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* We feel constrained to make use of terms that have become technical in
modern science—­though they do not always fully express the idea to be
conveyed—­for want of better words.   It is useless to hope that the
occult doctrine may be ever thoroughly understood, even the few tenets
that can be safely given to the world at large, unless a glossary of
such words is edited;  and, what is of a still greater importance, until
the full and correct meaning of the terms therein taught is thoroughly
mastered.
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Now to the Hindu doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It has a basis of truth; and, in fact, it is an axiomatic truth, but only in reference to human atoms and emanations, and that not only after a man’s death, but during the whole period of his life.  The esoteric meaning of the Laws of Manu (sec.  XII. 3, and xii. 54 and ), of the verses asserting that “every act, either mental, verbal or corporeal, bears good or evil fruit (Karma),” that “the various transmigrations of men (not souls) through the highest, middle and lowest stages, are produced by their actions,” and again that “a Brahman-killer enters the body of a dog, bear, ass, camel, goat, sheep, bird, &c.,” bears no reference to the human Ego, but only to the atoms of his body, his lower triad and his fluidic emanations.  It is all very well for the Brahmans to distort, in their own interest, the real meaning contained in these laws, but the words as quoted never meant what they were made to yield later on.  The Brahmans applied them selfishly to themselves, whereas by “Brahman,” man’s seventh principle, his immortal monad and the essence of the personal Ego were allegorically meant.  He who kills or extinguishes in himself the light of Parabrahm—­i.e., severs his personal Ego from the Atman, and thus kills the future Devachanee, becomes a “Brahman killer.”  Instead of facilitating, through a virtuous life and spiritual aspirations, the union of the Buddhi and the Manas, he condemns, by his own evil acts, every atom of his lower principles to become attracted and drawn in virtue of the magnetic affinity, thus created by his passions, into the bodies of lower animals.  This is the real meaning of the doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It is not that such amalgamation of human particles with animal or even vegetable atoms can carry in it any idea of personal punishment per se, for of course it does not.  But it is a cause, the effects of which may manifest themselves throughout succeeding re-births, unless the personality is annihilated.  Otherwise, from cause to effect, every effect becoming in its turn a cause, they will run along the cycle of re-births, the once given impulse expending itself only at the threshold of Pralaya.  But of this anon.  Notwithstanding their esoteric meaning, even the words of the grandest and noblest of all the adepts, Gautama Buddha, are misunderstood, distorted and ridiculed in the same way.  The Hina-yana, the lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist,