitiveness hold the reins of power —just so long will Wealth rule—Money be the god before which the people will bow. In a true state of society Acquisitiveness will gather for Love to use. Acquisitiveness cannot use, distribute wisely, justly, any more than man can be mother or woman father. This latter is the work of Love, guided by the wisdom of Justice.
Man loves to acquire. It is his sphere—his delight. But the ruling love which uses wisely for the good of all—this love is woman’s—it is the ruling power of her soul: love, devotion, maternal, filial or conjugal—love in some or all of these forms combined. And this is particularly true of her sex-nature; she yields it where she loves, and only there when left free from outside pressure. This sex-life of woman—controlled by and giving life to (first) the special and (secondly) the universal maternal—would, in freedom, control all the other organs of the brain, or the powers of the spirit through them, in the service of humanity, acquisitiveness not excepted.
With this, the ruling love of woman, to wit, the maternal, in the ascendancy — as it would be if she had the entire control of her sex-nature, making man subject to her in this direction — the sex magnetism, in vitalizing life’s activities, would not then, could not be from the money but from the love plane. With this, the ruling love of woman, in the ascendancy, monopolies of wealth to the injury of the masses would be impossible ) for the vitalizing life for such a condition would be wanting, and, of course, the condition itself could not exist.
The mockeries of wealth, in contrast with the wretchedness of hunger and rags, would no more be known; for the woman hand, guided by the woman heart unperverted by forced obedience to the money god—now god no longer—that hand, guided by the true, maternal heart of woman, would wipe the tears from off all faces.
Glorious consummation! One long prayed for; but when a few of us see the way to its realization and go to work in live earnest then comes the tug of war — then the-hounds of Slander and Malice are let loose.
The prayer of words does not alarm in the least, but when the prayer of deeds commences then this money god begins to look after the slaves who have sustained his throne by holding their sex subject to his will, or, rather, submitting their sex to his use because they saw no way of escape.
That the whole social body is out of joint, perverted,, sick, sore from head to foot, who dares to deny? Diseased all the way through; but there must be some centre from which this disease starts—some organ of the social life which must be probed, cleansed, made pure, or there can never again be health. We have been sounding and feeling our way to find where this vital part is; we have touched many very tender places, making the patient shrink and scowl terribly, still no cause found heretofore that seemed sufficiently diseased to produce of itself so dire an effect. But finally the fountain of life itself is reached and lo! there is such a shriek of prolonged agony that it seems to rend the very heavens.
We have laid hands upon the recognized standard of marriage; we have claimed that woman shall be free, declared our belief in her innate soul purity and her right to the use of her maternal functions in spite of law or priest; and from the outcry made we know that we have found the vital point of the disease; and, further, we shall lay bare and probe, though it rock the nations from centre to circumference, for only thus can we escape certain death to all that is worth even a thought.
Already the convulsions of the patient, writhing beneath the needed probing, have thrown a large class of so-called reformers from their balance; already they are running for the garment of respectability to cover the fearful sight (as though covering would heal). They tell us that we must have nothing to do with this social question.
Nothing to do with the fountain of life, of power? —. -No-wonder that apathy has reigned and still reigns where once there was life and vigor.
We must have something to do with this thing, with this question, or perish. We cannot escape it if we would and, as the agitation increases—when the subject of freedom for woman is talked of—as misrepresentations multiply—as honest confession is met with repudiation, while sneaking hypocrisy comes to the front (or tries to) and talks long and loud of purity— we are led to ask, “Why is it? Why all this disturbance? Why is it, when prostitution runs riot on our streets, that leading reformers do not seem particularly distressed? When advertisements for the cure of disease brought on by abuse of the sex functions are posted upon almost every street corner no particular anxiety is manifested about the matter by those who are so afraid of being disgraced if this question is discussed?
Women prostitute their bodies nightly to legal brutes called u husband,” and, thinking themselves virtuous, shrink from the very touch of the garments of the more-womanly woman who is prostituted illegally — forced thereto by the accursed edict of Respectability because she once loved in purity of soul and trusted illegally.
We know all this to be true; and know, also, that broken health and diseased, discordant children are the legitimate fruits of these legal prostitutions — evils fully as terrible as those that arise from illegal prostitution; and, further, we are all ready to admit that woman is less sensually inclined, loves more from the spiritual than does man. We admit this in theory. Why then is it that when a portion of us try to put this theory into practice by giving woman the control of her own person and demanding that the wealth of the world shall be so used that she shall not be pressed, either directly or indirectly, into giving herself from the money plane; or, in other words, for a support— why is it when we demand this that the spasms of Respectability are so terrible?
Theory is well enough, but practice would be awful! It is well enough to talk of the more spiritual nature of woman, but to trust that nature in its own keeping would destroy us. Now, why is this? why this terrible agitation when we propose to work for a reconstruction of society that will practically exemplify the truth or falsity of the theory which accords to woman a higher spirituality than man?
Why is it?
Simply this, and nothing more: We are shaking the throne of power upon which this money god sits, and through his vicegerant, his prime minister, the very respectable Mother Grundy, he is riveting the chains of his captives—captives to the money god—and talking of doing the will of the Father who is in Heaven. Alas, they cannot serve two masters if they try. And so humanity—a bleeding, dying humanity, stretches its hands to them in vain.
Brothels may exist all over the land; marital infidelity run rampant, sexual diseases poison the very fountains of life; Foeticide lift its red hands dripping with the blood of the innocents — this, all this, and a thousand times more, and yet those who claim to wish for better things are so carried by the tide, so held in the grasp of the dominant power that they seem very little troubled about the matter.
But when it is proposed to set woman entirely free from man’s domination sexually, then the anxiety manifested for the preservation of purity is wonderful to behold. For the preservation of purity? We must first have before we can preserve it; and true purity we never can have so long as we are under the rule of the present order of things.
But purity we must and will have. The hour has come when woman is demanding to be freed from unwilling sex relations; neither will she much longer be held to sex isolation because not owned, because she has not been sealed, delivered over to the keeping of some man, as man-made statutes direct. Man-made for woman has had no voice therein.
Woman must be free to use her sex functions only at the promptings of her love, and then the material of which the throne of the money god is built and sustained will no longer be manufactured. Sex life will nevermore flow forth at the beck of Wealth, of the money which tempts Poverty.
Thus Acquisitiveness will no longer rule, but take its place as the servant of Love—and Love worketh no ill to its neighbor.
But we can see the combined power that will be brought to bear against us in this the grandest work of the ages. Ah, yes, we see it. We behold the thunderbolts of the money god’s wrath, as he hurls them at our uncovered heads. We see the martyrdom which awaits us and may yet be ours. We see the gathering forces that are rallying for the final conflict, ere the millennial can be ushered in.
Though we see and feel all this bearing down upon us, we pale not. We are rebels in the fullest sense of that word. We are determined to overthrow the ruling power, to dethrone it and to place the Christ of love — existing in woman’s soul—upon the throne. That Christ who has worn the crown of thorns and had the wormwood and the gall pressed to the lips, through the ages of the past, has been crucified between the two thieves of Marriage and Prostitution, till the very heavens are black with agony, and the veil of the temple of Hypocrisy is being rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Soon the passion of suffering will be finished and the resurrection morn be ushered in. Already the angels have descended to roll back the stone from the door of the sepulchre.
Yes, we are determined to accomplish this mighty work. The hosts of those who oppose us are many they have wealth; they have the power of the present order of things upon their side; they may use the prison or the gallows; they will do what they can, for their case is desperate. But those who are with us are more than those who are against us.
