MYSTERIOUS AGENCIES

Belief in mysterious agencies characterises a certain period in the religious development of every nation.  Even the Jews, distinguished among the Semites by their soberness, consulted Yahveh through the Urim and Thummim, an oracle the nature of which is no longer definitely known. 

Kindred institutions among most nations are based upon primitive animism, or a belief in spirits, but in China we have a very peculiar mixture of logical clearness with fanciful superstitions. Chinese occultism is based upon a rational, nay a philosophical, or even mathematical, conception of existence.  An original rationalism has here engendered a most luxurious growth of mysticism, and so the influence of occultism upon the people of the Middle Kingdom has been prolonged beyond measure.

Text:  Paul Carus, Chinese Astrology: Early Chinese Occultism, La Salle, Illinois, Open Court Press, 1907.

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Saraha Sings

Though the house-lamps have been lit

The blind live on in the dark.

Though spontaneity is all-encompassing

And close, to the deluded it always remains far away.

BOOK OF SONGS 244: I'M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT

When he built the Magic Tower,

When he planned and founded it,

All the people worked at it ;

In less than a day they finished it.

When he built it, there was no goading ;

Yet the people came in their throngs.

The king was in the Magic Park,

Where the doe and stag lay hid.

Doe and stag at his coming leapt and

bounded ;

The white herons gleamed so sleek.

The king was by the Magic Pool,

 Where the fish sprang so lithe.

On the upright posts and cross-beams with

their spikes

Hang the big drums and gongs.

Oh, well –ranged are the drums and gongs,

And merry is the Moated Mound.

Oh, well –ranged are the drums and gongs!

And merry is the Moated Mound.

Bang, bang go the fish-skin drums ;

The sightless and the eyeless ply their skill.

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