Publisher's Synopsis
From the INTRODUCTION.
A STORY of true love needs no formal introduction, just as good wine needs no bush. My only excuse for a preface is the fact that this particular romance deals more or less with the occult sciences, and it may interest the reader to know something about the history of magic and the influence it has exerted in the world. In an age of science it seems strange that magic, astrology, alchemy, spiritism, and kindred things, should have any votaries among serious-minded people.
But nevertheless such is the case. The literature on the subject is quite voluminous. The reason for all this is obvious. It is a reaction against the materialism of the age. Tender-hearted people flee from the mechanical conception of the universe and the soul to the wildest dreams of the Orient. But of late years the materialistic school of philosophy has been on the wane among thinking men. The inadequacy of atheistic-monism to really explain anything has been patent for a long time. That the cosmos is a psychism is gradually dawning upon many who have held the materialistic conception of things. The epoch-making book of Sir Oliver Lodge (than whom no profounder physicist exists) on mind and its relations to matter shows the change of base on the part of scientific men toward the idealistic philosophy. The universe is the product of mind. The Orient has always advocated the spiritualistic interpretation of the cosmos and the human soul. Exalting mind above matter to an extravagant degree, the philosophy of the Orient has brought into being the occult sciences which have exercised such a potent sway over humanity. The power of the will, as exhibited in hypnotic experiments; the well-credited examples of telepathy, or thought-transference; the remarkable experiments in clairvoyance, etc., which are well attested, go to prove that the human soul is an entity possessing wonderful - ay, magical - powers, and capable of surviving the shock of time and the grave. The Societies for Psychical Research - English, American, and French - which conduct their experiments along scientific lines, have verified many of the so-called occult arts of the Orient. Science to-day, as witness the experiments in chemistry of Professor Ramsay, seems to be on the verge of realizing the mad dreams of the old alchemists. All these things being so, it is not a remarkable fact that attention should be drawn to the occult arts of the East, and that charlatans should flourish - pretenders to magic, who live by preying upon the superstitions of the vulgar.
In the House of the Sphinx the Author has endeavored to depict one of these pretenders to sorcery. The hermetic seances of Ramidan are not drawn from the imagination. The curious reader will find such occult practices seriously treated in Eliphas Levi's work on higher magic, which has been translated into English by A. E. Waite, under the title of the "Mysteries of Magic." Levi was a great French cabalist and mystic, whose life reads like a romance.
Magic probably originated in India, and from there filtered into Egypt, Persia, and other countries. The temples of Egypt were veritable storehouses of natural magic. The science of the ancient world was largely confined to the Priests of Egypt. With the aid of polished convex mirrors of metal they were able to cast images upon the smoke rising from burning incense, and thus often deceived their votaries into the belief that they beheld visions of the gods. Hypnotism was known to them, and practiced. Magic was prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, yet it flourished. Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa were the shining lights among these necromancers.