Could you see the hosts of the unseen world as they urge us on; could you hear what I have heard, as with my soul’s ears; I have caught the voices of the wise ones of the ages, whose benevolence has agonized till they have learned that they must have the aid of those who have passed through earth’s hells, ere such hells can be removed; could you hear them as they called from the highlands of the other life to these in the valleys of degradation, saying: “Come up and help us to solve the problem of redemption ”; and could you hear the myriads of those who went down to death with the arms of despair encircling their souls—the drunkard, the outcast, and all of earth’s untimely ones who have been tom from this life and its benefits; yea, the myriad millions, who came and sat upon the seat of council, with their darkened spirits quivering into new life ’neath the influence of an awakened hope — sat upon the seat of council and told their experiences, opened up the causes which crushed them — and could you have seen the faces of these listening ones, as they have glowed before me in my hours of exaltation — seen them as they gathered up item after item of evidence, till at last they saw the cause of it all—that cause, the slavery of woman.
Could you see the determination written upon their faces and upon the faces of those who, for the first time, realize that they too are needed in this work, you would know that we could not fail—you would know that woman must and will be free — that these myriad, hosts have sworn it, and for this they are working. Kings, priests, principalities or powers of earth—be they what they may —cannot prevent, but must wheel into line or go down in the wreck of the old.
For this we live, and for this we will die if needs be. For this we ask your aid, for we know that woman’s freedom is the world’s redemption, and the renovation of the spirit spheres as well; and when it is accomplished there will be such a shout of “peace and good will” as the world has never heard.
A grand culmination! But mankind has been ruled so much through the emotional, have walked so little in the light of underlying and undying principles that I would fain return again to the law controlling this matter and by further illustrations impress it more fully upon your minds.
We have already seen that there are two forces acting in unison to bring into being all forms of life. We call these forces, these unfathomable, ever-acting life powers, “Father God” and “Mother Nature” or “Father and Mother God.” We find these two forces embodied in the human as male and female, and we know that the union of these two gives another form of life. It is easy to recognize this truth when the form resulting is a physical one—another human being. When we look upon a child we know that there has been between some two persons a union of those two forces in the production of that child. We know this—we do not stop to question, to prove it.
But when we come to the intellectual, to the spiritual, it is hard to realize that all the beauty, all the life we have here, comes also from the fountain of sex. The aroma of the flower is as much a part of it as is the seed ripening in its bosom, and the same elements which blended in the grosser form are necessary in the finer blendings to produce the other; and so of the human.
Every one’s sphere, their magnetic and electric emanations, are as is the sex life, and the sex life is determined as to the direction of its vitalizing power outside the special sex act, by the organ of the brain most active in the individual. The sex life gives strength, power, to said organ, and said organ gives direction to said power. You may ask me why I go back to these points? bring up these arguments again?
I reply: Because you have been so little accustomed to thinking in this direction that you will lose the weight of the argument, fail to see the force and application of this law of life, if I do not reiterate and reiterate through the various illustrations that I can call to my aid.
So, continuing with line upon line, proof upon proof, I take up a point already conceded, for the purpose of further illustration, to wit: The forms of all life are determined by the nature of the sex life which gives them form. The sex life, in its concentrated elements must be like unto the form of life from which it is concentrated, otherwise it could not give the same or a similar form to the life which springs from it, when it is blended with its opposite.
This is too self-evident to need proof; and that the diffused elements flowing out from an object, whether animal or vegetable, will also be of the same nature, is also undeniable. We know that this is true of each individual object, and that, flowing out in so rarified a condition, these emanations blend and form a general atmosphere, such as surrounds the earth. This atmosphere we breathe into our lungs, and the health of our bodies depends much upon the elements of which it is composed. If it is loaded down with noxious vapors rising from pools of filth, from decaying vegetation, where there has been much moisture and little sunlight; from swamps, where the waters are pent up and become putrid from inaction, then chills follow, fevers prevail and general distress takes the place of health and peace. It is of no use to cover up or turn your backs upon these conditions—the subtle element finds its way into every crack and crevice. Favorable situations and disinfectants may palliate but cannot wholly save from the effects which such putrid conditions generate.
But there is an atmosphere which sustains the same relation to the mental and spiritual as does this of which we have been speaking to the physical. Whence comes this mental, this spiritual atmosphere? From whence does it obtain its life or death-dealing power? From the sex life, acting through the brain organs. Those organs of the brain brought into action when the sex act is thought of, or consummated, give character to this atmosphere, make it moral or immoral, degrading or elevating in its vitalizing power.
If We think of this act as something low, enter into it under conditions that our self-respect disapproves, then we give off a degrading sex atmosphere, for the low thought, acting through the brain, poisons it. The lungs of the soul, or spirit body, breathe in this atmosphere, giving a healthy or diseased action, even as the lungs of the body take in the physical atmosphere, giving health or disease physically.
Would that I could so impress this truth, not ‘only upon your minds but upon the minds of the entire human family, that it could never more pass from their active consciousness. Never since the dawning of creation’s mom has a truth of more importance been announced to a waiting world j never one which showed so fully the destructive tendency of the sex act under any and all conditions but that of mutual sex love.
Now what are the organs of the brain generally called into action under the present order of things? How large a proportion, suppose you are reciprocal t One-half? One-fourth? One-tenth? I doubt it. But suppose one-fourth. In that case one-fourth of the vital atmosphere quickening, giving life to the mental, the spiritual would be healthy and the balance diseased.
Again I ask: What are the organs of the brain called into action in most cases under the present order of things? In legal marriage, where there is not mutual sex love it is submission or combative indignation combined with fear and disgust. Woman is, must be, repelled, disgusted, whenever she submits to an unwelcome embrace. This always, but it may be combined with fear and submission, in which the elements of cowardice are furnished; or it may be combined with fear of results, and bitter, resentful, combative elements accompanying. Is it any wonder that the world has become disgusted with this most beautiful, most holy of all relations, if entered into aright? Is it any wonder that the very air is replete with the elements of war, of red-handed murder, wholesale and retail?
But the brain organs called into action under such circumstances, on the part of the male, what are they? The combative resistance to the partner’s dislike which overcomes—the persuasiveness which wakes into undue reciprocal action, thus destroying love, as hothouse plants die beneath the biting frost; or the enforcement of legal rights—in other words, legal rape.
Is it any wonder that with such a combination of vital elements permeating the mental, the spiritual atmosphere, that society is made up of the oppressor and the oppressed, of tyrants and slaves.
But both in and out of marriage this act is full often—yea, three times out of five the result of acquisitiveness. When a woman is so situated in life that money, support for herself and children, necessarily comes in as one of the chief considerations, even love in such a case is neutralized, or nearly so; but when there is no love then all the sex force called into action during the entire life goes to vitalize the money power—becomes a part of the very breath of the life of this god
Love outside of legal marriage cannot be consummated only by calling into action the organs of the brain which, in their undue action, furnish the elements of hypocrisy, or of reckless, shameless defiance, except in these few—very few—cases where the law has been ignored from principle, and the parties stand to their acts in a noble self-approval. Such are the heroes that the world will one day crown with unfading immortelles.
But I will leave this subject with you, feeling that you must see, as I do, that woman’s freedom is the world’s redemption, and, seeing this, that you will aid in bringing it about, either by coming to the front yourselves or by sustaining those who do.
ADDENDA.
