situations in which man lives, and which are the karma of the man. They act under what is called the laws of nature, and these laws, another name for karma, are supervised by the Intelligences presiding over the actions of nature. In this manner elementals build when the time for re-embodiment has arrived, in the mother, the body of the unborn. They build according to the design furnished them. That design, carried over by the mind, is the beginning of the new sense man, and is the bond which unites the two germs of father and mother. The elementals fill out the design with matter drawn from the four elements, and have completed the structure by the time of birth.

So the child is born with winning or displeasing features, with deformities or afflictions, to reward the indwellng ego or to teach it to refrain from thoughts and actions which have produced such results (see The Word, Vol. 7, pp. 224332). Nature ghosts thereafter mature the child to the adult state and develop in the child the psychic tendencies inherent in it, which are also elementals. Nature ghosts provide the environment of home life, pleasure, pastimes, obstacles, and all that causes joy and trouble, all that makes man's sensuous life. Ambitions, recognition of opportunities, adventures are suggested by nature ghosts, and they provide them, too, and carry the man through, if he gives his thought and attention to these things. The ghosts furnish them as his karma permits. Industry, persistence, attention, thoroughness, courtesy, bring rewards which are often also physical, as wealth and comfort. Laziness, slothfulness, lack of tact, unconcern for others' feelings, bring effects which are often physical, as poverty, desertion, trouble. All pleasing or unpleasant events in the external world are due to the action of elementals under the control of the Intelligences which regulate the person's karma.

And now in these vast worlds, in which our visible earth is only a small and impotent body with unsoundable abysses within and without, where all proceeds according to law fixed and unalterable, where there is no disorder, where nature and mind meet and the results of their interaction are

according to law, where innumerable streams of spiritmatter and matter-spirit whirl, flow, and precipitate, melt, dissolve, sublimate, spiritualize, and concrete again, all through the thoughts and the body of man, the lemniscate of nature and mind, where in this way nature from high and spiritual planes under law involves into physical matter, and under law evolves through man up to the state of matter conscious as mind, where this goal as a fixed purpose is attained through the re-embodiment of matter and the reincarnations of mind, and where in all these realms and processes karma is the universal and supreme law holding the four worlds with all their gods and ghosts down to the smallest that exists for a second only, in its sure reign, where is there room for luck and luck ghosts?

Man's Prerogative Is the Right to Choose.

Man has the right to choose, though within certain limits. Man may choose to commit wrongs. Karma permits that, within the limits of the karma of others and not beyond the power of his own accumulated karma to react on him. Among other things he has the right to choose what gods he will worship, if gods, or whether gods or Intelligences, and whether in the realms of the sense man or on the heights of an enlightened mind. He may worship, too, by performances of duty, industry, persistence, attention, thoroughness. While the acts are done for worldly ends, they bring their worldly rewards, but they bring them legitimately, and more, they aid in the development of the mind and character and so bring good karma in a worldly sense. Nature ghosts, of course, are the servants which bring about earthly conditions under such karma. In the reverse, others may choose to be slothful, indolent, tactless, and not to respect the rights and feelings of others. They, too, meet eventually their deserts, and nature ghosts furnish the condition for downfall and trouble. All this is according to karma. Chance has nothing to do with it.

There are some persons who choose to worship the notion of chance. They do not want to work by the legiti

mate method for success. They desire a short cut, though they feel it is illegitimate. They want favors, to be exceptions, to get around the general order, and want to have what they do not pay for. They have the choice to do this, just as some have the choice to do wrong. The more ardent and powerful of these worshippers of chance create good luck ghosts in the way explained. It is a question of time when these ardent worshippers will change their devotion to some other god and so, incurring the jealousy and anger of the god they had worshipped, bring on their bad luck. But all this is according to law; their good luck is their karma within the limits of their power to choose. Karma uses as its very means the power which the lucky have gained, to bring about its own just ends.

Seldom does a man with a good luck ghost use his luck for righteous ends. The man favored by a luck ghost receives his rewards too easily; he believes in chance, and that fortune is acquired easily without arduous efforts. These efforts are, however, required by the cosmic law. He believes that much may be had for little, because that has been his experience, or what he believes to be the experience of others.

His attitude of mind brings of itself the turn of his cycle of luck.

Bad luck ghosts, it will be remembered, are of two kinds, those that a wrathful elemental god sent because the former worshipper has bowed to other shrines at the turn of his cycle of luck, and those that were elementals already existing in nature and attached themselves to certain humans because their attitude of mind was an invitation to the ghosts to have the fun of the sensation of worry, deception, self-pity, and

These bad luck ghosts are allowed to attach themselves by the karma of the human. It is simple. Where a human has a tendency to look upon himself as being martyrized-being exceptional, not understood-he is apt to dwell on this. So he develops an attitude of mind where the qualities of gloom, worry, fear, uncertainty, self-pity, are dom

inant. All this is a phase of concealed egotism. This attitude attracts, and invites, through these avenues, elementals. Karma then, to cure the person of these unnecessary woes, lets the elementals play with him. This is in accordance with the law which looks to the evolution of the mind by letting it learn lessons, through the experience of situations it has produced.

Therefore the work of good luck ghosts and bad luck ghosts, no matter how contrary their actions may seem to the general course of affairs under the rule of karma, are, if all the facts surrounding their working were known, well within the operations of the law.

THE SECRET DOCTRINE OF THE TAROT

By Paul F. Case

CHAPTER VII.

UR English "F" is derived from the Greek digamma, which was probably a modification of the Phoenician letter corresponding to the Hebrew Vau. We cannot be absolutely certain about the hieroglyphic origin of this letter, but we may be reasonably sure that Fabre d'Olivet's opinion that the primitive character was an eye is without foundation. The best modern authorities, in fact, agree that the Phoenician Vau probably stood for the object it most resembles-a yoke.

To think of a yoke is to be reminded of oxen; and in the Hebrew alphabet Aleph, the ox, is the symbol for the universal radiant energy, which is manifested as the solar force that causes almost every movement of terrestrial matter. This force has a double activity, sometimes represented by two oxen-one white, the other black. To yoke and drive this team is to master the solar force.

Figuratively, a yoke is anything that connects or binds. The captives of Rome and other nations of antiquity were made to pass under a symbolic yoke of spears, which represented their state of bondage. Later the yoke was an emblem of voluntary service, as in Jesus' words “My yoke is easy."

Service, indeed, is the heart of all religion. "Faith without works is dead." Acts are the proof of belief, which is only the beginning of the religious life.