Oracle

January 16, 1916: Destiny is determined at the birth of the soul, and the will enters only to fulfill destiny. January 18, 1920: Rice is excellent: it contains the least disturbing quality in its nature of food for the body not meant for physical stress. -from Oracle One of the most extraordinary figures of the popular intellectualism of the early 20th century, Claude Bragdon was an architect and designer who dabbled in theosophy and the occult and wrote about it all with an infectious spirit and passion. Here, in this compact volume first published in 1921, he shares the psychic communications his second wife, Eugenie Julier Macauley, received from "a guardian spirit of supernatural goodness and wisdom." Refusing to use her mysterious insight for trivia matters, Eugenie asked of this "Oracle" only knowledge transcending human ken. These are the fruits of her paranormal gift. Other works by Bragdon available from Cosimo Classics: Merely Players, The Eternal Poles, Yoga for You, Four-Dimensional Vistas, Projective Ornament, The Beautiful Necessity, Architecture and Democracy, Episodes from An Unwritten History, and A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension). American architect, stage designer, and writer CLAUDE FAYETTE BRAGDON (1866-1946) helped found the Rochester Architectural Club, in the city where he made his greatest mark as a building designer with structures including Rochester Central Station, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the First Universalist Church; he also designed Peterborough Bridge in Ontario. In later life, Bragdon worked on Broadway as scenic designer for 1930s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Hamlet, among others.