The disciples of Zoroaster were the _Magi_; that is to say, the learned men of the day, but they modified the doctrine of the Prophet, which the Guebres alone preserved in its purity, with the fundamental doctrine of the dualism of light and darkness, represented by _Ormazd_ and _Ahriman_, the spirit of the blest and the spirit of the damned. The Chaldeans, celebrated from times of antiquity for their knowledge, not only of astronomy, but all other sciences, adopted the doctrines of the Zend-Avesta, and their Magi transmitted the same to the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and finally to the Gauls, whose adepts were the Druids. The science or Magic of the Chaldeans was only magnetism, somnambulism, and spiritism. Says M. F. Fabart: “The Magi, according to certain _bas reliefs_ exhumed in Oriental countries, knew the virtue of magnetic passes. We see figures with hands extended, influencing by their gestures the subjects, who, seated before them, have closed eyes. “The Pythonesses and Sybills did not have the power of foresight until they had passed through the crisis of an artificial somnambulism, and we find passages in antique authorities where this imposed sleep is discussed.[48] In one of my preceding works I have spoken of several very curious passages in the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, where he speaks of the oracles of the female magician Erichto and the responses of the Pythonesses in the Temple of Delphi to the inquiries of Appius. Cassandra, priestess to Apollo in the tragedy of Agamemnon, by Seneca the tragedian, is a perfect type of the hypnotizable hysteric, and, if the poet does not describe the methods followed by the priests of the temple in order to magnetize their subjects, we find them noted by other Latin authors in terms so explicit as to leave no doubt as to their knowledge of magnetic passes (hypnotism). Says Cœlius Aurelianus: “We make circular movements with the hands before the eyes of the patient. Under our gaze the subject follows the movements of our hands, the eyes blinking.” It is while giving the treatment for catalepsy that the Roman physician, the contemporary of Galen, initiates us in magnetic practice. After giving a description of the neurosis, which he characterizes by prostration, immobility, rigidity of neck, loss of voice, stupor of the senses, widely opened eyelids, fixity of the eyes and ocular expression, the Latin author teaches us how to relieve the disease and partially waken the movement, senses, and intelligence of the patient; and he magnetizes, as is clearly indicated in the following lines: “_Atque ita, si ante oculos eorum quisquam digitos circum moveat, palpebrant ægrotantes, et suo obtutu manuum trajectionem sequuntur; vel si quicquam profecerint etiam toto obtutu converso attendunt; et inclamati, respicientes lacrymantur nihil dicentes, sed volentium respondere vultum æmulantes_.”[49]