Perhaps the most picturesque of the mystical dreamers, the one who somehow stands forward from stained-glass mediævalism with more human distinctness than any man of his time, is Jacob Boehme, or Behmen, as it is frequently written in English. Direct illumination lent him spiritual vision of the root of all things; nature unveiled before him, mysteries were made clear. Essentially and of necessity he must have been a dreamer, this lad who spent his earlier years tending cattle and then became a shoemaker's apprentice, and who in later life had all the theologians of the world about his ears seeking to find fault with his doctrines. Every cloud in the sky threw him into ecstasy, every flower in the field made its revelation. His first book, "Aurora," suggests dreams and dream phantasy brought into the ken of the possibilities of life. And the term Ungrund or Urgrund for the source of everything, love, joy, purgatory, paradise, weak, strong, etc., savors of the modern dream phantasy.

The mysticism that is woman's inheritance through the infinitely and essentially mystical function of nurturing and bearing a human body and of incarnating a human soul, fits her especially to receive dreams and visions, and yet many women who have sung of their dreams and have told their visions have been, not the mothers, initiates to the inner shrine of motherhood, but those who have been called to celibacy and the hierophantic life.

Many of these dreams have descended to us from the days of the sibyls, oracles and priestesses; with a sort of ethereal symbolism as subtle, and strong, and indescribable as the odor of the vervain that they loved, their visions have come whispering across the seas of time.

Mediævalism with its saints furnishes minute descriptions of women's dreams. In that age of class distinction, class itself was forgotten and the dreamers were heard with becoming reverence, whether they boasted of the high lineage of the beautiful Lady Clare, the follower of St. Francis, or whether like St. Catherine of Sienna, they sprang from the

peasantry. The dreams of Lady Clare took tangible form in the order of the Poor Clares which works amid the suffering world to this day, while those of St. Catherine and of St. Teresa are received with unquestioning reverence by the devout. To St. Catherine especially was vouched a vision of the Saviour of mankind seated amongst His disciples, and all about Him stretched the seas of illimitable glory.

Well-nigh perfect examples of the dream state at its highest development are the dreams of St. Veronica (1497). The daughter of poor parents, she earnestly desired to become a nun, but as she was without money and had not learned to read she was disqualified. Each night when her work for the day was done she would struggle over the alphabet by the light of her little oil lamp, until at last, worn out she would fall asleep. One night the Blessed Virgin appeared to her robed in the blue of the midday sky and bearing a sheaf of lilies. Her message was distinct: "My child, trouble not thyself with this scholarship, the only learning thou needest is comprised in three letters, black, white and red. The white letter is purity of soul and body. This black letter is contentment with what God sends you. This red letter is meditation on the passion of my dear son. Let these branches of learning be mastered and the letters will come of themselves." She finally became a lay sister in the convent of St. Martha, but she was never able to sing in the choir offices until a certain dream in which an angel descended to her cell holding in his hand a psalter which he bade her read. From that moment all difficulty vanished and she "chanted the psalms of David with the antiphons and responses alternately with the angels of God."

There is one instance especially of a simple maid, born of peasant parents in the little village of Domremy in France. She is held as a witch by the English and defined as a sorceress by the Council of Basle, but to the French people she was and is a high and holy saint. An ancient prophet, no other indeed than the enchanter Merlin, had forecast from his own

Perhaps the most picturesque of the mystical dreamers, the one who somehow stands forward from stained-glass mediævalism with more human distinctness than any man of his time, is Jacob Boehme, or Behmen, as it is frequently written in English. Direct illumination lent him spiritual vision of the root of all things; nature unveiled before him, mysteries were made clear. Essentially and of necessity he must have been a dreamer, this lad who spent his earlier years tending cattle and then became a shoemaker's apprentice, and who in later life had all the theologians of the world about his ears seeking to find fault with his doctrines. Every cloud in the sky threw him into ecstasy, every flower in the field made its revelation. His first book, "Aurora," suggests dreams and dream phantasy brought into the ken of the possibilities of life. And the term Ungrund or Urgrund for the source of everything, love, joy, purgatory, paradise, weak, strong, etc., savors of the modern dream phantasy.

