OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) was a German physicist and satirist known for his "Sudelbücher" or scrapbooks of aphorisms., who said: "If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!"

And so it is with our contemporaries when they pass judgment on theosophical Theosophy: a system of esoteric philosophy seeking direct knowledge of the divine truths. If these truths should in the ears of many sound like mere words, words to which they cannot attach any meaning, the fault need not necessarily rest with Theosophy; those, however, who have found their way into these matters will know that behind all allusions to higher Beings, such Beings do actually exist, although they are not to be found in the world of the senses.

Our theosophical conception of the universe shows us that man, as far as he is revealed to our senses in the external world, as far as his shape and form are concerned, is but a part of the complete human being, and that, in fact, there are many other parts behind the physical body. Man possesses this physical body in common with all the so-called "lifeless" mineral objects that surround him. Over and above this, however, man possesses the etheric, or vital body. (The term "etheric" is not