Dear Reader: After ten years of thought upon the subject, since the foregoing was published, permit me to add a few words in reference to the demand for freedom for woman, which has so frightened the world.
Woman’s sexual freedom, from the present standpoint, means degradation—it means the fugitive fleeing from the bloodhounds—it means to put her wholly out of harmony with the existing order of things, and no wonder people are frightened None but the martyr souls who have had visions of the New in all its wondrous proportions of harmony and beauty, can afford, or even endure to be utterly at variance with the general order of things. But such souls are ever found when needed to plant the germ which must gestate amid the debris of the crumbling elements of the Old
The ideal of the New may be declared but cannot be made practical at once. It can only come gradually into view as the Old recedes.
The agitation of the question caused by the statement of woman’s true position as the mother of the race has warmed, quickened into life the germ that will yet ripen into a freedom which must eventually crown her with the power to lift the race out of the quagmire of animalism in which it now stands.
A few years since a few earnest souls, burdened with a sense of the injustice and consequent misery resulting from woman’s present position as woman, caught a glimpse of what society might become with woman free—queen of the love realm—and educated as to her responsibility in the use of said freedom; and that which gave power to the social agitation of that time came from their enthused hearts.
The world saw not what they saw and could judge only from what it knew. Of course they were and are condemned—it could not well be otherwise. But the thought lived—it still lives. The ordeal through which its advocates have passed, and are yet passing, only serves to separate the crude from the permanent.
The essay in the first part of this little book was written nearly seven years after the lecture following it. They are now placed side by side to show the difference; and yet, all that is demanded in the first is involved in the later production.
The pure, sweet, exalted relation between the sexes that tends toward regeneration can never prevail so long as woman is, in any measure, subject to man—so long as any outside pressure is brought to bear to cause her to yield to the sex embrace.
But before woman can be thus free from man’s power—man also must be free from the power of his fellow man in the sphere of wealth—of bread and butter. One is but the complement of the other, and the elements are at work which will bring both results.
Let us work and wait, for the day star is coming up the heavens.
The: Authoress.
THE TREE OF LIFE BETWEEN TWO THIEVES.
It is said by those who claim to know, that esoteric Buddhism and esoteric Christianity are one and the same thing.
Esoteric means secret, hidden. In other words, the true meaning of the great religious systems of the world has never been given to the people. This knowledge has been held by the few, and is evidently the source of the power of the few over the many.
Sex was once an object of worship. Its symbols were honored by all. None were so low, so vile as to speak sneeringly, vulgarly of anything pertaining to sex.
Were they less pure than we as a people are, where so many delight to degrade sex, to make it a hissing and a byword, and where the scientific name of a sex organ is counted obscene?
Our memory is at fault as to dates and names, but we once read in a work of research upon the subject, that some of the pagan nations thought it an honor to have their women sacrifice their sex, at least once, to the gods.
It was stated that women went to the temples consecrated to the gods and waited certain hours of each day until some stranger claimed their embrace—the stranger being counted as in the care of the gods; whatsoever was done for him was considered as done for them.
We find also that, with the Eastern nations, and with a large portion of the Christian world, celibacy for the sake of religion, for Christ’s sake, is counted as the highest purity. Man born of woman must repudiate all women to serve God. Woman begotten by man must repudiate all men for Christ’s sake.
How does this differ in spirit from the pagan custom? The difference, as we see it, is in one case the gods or spirits inhale the aura of the mutual act on the same principle that the Jewish God inhaled the aura of the burnt offering, it being a sweet-smelling savor in his nostrils; and in the other, provided the vow of chastity is lived, the very sex-life itself is exhaled by the devotee, to be gathered up by God “the great spirit”
In both cases religion rules, absorbs the sex-life; and in both cases the gods, or God, so-called, holds the people in subjection. Now, what do these things mean?
We take the ground that the whole secret of priestly power, and of the perpetuation of priestly delusions, lies in the subservience of our sex-life to religious authority.
Professor Elliot Coues, a student of Oriental literature and philosophy, says that it is largely concerned in what in the West is called mesmerism, and in the East magic. Now, it is well known that the Oriental nations are wholly under the control of the priesthood.
Is it their knowledge of mesmerism, or magic, which gives them this power? But what is mesmerism? Listen to this Oriental scholar:
“The mesmeric force is simply sex-magnetism.”
Ah, then magicians use sex-magnetism. The wonderful powers of the Eastern fakirs, or mediums, come from the fact that their controlling spirits know how to gather and use sex-magnetism. But he also calls it psychic force. Psychic pertains to soul.
Sex-magnetism, soul-force, the power by means of# which one person holds control over another, or the few over the many. No wonder the religions of the world have sought to control sex. No wonder that the church of today fights the opening up of the sex question—the study of sex-law.
Professor Coues says: “The practice of mesmerism has always been discountenanced by Theosophists.” Now, why should people organize “for the preservation and study of that which must not be practiced?” I mistake. Adepts may practice, but they do so by mental power, not by physical manipulation. The professor says: “Confined to those students of psychic science who can be trusted to discreetly use such knowledge.” But we will give the whole paragraph of which the above is a part:
“I have long and steadily spoken, in the face of much ridicule, of the inherent dangers, not the less real because little suspected and scarcely credited, which attend the practice of magnetism; and of the disastrous consequences likely to ensue should the knowledge of such arts become public property. I have conscientiously striven to keep such things secret as they should be, or at least confined to those students of psychic science who can be trusted to discreetly use such knowledge. But it is already painfully evident that the secret is an open one, of which any sufficiently courageous knave may avail himself.”
Did the gentleman live in India, and were he born a member of a Brahman caste, he would have no difficulty in keeping such knowledge from the “vulgar herd” Knowledge is power. To so understand the forces of nature as to know how to handle them, confers immense power upon the possessor over those who do not thus understand.
Sex is the central pivot of nature’s forces in all grades and departments of life, from the lowest monad to the highest intelligent being, visible or invisible. There may be double sexed life, male and female in one, but there can be no unsexed life. Various names may be given in the different departments, but it is always the two forces or elements.
This being true, the more perfect our knowledge of sex-law, the greater the power over those who do not possess such knowledge; that is, so far as such knowledge can be made practical.
Considering all these things, we must entirely disagree with the learned professor. Any knowledge which any “courageous knave,” if he can gain access, thereto, can use to the injury of others, should be made public property, so that all may protect themselves against its undue or improper use.
The first lesson given to the Brahmin boy when he commences his religious life, at nine years of age, is; “Know that the shades of your ancestors in aerial form will attend you in your studies, and, if you are worthy, will hereafter reveal to you the secret of life.
Always bear in mind that what you now learn should never he revealed to the vulgar herd.” But we are not Brahmans, and we believe in lifting the “vulgar herd out of all vulgar conditions.
Speaking of crimes committed by “courageous knaves” who use psychic force to control and injure others, the professor says: “Probably the requirement of the case, in the not distant future, will be legal provision for the punishment of some crimes not now known to the law, or, rather, crimes whose possibility the law as it stands now denies.”
In other words, instead of making such knowledge public property, an integral part of our educational system, so that people can protect themselves, this Theosophical professor would have laws enacted against psychic crimes—would make men taken from the “vulgar herd” and placed in the jury box, judges as to whether such crime had been committed or not.
Now, why such stupidity? Simply because the professor and others like him are psychologized by unseen powers, whose very place and power depend upon keeping the people in ignorance of psychic, or sex-law. “The secret of life,” so says the Brahman teacher.
“Lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. So he placed a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” So says Moses for the God of the Jews.
