Swedenborgians claimed that the human body is sometimes abandoned by the soul in consequence of overpowering fright, grief, despair or sickness, and that we encounter every day such living corpses. Into these bodies may enter the soul of an adept sorcerer or some earth-bound, disembodied soul. In insanity the astral soul is partly paralyzed, bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampire or human soul near its own dissolution, and clinging desperately to earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this expedient. The ancients claimed that the soul was located in the solar plexus, and it was asserted that they could read, hear, see and smell through the navel. In our vermiform stage of development before evolution had supplied us with heads, the soul was perhaps in the stomach, but it may have moved since. Plato says that the divine part of the soul is located in the head. Haeckel says that the human soul is a combination of the souls of all the cells of the body. It is impossible to destroy any simple substance, and if it affords you any comfort, you can assume that the soul or ego is an indestructible electron. The Stoics claimed that the soul is in the heart, and that although it outlives the body, it is yet perishable and can only endure at the longest till the termination of the world period, 4,320,000,000 years. Epicurus claimed that “nothing that exists will ever cease to exist. Atoms exist from all eternity, and worlds were formed by their vortical motion. The soul is material and composed of exceedingly fine atoms, and is dispersed through the whole body. The rational soul is in the breast.” Stephanus, of Alexandria, says that “copper is like a man, it has a soul and body.” Yoga Ramacharaka says that “iron is alive and may be killed by poison.” “Transmigration of the soul takes place in all flesh, in beasts, reptiles and fowls. For one form of uncleanness the soul will pass into a Gentile, for another into a mule, for others into an ass, a woman, a bat, a she-mule or a camel.”—Kabala Nishmath Chaim, Ch. 13, No. 1. It sometimes happens that one sacrifices an animal with a human soul in it. Therefore the slaughtering knife must be without defect, and the slaughter must needs be delicately done to avoid cutting the gizzard out of the human soul. “The soul of a murderer is transmigrated into water. Let no man drink from a running stream, lest the soul of a wicked sinner pass into him.”—Kabala Emeh Hamelech, fol. 153, col. 1. “By a combination of the letters of the ineffable name Rava once created a man and sent him to Rav. Zera. The man being unable to reply when spoken to, the Rabbi said to him: ‘Thou art a creation of the company (of necromancers) return to thy dust.’ By the same means a Rabbi created pumpkins, melons, deers and roes.”—Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrim, ch. 7.