with all kinds of bodies, especially with crystals. Luminous emanations were seen, by sensitive subjects, round all these bodies. Around the heads of men placed in the dark room they saw white rays; from their fingers issued small flames. In the first portion of their sleep somnambulists sometimes see their magnetizer with these same signs. Pure astral light appears only in a condition of lofty ecstasy, but it is polarized in all bodies, combines with all terrestrial fluids and plays diverse _rôles_ in electricity, in terrestrial and animal magnetism.[5] The interest of Reichenbach’s experiments is that they make precise the limits and transition from physical to astral vision capable of leading on to spiritual vision. They also enable us to obtain a faint glimpse of the infinite subtleties of imponderable matter. Along this path there is nothing to prevent our conceiving it as so fluid, so subtile and penetrating, that it becomes in some way homogeneous with spirit, serving the latter as a perfect garment. We have just seen that modern natural philosophy, in order to explain the world, has been obliged to recognize an imponderable, universal agent, that it has even proved its presence, and, in this way, without knowing it, has fallen in with the notions of ancient theosophies. Let us now try to define the nature and function of cosmic fluid in accordance with the philosophy of occultism in all ages. On this main principle of cosmogony, Zoroaster is in agreement with Heraclitus, Pythagoras with Saint Paul, the Kabbalists with Paracelsus. Cybele-Maïa reigns everywhere, the mighty soul of the world, the vibrating and plastic substance which the breath of the creative spirit uses at its will. Her oceans of ether serve to cement together all the worlds. She is the great mediator between the invisible and the visible, between spirit and matter, between the within and the without of the universe. Condensed in enormous masses in the atmosphere beneath the action of the sun, she flashes forth in a thunderbolt. Absorbed by the earth she circulates in magnetic currents. Subtilized in the nervous system of the animal she transmits her will to the limbs, her sensations to the brain. More than that, this subtile fluid forms living organisms similar to material bodies. It serves as substance to the astral body of the soul, a garment of light which the spirit is ever weaving for itself. The fluid becomes transformed, it rarefies or densifies according to the souls it clothes or the worlds it envelops. Not only does it embody spirit and spiritualize matter in its living bosom, it reflects in a perpetual mirage both things and the thoughts and wills of mankind. The strength and duration of these images is in proportion to the intensity of the will producing them. And, in truth, there is no other means of explaining thought suggestion and transmission at a distance, that principle of magic now-a-days acknowledged and