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THE DIAKKA AND THEIR EARTHLY VICTIMS¹

Seen from Starnos, or from the right shoulder of the beautiful mountain east of the Seven Lakes of Cylosimar,² lies a wonderful and mysterious portion of the Summer Land. It appears like an immeasurable wilderness covering the whole sphere to the South-West and throwing a shadow far up into the dome of the rosy-blue heavens. It is so attractive that great self-government is necessary to save one from hastening to enter a country which has for millions of ages excited the admiration and curiosity of the imperfect inhabitants of all worlds. The observer is amazed with the apparently boundless magnitude of this celestial wilderness and by its wonderful aerial crown, so bright and prismatic as to make immediate surroundings black. It impresses the beholder that hills and dales and forests beneath must be splendid with diamonds and golden riches, too perfect for earthly eyes. All external appearances of this Wilderness of the Diakka convey suggestions of a mysterious and occult character. It is a Garden of Eden and yet also a place where the morally deficient and unclean enter upon a strange probationary life.³

¹ See the work under this title passim.
² See p. 191.
³ There seems evidence for concluding that the revelations of Davis concerning Diakka were received with less confidence by Spiritualists than most of his other visions, and it has even been suggested that they were his way of explaining and minimising the counter-revelations of Thomas Lake Harris. On the other hand, some occultists have regarded the account as affording a glimpse of sub-mundane life, such as that attri-

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The Diakka and their Earthly Victims

A Diakka means a person with an occult temperament and propensities, springing from overcharged self-consciousness. Intellectually he may be a Bacon, a Byron, a Shakespeare; but, being morally deficient, he is without active feelings of justice, philanthropy or affection. He knows nothing of what men call gratitude; the motives of hate and love are the same for him; self is the end of his being, and he thinks that all personal life will be absorbed ultimately in the all-consuming self-love of God. Though unbalanced, he is not, however,

buted to elemental. Of these, however, Davis knew nothing, and had no room for them in his system. The Diakka are disembodied human beings, and when he speaks of angels they are merely advanced souls who had once lived on earth, or in one of the planets. As regards the doctrine of demons, this is considered at length only on a single occasion; but it is in an exceedingly confused manner and does not call for reproduction in the text of the present work. The remarks are embodied in a criticism of certain mediumistic phenomena which occurred about 1853, and suggested pandemonium to the witness who put it on record, being a certain Dr. J. A. Gridley. From the standpoint of Davis, all devils in the universe are living in the symbols of the mind, on the middle ground between our material and spiritual organisations. What are called evil spirits originate in the conflict of our nervous system, when one state of mentality is indulged at the expense of blessings which may be conferred by the other. If we dwell too much in the spiritual sphere it will draw us out of harmony with the laws of the outside world, and if the material sphere is suffered to becloud our spiritual and supersensuous nature the same operation will occur in a reverse sense. In either extreme, the mind is beset with imaginary devils, evil spirits and hells. We are not therefore to believe in evil spirits upon evidence personally received. It is to be recognised that if we are in bondage to the external we become mediums for the fantastic impressions of existence, derivations from the old notions of good and evil deities, as taught, e.g., by Zoroaster. Good communications depend upon good states of mind. To have true impressions we must live true lives.—The Present Age and Inner Life, pp. 320-370. The criticism is not convincing, but it establishes the point that, for Davis, there were neither angels nor demons except in the sense of progressed or unprogressed humanities. He claims further to believe that spirits work occasionally upon unfortunate persons by means of symbolical representations or dramas for the sake of securing reformation.—Ibid., p. 370.

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The Harmonial Philosophy

an evil person. He takes delight in personating opposite characters, often amusing himself with jugglery and tricky witticisms, secretly tormenting mediums, causing them to exaggerate in speech and falsify by acts. Nevertheless good physicians of love and ministers of truth labour among the Diakka, so that each and all are delivered ultimately. When you go into their wonderful wilderness you find yourself in a garden of beauty. The Divine Love and Wisdom are there, shining in splendour from the sad-leaved trees and emanating from feathery and downy grasses that carpet the beautiful land. The trees resemble in their foliage our pine and fir; but they cast a wonderful golden shade throughout the entire realm. Yet the light of the upper sky shines through all, even far down into the foundations of the land. Thus, although there is an amazing solemnity, a tearful sadness and melancholy murmur, magnetically subduing the egotistic extravagances of the inhabitants, yet travellers from other countries enter the society of the Diakka and enjoy their life and scenery.

The intellectually gifted, witty and tricky Diakka are not restrained from visits to earth, because personal education through experience is part of the scheme of developing personal responsibility. By permission of superior minds they play important parts in assaults upon bad governments, pernicious customs, evil social conditions, and frequently upon religious errors and superstitions. But for these spiritual freebooters little progress would be made. In the concerns of spiritualism they delight in flattering mediums and making magnificent promises to fortune-seekers who interrogate such persons for private gain. Some of their amazing promises are accompanied with most satisfactory evidences of spiritual intercourse. They puzzle spiritual philosophers by a mixture of alarming doubts about immortality. No more romantic farce than the boon of being reincarnated was ever played upon human imagination by

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The Diakka and their Earthly Victims

the sportive Diakka. They take a gipsy-like pleasure in travelling from place to place, from circle to circle, from medium to medium, passing themselves off under assumed great names. They are perfect in all sleight-of-hand performances, from their extensive knowledge and control of the subtlest elements and laws of exterior chemistry. In circles for materialisation they play fantastic tricks for the entertainment of the credulous, though it is not to be inferred that the creations of art are all false to the originals. The Diakka are masters of the Black Art, and most of their materialisations gather up chemically and represent literally the face, form, expression and even the style of clothing by which a personated entity was commonly known and recognised before death. The Diakka themselves were once human beings. They are derived from every tribe and nation under the sun. They have died, as we shall die, and now they return to molest men and women, like "chickens coming home to roost." They are begotten of humanity, and they come back to reciprocate with their producing causes.¹ Men's bad and brutal passions reappear in their children, who shower back from the Wilderness of the Diakka the effects of such tendencies upon susceptible persons, the innocent and the guilty suffering alike. What timid investigators of spiritualism are shocked at—the false and disgusting among mediums—might arouse, with more justice, their attention to those cardinal immoralities in society which generate what they abhor.

¹ In The Genesis and Ethics of Conjugal Love it is said otherwise that the Diakka occasionally meddle with the affairs of individuals through correspondingly inclined mediums, who are largely responsible for the intercourse.