Lives of Alcyone

authorities; but Alcyone felt strongly dissatisfied with this, and
earnestly desired to have the opinion on this subject of the uncle
upon whose wisdom he found himself so constantly learning in the
scenes from old Peru. It must be understood that in examining these
pictures psychometrically, he found them not merely as pictures, but
was able, as it were, to enter into that form and to live over again,
with all its original intensity, the life of authority and experiment
which he had led in those earlier centuries, and he had when doing
this a curious double consciousness, for the memories of the Indian
life were present in his mind even while he was living over again the
older Peruvian existence.
During this period of indecision he was going back
psychometrically by means of the seal into that older life, and
constantly he made a passionate appeal to the Peruvian uncle for
counsel in his present Indian difficulty; or rather perhaps for the
support which he felt sure that that uncle would have given to his
own conviction of the side of what seemed to him right. Suddenly,
and in answer to this appeal, there came something which he had
never seen before; a kind of vivid and greatly intensified life came
into the form of the uncle in his mental picture into reality and
changed before his eyes into a commanding Indian figure, which
materialised itself so as to be visible to Percy as well as to him, and
spoke to him with great emphasis in reply to his appeal.
Mercury told him that he had really been his uncle long ago in
old Peru, but now was born again in a distant part of India. He then
proceeded to give him definite advice, first of all upon the subject at
issue, and then on a more personal matter. He told him that his
intuition was right, and that the influence of the temple should be