Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual (Dogme et rituel de la haute magie)

Love is one of the great instruments of magical power, but it is categorically forbidden to the magus, at least as an intoxication or passion. Woe to the Samson of the Kabbalah if he permit himself to be put asleep by Delilah ! The Hercules of science, who exchanges his royal sceptre for the distaff of Omphale, will soon experience the vengeance of Dejanira, and nothing will be left for him but the pyre of Mount (Etd, in order to escape the devouring folds of the coat of Nessus. Sexual love is ever an illusion, for it is the result of an imaginary mirage. The astral light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genesis. This subtle agent, ever active, ever abounding in sap, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images ; this force, which by itself is blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil ; this every renewing drculus of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent ; this corporal spirit ; this fiery body ; this impalpable omnipresent ether ; this monstrous seduction of nature — how shall we define it comprehensively and how characterise its action ? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good as to evil ; it transmits light and propagates darkness ; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge ; it is a serpent but it is also an aureole ; it is a fire, but it may belong equally to the torments of infernus, or to the sacrifice of incense offered up to heaven. To dispose of it, we

must, like the predestined women, set our foot upon its head. In the elementary world water corresponds to the kabbalistic woman and fire to the serpent. To subdue the serpent, that is, to govern the circle of the astral light, we must place ourselves outside its currents, that is, we must isolate ourselves. For this reason Apollonius of Tyana wrapped himself completely in a mantle of fine wool, setting his feet thereon and drawing it over his head. Then he bent his back in semi-circular fashion, and closed his eyes, after fulfilling certain rites, probably magnetic passes and sacramental words designed to fix the imagination and determine the action of the will. The woollen mantle is of great use in magic, and was the common conveyance of sorcerers on their way to the Sabbath, which proves that the sorcerers did not really go to the Sabbath, but the Sabbath came to the sorcerers, when isolated in their mantle, and conducted to their transhwid images analogous to their magical preoccupations, combined with reflections of all kindred acts previously accomplished in the world. This torrent of universal life is also represented in religious doctrines by the expiatory fire of hell. It is the instrument of initiation, the monster to be overcome, the enemy to subdue; it is this which brings to our evocations and to the conjurations of goetic magic such swarms of larvae and phantoms ; therein are preserved all the forms which by their fantastic and fortuitous assemblage people our nightmares with such abominable deformities.

To allow ourselves to be sucked down by this whirling stream is to fall into the abysses of madness, more frightful than those of death ; to expel the darkness of this chaos and force it to give perfect forms to our thoughts — this is, to be a man of genius, it is to create, it is to be victorious over hell ! The astral light directs the instincts of animals and offers battle to the intelligence of man, which it strives to pervert by the enticements of its reflections, and the illusion of its images, a fatal and inevitable operation, directed and made still more

calamitous by the elementary spirits and suffering souls, whose restless wills seek out sympathies in our weakness, and tempt us not so much to destroy us as to win friends for themselves. That book of consciences which, according to Christian doctrine, shall be opened at the last day, is no other than the astral light, which preserves the impress of every logos, that is to say, of all actions and all forms. Our acts modify our magnetic respiration'iR such a way that a seer, meeting any person for the first time, can tell whether that person is innocent or criminal, and what are his virtues or his crimes. This faculty, which belongs to divination, was called by the Christian mystics of the early Church the discernment of spirits. Those who abdicate the empire of reason and delight to let their wills wander in pursuit of the reflections in the astral light, are subject to alternations of mania and melancholy which have originated all the marvels of demoniacal possession, though it is true, at the same time, that by means of these reflections impure spirits can act upon similar souls, make use of them as docile instruments, and even habitually torment their organism, wherein they enter and reside by obsession, or embryonically. These kabbalistic terms are explained in the Hebrew book of the Eevolution of Souls, of which our thirteenth chapter will contain a succinct analysis. It is therefore extremely dangerous to make sport of the mysteries of magic ; it is, above all, excessively rash to practise its rites from curiosity, by experiment, and as if to exploit higher forces. The inquisitive who, without being adepts, busy themselves with evocations or occult magnetism, are like children playing with fire in the neighbourhood of a cask of gunpowder ; sooner or later they will fall victims to some terrible explosion.

To be isolated from the astral light it is not enough to envelop one’s self in a woollen fabric ; we must also, and above all, impose absolute tranquillity on mind and heart, we must have quitted the world of passions and be assured of perseverance in the spontaneous operations of an inflexible will. We must frequently reiterate the acts of this will, for, as we shall see in the introduction to the Eitual, the will only assures itself by acts, as the power and perpetuity of religions depend on their rites and ceremonies. There are intoxicating substances, which, by increasing nervous sensibility, exalt the power and consequently the allurements of astral representations ; by the same means, but pursuing a contrary course, spirits may be alarmed and disturbed. These substances, of themselves magnetic, and further magnetised by the operators, are what people term philters and enchanted potions. But we shall not enter here upon this dangerous application of magic, which Cornelius Agrippa himself terms venomous magic. It is true that there are no longer pyres for sorcerers, but always, and more than ever, are there penalties dealt out to malefactors. Let us confine ourselves therefore to stating, as the occasion offers, the reality of this power.

