Psychic phenomena have always existed; their main aspects from antiquity to the present day; today they are officially studied at an institute recognized as being of public utility by the State. The phenomena of which we shall treat in this book have been known since the remotest antiquity. What we now call "magnetism," "hypnotism," "suggestion," "telepsychism," etc., constituted the experimental part of the science reserved, in India, in Chaldea, in Egypt, for a privileged caste who assumed at the same time the functions of priests, magistrates, and physicians. From generation to generation, the ancient initiates transmitted to each other the secret of their powers, and it may be said that they had pushed its development to a point from which the moderns are still far removed. For they seem to have exercised an almost absolute ascendancy over the minds and souls of their fellows, healing bodies with a word, subduing with a mere glance. Several authors are also of the opinion that they were capable of using certain forms of energy which our present-day scientists have not yet rediscovered. Some elements of this so-called occult science, because it is carefully concealed from the masses, have survived in the disappeared civilizations. History testifies to the prodigies performed at different times among all peoples by individuals who seem to have inherited powers from the Hierophants.