The knowledge possessed by the higher classes of Brahmins is so guarded that it is never committed to writing, and only taught in underground crypts of the Pagoda.
Now, why all this care unless they gather from the masses the life-power which gives them their pre-eminence, and that a knowledge of the fact by the people at large would unseat them from their thrones of power; or, in other words, when the people learn to use sex-life for their own intellectual and spiritual growth, then the power of the gods over mortals is gone.
But we will return to Professor Coues. He says of the combined use of psychic, or magnetic force: “And even competent psychical researchers, well posted in the powers one person may exercise over another by such means, are slow to understand the enormous accession of power which results from the conspiracy of several persons to the same end of psychical evil. To illustrate: If, for example, one person may do a certain amount of good or evil mesmerically, two persons would be able to do, not twice as much, but perhaps four times as much; three persons, not thrice as much as one, but perhaps nine times as much; and so on, in a sort of geometrical, not simply arithmetical, progression; such is the force of combination of spiritual powers, either for good or evil.”
Eight here there comes to mind the words: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” And again:
“They were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting; and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.” Let us quote again from Professor Coues: “The mesmeric force is simply sex-magnetism;” again he calls it “psychic force, the secret of spiritualistic mediumship,” etc., etc.
Psychic pertains to soul. Psychic knowledge is soul-knowledge, soul-methods of action, of power. It would not be very strange if the whole “plan of salvation” depended upon a right knowledge of sex-law —that “Christ crucified” is but a form, a symbol of sex—that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the cloven tongues of fire, and all the sacred paraphernalia of religion were simply figurative representations of the esoteric, the hidden meaning of sex.
Victoria C. Woodhull claimed that sex-aroma, or the spirit aura of sex, was the chemically centralizing element of materialization; and in the experience given by the Chief Justice of the French East Indies, he tells of witnessing the mediumistic power of a Brahman fakir. The fakir sat down in a corner after throwing a handful of perfumed powder upon a small furnace, and the smoke formed into a luminous cloud; not a luminous tongue to speak words, but luminous hands appeared and disappeared, and one wrote upon the cloud, “I have taken to myself a fluidic body.”
Another cloud, more opaque and of brighter color, formed, and presently assumed the human form of an aged Brahmanical priest, and in letters of fire upon this old man’s bosom, it was declared that he was a former inhabitant of this earth.
Now, this fakir is bound to a life of chastity. If his sex has ever been active, it has been involuntary, or in cohabitation with spirits. Do not be shocked. I have heard more than one medium, and of both sexes, tell of such experiences; some were willing and others not. I heard of one case down in New Jersey, and it was related to me by L. K. Coonley. I believe he has passed over, but am not certain.
He stated that a young girl, a medium for physical manifestations—in fact, a materializing medium—she never came before the public as such; this girl was troubled by a masculine spirit belonging to the family some two or three generations back, who would come, materialize, and force himself upon her. This is about equal to what is related in the apocryphal bible.
Again I say: Do not be shocked; we must get to the bottom of a thing before we can understand it, and the horrors of sex-abuse have filled the world with disease and death; not only temporal, but eternal death.
Do I believe eternal death possible? Yes, not in the sense of eternal suffering, but in the sense of annihilated individuality, so far as all that pertains to this life is concerned. Mrs. Frances Osgood Willard, in an able work called “Sexology the Science of Life,” declares her belief that “eternal life” means much more than has generally been supposed, says it needs an individuality that can stand the crash of worlds; and Charles Dawbarn, from whose lecture on the Spiritualism of the East we have quoted, says of India:
“The peasant scratches the soil just as his ancestors have done for thousands of years. He must labor without ceasing, or he starves; and totally without education, he lives his life of wretchedness and woe, and even in his death is cursed by horrid fears of the future.
“ If we call the history of India only 5,000 years there has not less than 15,000,000,000 such wretched beings passed off the stage of life, enough to people twelve such worlds as ours is today.”
After making such estimate, Mr. Dawbarn asks where all these spirits are, and why there has been no progress, no bettering of the condition of that class?
We may be wrong, but it is our firm conviction that they went out as individuals, ceased to live, or, that they have lain in the stupor of ignorance and spiritual death till reincarnated.
This latter idea I have never thought much about, yet reincarnation may, in a sense, be true. Of one thing I feel certain: Those who are abject and submissive to priestly powers here, will, if there is enough to them to live at all, be abject and submissive there.
But to go back to our fakir; his whole sex-life had been sacrificed to the gods, to his religion, which was the worship of the spirits of his ancestors; and wherever he went women looked upon him as holy, and in their worshipful reverence the aroma of their sex-life flowed toward him, and the spirits of his ancestors knew how to gather that aura and, combined with his, form their fluidic bodies, and when they so chose, materialize.
And the combined psychic power of those Brahman priests has ruled and robbed the “vulgar herd” through such knowledge as Professor Coues thinks should not be given to the public; has robbed those millions of all that makes existence valuable, if not of existence itself, through all these ages; and yet there is a law through which they could have become more god-like, and, at the same time, have lifted the masses up to a god-like plane. But more of this further on.
But to show that we are not alone in our views of the importance of sex-knowledge, we quote from another writer, a woman, a clairvoyant. She says:
“We are immortal through the integrity of our spirit bodies in the spirit world, and sins committed against the body in this world, in those functions that are vital, especially in those of sex, affect the integrity of the spirit body in the next world.”
Permit me to say right here that, if the spirit body is built up of the spirit aura of sex—if spirit or psychic life is, as has been claimed, evolved from a recognition of the spiritual in sex; are not those who ignore sex relations except for offspring, thin and poor in their spirit bodies? Will not their lamps lack oil?
We are certain that the spiritual may be lived for at the expense of the body; whether such living does the spirit any good is another question; but is there not also such a thing as living for the body, conserving all our forces for the use of the body at the expense of the spirit?
One more quotation from our friend, the clairvoyant:
“Christians have gathered from some of the old sages the trite truth, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ You start back in horror! Oh, no, you won’t believe that! You forget that nature does not forgive a wrong—that neither does she repair an abuse if it passes beyond a certain point; but you know that sexual sin is a crime against nature. You must also know that those organs, being central, are most vital to the growth of the spirit body; and can you tell where the effects of such sin will stop, or if nature will be able to repair the injury?
“I tell you nay, and did women but know the terrible effects of these abuses, they would stand by the integrity of their sex-functions with their lives.”
“The soul that sinneth.” The soul, the psychic portion of our being, that which, according to Professor Coues, is connected with sex, uses sex-magnetism as an element of power. “Psychic power; soul power; sex-magnetism;” better suffer almost anything else than that the soul—the spirit body, be destroyed. What, then, can be said of Christian marriage, that which puts the wife’s person in the keeping of the husband, makes him her “lord and master?” What can be said of that kind of “duty” which makes it religiously incumbent upon the wife to be subject to the husband’s sexual demands?
But there is another phase of Christian sex-power that we will notice here.
Professor Coues speaks of the effects of concentrated, or combined, psychic force. The subject of such force loses the control of his own will, is controlled by the will of another, or of others working in accord.
When our Christian friends get the psychological control, in their revival meetings, of some “hoary old sinner,” they think, poor, ignorant ones, that the power of God is manifested in a wonderful manner. It would surprise them some, could their intellectual eyes be opened, to see that it was done by the combined power of their own sex-magnetism, directed Godward in his behalf.
We will re-quote Coues: “Even competent psychical researchers, well posted in the power one person may exercise over another by such means, are slow to understand the enormous accession of power which results from the conspiracy of several persons to the same end.”