To direct the astral light we must understand also its double vibration, as well as the balance of forces termed magical equilibrium and expressed in the Kabbalah by the senary. Considered in its first cause, this equilibrium is the will of God ; it is liberty in man, and mathematical equilibrium in matter. Equilibrium produces stability and duration. Liberty generates the immortality of man, and the will of God gives effect to the laws of eternal reason. Equilibrium in ideas is reason and in forces power. Equilibrium is exact ; fulfil its law, and it is there ; violate it, however slightly, and it is destroyed. Eor this reason nothing is useless or lost. Every utterance and every movement are for or against truth, which is composed of for and against conciliated, or at least equilibrated. We shall state in the introduction to the Eitual how magical equilibrium should be produced, and why it is necessary to the success of all operations. Omnipotence is the most absolute liberty ; now, absolute liberty cannot exist apart from perfect equilibrium. Magical equilibrium is hence one of the first conditions of success in the operations of science, and must be sought even in occult chemistry, by learning to combine contraries without neutralising them by one another. Magical equilibrium explains the great and primeval mystery of the existence and relative necessity of evil. This relative necessity gives, in black magic, the measure of the power of demons or impure spirits, to whom virtues practised upon earth are a source of increased rage and apparently of increased power. At the epochs when saints and angels work miracles openly, sorcerers and fiends in their turn operate marvels and prodigies. Eivalry often creates success ; we lean upon that which resists.

The septenary is the sacred number in all theogonies and in all symbols, because it is composed of the triad and the tetrad. The number seven represents magical power in all its fulness ; it is the mind reinforced by all elementary potencies ; it is the soul served by nature ; it is the sanctum regnum mentioned in the keys of Solomon, and represented in the Tarot by a crowned warrior, who bears a triangle on his cuirass, and is posed upon a cube, to which two sphinxes are harnessed, straining in opposite directions, while their heads are turned the same way. This warrior is armed with a fiery sword, and holds in his other hand, a sceptre surmounted by a triangle and a sphere. The cube is the philosophical stone ; the sphinxes are the two forces of the great agent, corresponding to Jakin and Bohas, the two pillars of the temple; the cuirass is the knowledge of divine things, which renders the wise man invulnerable to human assaults ; the sceptre is the magic rod ; the fiery sword is the symbol of victory over the deadly sins, seven in number, like the virtues, the conceptions of both being typified by the ancients under the figures of the seven planets then known. Thus, faith — that aspiration towards the infinite, that noble self-reliance sustained by confidence in all virtues — that faith, which, in weak natures, may degenerate into pride, was represented by the Sun ;

hope, the enemy of avarice, by the Moon ; charity, in opposition to luxury, by Venus, the bright star of the morning and evening ; strength, superior to wrath, by Mars ; prudence, hostile to idleness, by Mercury; temperance, opposed to gluttony, by Saturn, who was given a stone instead of his children to devour ; finally, justice, in opposition to envy, by Jupiter, the conqueror of the Titans. Such are the symbols borrowed by astronomy from the Hellenic cultus. In the Kabbalah of the Hebrews, the Sun represents the angel of light ; the Moon, the angel of aspirations and dreams ; Mars, the destroying angel ; Mercury, the angel of progress ; Jupiter, the angel of power ; Saturn, the angel of the wilderness. They were named Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael, Zachariel, and Orifiel.

These governing potencies of souls shared human life in periods, which astrologers measured by the revolutions of the corresponding planets. But kabbalistic astrology must not be confounded with judicial astrology. We will explain this distinction. Infancy is dedicated to the Sun, childhood to the Moon, youth to Mars and Venus, manhood to Mercury, ripe age to J upiter, and old age to Saturn. How, humanity in general subsists under laws of development analogous to those of individual life. On this groundwork Trithemius establishes his prophetic key of the seven spirits, to which we shall subsequently refer ; by means thereof, observing the analogical proportions of successive events, it is possible to predict important future occurrences with certitude, and to fix beforehand, from age to age, the destinies of nations and the world. St John, depositary of the secret doctrine of Christ, has introduced it into the kabbalistic book of the Apocalypse, which he represents sealed with seven seals. We there find the seven genii of ancient mythologies, with the cups and swords of the Tarot. The doctrine concealed under these emblems is the pure Kabbalah, already lost by the Pharisees at the time of Christ’s advent. The scenes which succeed one another in this wonderful prophetic epic are so many pantacles, the keys of which are the ternary, the quaternary, the septenary, and the duodenary. Its hieroglyphic figures are analogous to those of the book of Hermes or the Genesis of Enoch, to make use of a tentative title which expresses merely the personal opinion of the erudite William Postel.

The cherub, or symbolic bull, which Moses placed at the gate of the edenic world, bearing a fiery sword, is a sphinx, having a bull’s body and a human head ; it is the antique Assyrian sphinx, and the combat and victory of Mithras were its hieroglyphic analysis. Kow, this armed sphinx represents the law of mystery which watches at the door of initiation to warn away the profane. Voltaire, who knew nothing of all this, was highly diverted at the notion of a bull brandishing a sword. What would he have said had he visited the ruins of Memphis and Thebes, and what would the echo of past ages which slumbers in the tombs of Ptameses have replied to those light sarcasms so much relished in Prance ? The Mosaic cherub represents also the great magical mystery, of which the elements are expressed by the septenary, without, however, giving the final word. This verbum incnarrcCbiU of the sages of the Alexandrian school, this word which Hebrew Kabbalists write nirr' and interpret by thus expressing the triplicity of the secondary principle, the dualism of the means, and the equal unity of the first and final principle, then further the alliance between the triad and the tetrad in a word composed of four letters, which form seven by means of a

