Therefore, it is not only from the Mosaic books that we mean to adduce proof for our further arguments. The ancient Jews got all their knowledge—religious as well as profane—from the nations with which we see them mixed up from the earliest periods. Even the oldest of all sciences, their kabalistic “secret doctrine,” may be traced in each detail to its primeval source, Upper India, or Turkestan, far before the time of a distinct separation between the Aryan and Semitic nations. The King Solomon so celebrated by posterity, as Josephus the historian says,[250] for his magical skill, got his secret learning from India through Hiram, the king of Ophir, and perhaps Sheba. His ring, commonly known as “Solomon’s seal,” so celebrated for the potency of its sway over the various kinds of genii and demons, in all the popular legends, is equally of Hindu origin. Writing on the pretentious and abominable skill of the “devil-worshippers” of Travancore, the Rev. Samuel Mateer, of the London Missionary Society, claims at the same time to be in possession of a very old manuscript volume of magical incantations and spells in the Malayâlim language, giving directions for effecting a great variety of purposes. Of course he adds, that “many of these are _fearful_ in their malignity and obscenity,” and gives in his work the _fac-simile_ of some amulets bearing the magical figures and designs on them. We find among them one with the following legend: “To remove trembling arising from demoniacal {136} possession—write this figure on a plant that has milky juice, and drive a nail through it; the trembling will cease.”[251] The figure is the identical Solomon’s _seal_, or double triangle of the Kabalists. Did the Hindu get it from the Jewish kabalist, or the latter from India, by inheritance from their great king-kabalist, the wise Solomon?[252] But we will leave this trifling dispute to continue the more interesting question of the astral light, and its unknown properties. Admitting, then, that this mythical agent is Ether, we will proceed to see what and how much of it is known to science. With respect to the various effects of the different solar rays, Robert Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his _Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations_, that: “Those rays which give the _most_ light—the yellow and the orange rays—will not produce change of color in the chloride of silver;” while “those rays which have the _least_ illuminating power—the blue and violet—produce the greatest change, and in exceedingly short time.... {137} The yellow glasses obstruct scarcely any light; the blue glasses may be so dark as to admit of the permeation of a very small quantity.”