till exists even at the present day, observing still the same
old-world ritual even teaching as a sacred and hidden language the
same Atlantean tongue which was used at its foundation so many
thousands of years ago. It still remains what it was from the first--a
lodge of occultists of pure and philanthropic aims, which can lead
those students whom it finds worthy no inconsiderable distance on the
road to knowledge, and confers such psychic powers as are in its gift
only after the most searching tests as to the fitness of the
candidate. Its teachers do not stand upon the Adept level, yet
hundreds have learnt through it how to set their feet upon the Path
which has led them to Adeptship in later lives; and though it is not
in direct communication with the Brotherhood of the Himalayas, there
are some among the latter who have themselves been connected with it
in former incarnations, and therefore retain a more than ordinarily
friendly interest in its proceedings.

The chiefs of this lodge, though they have always kept themselves and
their society strictly in the background, have nevertheless done what
they could from time to time to assist the progress of truth in the
world, and some half-century ago, in despair at the rampant
materialism which seemed to be stifling all spirituality in Europe and
America, they determined to make an attempt to combat it by somewhat
novel methods--in point of fact to offer opportunities by which any
reasonable man could acquire absolute proof of that life apart from
the physical body which it was the tendency of science to deny. The
phenomena exhibited were not in themselves absolutely new, since in
some form or other we may hear of them all through history; but their
definite organization--their production as it were to order--these
were features distinctly new to the modern world. The movement they
thus set on foot gradually grew into the vast fabric of modern
spiritualism, and though it would perhaps be unfair to hold the
originators of the scheme directly responsible for many of the results
which have followed, we must admit that they have achieved their
purpose to the extent of converting vast numbers of people from a
belief in nothing in particular to a firm faith in at any rate some
kind of future life. This is undoubtedly a magnificent result, though,
in the opinion of many of those whose power and knowledge enable them
to take a wider view of such matters than we can, it has been at