Gentlewoman: I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body. Doctor: Well, well, well. Gentlewoman: Pray God it be, sir. Doctor: This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds. Lady Macbeth: Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave. Doctor: Even so? Lady Macbeth: To bed, to bed: there's knocking at the gate. The Doctor says truly "This disease is beyond my practice." The wretched woman finally dies under the strain. Macbeth is a picture, on the material side, of that selfish and heartless ambition in human nature that cruelly sweeps aside remorselessly whatever stands between it and the immediate realization of its desires-the story of ambition, clothed with the power of achievement, and of the terrible reaction that must inevitably follow. It is a presentation of the truth that a structure built upon selfishness and wrong doing is predoomed to be destroyed, regardless the high place and power of its builders, because the seeds of destruction are inherently within it. Every thoughtful reader sees at once that it is remarkably true to life, and the student of things occult sees that it is equally true to the hidden side of nature. The "weird women," the accurate prophecies of coming events, the temporary clairvoyance of Macbeth, the wraith of Banquo, are all as true to nature as are the descriptions and emotions of the various characters which the great dramatist presents. There is nothing in the entire play that is unnatural, untrue or overdrawn. Its various phases of occult phenomena are commonplaces in our own day and may be observed and verified by those who are sufficiently interested to patiently investigate them. THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD III The occultism in Richard III is to be found chiefly in dreams and these dreams, as presented by the great dramatist, are consistent with the hypothesis that there is an intimate relationship between the physical life and the astral existence. A brief discussion of the subject of dreams should precede an examination of the terrifying experience of Richard on the eve of the battle that cost him his kingdom and his life. The hypothesis, well known in theosophical literature, is that after the death of the physical body, the consciousness (which is the real man, while the material body is but its temporary vehicle) survives in full integrity in the intangible world which surrounds and permeates the visible world; that that life includes an unbroken memory of this one; that there are several divisions of the invisible world, with varying states of consciousness, from the most dismal purgatory that may properly be called "hell," to an ecstatic state of being that may truly be called "heaven," and that the mental and emotional status of any individual after the loss of the physical body is very definitely determined by the purity or grossness, the benevolence or the malevolence, of his life while in the physical body. Death, however, is not the only method of release from the material realm. Sleep temporarily accomplishes the same result, but it is not often that one retains a memory of what occurs during the brief absence from the physical body, and the infrequent recollections are commonly fragmentary and incoherent. Occasionally, however, the memory is clear and consecutive and, naturally enough, matters of tragic import are strongly impressed on the physical brain by the astral thought and emotion which arise from the deepest joy or the most abject fear. The terror that comes upon the murderer when in sleep he loses the protection afforded him by the gross physical matter that shuts out the astral world from his waking consciousness, is presented to us in Richard III. Of course, not all people are sufficiently sensitive to retain an impression of astral experiences. If it were so every murderer would come back to the waking state more or less unnerved, according to his degree of sensitiveness. Richard seems to have been one of those who occasionally bring into the waking consciousness a very vivid recollection of what had occurred while his consciousness functioned apart from the physical body. He had fallen asleep in his tent, that last night of his life, and had met, as in the flesh, the long list of his victims, each of whom makes it clear that disaster and death are just ahead for him. The chief distinction between the dream that is a memory, more or less distinct, of an astral experience, and the chaotic dreams that are merely the automatic activity of the brain during slumber, is the vividness and the impression of reality in the former-a characteristic that comes out clearly in the ghost scenes. Richard falls asleep in his tent, Scene III, Act V: The Ghost of Prince Edward, Son to Henry the Sixth, rises between the two tents. Ghost. [To King Richard]: Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow! Think how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth When I was mortal, my anointed body |