BEFORE THE VEIL.
PAGAN GODS.—This term gods is erroneously understood by most of the reading public, to mean idols. The idea attached to them is not that of something objective or anthropomorphical. With the exception of occasions when "gods" mean either divine planetary entities (angels), or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term simply conveys to the mind of the mystic—whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage, Egyptian hierophant, or disciple of the Greek philosophers—the idea of a visible or cognized manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such occult potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the numberless deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are simply Powers of the "Unseen Universe." When the officiating Brahman invokes Aditya—who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun—he simply commands that potency (personified in some god), which, as he asserts, "resides in the Mantra, as the sacred Vâch." These god-powers are allegorically regarded as the divine Hotars of the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the human Hotar who officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power becomes, ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.
PITRIS.—It is generally believed that the Hindu term Pitris means the spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence the argument of some spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers, are mediums; that they themselves confess to being unable to produce anything without the help of the Pitris, of whom they are the obedient instruments. This is in more than one sense erroneous. The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the human kind or Adamic race; the spirits of human races which, on the great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In Manava-Dharma-Sastra they are called the Lunar ancestors.
PYTHIA, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and "any female supposed to have the spirit of divination in her—a witch," which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean
