Then as now, the specially gifted were used in connection with the service of mysteries, but in all the old cults which attained to any degree of organization the arch-priests or hierophants were not themselves mediums, but made use of mediums as instruments. The rôle played by the medium was a more or less unimportant one just as to-day the “psychics” used by the different sects of Tibetan Lamas are relatively unimportant and insignificant members of the priestcraft. The priests had, however, other secrets--secrets which on occasion conferred the gift of vision on the ordinary non-psychic person. Sacerdotalism and royalty were closely allied not only in ancient Egypt, but throughout the bulk of the mid-Oriental and Byzantine cults. Then as now, people demanded proof of miracles and the proof had to be forthcoming. Little by little, savants have recovered from hieroglyph and papyri, from stone and manuscript, something of the great rituals and something of both the outer and inner forms of these dead faiths. We know enough to realize that the adepts possessed the art of releasing the spirit from the body and of producing the trance state not only in individuals but in comparatively large congregations. The two hypotheses are the agency of hypnotism and the agency of some mechanical or physiological factor such as a drug. The possibilities of hypnotism in the form of crowd suggestion cannot be overlooked, but it does not entirely account for some of the phenomena that tradition has handed down and which is substituted by contemporary record. Analysis of some of these cults shows that the initiates partook of a ceremonial drink or brew of some kind and that there is a more than mystical use of the censer. Nine-tenths of the so-called propitiatory ritual was symbolic, but there remains an unexplained tenth part whose agency was primarily that of mechanical excitant of what one may term “psychism”--those qualities of perception that we class as psychic gifts. It is precisely these extraordinarily valuable secrets that were among the deepest arts of the priestcraft. There was no record of these--nothing direct is to be found in the writings, and although it is possible to recover the philosophic bases of the myths these rule-of-thumb mysteries still elude us. After all, many other similar secrets, and even fairly well-known common facts of antiquity, have been lost to us. We do not know the composition of the celebrated Roman fish sauce “garum.” We cannot tell what are the ingredients of Stradivarius’ violin varnishes or some old master’s colours. Nevertheless, it is unreasonable to suppose that the necessary materials have vanished from the earth. We have the whole known world to ransack for them where the ancients had only a limited and circumscribed number of plants, beasts, and minerals from which to gather their ingredients.