Remember, please, that according to the professor, and as we see things, according to truth, psychic force is sex-force, and also, that this power can be used either for good or evil purposes. Still further, that it may be blindly used with a purpose of good, and yet the results be evil because of ignorance of the law involved.
“The enormous accession of power which results from a conspiracy of several persons to the same end.” Is not every revival meeting the result of a conspiracy or combined purpose to convert souls to Jesus?
Now, in all this, I have no intention of speaking contemptuously of sex. No, indeed! To me sex is pure, is holy if rightly used. But not rightly used, it curses more than all else. Ignorance is not bliss in sex matters. Here it is the height of folly not to be wise. But how can we become wise in reference to the use of this or any other power, if the truth is kept from us, if we are not permitted to investigate? But to illustrate our position more fully, we will quote from a pamphlet written more than sixteen years since, and now bound up with this. We there say:
“ Sex-union, the blending of the positive and negative—the masculine and feminine forces—is the fountain, the source from which springs all life. Not only the life of the physical forms which meet the eye, but all states and conditions of life, moral, intellectual, spiritual.
“Life is power, consequently the fountain of sex, if the source of all life, must also be the source of all power. It matters not whether sex-blending, or sex-union gives an embodied form of materiality, or generates, sets free an element, a magnetism which goes to vitalize the mental and spiritual atmosphere; the tendency of that life, the direction in which it acts, depend upon the ruling love of those whose forces so blend. By Sex-blending we mean the blending of sex-atmospheres which takes place without physical contact.”
We will now go back to our revival meeting. Those who are interested, those who desire a revival, get warmed up. Both men and women send out their psychic, to wit, sex-force, though they do not recognize it as such; but it goes out all the same, toward one common purpose, the salvation of souls.
That purpose is backed by the love-life, or vital force, of all who are working up the revival, and it takes possession of, mesmerizes, controls the negatives, the sensitives in the audience by the same law that the public mesmerizer psychologizes his subjects. It makes them feel just as the combined minds of the revival makers think they ought to feel—first oppressed, burdened with sin, in danger of being lost, and finally to accept Jesus and rejoice in believing they are saved, that God has forgiven them for Christ’s sake.
But there is more than this in the conversion of some souls. Love, that which obtains between the sexes, begins in the blending of their magnetic spheres.
Each drinks in, as it were, a life-force from the other. The blending of their magnetisms generates new life for each, and when hands and lips clasp the thrill electrifies the whole body.
This blending of the magnetic spheres is akin to spiritual blending, and where the moral and spiritual aura blend also it is spirit blending; but mark: If spirits in the body can send out their forces and unite in blissful thrills, a spirit out of the body can draw near and embrace a spirit in the body, and this is what is done in many cases of what is called conversion.
They who have felt both know that, though perhaps more intense, the rapture is the same in kind as is the thrill which permeates the being when lovers clasp hands—the same in kind is the thrill, the ecstasy of the shouting convert.
To those who think this embrace of spirits is not possible, permit us to say that, some two or three times during the last twenty years, we have been conscious of being outside the body and yet connected with it. On one occasion, in a room where there were several persons, gentlemen and ladies, I felt strangely attracted to a gentleman, a stranger sitting near me, and, without any volition on my part, I felt my spirit leave my body; his did the same; we thus met half-way and embraced. It was our spirits, not our bodies.
Remember, there was no volition, no willing that this might be so, but it was as if two magnets, one positive and the other negative, had been drawn together by an irresistible law of nature; and I am fully satisfied that physical contact is sometimes brought about in the same way, the attraction being so strong that neither has the power to will against it.
But in cases of conversion, so-called, and of religious experiences, the current is sometimes stronger than the physical can stand, and the subject sinks away into an unconscious state called trance. We remember such a case.
It is now nearly fifty years since we attended a Methodist Quarterly Meeting held at the home of a prominent church member. A tent was attached to the house, and here we beheld the daughter of the house in a dead trance. When she came out of it she said she had seen Jesus and the angels, and less favored ones envied her the gifts which seemed the result of her piety.
In less than a year she was a mother and not a wife. Then the sneer went round, and the belief in her piety was at discount; and yet the result was perfectly natural, even though not understood. It is quite probable that no one wondered more than did the poor girl herself why she should be left to do such a thing.
And yet that which gave her spirit lover power to wrap her in his embrace till she swooned in ecstasy— that same law gave her mortal lover power to subject her to his will. The quickening of the spiritual sex-element had only descended and culminated in the physical.
As the result of many years observation, we are fully satisfied that many a poor, outcast woman got her first start on the downward road at the revival meeting. In the psychic, the sex-magnetic element there found, her sex-nature received an abnormal, a hothouse development; consequently an unnatural, an unhealthy craving was established which she could not overcome.
Did parents understand these laws, no young, sensitive person of either sex would ever be allowed to come under the influence of religious excitement.
Our sex-forces are life’s motor power. They may be used physically, intellectually, or spiritually, and our opinion is that they should be used through all three channels, but however used, it will surely be in accord with the ruling love, the ruling purpose.
Professor Coues says certain parties are teaching a. bastard sort of mesmerism to their dupes, and calling it spiritual development, and that through the hope of acquiring spiritual attainments, many ignorant people have been misled and gulled.
Not more than ignorant people have been misled and gulled in revival meetings. The kind of spiritual development there sought, or at least the kind found, is the kindling of the religio-emotional nature for the sake of the pleasure produced. Oh, they are so happy!
Degradation results from living to eat, or from living for sexual pleasure. The combined results of such living are gluttony, libertinism, prostitution; and transferring pleasure-seeking from the physical to the emotional plane does not change the law. This being true, going to protracted meetings, or sitting in circles merely to get happy, is nothing less than spiritual prostitution.
Remember, the mesmeric force is sex-magnetism, and it is just as truly the developing power of circles as it is of revivals. I am not saying that sex-magnetism is bad, but I do say it needs to be intelligently handled. No, these things are not bad in and of themselves, but from the use made of them by both ignorant and designing persons.
The use and beauty of social life comes from sex-magnetism, and rightly used, it becomes a source of health, happiness, and refinement. Sex-knowledge is what is needed. This force, this vital life, or death-power, accordingly as it is used, is everywhere. Yes, everywhere. We must quote again from our lady friend:
“It is the unbalanced condition of the sex-forces of society which throws men into that condition which polite ladies call animalistic, for nature does not recognize the marriage of priestcraft. While there are so many women in the ‘marriage market,’ surcharged with sex-elements seeking for interchange, they act upon men, and as they are endowed, so are they affected. If it happens to be a married man, he goes home to his wife and prostitutes her.”
How few of us recognize the power of this unseen but positive element? It is sex-knowledge that is needed, we again assert. People have had this knowledge kept from them as edge tools are kept from children. We can do the latter. We can keep edge-tools from those who do not know how to handle them, but we cannot thus control sex-magnetism; hence the imperative necessity that it be understood; and yet Professor Coues says:
I have conscientiously striven to keep such things secret, as they should be, or at least confined to those students of psychic science (sex-science) who can be trusted to discreetly use such knowledge.” He regrets that the secret is evidently an open one, because of the fact that, by the combined purpose of those who possess this knowledge, so much evil can be wrought, if their purpose be evil.
We do not question the fact of such power. We feel sure that it is from just such combined purpose that the masses are held in subjection, even against reason and their better judgment. It is the sex-element, sex-magnetism religiously used which rules the world, and so long as sex-knowledge can be kept from the people, just so long will the church rule.