THE DOCTllINE OF TKANSCENDENT MAGIC triple and double repetition — this word is pronounced Ararita. The virtue of the septenary is absolute in magic, for the number is decisive in all things; hence all religions have consecrated it in their rites. The seventh year was a jubilee among the Jews ; the seventh day is set apart for rest and prayer ; there are seven sacraments, &c. The seven colours of the prism and the seven musical notes, correspond also to the seven planets of the ancients, that is, to the seven chords of the human lyre. The spiritual heaven has never changed, and astrology has been more invariable than astronomy. The seven planets are, in fact, the hieroglyphic symbols of the key of our affections. To compose tahsmans of the Sun, Moon, or Saturn, is to attach the will magnetically to signs corresponding to the chief powers of the soul ; to consecrate something to Mercury or Venus is to magnetise that object according to a direct intention, whether pleasure, science, or profit be the end in view. The analogous metals, animals, plants, and perfumes are auxiliaries to this end. The seven magical animals are : — (a) Among birds, corresponding to the divine world, the swan, the owl, the vulture, the dove, the stork, the eagle, and the pewit ; (&) among fish, corresponding to the spiritual or scientific world, the seal, the cat-fish, the pike, the mullet, the chub, the dolphin, the sepia or cuttle-fish ; (c) among quadrupeds, corresponding to the natural world, the lion, the cat, the wolf, the he-goat, the monkey, the stag, and the mole. The blood, fat, liver, and gall of these animals serve in enchantments ; their brain combines with the perfumes of the planets, and it is recognised by ancient practice that they possess magnetic virtues corresponding to the seven planetary influences.

The talismans of the seven spirits are engraved either on precious stones, such as the carbuncle, crystal, diamond, emerald, agate, sapphire, and onyx; or upon metals, such as gold, silver, iron, copper, fixed mercury, pewter, and lead. The kabbalistic signs of the seven spirits are : — for the Sun, a serpent with the head of a lion ; for the Moon, a globe divided by two crescents ; for Mars, a dragon biting the hilt of a sword; for Venus, a lingam ; for Mercury, the Hermetic caduceus and the cynocephalus ; for Jupiter, the blazing pentagram in the talons or beak of an eagle ; for Saturn, a lame and aged man, or a serpent curled about the sun-stone. All these symbols are found on the graven stones of the ancients, and especially on those talismans of the Gnostic epochs which are known by the name of Abraxas. In the collection of the talismans of Paracelsus, Jupiter is represented by a priest in ecclesiastical costume, while in the Tarot he appears as a grand hierophant crowned with a triple tiara, holding a three-fold cross in his hands, forming the magical triangle, and representing at once the sceptre and key of the three worlds.

By combining all that we have said about the unity of the triad and tetrad, we shall find all that remains for us to say concerning the septenary, that grand and complete magical unity composed of four and three.* Causes manifest by effects, and effects are proportioned to causes. The divine word, the one word, the tetragram, has affirmed itself by tetradic creation. Human fecundity proves divine fecundity ; the jod of the divine name is the eternal virility of the First Principle. Man understands that he was made in the image of God when he attains comprehen- * With reference to the plants and colours of the septenary employed in magnetic experiences, see the erudite work of M. Ragon on La Ma<;onnerie Occulte, sion of God by increasing to infinity the idea which he forms of himself. When realising God as the infinite man, man says nnto himself : I am the finite God. Magic differs from mysticism because it judges nothing tb priori until after it has established posteriori the base itself of its judgments, that is to say, after having understood the cause by the effects contained in the very energy of the cause, by means of the universal law of analogy. Hence in the occult sciences all is real, and theories are established only on the foundations of experience. Kealities alone constitute the proportions of the ideal, and the magus admits nothing as certain in the domain of ideas save that which is demonstrated by realisation.

In other words, what is true in ’ the cause manifests in the effect. What is not realised does not exist. The realisation of speech is the logos properly so called, A thought realises itself in becoming speech ; it realises itself also by signs, sounds, and representations of signs : this is the first degree of realisation. Then it is imprinted on the astral light by means of the signs of writing or speech ; it influences other minds by reflection upon them; it is refracted by crossing the diaphane of other men ; it assumes new forms and proportions ; it is then translated into acts and modifles the world : this is the last degree of realisation. Men who are born into a world modified by an idea bear away with them the impression thereof, and it is thus that the word is made flesh. The impression of the disobedience of Adam, preserved in the astral light, could only be effaced by the stronger impression of the obedience of the Saviour, and thus the original sin and redemption of the world can be explained in a natural and magical sense. The astral light, or soul of the world, was the instrument of Adam’s omnipotence; it became afterwards the instrument of his punishment, being corrupted and troubled by his sin, which intermingled an impure reflection with those primitive images which composed the book of universal science for his still virgin imagination.

The astral light, depicted in ancient symbols by the serpent devouring his tail, represents alternately malice and prudence, time and eternity, tempter and Eedeemer ; for this light, being the vehicle of life, is an auxiliary alike of good and evil, and may be taken for the fiery form of Satan as for the body of the Holy Ghost. It is the instrument of warfare in angelic battles, and indifferently feeds the flames of hell and the lightnings of St Michael. It may be compared to a horse having a nature analogous to the chameleon, and ever reflecting the armour of his rider. The astral light is the realisation or form of the intellectual light, as the latter is the realisation or form of the divine light. The great initiator of Christianity, divining that the astral light was overcharged with the impure reflections of Roman debauchery, sought to separate his disciples from the ambient sphere of reflections, and to make them attentive only to the interior light, so that, through the medium of a common faith and enthusiasm, they might communicate together by new magnetic chains, which he termed grace, and thus overcome the dissolute currents, to which he gave the names of the devil and Satan, signifying their putrefaction. To oppose current to current is to renew the power of fluidic life. The revealers have, therefore, scarcely done more than divine, by the accuracy of their calculations, the appropriate moment for moral reactions.