The mysticism that is woman's inheritance through the infinitely and essentially mystical function of nurturing and bearing a human body and of incarnating a human soul, fits her especially to receive dreams and visions, and yet many women who have sung of their dreams and have told their visions have been, not the mothers, initiates to the inner shrine of motherhood, but those who have been called to celibacy and the hierophantic life.

Many of these dreams have descended to us from the days of the sibyls, oracles and priestesses; with a sort of ethereal symbolism as subtle, and strong, and indescribable as the odor of the vervain that they loved, their visions have come whispering across the seas of time.

Medievalism with its saints furnishes minute descriptions of women's dreams. In that age of class distinction, class itself was forgotten and the dreamers were heard with becoming reverence, whether they boasted of the high lineage of the beautiful Lady Clare, the follower of St. Francis, or whether like St. Catherine of Sienna, they sprang from the

peasantry. The dreams of Lady Clare took tangible form in the order of the Poor Clares which works amid the suffering world to this day, while those of St. Catherine and of St. Teresa are received with unquestioning reverence by the devout. To St. Catherine especially was vouched a vision of the Saviour of mankind seated amongst His disciples, and all about Him stretched the seas of illimitable glory.

Well-nigh perfect examples of the dream state at its highest development are the dreams of St. Veronica (1497). The daughter of poor parents, she earnestly desired to become a nun, but as she was without money and had not learned to read she was disqualified. Each night when her work for the day was done she would struggle over the alphabet by the light of her little oil lamp, until at last, worn out she would fall asleep. One night the Blessed Virgin appeared to her robed in the blue of the midday sky and bearing a sheaf of lilies. Her message was distinct: "My child, trouble not thyself with this scholarship, the only learning thou needest is comprised in three letters, black, white and red. The white letter is purity of soul and body. This black letter is contentment with what God sends you. This red letter is meditation on the passion of my dear son. Let these branches of learning be mastered and the letters will come of themselves." She finally became a lay sister in the convent of St. Martha, but she was never able to sing in the choir offices until a certain dream in which an angel descended to her cell holding in his hand a psalter which he bade her read. From that moment all difficulty vanished and she "chanted the psalms of David with the antiphons and responses alternately with the angels of God."

There is one instance especially of a simple maid, born of peasant parents in the little village of Domremy in France. She is held as a witch by the English and defined as a sorceress by the Council of Basle, but to the French people she was and is a high and holy saint. An ancient prophet, no other indeed than the enchanter Merlin, had forecast from his own

Perhaps the most picturesque of the mystical dreamers, the one who somehow stands forward from stained-glass mediævalism with more human distinctness than any man of his time, is Jacob Boehme, or Behmen, as it is frequently written in English. Direct illumination lent him spiritual vision of the root of all things; nature unveiled before him, mysteries were made clear. Essentially and of necessity he must have been a dreamer, this lad who spent his earlier years tending cattle and then became a shoemaker's apprentice, and who in later life had all the theologians of the world about his ears seeking to find fault with his doctrines. Every cloud in the sky threw him into ecstasy, every flower in the field made its revelation. His first book, "Aurora," suggests dreams and dream phantasy brought into the ken of the possibilities of life. And the term Ungrund or Urgrund for the source of everything, love, joy, purgatory, paradise, weak, strong, etc., savors of the modern dream phantasy.

The mysticism that is woman's inheritance through the infinitely and essentially mystical function of nurturing and bearing a human body and of incarnating a human soul, fits her especially to receive dreams and visions, and yet many women who have sung of their dreams and have told their visions have been, not the mothers, initiates to the inner shrine of motherhood, but those who have been called to celibacy and the hierophantic life.

Many of these dreams have descended to us from the days of the sibyls, oracles and priestesses; with a sort of ethereal symbolism as subtle, and strong, and indescribable as the odor of the vervain that they loved, their visions have come whispering across the seas of time.

Mediævalism with its saints furnishes minute descriptions of women's dreams. In that age of class distinction, class itself was forgotten and the dreamers were heard with becoming reverence, whether they boasted of the high lineage of the beautiful Lady Clare, the follower of St. Francis, or whether like St. Catherine of Sienna, they sprang from the