We said this years ago—said, “so long as the church controls sex she controls everything,” and each succeeding year but adds to our conviction. Sex-life cannot be lost. It is the vital life of the universe, and if thrown off by mortals without being conserved to the highest individual use, that is, with an understanding and a purpose of other, higher uses than either offspring or pleasure; unless this is done, spirit chemists know how to gather it up and direct its energies to their own ends.
It is used by the positive, the controlling power here, and why not there? The man or woman who becomes negative to another in this life, insensibly serves that other, gives off vital force for the other to use. If he or she becomes sick because of having given off more than they can safely spare, then such leech will give back a little as a healer.
So the rich, through the laws of trade, gather the results of toil, and when the toiler must have aid they give back a little, as charity.
The poor produce, and the rich know how to handle the products of their toil to their own benefit; but the poor must be kept in ignorance of the methods by which this is done, and those who arraign our present economic system are counted the enemies of society, disturbers of the peace.
Likewise, the masses use their sex religiously, and lovers of power, both here and in spirit life, gather that which the others ignorantly waste, and therewith weave around them a magnetic net that they cannot break through. Friend Coues fears that sex or psychic knowledge will be used unscrupulously here. Can he protect us from those in spirit life who may be just as unscrupulous in the use of such knowledge?
If the toiler had the results of his toil, he would not need what is falsely called charity; and if we knew how best to conserve our own sex-forces, we should be perfectly safe from all outside psychic power; it could not be used to our injury.
But, as those who control the world’s wealth will do all in their power to prevent such an adjustment of property relations as will give justice to all, so, those who rule magnetically, through a knowledge of sex-law by gathering of sex-force through making people religiously subject in sex-matters— such will oppose with all their power the demand for sex-knowledge.
The people are told by such: “The whole thing is very, very vile;” are told: “The less you have to do with those subjects in that way, the better it will be for you.” “In that way” to wit, investigating outside the prescribed limits.
But somehow, there are many who will not listen to such advice. They are reaching out for knowledge. They begin to sense that there is something hidden to which they have a right, and they are determined to unriddle the sphynx which has devoured the race so long. If the way to such knowledge is so barred that they cannot obtain it legitimately, then they will seek it illegitimately.
If they are not allowed to gather and apply this knowledge in a way to make it a blessing, then it will become a curse, for the “open secret” must grow and spread.
If children do not learn the common facts of sex from the pure lips of parents or friends, they will gather such knowledge from impure lips, and to their hurt. So of men and women in relation to the deeper, the occult forces of sex, for we are all but children of a larger growth, and having once caught the idea that there is a meaning, a power connected with sex-life that we do not understand, we cannot be kept from seeking it.
The more advanced among the masses, sense this secret, this deeper—this esoteric or hidden use. They have also heard that it exists, and they are determined to solve the problem. The only safe course is to open up to them the channels of information, and to study the question with them. But why any opposition to such a course? “Why should a knowledge of life’s subtle forces be kept from the people?
Because of those who hold a monopoly of such knowledge for their own purposes. The higher orders of the priesthood understand, and their influence, their power permeates the entire structure of society. We have spoken of sex being controlled religiously, and so it is. With but few exceptions, and the most of these in our own country—we mean but few comparatively —marriage is counted a sacrament, is not legal unless solemnized by the priest, or, at best, is not considered marriage by the church.
The church, the religious influence of the world, has two ways of controlling sex. One is in marriage, the object of which is numbers. The more children, the more blest of the Lord. Motherhood for God’s sake —to rear as many servants for God—the church—as possible. Woman in this scheme becomes a mere tool for increase.
The other method is to live celibate lives for God, or the gods. A prominent medium, one who was once popular as a speaker, and by the side of whom a spirit Catholic priest had been seen at different times and places by different clairvoyants—this woman told me that she saw her “guide” and talked with him—that he was father, mother, brother, sister, lover, everything to her.
“ Give me Jesus, give me Jesus,
You may have all this world,
Give me Jesus.”
The analogy is perfect. She did not confess to sex-relations; in fact, she indirectly denied it, but her tone was not as positive as when she spoke of other things. This woman was withdrawn from the world by her “guide.” He promised a wonderful development. If she would sit for it, he would in time materialize, and then they could travel together. She could sit upon the platform, and he would materialize and do the talking. For more than a dozen years she gave herself up to this, and in the end is left no better off than is many another woman who has given her life to man so long as there was any left to give.
That spirit priest simply lived, was held here in the earth sphere by her sex-life. She was his, body and soul, and while claiming to live so pure that she would not even touch a man’s hand, she was simply a spirit prostitute. Now, this living for God, becoming the bride of Christ, is all of the same piece. True, in most cases the spirit priest has to use a medium in the form of an earthly priest to act through, but the sex-forces—the sex-magnetism goes all the same to perpetuate the power of a spirit, and of an earthly hierarchy, and all in the name of God.
These two methods—the marriage method and the bride of Christ method—are the two thieves that rob the race of the perfected fruits of the tree of life.
These two kinds of life, as to sex, are all that are counted legitimate, the only ones sanctioned by the society at large. All variations from these are, without exception, counted wrong, and those who dare indulge, do so under a protest from their educated selfhood, and as something to be ashamed of and forgiven for. We do not mean that every individual thus condemn either themselves or others, but there is no exception which the public does not condemn.
If a nation would prosper, or a hierarchy rule triumphantly, they must have both means and numbers. The sex-fountain is the reservoir from which the religious, the so-called heavenly hierarchy draws both numbers and the psychic power which passes current in the occult, the soul realm.
The command to multiply and replenish the earth is supposed to have come from God, consequently propagation is looked upon as a religious duty, and the command that wives should be subject to husbands, “as unto the Lord,” gives the man full license to throw off his sex-life as often as he pleases. There are two reasons for this. First, it increases the tendency to conception.
The woman who is taxed in this way beyond what her own nature demands, is much more likely to become a mother than is the one who positively enjoys the sex-act. The more intense her action in the reciprocal act, the less likely is she to conceive, for she involuntarily throws from her what she would otherwise retain.
The other reason is: All sex-action on the man’s part which is not reciprocated by the wife, so far from being a benefit to either, the magnetic sex-element is simply thrown away.
Now, those who thus put woman in man’s power understood this, and their know how to gather and use those scattered forces; for, as before said, sex-life is the most vital thing in existence, and it cannot be lost.
Again, women are made to feel that it is not nice, it is not womanly to have sex-desire, and when they do they are ashamed to own it—another method of holding them to the childbearing plane.
But woman, through the frequency of motherhood, the frequency in which her life-forces are drawn upon to build up another life, bequeaths weakness to her children, while her submission as a duty gives a submissive race, such as can be used to uphold those who are in power, as being so by the will of God.
Now, in all this, do not understand that we approve reckless, irresponsible sex-relations. We do not believe that anything could be more disastrous to the human race. What we want is that people should know how to use their own forces for their mutual benefit. We want men to understand that when they crowd themselves upon their wives, they not only rob her but themselves.
We want them to know that there is no compensation in unreciprocal relations, that such relations are like drinking salt-water to quench thirst; and we want them to understand further, that mere physical reciprocity is of but little benefit, if love and respect are wanting.
Indeed, the man who associates sexually with a woman he does not respect—well, we have no words to express the degradation that he brings to himself. The woman who is forced to sell herself for bread is above such a man, and more particularly if it be for bread for her children.