The law of realisation produces what we call magnetic breathing ; places and objects become impregnated therewith, and this communicates to them an influence in conformity with our dominant desires, with those, above all, which are confirmed and realised by acts. As a fact, the universal agent, or latent astral light, ever seeks equilibrium ; it fills the void and sucks up the plenitude, which makes vice contagious, like certain physical maladies, and works powerfully in the proselytism of virtue. Hence it is that cohabitation with antipathetic beings is a torment ; hence it is that relics, whether of saints or of great criminals, produce the extraordinary results of sudden conversion and

perversion ; hence it is that sexual love is often awakened by a breath or a touch, and this, not only by means of the contact of the person himself, but of objects which he has unconsciously touched or magnetised. There is an outbreathing and inbreathing of the soul, exactly like that of the body. It breathes in the felicity which it believes, and it breathes forth ideas which result from its inner sensations. Diseased souls have an evil breath, and vitiate their moral atmosphere — that is, they combine impure reflections with the astral light which permeates them, and establish unwholesome currents therein. We are often invaded, to our astonishment, in society by evil thoughts which would have seemed impossible, and are not aware that they are due to some morbid proximity. This secret is of high importance, for it leads to the opening of consciences, one of the most incontestible and terrible powers of magical art. Magnetic respiration produces about the soul a radiation of which it is the centre, and surrounds it with the reflection of its works, creating for it a heaven or a hell. There are no isolated acts, and it is impossiblethat there should be secret acts ; whatsoever we truly will — that is, everything which we confirm by our acts — remains registered in the astral light, where our reflections are preserved. These reflections continually influence our thought by the mediation of the diaphane, and it is in this sense that we become and remain the children of our works.

The astral light, transformed at the moment of conception into human light, is the soul’s first envelope, and, in combination with extremely subtle fluids, it forms the ethereal body or sidereal phantom, of which Paracelsus discourses in his philosophy of intuition — 'philosojphia sagax. This sidereal body, setting itself free at death, attracts, and for a long time preserves, through the sympathy of things homogeneous, the reflections of the past life; if drawn along a special current by a will which is powerfully sympathetic, it manifests naturally, for there is nothing more natural than prodigies. It is thus apparitions are produced. But we shall develop this point more fully in the chapter devoted to Necromancy. This fluidic body, subject, like the mass of the astral light, to two contrary movements, attracting on the left and repelling on the right, or reciprocally, between the two sexes, begets various impulses within us, and contributes to solicitudes of conscience ; it is frequently influenced by reflections of other minds, and thus are produced, on the one hand, temptations, ajid, on the other, profound and unexpected graces. This is also the explanation of the traditional doctrine of two angels who strengthen and tempc us. The two forces of the astral light may be represented by a balance wherein are weighed our good intentions for the triumph of justice and the emancipation of our liberty.

The astral body is not always of the same sex as the terrestial, that is, the proportions of the two forces, varying from right to left, frequently seem to gainsay the visible organisation, producing the seeming vagaries of human passions, and explaining, without in any sense morally justifying, the amorous peculiarities of Anacreon or Sappho. A skilful magnetiser should take all these subtle distinctions into account, and we shall provide in our Kitual the rules for their recognition. There are two kinds of realisation, the true and the fantastic. The first is the exclusive secret of magicians, the other belongs to enchanters and sorcerers. Mythologies are fantastic realisations of religious dogma ; superstitions are the sorcery of mistaken piety; but even mythologies and superstitions are more efficacious with human will than a purely speculative philosophy apart from any practice. Hence St Paul opposes the conquests of the folly of the Cross to the inertness of human wisdom. Eeligion realises philosophy by adapting it to the weaknesses of the vulgar ; such is for Kabbalists the secret reason and occult explanation of the doctrines of incarnation and redemption. Thoughts untranslated into speech are thoughts lost for humanity ; words unconfirmed by acts are idle words, and the idle word is not far removed from falsehood. Thought formulated by speech and confirmed by acts constitutes a good work or a crime. Hence, whether in vice or virtue, there is no speech for which we are not responsible ;

above all, there are no indifferent acts. Curses and blessings invariably produce their consequence, and every action, whatsoever its nature, whether inspired by love or hate, has effects analogous to its motive, its extent, and its direction. When that emperor whose images had been mutilated, raising his hand to his face, exclaimed, “ I do not feel that I am injured,” he was mistaken in his valuation, and thereby detracted from the merit of his clemency. What man of honour could behold undisturbed an insult offered to his portrait ? And did such insults, inflicted even unknown to ourselves, react on us by a fatal influence, were the effects of bewitchment actual, as indeed an adept cannot doubt, how much more imprudent and ill-advised would seem this utterance of the good emperor !

There are persons whom we can never offend with impunity, and if the injury we have done them is mortal, we forthwith begin to die. There are those also whom we never meet in vain, whose mere glance alters the direction of our life. The basilisk who slays by a look is no fable ; it is a magical allegory. Generally speaking, it is bad for health to have enemies, and we can never brave with impunity the reprobation of anyone. Before opposing ourselves to a given force or current, we must be well assured that we possess the contrary force, or are with the stream of the contrary current ; otherwise, we shall be crushed or struck down, and many sudden deaths have no other cause than this. The terrible visitations of Nadab and Abiu, of Osa, of Ananias and Saphira, were occasioned by electric currents of outraged convictions ; the sufferings of the Ursulines of Londun, of the nuns of Louviers, and of the convulsionaries of Jansenism, were identical in principle, and are explicable by the same occult natural laws. Had not Urban Grandier been immolated, one of two things would have occurred — either the possessed nuns would have died in frightful convulsions, or the phenomena of diabolical frenzy would have so gained in strength and in influence, epidemically, that Grandier, notwithstanding his knowledge and his reason, would himself have become hallucinated, and to such a degree that he would have slandered himself, like the unhappy Gaufridy, or would otherwise have perished suddenly, with all the appalling characteristics of poisoning or of divine vengeance.

