In a moment everything as it were became solid, and she felt that she
had dropped again to the earth. Clothed in a larger and more majestic
body than that she wore as Alice Enistor, she moved amidst familiar
surroundings, knowing the landscape she moved through and the people
whom she found herself amongst. Then she was aware that she was still on
a higher plane and had travelled in time through five thousand years to
re-live for the moment an incarnation of the past. The Book of Time, as
she dimly sensed it, was not a book, as the physical brain knows a book,
but a state of consciousness. At this moment, when the rainbow had
vanished and the music had ceased, and--as it might be--she was living
amongst the living, her father's voice came for the third time.
"What do you see? What do you do? Who are you, and who are those you
mingle with? Speak!"
So she was not entirely detached from her body of Alice Enistor after
all, since a thin thread of light ran from where she was to where she
had been when starting on the journey. Down that thread of light--so it
seemed--she sent her voice: telegraphed, or telephoned, all that her
father wished to know. The necessary goal had been reached, the
necessary communication between the mental and physical planes had been
established, and she proceeded to reply, compelled by some unknown
influence which forced her to speak.
In the library Narvaez wiped the perspiration from his bald forehead,
and sighed heavily with the efforts he had made to bring things to this
point. But he did not speak with his own tongue, lest the sound of his
voice should reach the girl in those far-off regions and make her
rebellious. Silently he impressed his desires upon Enistor, and softly
Enistor voiced those same desires, while he looked at the motionless
figure of his daughter reclining in the deep arm-chair.
"What do you see?" asked Enistor, scarcely moving his lips, and in a
thin silvery utterance, soft as a summer breeze, came the answer:
"I am looking on Chaldea, far back in the deeps of time. No--not
looking: I am living in Chaldea, as the priestess of a great
Star-Angel."
"The name of the Star-Angel?"
"You would call Him, Mars, although He has a different name in Chaldea.
He is the Planetary Spirit of Mars, and I serve in His temple. The
Chaldeans worship the Host of Heaven, as manifestations of the Logos,
whose visible symbol is the Sun. The Star-Angels of the seven planets
are the seven Spirits before the Throne, mentioned in the Book of
Revelation. The Logos is not the Absolute God from Whom emanated the
Universes, but the Being whose Body and Creation is the Solar System. He
is the only God our consciousness can conceive. He is the One of this
creation manifesting Himself in the many: we are the many ever striving
to return to Him, by learning through experience how voluntarily to
choose good instead of evil."
"Do the Chaldeans worship the Stars themselves?"