Empire unusual suggested

8 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
Since these rumors have been puzzling to many authorities in
the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps it is appropriate to begin
with a quotation from the life of St. Anthony, the Egyptian-born
founder of Christian monasticism who lived about 300 A.D. In
the desert, St. Anthony met with a strange being of small stature,
who fled after a brief conversation with him:
Before long in a small rocky valley shut in on all sides he sees a
mannikin with hooted snout, horned forehead, and extremities like
goat's feet. When he "saw this, Anthony like a good soldier seized
the shield of faith and the helmet of hope: the creature none the
less began to offer him the fruit of the palm tree to support him on
his journey and as it were pledges of peace. Anthony perceiving this
stopped and asked who he was. The answer he received from him
was this:
"I am a mortal being and one of the inhabitants of the Desert
whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under
the names of Fauns, Satyrs and Incubi. I am sent to represent my
tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord,
and ours, who, we have learnt, came once to save the world, and
'whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.' "
As he uttered such words as these, the aged traveller's cheeks
streamed with tears, the marks of his deep feeling, which he shed in
the fulness of his joy, He rejoiced over the Glory of Christ and the
destruction of Satan, and marvelling all the while that he could
understand the Satyr's language, and striking the ground with his
staE, he said,
"Woe to thee, Alexandria, who instead of God worshippest
monsters! Woe to thee, harlot city, into which have flowed together
the demons of the whole world! What will you say now? Beasts
speak of Christ, and you instead of God worship monsters."
He had not finished speaking when, as if on wings, the wild
creature fled away.
Let no one scruple to believe this incident; its truth is supported
by what took place when Constantinc was on the throne, a matter
of which the whole world was witness. For a man of that kind was
brought alive to Alexandria and shewn as a wonderful sight to the
people. Afterwards his lifeless body, to prevent its decay through
the summer heat, was preserved in salt and brought to Antioch that
the Emperor might see it.9
Again, with this story, we are faced with an account the truthfulness
of which it would be futile to question: the lives of the
early saints are full of amazing miracles that should be taken as
VISIONS OF A PARALLEL WORLD 9
literary figures rather than as scientific observations. The important
point is that basic religious texts contain such material,
giving, so to speak, letters of nobility to a category of beings
widely believed to be of supernatural origin. Such observations
as St. Anthony's will prove fundamental when religious authorities
are faced with the problem of evaluating medieval observations
of beings from the sky, claims of evocation of demons by
occult means, and even modern miracles.
The details and the terminology of such observations as St.
Anthony's are not important to this study. It is enough to note
that in St. Anthony's account the strange being is indifferently
termed a satyr and a mannikin, while the saint himself states
that the Gentiles also use the names faun and incubus. St. Jerome
speaks of a "man of that kind." Throughout our study of these
legends, we shall find the same confusion. In the above account,
however, it is at least clear to St. Anthony that the creature is
neither an angel nor a demon. If it had been, he would have
recognized it immediately!
In the twenty-century-old Indian book of primitive astronomy,
Surya Siddhanta, it is said that "Below the moon and above the
clouds revolve the Siddhas [perfected men] and the Vidyaharas
[possessors of knowledge]." According to Andrew Tomas, Indian
tradition holds that the Siddhas could become "very heavy at will
or as light as a feather, travel through space and disappear from
sight." 10
Observations of beings who flew across the sky and landed are
also found in the writings of Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons,
France. Agobard, who was born in Spain in 779 and came to
France when three years old, became archbishop at thirty-seven.
When he died in 840, "one of the most celebrated and learned
prelates of the ninth century," he left an interesting account of
a peculiarly significant incident:
We have, however, seen and heard many men plunged in such
great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly, as to believe that there
is a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in
the clouds, in order to carry back to that region those fruits of the
cartli which arc destroyed by hail and tempests; the sailors paying
rewards to the storm wizards and themselves receiving corn and