In the eighteenth century the unfortunate poet Gilbert fell a victim to his audacity in braving the current of opinion and actual philosophical fanaticism which characterised his epoch. Guilty of philosophical treason, he died raving mad, possessed by the most incredible terrors, as if God himself had punished him for defending his cause out of season. As a fact, he perished by reason of a law of nature of which he could know nothing ; he set himself against an electric current, and was struck down as by lightning. Had Marat not been assassinated by Charlotte Corday, he would have been destroyed infallibly by a reaction of public opinion. It was the execration of the honest which afflicted him with leprosy, and he would have had to succumb thereto. The reprobation excited by the massacre of St Bartholomew was the sole cause of the atrocious disease and death of Charles IX., while, had not Henry IV. been sustained by an immense popularity, which he owed to the projecting power or sympathetic force of his astral life, he would scarcely have outlived his conversion, but would have perished under the contempt of Protestants, combined with the suspicion and ill-will of Catholics. Unpopularity may be a proof of integrity and courage, but never of policy or prudence ; the wounds inflicted by opinion are mortal for statesmen. We may recall the premature and violent end of many illustrious persons whom it would be inexpedient to mention here. Disgraces in public opinion may often be great injustices, but none the less they are invariably occasions of

ill-success, and frequently of a death-sentence. In return, acts of injustice done to one individual can and should, if they rest unrepaired, cause the loss of an entire nation or of a whole society ; this is what is called the cry of blood, for at the bottom of every injustice there is the germ of homicide. By reason of these terrible laws of solidarity, Christianity recommends so strongly the forgiveness of injuries and reconciliation. He who dies unforgiving casts himself dagger-armed into eternity, and condemns himself to the horrors of an eternal murder. The efficacy of paternal or maternal blessings or curses is an invincible popular tradition and belief. As a fact, the closer the bonds which unite two persons, the more terrible are the consequences of hatred between them. The brand of Althaea burning the blood of Meleager is the mythological symbol of this terrible power. Let parents be ever on their guard, for no one can kindle hell in his own blood, and devote his own issue to misfortune, without being himself burnt and made wretched. To pardon is never a crime, but to curse is always a danger and an evil action. The initiate is he who possesses the lamp of Trismegistus, the mantle of Apollonius, and the staff of the patriarchs. The lamp of Trismegistus is reason illuminated by science ; the mantle of Apollonius is full and complete self-possession, which isolates the sage from blind tendencies ; and the staff of the patriarchs is the help of the secret and everlasting forces of nature. The lamp of Trismegistus enlightens

present, past, and future, lays bare the conscience of men, and manifests the inmost recesses of the female heart. The lamp burns with a triple flame, the mantle is thrice-folded, and the staff is divided into three parts. The number nine is that of divine reflections ; it expresses the divine idea in all its abstract power, but it also signifies extravagance in belief, and hence superstition and idolatry. For this reason Hermes has made it the number of initiation, because the initiate reigns over superstition and by superstition, and alone can advance through the darkness, leaning on his staff, enveloped in his mantle, and lighted by his lamp. Keason has been given to all men, but all do not know how to make use of it ; it is a science to be acquired. Liberty is offered to all, but not all can be free ; it is a right that must be earned. Force is for all, but all do not know how to rest upon it; it is a power that must be seized. We attain nothing without more than one effort. The destiny of man is that he should enrich himself with what he gains, and that he should afterwards have, like God, the glory and pleasure of dispensing it.

Magic was called formerly the sacerdotal art and the royal art, because initiation gave empire over souls to the sage, and the adroitness for ruling wills. Divination is also one of the privileges of the initiate ; now, divination is simply the knowledge of effects contained in causes and science applied to the facts of the universal dogma of analogy. Human acts are not alone written in the astral light ; their traces are left upon the face, they modify mien and carriage, they change the tone of the voice. Thus every man bears about him the history of his life, which is legible for the initiate. Now, the future is ever the consequence of the past, and unexpected circumstances do not appreciably alter results reasonably calculated. The destiny of each man can be therefore foretold him. An entire existence can be judged by a single movement ; one piece of awkwardness may be the presage of a long chain of misfortunes. Caesar was assassinated because he was ashamed of being bald; Napoleon ended his days at St Helena because he admired the poems of Ossian ; Louis Philippe abdicated the throne as he did because he carried an umbrella. These are paradoxes for the vulgar, who cannot grasp the occult relations of things, but they are causes for the adept, who understands all and is surprised at nothing.

Initiation is a preservative against the false lights of mysticism ; it equips human reason with its relative value and proportional infallibility, connecting it with supreme reason by the chain of analogies. Hence the initiate knows no doubtful hopes, no absurd fears, because he has no irrational beliefs ; he is acquainted with the extent of his power, and he can dare without danger. Por him, therefore, to dare is to be able. Here, then, is a new interpretation of his attributes ; his lamp represents learning, the mantle which enwraps him his discretion, and his staff is the emblem of his strength and daring. He knows, he dares, and is silent. He knows the secrets of the future, he dares in the present, and he is silent on the past. He knows the failings of the human heart ; he dares make use of them to achieve his work ; and he is silent as to his purposes. He knows the principle of all symbolisms and of all religions ; he dares to practise or to abstain from them without hypocrisy and without impiety ; and he is silent upon the one dogma of supreme initiation. He knows the existence and nature of the great magical agent ; he dares perform the acts and give utterance to the words which make it subject to human will, and he is silent upon the mysteries of the great arcanum.

