or spiritual mates, and that what they each saw in
her was really a prophecy of their own perfected and spiritualized love.

The subject is one that is positively incomprehensible and unexplainable to
the average mind. All mystic literature, when read with the eyes of
understanding, exalts and spiritualizes sex. The latter day degeneration of
sex is the "trail of the serpent," which Woman is to crush with her heel.
And Woman is crushing it to-day, although to the superficial observer, who
sees only surface conditions, it would appear as though Woman had fallen
from her high estate, to take her place on a footing with man. This view is
the exoteric, and not the esoteric, one.

They who have ears hear the inner voice, and they who have eyes see with
the inner sight. The mystery of sex is the eternal mystery which each must
solve for himself before he can comprehend it, and when solved eliminates
all sense of sin and shame; brings Illumination in which everything is made
clear and makes man-woman immortal--_a_ god.

Swedenborg's theory of Heaven as a never-ending honeymoon in which
spiritually-mated humans dwell, has been denounced by many as "shocking" to
a refined and sensitive mind. But this idea is shocking only because even
the most advanced minds are seldom Illumined, their advancement being along
the lines of intellectual research and _acquired knowledge_, which, as we
have previously explained, is not synonymous with _interior wisdom_.

The illumined mind is bound to find in the eternal and ever-present fact of
sex, the key to the mysteries--the password to immortal godhood.

The subject is one that cannot be set forth in printed words; this fact is,
indeed, the very Plan of Illumination. It cannot be _taught_. It must be
_found_. Only those who have glimpsed its truth can even imperfectly point
the way in which it _may_ be discovered. No teacher can guarantee it. It is
the most evanescent, the most delicate, the most indescribable thing in the
Cosmos. It is therefore the most readily misinterpreted and misunderstood.

Balzac doubtless understood, not as a matter of perception of a truth but
as an experience, and this fact, if no other, marks him as one having a
very high degree of cosmic consciousness.

Seraphita called herself a "Specialist." When Minna inquired how it was
that Seraphitus could read the souls of men, the answer was:

"I have the gift of Specialism. Specialism is an inward sight that can
pen