PITRIS.—It is generally believed that the Hindu term _Pitris_ means the spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence the argument of some spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers, are _mediums_; that they themselves confess to being unable to produce anything without the help of the _Pitris_, of whom they are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous. The _Pitris_ are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of _human_ races which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In _Manava-Dharma-Sastra_ they are called the _Lunar_ ancestors. PYTHIA, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and “any female supposed to have the spirit of divination in her—_a witch_,” which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean {xxxix} exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called _ventriloqua vates_,[41] the ventriloquist-prophetess. The ancients placed the astral soul of man, ψυχη, or his self-consciousness, in the pit of the stomach. The Brahmans shared this belief with Plato and other philosophers. Thus we find in the fourth verse of the second _Nâbhânedishtha Hymn_ it is said: “Hear, O sons of the gods (spirits) one who speaks through his navel (nâbhâ) for he hails you in your dwellings!”