So may you find him often melancholy, never dejected or despairing ; often poor, never abject or miserable ; persecuted often, never disheartened or conquered. He remembers the bereavement and murder of Orpheus, the exile and lonely death of Moses, the martyrdom of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the cross of the Saviour. He knows the desolation in which Agrippa died, whose memory is even now slandered ; he knows what labours overcame the great Paracelsus, and all that Kaymond LuUy was condemned to undergo that he might finish by a violent death. He remembers Swedenborg simulating madness and even losing reason in order to excuse his science ; St Martin and his hidden life ; Cagliostro, who perished forsaken in the cells of the Inquisition ; Cazotte, who ascended the scaffold. Inheritor of so many victims, he does not dare the less, but he understands better the necessity for silence. Let us follow his example ; let us learn diligently ; when we know, let us have courage, and let us be silent. All religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in types, by the sages of the earliest ages of the world ; simplified and vulgarised in later days, its symIdoIs furnished letters to the art of Writing, characters to the Word, and to occult Philosophy its mysterious signs and pantacles. This book, attributed by the Hebrews to Enoch, seventh master of the world after Adam ;

by the Egyptians to Hermes-Trismegistus ; by the Greeks to Cadmus, the mysterious builder of the Holy City ; this book was the symbolical summary of primitive tradition, called subsequently Kabbalah or Cabala, meaning reception. The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of magic ; the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible. Now the ancients, observing that equilibrium is the universal law in physics, consequent on the apparent opposition of two forces, argued from physical to metaphysical equilibrium, and maintained that in God, that is, in the prime living and active cause, there must be recog-

nised two properties which are necessary to one another — stability and motion, necessity and liberty, rational order and volitional autonomy, justice and love, whence also severity and mercy. Now, these two attributes were personified, so to speak, by the Kabbalistic Jews under the names of Geburah and Chesed. Above Geburah and Chesed abides the supreme crown, the equilibrating power, principle of the world or equilibrated kingdom, which we find mentioned under the name of Malchuth in the occult and kabbalistic versicle of the Pater-noster to which we have already referred. But Geburah and Chesed, maintained in equilibrium by the crown above and the kingdom below, constitute two principles, which may be considered from an abstract point of view, or in their realisation. In their abstract or idealised sense, they take the higher names of Chochmah, wisdom, and Binah, intelligence. Their realisation is stability and progress, that is, eternity and victory — Hod and Netsali. Such, according to the Kabbalah, is the groundwork of all religions and all sciences — a triple triangle and a circle, the notion of the triad explained by the balance multiplied by itself in the domains of the ideal, then the realisation of this conception in forms. Now, the ancients attached the first notions of this simple and impressive theology to the very idea of numbers, and qualified the figures of the first decade after the following manner : —

1. Kether. — The Crown, the equilibrating power. 2. Chochmah. — Wisdom, equilibrated in its unchangeable order by the initiative of intelligence. 3. Binah. — Active intelligence, equilibrated by Wisdom. 4. Chesed. — Mercy, which is wisdom in its secondary conception, ever benevolent because it is strong. 5. Geburah. — Austerity, necessitated by Wisdom itself, and by goodwill. To permit evil is to hinder good. 6. Tiph&i'eth. — Beauty, the luminous conception of equilibrium in forms, intermediary between the Crown and the Kingdom, mediating principle between Creator and creation. (Sublime conception of poetry and its sovereign priesthood !) 7. Netsah. — Victory, that is, eternal triumph of intelligence and justice. 8. Hod. — Eternity of the conquests achieved by mind over matter, active over passive, life over death. 9. Jesod. — The Foundation, that is, the basis of all belief and all truth — what we term the absolute in philosophy. 10. Malchuth. — The Kingdom is the universe, entire creation, the work and mirror of Gk)d, the proof of supreme reason, the formal consequence which compels us to have recourse to virtual premisses, the enigma which has God for its answer — supreme and absolute reason. These ten primary notions attached to the ten first characters of the primitive alphabet, signifying both principles and numbers, are called the ten Sephiroth by the masters in Kabbalah. The sacred tetragam, drawn in the following manner, indicates the number, source, and corre-

spondence of the divine names. To this name of Jotchavah, written by these four-and-twenty signs, crowned with a triple flower of light, must be referred the twenty -four thrones of heaven, and the twenty-four crowned elders in the Apocalypse. In the Kabbalah the occult principle is called the Elder, and this principle, multiplied, and, as it were, reflected, in secondary causes, creates images of itself — that is to say, so many elders as there are diverse conceptions of its unique essence. These images, less perfect in proportion as they are further removed from their source, project upon the darkness an ultimate reflection or glimmer, repre- senting a horrible and deformed elder, who is vulgarly termed the devil. Hence an initiate has been bold enough to say ; “ The devil is God, as understood by the wicked ” ; while another has added, in words more bizarre, but no less energetic : “ The devil is composed of God’s ruins.” We may sum up and explain these strikingly novel definitions by remarking that in symbolism itself the demon is an angel cast out of heaven for having sought to usurp divinity. This belongs to the allegorical language of prophets and makers of legends. Philosophically speaking, the devil is a human idea of divinity, which has been surpassed and dispossessed of heaven by the progress of science and reason. Among primitive Oriental peoples, Moloch, Adramelek, Baal, were personifications of the one God, dishonoured by barbarous attributes. The god of the Jansenists, creating hell for the majority of human beings, and delighting in the eternal tortures of those he was unwilling to save, is a conception even 'more barbarous than that of Moloch ; hence the god of the Jansenists is already a veritable Satan, fallen from heaven, in the sight of every wise and enlightened Christian.

