I have read, in the marvelous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul. This verse occurs to him in connection with the old story that the City of Prague was once beleaguered by a vast phantom army, which camped down on the opposite bank of the river, and he likens the human heart to Prague. Here, in the city dwells Ishwara, who, while thus imprisoned, is beleaguered by the vast army—the phantoms of all the acts and thoughts of the person in this and other lives. Occultism declares with the poet, that the heart is a mystic scroll; it is a veritable field also, in which are sown many seeds that may lie unnoticed, not only during one life, but often for many many incarnations, but sure to blossom forth one day under favoring circumstances. And as they begin to grow, they evoke the phantoms of the deeds that sowed them, and those ghostly hosts sweep round the soul in its prison house. In _Resignation_, Longfellow wrote: “There is no death! What seems so is transition.” This is one of the propositions of Occultism. The poet was writing upon the death of the physical body of a girl much beloved, and was considering the change which in common life is known as “death.” But the followers of the Wisdom Religion know that this terrible change is not really death, is not in any sense the moment of decease of even the physical man. The visible being is a congeries of energies or elements which are by no means all dead when the person breathes his last, nor when the body is consigned to the grave. It is only the transition, as Longfellow says, of the informing spirit, to another sphere of action. The same view is taken in the _Atharva Veda_, where it says, “Everything is transformed. Life and death are only modes of transformation, which rule the vital molecule from plant up to Brahma himself.” The occult philosophy considers as death, only that process, and period, of separation between _all_ the various elements of one’s lower human and animal nature; so that, in the case of suicides and other sudden and premature deaths, what occultists know as “death,” extends over a long period of time. The moment called death by the world, is only the time of separation between the body and the life principle, which the Hindus call _jiva_; this is the moment when the transition begins. Goethe was a profound student of occultism. Its influence is to be traced throughout his works, and a leading motive in many of his dramas is the dominance over the lives of men of that power which we call _Karma_. His masterpiece, _Faust_, upon which a library of commentaries has been written, can only be truly read in the light of Occultism. _Faust_ comes to an end with the following “Mystic Chorus” sung by the assembled Hosts of Heaven: