d after a physical _seance_. A student
of occultism is taught how to guard himself from their attempts, but
without that knowledge it is difficult for one who puts himself in
their way to avoid being more or less laid under contribution by them.

8. _The Vampire and Werewolf._

There remain two even more awful but happily very rare possibilities
to be mentioned before this part of our subject is completed, and
though they differ very widely in many ways we may yet perhaps group
them together, since they have in common the qualities of unearthly
horror and of extreme rarity--the latter arising from the fact that
they are really relics of earlier races. We of the fifth root race
ought to have evolved beyond the possibility of meeting such a ghastly
fate as is indicated by either of the two headings of this
sub-section, and we have so nearly done it that these creatures are
commonly regarded as mere mediaeval fables; yet there _are_ examples to
be found occasionally even now, though chiefly in countries where
there is a considerable strain of fourth-race blood, such as Russia or
Hungary. The popular legends about them are probably often
considerably exaggerated, but there is nevertheless a terribly serious
sub-stratum of truth beneath the eerie stories which pass from mouth
to mouth among the peasantry of Central Europe. The general
characteristics of such tales are too well known to need more than a
passing reference; a fairly typical specimen of the vampire story,
though it does not profess to be more than the merest fiction, is
Sheridan le Fanu's _Carmilla_, while a very remarkable account of an
unusual form of this creature is to be found in _Isis Unveiled_, vol.
i., p. 454. All readers of Theosophical literature are familiar with
the idea that it is possible for a man to live a life so absolutely
degraded and selfish, so utterly wicked and brutal, that the whole of
his lower Manas may become entirely immeshed in Kama, and finally
separated from its spiritual source in the higher Ego. Some students
even seem to think that such an occurrence is quite a common one, and
that we may meet scores of such "soulless men," as they have been
called, in the street every day of our lives, but this, happily, is
untrue. To attain the appalling preeminence in evil which thus
involves the entire loss of a personality and the weakening of the
developing individuality behind, a man must stifle every gleam of
unselfishness or spiritual