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216 and demanded by mankind, far superior to that displayed by the riff-raff pulings of half-crazed fanatics; the money-grabbing hordes of "Fortune-tellers" infesting all large cities; the "Biologists," "Psychologists," and others of the same order and genera. The new has become old, and the old new, and a better method of self-development is found in the revived practice than in all the others singly or combined. In India, China, Japan, Siam, Upper Egypt, Arabia, Central Nigritia, and on the far-off plains of Tartary and Thibet, the old usage still survives; and the seers divine through shells, and crystals, and diamonds, emeralds, or the plain and less expensive dark-ovoid,—wholly surpassing the boasted clairvoyance of France, England, and America, and in the same identical lines too,—albeit some uses thereof are perversions from the true and normal, whether for mere financial ends,—as by the rising and the falling of a white or yellow cloud or spot on the mirror's surface, indicative of similar movements in the correspondent precious metals; the floating or the sinking of a fleece for "stocks;" the rising or lowering of a stalk or sheaf of wheat, declarative of the course to be taken by that cereal in the markets of the world, for, sometimes, weeks ahead; or whether the objects, purposes, and ends sought pertain to the higher, broader, or deeper ranges of human thought and speculation. Unquestionably this ancient mode of dealing with the dead, and rapporting the mystical worlds above, beneath, within, and around us, is as superior to modern "Circleism" as gold in beauty outvies rough iron; hence students and explorers of the mystical side of the human soul; those desirous of opening the sealed doors of strange new worlds, and realizing somewhat of the tremendous problem of Being, must develop, not merely "Progress;" and to such the process of self-culturement is by me considered absolutely indispensable, and worth more to an anxious, earnest, light-seeking, yet not impatient soul, than all the "circles," and magnetists on the four continents; because the developed man or woman grows ; the "progressed" ones, merely memory and tact; and to be an Independent Seer is to become an absolute Power on the globe! whereas all forms of automacy, magnetic or otherwise, are but forms of serf-dom and