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A Treatise on White Magic - Introductory Remarks
b. The Soul, the Mediator or Middle Principle There are two angles or points of view from which the nature of the soul must be grasped: one is the aspect of the soul in relation to the fourth kingdom in nature, i.e. the human, and the other that of the subhuman kingdoms in nature, which, it must be remembered, are reflections of the three higher. It should be borne in mind that the soul of matter, the anima mundi, is the sentient factor in substance itself. It is the responsiveness of matter throughout the universe and that innate faculty in all forms, from the atom of the physicist, to the solar system of the astronomer, which produces the undeniable intelligent activity which all demonstrate. It can be called attractive energy, coherency, sentiency, aliveness, awareness or consciousness, but perhaps the most illuminating term is that the soul is the quality which every form manifests. It is that subtle something which distinguishes one element from another, one mineral from another. It is the intangible essential nature of the form which in the vegetable kingdom determines whether a rose or a cauliflower, an elm [34] or a watercress shall come into being; it is a type of energy which distinguishes the varying species of the animal kingdom and makes one man different from another in his appearance, nature and character. The scientist has tabulated, investigated and analyzed the forms; names have been selected and given to the elements, and the minerals, the forms of vegetable life and species of the varying species of animals; the structure of the forms and the history of their evolutionary progress have been studied and deductions and conclusions have been reached, but the solution of the problem of life itself still eludes the wisest, and until the understanding of the "web of life" or of the body of vitality which underlies every form and links every part of a form with every other part is recognized and known to be a fact in nature, the problem will remain unsolved. The definition of the soul may be regarded as somewhat more feasible than that of spirit owing to the fact that there are many people who have experienced at sometime or another an illumination, an unfoldment, an uplifting, and a beatitude which has convinced them that there is a state of consciousness so far removed from that normally experienced as to bring them into a new state of being and a new level of awareness. It is something felt and experienced, and involves that psychic expansion which the mystic has registered down the ages, and which St. Paul referred to when he spoke of being "caught up to the third Heaven," and of hearing things there which it is not lawful for man to utter. When hearing and sight on those levels are both producing registered experience then we have the occultist plus the mystic.
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