In the multiplication of the divine names the kabbalists have connected them all, either with the unity of the tetragram, the figure of the triad, or the sephirotic scale of the decad. They arrange the scale of the divine names and numbers in a triangle, which may be presented in Eoman characters as follows : — JA SDI JEHV ELOIM SABAOT ARAKITA ELVEDAAT ELIM GIBOR ELIM SABAOT The sum of all these divine names formed from the one tetragram is a basis of the Hebrew Eitual, and constitutes the occult force which the kabbalistic rabbins invoke under the title of Semhamphoras. We have now to concern ourselves with the Tarot from the kabbalistic point of view, and have already indicated the occult source of the name. This hieroglyphic book is composed of a kabbalistic alphabet, and of a wheel or circle of four decades, distinguished by four symbolical and typical figures, each having for its radius a scale of four progressive figures, which represent Humanity : man, woman, youth, child — master, mistress, knight, esquire. The twenty-two figures of the alphabet represent, in the first place, the thirteen dogmas, and secondly, the nine beliefs authorised by that Jewish religion which is so strong and so firmly established in the highest reason.

Here follows the religious and kabbalistic key of The Tarot, formulated in technical verses after the mode of the ancient lawgivers : — 1 K A conscious, active cause in all we see. 2 2 And number proves the living unity. 3 i No bound hath He who doth the whole contain. 4 T But, all preceding, fills life’s vast domain. 5 n Sole worthy worship. He, the only Lord, 6 1 Doth his true doctrine to clean hearts accord, 8 n One law have we, and at one altar plead ; 9 13 Eternal God for aye their base upholds. 10 I Heaven and man’s days alike his rule enfolds. 11 3 In mercy rich, in retribution strong, 12 ^ His people’s King he will upraise ere long. Death only ends ; life’s vistas still expand. These doctrines sacred, pure, and stedfast shine ; And thus wejclose our number’s scale divine, 14 3 Good angels all things temper and assuage, 15 D While evil spirits burst with wrath and rage. 16 y God doth the lightning rule, the flame subdue. 17 £5 His word controls botli Vesper and her dew. 18 He makes the moon our watchman through the night.

19 p And by his sun renews the world in light. 20 *1 When dust to dust returns, his breath can call Life from the tomb which is the fate of all. or }n His crown illuminates the mercy seat, 22 And glorifies the cherubs at his feet. By the help of this purely dogmatic explanation we shall already understand the kabbalistic alphabet of the Tarot. Thus, Figure I., entitled the Buffoon, represents the active principle in the economy of divine and human autotelia. Figure II., vulgarly called Pope Joan, represents dogmatic unity based upon numbers, and is the personification of the Kabbalah or the Gnosis. Figure III. represents divine Spirituality under the emblem of a winged woman, holding in one hand the apocalyptic eagle, and in the other the world suspended from the end of her sceptre. The other emblems are equally clear, and can be explained as easily as the first. Turning now to the four suits, namely. Clubs, Cups, Swords, and Circles or Pantacles, commonly called Beniers — all these are hieroglyphics of the tetragram. Thus, the Club is the Egyptian Phallus or Hebrew jod ; the Cup is the cteis or primitive he ; the Sword is the conjunction of both, or the lingam, represented in Hebrew preceding the captivity by vau ; while the Circle or Pantacle, image of the world, is the he final of the divine name. How let us take a Tarot and combine all its emblems one by one into the Wheel or EOT A of William Postel ; let us group the four aces, the four twos, and so on, together ; we shall then have ten packs of cards giving the hieroglyphic interpretation of the triangle of divine names on the scale of the denary, as previously tabulated. By referring each number to its corresponding Sephira, we may then read them off as follows : —

Four signs present the name of every name. Four brilliant beams adorn bis crown of flame. Four rivers ever from bis wisdom flow. Four proofs of bis intelligence we know. Four benefactions from bis mercy come. Four times four sins avenged bis justice sum. Four rays unclouded make bis beauty known. Four times bis conquest shall in song be shewn. Four times he triumphs on the timeless plane. Foundations four his great white throne maintain. One fourfold kingdom owns his endless sway, As from his crown there streams a fourfold ray. By this simple arrangement the kabbalistic meaning of each card is exhibited. For example, the five of clubs rigorously signifies Geburah of Jod, that is, the justice of the creator or the wrath of man ; the seven of cups signifies the victory of mercy or the triumph of woman ; the eight of swords signifies conflict or eternal equilibrium ; and so of the others. We can thus understand how the ancient pontiffs proceeded to make the oracle speak. The chance dealing of the lamens invariably produced a fresh kabbalistic meaning, exactly true in its combinations, which alone were fortuitous ; and, seeing that the faith of the ancients attributed nothing to chance, they read the answers of Providence in the oracles of the Tarot, which were called Theraph or Theraphim by the Hebrews, as the erudite kabbalist GafFarel, one of the magicians employed by Cardinal Kichelieu, was the first to perceive.

