THE SEER
Ir is not to be wondered that the magic strain to which P.
had been placed during the last seven months should have
long since blossomed into flowers of weird and wonderful
beauty. And so we find, as far back as the beginning of
November 1899, the commencement ofa series of extraordinary
visions as wild and involved as many of those of Blake or
St. Francis.
But before entering upon these visions, it will be necessary
to explain that by a vision we mean as definite a psychological
state and as certain and actual a fact to the mental eye, as the
view of a landscape is considered to be to the physical eye
itself. And so when we have occasion to write “he saw an
angel,” it is to be taken that we mean by it as absolute a fact
as if we had written ‘he saw a mountain,” or “he saw a cow.”
It, however, is not to be accepted that by this we lay down that
either angels or cows exist apart from ourselves, they may or
they may not ; but it is to be taken that angels, and mountains
and cows are ideas of equal value in their own specific
spheres : the astral and the material ; and that they have their
proper place in existence, whatever existence may be, and that
every experience, normal, abnormal, subnormal or supernormal,
whether treated as an illusion or a fact, is of equal value so
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