21. The Science Of The Prophets-d

A modern investigator, the Chevalier D'Arpentigny, has imparted to chiromancy a fresh degree of certitude by his remarks on the analogies which really exist between the characters of persons and the form of their hands, as a whole or in detail. This new science has been developed and verified further by an artist who is also a man of letters, rich in originality and skill. The disciple has surpassed the master, and our amiable and spiritual Desbarrolles, one of those travellers with whom our great novelist Alexandre Damas delights to surround himself in his cosmopolitan romances, is quoted already as a veritable magician in chiromancy. The querent should be questioned also upon his habitual dreams; dreams are the reflection of life, both interior and exterior. They were considered with serious attention by the old philosophers; patriarchs regarded them as certain revelations; most religious revelations have been given in dreams. The monsters of perdition are nightmares of Christianity, and as the author of Smarra has observed ingeniously, never could pencil or chisel have produced such prodigies if they had not been beheld in sleep. We should beware of persons whose imagination continually reflects deformities. Temperament is, in like manner, manifested by dreams, and as this exercises a permanent influence upon life, it is necessary to be well acquainted therewith, if we would conjecture a destiny with certitude. Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light indicate a sanguine temperament; those of water, mud, rain, tears, are characteristic of a more phlegmatic disposition; nocturnal fire, darkness, terrors, spectres, belong to the bilious and melancholic. Synesius, one of the greatest Christian bishops of the first centuries, the disciple of that beautiful and pure Hypatia who was massacred by fanatics after presiding gloriously over the school of Alexandria, in the inheritance of which school Christianity should have shared - Synesius, lyric poet like Pindar and Callimachus, priest like Orpheus, Christian like Spiridion of Tremithonte - has left us a treatise on dreams which has been the subject of a commentary by Cardan. No one concerns themselves now with these magnificent researches of the mind because successive fanaticisms have well-nigh forced the world to despair of scientific and religious rationalism. St. Paul burned Trismegistus; Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus and St. Paul. O Persecutors! O incendiaries! O scoffers! When will ye end your work of darkness and destruction? One of the greatest Magi of the Christian era, Trithemius, irreproachable abbot of a Benedictine monastery, learned theologian and master of Cornelius Agrippa, has left among his disesteemed but inestimable works, a treatise entitled, “De Septem Secundiis”, id est intelligentiis sive spiritibus orbes post Deum moventi-bus. It is a key of all prophecies new or old, a mathematical, historical and simple method of surpassing Isaiah and Jeremiah in the prevision of all great events to come. The author in bold outline sketches the philosophy of history, and divides the existence of the entire world between seven genii of the Kabalah. It is the grandest and widest interpretation ever made of those seven angels of the Apocalypse who appear successively with trumpets and cups to pour out the word and its realization upon earth. The duration of each angelic reign is 354 years and 4 months, beginning with that of Orifiel, the angel of Saturn, on 13 March, for, according to Trithemius, this was the date of the world's creation; his rule answers to a period of savagery and darkness.