thaumaturgy
with which these children of nature were familiar centuries ago in the
New World, and which are recorded of the theosophists and magicians
of Egypt, Greece and Rome.[142] So long as many intelligent
and sensible people among ourselves find all explanations of these modern
phenomena inadequate and unsatisfactory, we may patiently wait for a
complete solution of those of a greater antiquity.
42. The conclusion to which this study of Nagualism leads is, that it was not merely the belief in a personal guardian spirit, as some have asserted; not merely a survival of fragments of the ancient heathenism, more or less diluted by Christian teachings, as others have maintained; but that above and beyond these, it was a powerful secret organization, extending over a wide area including members of different languages and varying culture, bound together by mystic rites, by necromantic powers and occult doctrines; but, more than all, by one intense emotion-hatred of the whites—and by one unalterable purpose—that of their destruction and with them the annihilation of the government and religion which they had introduced.
[142] In the Notice Preliminaire to the second part of his work, La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et au Mayan Age, Mr. Alfred Maury admirably sums up the scientific resources at our command for explaining the mystical phenomena of experience, without denying their reality as actual occurrences.
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