In the oldest documents now in the possession of the World—the _Vedas_ and the older laws of Manu—we find many magical rites practised and permitted by the Brâhmans.(572) Tibet, Japan, and China, teach in the present age that which was taught by the oldest Chaldæans. The clergy of these respective countries prove moreover what they teach—namely, that the practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities, developes the vital soul‐power of self‐illumination. Affording to man the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we find magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great Britain practised it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes many a chapter to the “wisdom”(573) of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees—the Druids of the Gauls—expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all—the immortality of the Soul.(574) In their sacred groves—natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible Architect—the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight, to learn about what man once was, and what he will be.(575) They needed no artificial illumination, nor life‐drawing gas, to light up their temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their oak‐crowned heads; and their white‐robed sacred bards knew how to converse with the solitary queen of the starry vault.(576)