No, we are far from advocating recklessness in this direction. There is too much of that now. What we want is the knowledge that will give us genuine purity. We are tired of the counterfeit. And above all things, children should never be allowed to get a low, vulgar idea of sex, for such ideas tend to pollute the whole being.
The mother who told her little son that in a little room in her body there was a little brother or sister growing for him, and that when the right time came it would knock at the door and come out—that mother made that subject forever sacred to that son. In afteryears he always shrank with horror from all vulgar talk upon the subject. In his boyhood he would indignantly resist any attempt of his playmates at improper handling of himself, giving as reason: “When I become a man I want healthy children.”
This is the point at which we are aiming. Knowledge rightly given is what is needed. We urge that no knowledge pertaining to sex should be kept back from the people. We would show that such knowledge in the hands of the few, to the exclusion of the many, enables said few to combine and rule the many. Also, that when each and all know how to so conserve their own sex-life as to secure to themselves the highest good, physically, intellectually, and spiritually’, then each will be master of his or her own soul-forces, and no outside power can psychologize them to their hurt; and we further claim that this highest good cannot come from celibacy.
When this is accomplished, when sex ceases to be degraded or religiously directed, then the head of all tyranny will not only be bruised, but broken.
We claim that under the present methods of teaching we are robbed of the best, the highest use cialis for sex, and as sex-life cannot be lost, claim that it is gathered by the will-power of those who know how to turn its magnetic, its living force to their own use; claim that we are made subject to others to our injury and to theirs, for no one can hold undue power over others and at the same time reach the highest goal of self attainment.
The highest selfhood lies in the full unfolding of our own powers, which cannot be done so long as any portion of our forces are used in controlling others unduly. We may thus acquire a power, but not the power.
Under the system of Christian marriage, childbearing or celibacy are the only accepted alternatives for woman. If she takes any other course, she does so at her peril.
Charles Dawbarn, whom we have quoted before, says of the Brahmans: “They show us a spiritocracy that has been a foul tyranny for thousands of years. They seem to have a contempt for woman. We never hear of a female medium, nor even of a female spirit. The subjection and degradation of woman in that unhappy country are apparently the results of spirit rule. The whole anxiety of the attendant spirits of the Brahman seems to be to develop his mediumship by subduing every bodily passion.
Must subdue but not destroy, for a Brahman cannot become the head of the Supreme Council till he is eighty years of age, up to which hour he must have lived a life of chastity from his first initiation. Before this he must pay the debt of his ancestors by becoming the father of a son; then chastity till four score, and then after his election, and before entering upon his office, he must prove his manhood by becoming the father of a son, whose mother must be a virgin from the temple selected for him by the council.
Look at India and mark the results of such scorn of sex—such degradation of woman. Of no use only as an appendage to man, as the means of perpetuating the race. One would almost imagine that some degenerate Brahman spirit had left the spirit caste of which he was a member; this, or had been cast out, and had wandered to the more western nations, or rather tribes not yet nationalized, and there chosen his medium and developed that from which Christianity has sprung. One could almost imagine this when contemplating woman’s place under the Christian system.
The teaching is, marriage or celibacy—that is, Christian marriage, a marriage which makes woman the property of man. “He shall rule over thee.” Why, what for? Because she partook of the tree of knowledge.
We can imagine the consternation among the gods, the spirit priests who had so long ruled the earth. “What shall we do? “they said; “here is a woman who has begun to learn I We must stop this in some way, or we are undone.”
“ Put her under the control of man, let him rule over her, and such rule will be the ‘flaming sword’ which will keep her, and consequently him, from the tree of life.” “And he shall rule over thee.” Words of infernal import.
Yes, woman must pledge her body to the use of some man during her natural life, or never use her natural right to become a mother. To secure this natural right for once, she must be placed in a position in which she is forced to become a mother as often as it is possible for her to do so; and more than this, if any dare to teach her how to avoid unwelcome motherhood, man-made law consigns them to prison.
Would we give such knowledge? We believe that if such knowledge exists, it belongs by right to every woman, and he or she who, having such knowledge, withholds it, is criminally remiss, for no greater crime can be committed against a child than to be gotten as an undesired result of man’s gratification. It is worse than murder, and the fact that it is law-sanctioned and church-sanctioned does not make it less a crime.
Our method would be to teach men and women that sex is creative in other senses than the physical. We would show them that, with a recognition of the intellectual and the spiritual in sex, mutual sex-love will increase both the mental and spiritual power of genuine selfhood. Not the lack of selfhood which brings us with bowed heads, to our knees, but one that stands us squarely upon our own feet, with heads erect and eyes that dare to look anybody in the face.
We believe that such recognition of sex-use will soon take the man and woman out of the generative into the regenerative sphere—that is, sexual relations will cease generating new bodies, and begin to renew the bodies of the parties to the act. We believe that in mutual relations where the spiritual and the intellectual are both recognized, and woman takes the lead, is not teazed into a condition of desire, but comes to it naturally—we believe that one such relation will satisfy more fully than dozens of such as now obtain; for magnetic or psychic life would be generated, not simply exchanged or wasted, so far as the parties are concerned.
But these are not church ideas. They are not conducive to church power. Oh, no. The great religions of the world teach that the highest purity and sex-relations are incompatible, cannot exist in one and the same person. The Christian religion teaches that God may impregnate a virgin and the fruit is holy, but if man does such a thing before he has church or legal sanction, the fruit is accursed. God, or the gods, hold pre-eminence.
It is said that woman’s sin brought death into the world. That statement will not bear investigation; but give woman possession of herself, free her from all outside pressure that tends to make her yield herself other than through natural, mutual sex-love, and teach her, her responsibility as to the right use of her freedom, and she will abolish three-fourths of the deaths that now prevail.
Indeed, men themselves sometimes get frightened over the results of the use of a power that does not belong to them; still they do not seem to have any idea of yielding it up to the rightful owner.
A company of Russian savants have been two years studying as to the best methods of preventing the spread of that terrible result of sex-abuse, syphilis, and not a woman in their council. Oh, no! Man is the one to decide! Their conclusion is that knowledge upon the subject should be popularized—to wit, that all men should have such information as will help them to avoid the results of indulgence.
Now, we will tell those “savants,” and all others who care to listen—will tell them in a few words how to eradicate the scourge they have brought upon themselves, from the face of the earth. No, it is not celibacy, for we do not believe that to be the healthiest or happiest life.
Sometime during the year 1873, we made the statement that the entire freedom of woman would, in a few generations, eradicate all forms of sexual disease; and further, that it was the only way in which it could be done. The ground of this assertion was:
“If woman is never forced from outside pressure to receive what she does not want, nor when she does not want, there will be no conflict of forces, and harmony is health.” We repeat: “If woman never receives the sex-embrace only when she desires, and from the man she desires, there will be no conflict of forces, and harmony is health. This must hold true whether the woman is constant in her desire toward one, or is by nature a varietist.”
At the time we submitted the proposition to two physicians, a man and a woman, and both said, and without the least hesitation, “You are right.”
Yet, such is church power over the minds of the people; such the determination to force nature into the arbitrary standard of the Christian form of marriage, that kind of marriage which makes the woman’s person the property of man, and her duty to minister to his passions, no matter how much her feelings are outraged; such the force of long years of teaching backed by “Thus saith the Lord,” that physicians dare not tell what they know. This on the one hand, and on the other, should they do so, and the people should act therefrom, sex-disease would so far vanish as to leave very many of them without employment, and consequently without the means of support.
