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The etheric double is primarily a body of magnetic stresses in the framework of whose meshes every cell and fibre of the physical body is held as in a rack. But intermediate between this and the dense physical body as we know it, there is what may be called the raw material out of which dense matter is condensed. This was called by the ancients, Hyle, or First Matter, and by the moderns, Ectoplasm. It is this projected ectoplasm which produces the phenomena whenever physical manifestations are in question. It may be projected as long rods, which will operate up to a distance of a dozen feet or so; or it may be projected as a nebulous cloud, connected with the medium by a tenuous thread. This cloud can be organised into distinct forms, having the semblance of life and acting as vehicles for conscious wills. There is a great deal of information available on this subject in the literature of spiritualism, to which reference may be found in the bibliography at the end of this book.

The adept who was head of the occult college to which I have previously referred, and from whom I received my first training in occultism, was able to perform this operation, and I have many times seen him do it. He would go into deep trance, after a few convulsive movements, somewhat like a slow tetany, and would then lose about two-thirds of his weight. I have many times helped to lift him, or even lifted him single-handed, when he was in this state, and he weighed no more than a child. A man can fake many things, but he cannot fake his weight. I have lifted him single handed from the floor on to a sofa when in this state. It is quite true that, being rigid as a board, he was much easier to handle than the ordinary limp, unconscious human form; but there is a certain ratio between the weight of a grown man and the strength of a woman of average physique.