To the occultist, birth is death and death is an awakening. The mystics of ancient days taught that to be born into the physical world was to enter a tomb, for no other plane of nature is so unresponsive, so limited as the earth-world. Time and distance were prison bars chaining the soul to narrow en- vironments. Heat and cold tormented the soul, age deprived it of its faculties, and man’s life was but a preparation for death. As life is lived under the shadow of death, they taught that it is a mockery, a hollow thing, gilded to the careless eye but tarnished and worm-eaten upon close examination. The physical body became the sepulchre, tire tomb, the place of burial in which spirit lay awaiting the day of liberation when as a virgin spark it should arise again from the broken urn of clay.

THE OCCULT ANATOMY OF MAN

by Manly P. Hall