animals who had to be
quieted by an offering of blood, lest they should awaken their masters
and warn them of the impending destruction. But apart from these
strange beasts they created other artificial entities of power and
energy so tremendous, that it is darkly hinted that some of them have
kept themselves in existence even to this day, though it is more than
eleven thousand years since the cataclysm which overwhelmed their
original masters. The terrible Indian goddess whose devotees were
impelled to commit in her name the awful crimes of Thuggee--the
ghastly Kali, worshipped even to this day with rites too abominable to
be described--might well be a relic of a system which had to be swept
away even at the cost of the submergence of a continent, and the loss
of sixty-five million human lives.

3. _Human Artificials._

We have now to consider a class of entities which, though it contains
but very few individuals, has acquired from its intimate connection
with one of the great movements of modern times an importance entirely
out of proportion to its numbers. It seems doubtful whether it should
appear under the first or third of our main divisions; but, though
certainly human, it is so far removed from the course of ordinary
evolution, so entirely the product of a will outside of its own, that
it perhaps falls most naturally into place among the artificial
beings. The easiest way of describing it will be to commence with its
history, and to do that we must once more look back to the great
Atlantean race. In thinking of the Adepts and schools of occultism of
that remarkable people our minds instinctively revert to the evil
practices of which we hear so much in connection with their latter
days; but we must not forget that before that age of selfishness and
degradation the mighty civilization of Atlantis had brought forth much
that was noble and worthy of admiration, and that among its leaders
were some who now stand upon the loftiest pinnacles as yet attained by
man. Among the lodges for occult study preliminary to initiation
formed by the Adepts of the good Law was one in a certain part of
America which was then tributary to one of the great Atlantean
monarchs--"the Divine Rulers of the Golden Gate"; and though it has
passed through many and strange vicissitudes, though it has had to
move its headquarters from country to country as each in turn was
invaded by the jarring elements of a later civilization, that lodge
s