Our present property system, as well as our church teaching, holds woman in bondage, perpetuates disease and crime, and thus becomes the moral question of the age. The sex-question is “the bottom-question of civilization,” but the property-question, as well as the church power, stands in the way; but sex-facts are what we are after now.
Some may doubt that a conflict of forces in sex-matters produces disease. They urge that it is promiscuity, uncleanness, and so forth. Unclean, yes, and we will explain why after a little.
We once knew of a child being killed in the womb because of the woman’s strong repugnance to a physician. There were two in the place; one she liked, and the other she very much disliked. Travail pains came on; the doctor was sent for, but the one she wanted was out of town, so the other was brought. The thought of having him near her produced such a revulsion of feeling that all pain ceased, and did not return for a week. The physician she desired was there when the child was born, but it was born dead, and the indications were that it had been dead a week.
If the thought of having the man she so disliked near her as a physician produced such a result, suppose she had been forced to receive him as a husband; would there not have been a conflict between her sex-elements and his that would have resulted in the death of the spermatozoa, the living creatures which she had been forced to receive into her body—living creatures, even though so small that to be seen the aid of a microscope is needed. And these dead elements, the physical covering of the creative life slain in that conflict of repulsion, would they not create uncleanness?
Now, take the case of the woman who has no other means for bread, the woman who must suffer not only the infliction of one but of many upon her. In such case there is not only the woman to be considered, but there is deadly conflict between the sex-elements of the different men when they come in contact.
Ah, my brothers, when will you learn wisdom? When will you learn to give woman her rightful place? Not till you must, we fear; so we must turn to woman herself, must teach her to rebel.
In the preceding pages, we have tried to make clear some important truths, and how well we have succeeded, the reader must judge. Some will understand us others will misunderstand; but all will provoke thought,, and the agitation of thought is the beginning of wisdom. In our reference to spirits and mediums it has not been our purpose to discuss Spiritualism as such, but to warn against all religious control of sex.
If we make Spiritualism to mean a belief in the fact of communion with the departed—the so-called dead— then Spiritualism is the oldest religion, numbers the most followers of any in the world.
The Brahmans call themselves by a name which in our language means the sect of the spirits—the worshippers of ancestral shades. From a book written on purpose for the Brahman, we find taught, among other things, “the relations of souls to each other, and the modes of evocation by which spirits may be induced to manifest.
“We find from the facts of history that spirits, through Brahman mediums, have ruled India for thousands of years. We find the masses in degradation, sex counted unclean, and woman held in contempt. We hear of Brahman spirit-men, but not of spirit-women. Neither do we hear of spirits belonging to the “vulgar herd.”
The rule over India by the spirit world has proved disastrous. India cannot rise till that rule is broken. We claim that the rule over India, as well as over other nations, is the result of organized intelligence commenced in this life and carried into the next—that a trained, a mediumistic priesthood is the channel through which they continue to hold rule here.
We also claim that the Christian religion was commenced and has moved forward in the same way; that, though differing in the fact of having but a triune one at the head, one whom they call God, the general principles, to wit, entire submission to the ruling spirit called God, the religious control of sex, and woman subject to man, the principle involved in all these is the same; and, as in all religions sex is held subservient to the God, or gods, we have come to believe that said gods, spirits, or ancestral shades hold their power through a knowledge of sex-law.
We have been taught that we are by necessity immortal. We are also told of the death of the soul, and to reconcile the two, eternal torture has been imagined. Is it not possible that one of the above postulates may be false, that some souls do perish, that we may be so ignorant of life’s laws, or so abuse them, that our spirit, or astral, bodies do not gather enough force in the womb of matter to endure the atmosphere of spirit?
If so, by what means, what is the principal agency used in the destruction of such souls? Sex is creative, not only in matter, but in mind, in spirit. We may not be able to make all understand this, but many know it to be true. We claim that because of ignorance of sex-law, and by subservience to religious teachers in sex-matters, the more negative, the more devotional but ignorant ones, have been robbed of their psychic force by those whom they worship with such blind reverence.
If this be true, then religion has been a destroyer instead of a saver of souls. Why should it not be so? We can see how people can be robbed of their physical sustenance till they perish. We can see how the rich live upon the lives of the poor—the average life of the well-to-do being nearly twice as many years as of the poverty-stricken. Then, why may not those who are strong in soul-force absorb, drink up the soul-force of the weaker, even till they perish?
But we will leave this point by referring our readers to a careful reading of the preface to “From Generation to Regeneration,” as found in the first part of this book, and try to show more fully what is meant on page 3 of this essay, where we say of the Brahmans:
“There is a law by which they could have become more god-like, and at the same time have lifted the masses to a god-like plane.”
Life’s activities act upon matter in a threefold way. Food taken into the stomach generates strength for the body, throws off the refuse for the nourishment of the vegetable world, and furnishes a finer, an invisible element that is taken up by the brain in the production of thought, creates a body for thought.
Now, suppose( the brain was inactive, called for none of this finer elements, what then? It would be absorbed by other brains or pass out into the general reservoir of finer forces as a characterless atmosphere, would simply be a portion of the material atmosphere we breathe. To become brain-food, brain must act upon it. To become strength for the moral, intellectual, or spiritual nature, each must act upon it.
We will now take the sex-act. Its visible result is another human body; the balance is refuse so far as matter is concerned; but what of the finer elements? Food does not create the life of the body; it only sustains it. The life itself came from, was generated by sex-union. The fine aroma of food does not give life to the brain, or rather, to the thoughts generated in the brain; it only feeds those thoughts, gives them strength to come forth. The life of thought comes from sex. But brain, spirit must act upon sex to generate thought, spiritual life, just as truly as it must act upon food to gather the finer element eliminated therefrom; so in the sex-act the spiritual and the intellectual must be active, must blend in sweet harmony to generate either spiritual or intellectual life for themselves, or to eliminate the aura thereof as an atmosphere to be inhaled by others.
But can the spiritual and the intellectual blend in an act which is looked upon as merely physical, merely animal? Can they blend in an act that is forced upon woman as a duty, a wifely duty; or can they blend in celibacy? Without such blending, either directly or indirectly, there can be neither intellectual nor spiritual life generated. Indirect blending, to wit, that of spheres without sex-contact, will do much, but is not all that is needed.
Thus, religious interference has destroyed the finer generative forces, or rather, has prevented their being generated through mutual sex-love, and the result is, the race has been robbed of the soul-force that comes from that which would, otherwise, have given those in the eartli-sphere life in abundance—would have lifted the masses out of the slough of degradation, and, at the same time, have so enriched the spirit world that it would not have been necessary for spirits to rob us in order to live.
Give us only mutual sex-relations, and those in which body, soul, and intellect blend, and the race will leap forward a thousand years in a century. But while the tree of life is sapped by the two thieves, Celibacy and Christian marriage, progress must be slow. Christian marriage, or any other that puts woman under the control of man sexually.
Had India’s Brahman priests and spirits understood and acted from the mutual law we have named, India’s millions would not now be sunk in degradation, and India’s “ancestral shades” would not still be drinking up the soul-force of those yet in the earth life.
But the subject grows upon us, and we must find a stopping-place.
Oh, for the light of nature’s laws upon the fountains of life! Oh, that life’s vital forces may never more be abused or wasted, but conserved to the highest use of body, soul, and intellect!
Oh, that all women would preempt their claim to freedom from all sex-invasion, and all men learn the true law of life I is the earnest wish of
L.W.
The End