Then I said, “O Immortals, what is your food and your drink, and how does your banquet differ from ours, seeing that we also eat no flesh, and blood has no place in our repasts?”

Then one of the Gods, whom at the time I did not know, but have since recognised as Hermes, rose from the table, and coming to me put into my hands a branch of a fig tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, and said, “If you would be perfect, and able to know and to do all things, quit the heresy of Prometheus.  Let fire warm and comfort you externally:  it is heaven’s gift.  But do not wrest it from its rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your race, to fill the veins of humanity with its contagion, and to consume your interior being with its breath.  All of you are men of clay, as was the image which Prometheus made.  Ye are nourished with stolen fire, and it consumes you.  Of all the evil uses of heaven’s good gifts, none is so evil as the internal use of fire.  For your hot foods and drinks have consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your nerves, sealed your senses, and cut short your lives.  Now, you neither see nor hear; for the fire in your organs consumes your senses.  Ye are all blind and deaf, creatures of clay.  We have sent you a book to read.  Practise its precepts, and your senses shall be opened.”

Then, not yet recognising him, I said, “Tell me your name, Lord.”  At this he laughed and answered, “I have been about you from the beginning.  I am the white cloud on the noonday sky.”  “Do you, then,” I asked, “desire the whole world to abandon the use of fire in preparing food and drink?”

Instead of answering my question, he said, “We show you the excellent way.  Two places only are vacant at our table.  We have told you all that can be shown you on the level on which you stand.  But our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are beyond your reach now.  We cannot give them to you until you are purified and have come up higher.  The conditions are God’s; the will is with you.”

These last words seemed to be repeated from the sky overhead, and again from beneath my feet.  And at the instant I fell, as if shot down like a meteor from a vast height; and with the swiftness and shock of the fall I awoke.

—­Hinton, Sept. 1877

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* The book referred to was a volume entitled Fruit and Bread, which 
had been sent anonymously on the previous morning.   The fig-tree, 
which both with the Hebrews and the Greeks was the type of intuitional 
perception, was an especial symbol of Hermes, called by the Hebrews 
Raphael.   The plural used by the seer included myself as the partner 
of her literary and other studies.   The term virgin in its mystical 
sense signifies a soul pure from admixture of matter.—­(Ed.)
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X. The Difficult Path

Having fallen asleep last night while in a state of great perplexity about the care and education of my daughter, I dreamt as follows.