As to the figures, a final couplet will suflB.ce to explain them : — King, Queen, Knight, Esquire. The married pair, the youth, the child, the race ; Thy path by these to Unity retrace. At the end of the Kitual we shall provide further details, together with full documents, concerning the marvellous Tarot book, which is of all books the most primitive, the key of prophecies and dogmas, in a word, the inspiration of inspired works, a fact which has remained unperceived equally by the science of Court de Gebelin and by the extraordinary intuitions of Eteilla or Alliette. The ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two Tarots form what the kabbalists term the thirty-two paths of absolute science. With regard to particular sciences, they distinguish them into fifty chapters, which they call the fifty gates — among Orientals the word gate signifies government or authority. The rabbins also divided the Kabbalah into Bereschit, or universal Genesis, and Mercavah, or the chariot of Ezekiel ; then by means of a dual interpretation of the kabbalistic alphabets, they formed two sciences, called Gematria and Temurah, and so composed the notary art, which is fundamentally the complete science of the Tarot signs and their complex and varied application to the divination of all secrets, whether of philosophy, nature, or the future itself. We shall recur in our twentieth chapter to this work.

THE MAGIC CHAIN Manus Fokce The great magical agent, by us termed the astral light, by others the soul of the earth, and designated by old chemists under the names of Azoth and Magnesia, this occult, unique, and indubitable force, is the key of all empire, the secret of all power ; it is the winged dragon of Medea, the serpent of the Edenic mystery ; it is the universal glass of visions, the bond of sympathies, the source of love, prophecy, and glory. To know how to avail one’s self of this agent is to be the trustee of God’s own power ; all real, effective magic, all occult force is there, and its demonstration is the sole end of all genuine books of science. To possess one’s self of the great magical agent there are two operations necessary — to concentrate and project, or, in other words, to fix and to move. Fixity has been provided as the basis and guarantee of movement by the Author of all things ; the magus must go to work in like manner. It is said that enthusiasm is contagious — and why ? Because it cannot be produced in the absence of collective faith. Faith produces faith ; to believe is to have a reason for willing ; to will with reason is to will with power — not, I say, with an infinite, but with an indefinite power. What operates in the intellectual and moral world obtains still more in the physical,

and when Archimedes was in want of a lever to move the world, what he sought was simply the great magical arcanum. One arm of the androgyne figure of Henry Khunrath bore the word Coagula and the other Solve. To collect and diffuse are nature’s two words — but after what manner can we accomplish these operations with the astral light or soul of the world ? Concentration is by isolation and distribution by the magical chain. Isolation consists in absolute independence for thought, complete liberty for the heart, and perfect continence for the senses. Every man who is possessed by prejudices and fears, every passionate person who is slave of his passions, is incapable of concentrating or coagulating, according to the expression of Khunrath, the astral light or soul of the earth. All true adepts have been independent even amidst torture, sober and chaste till death. The explanation of such anomaly is this — in order to dispose of a force, you must not be surprised by this force in a way that it may dispose of you. But then, cry out those who seek only in magic for a method of inordinately satisfying the lusts of nature, what good is a power which must not be used for our own satisfaction ? Unhappy creatures who ask, if I told you, how could you grasp it ? Are pearls nothing because they are worthless to the horde of Epicurus ?

Did not Curtius prefer the government of those who had gold than its possession by himself ? Must we not be something removed from the common man when we almost pretend to be God ? Moreover, I grieve to deject or discourage you, but I am not devising the transcendental sciences ; I teach them, defining their immutable necessities in the presentation of their primary and most inexorable conditions. Pythagoras was a free, sober, and chaste man ; Apollonius of Tyana and Julius Caesar were both of repellent austerity ; the sex of Paracelsus was suspected, so foreign was he to the weakness of love ; Kaymond Lully carried the severity of life to the most exalted point of asceticism ; Jerome Cardan exaggerated the practice of fasting till he nearly perished of starvation, if we may accept tradition ;

Agrippa, poor and buffeted from town to town, almost died of misery rather than yield to the caprice of a princess who insulted the liberty of science. What then made the felicity of these men ? The knowledge of great secrets and the consciousness of power. It was sufficient for those great souls. Must one be like unto them in order to know what they knew ? Assuredly not, and the existence of this book is perhaps a case in point ; but in order to do what they did, it is absolutely necessary to take, the means which they took. But what did they actually accomplish ? They astonished and subdued the world; they reigned more truly than kings. Magic is an instrument of divine goodness or demoniac pride, but it is the annihilation of earthly joys and the pleasures of mortal life. Why study it ? ask the luxurious. Merely to know it and possibly after to learn mistrust of stupid unbelief or puerile credulity. Men of pleasure, and half of these I count for so many women, is not gratified curiosity highly pleasurable ? Read therefore without fear, you will not be magicians against your will. Readiness for absolute renunciation is, moreover, necessary only in order to estabhsh universal currents and transform the face of the world ; there are relative magical operations, limited to a certain circle, which do not need such heroic virtues. We can act upon passions by passions, determine sympathies or antipathies, hurt even and heal, without possessing the omnipotence of the magus ; in this case, however, we must realise the risk of a reaction in proportion to the action, to which we may easily fall a victim. All this will be explained in our Ritual.

To make the magic chain is to establish a magnetic current which becomes stronger in proportion to the extent of the chain. We shall see in the Ritual how these currents can be produced, and what are the various modes of forming the chain. Mesmer’s trough was an exceedingly imperfect magic chain ; several great circles of illuminati in different northern countries possess more potent chains. Even that association of Catholic priests, celebrated for their occult power and their unpopularity, is established upon the plan and follows the conditions of the most potent magical chains, and herein is the secret of their force, which they attribute solely to the grace or will of God, a vulgar and cheap solution for every mystery of power in influence or attraction. In the Eitual it will be our task to estimate the sequence of truly magical ceremonies and evocations which make up the great work of vocation under the name of the Exercises of St Ignatius. All enthusiasm propagated in a society by a series of communications and practices in common produces a magnetic current, and continues or increases by the current. The action of the current is to carry away and often to exalt beyond measure persons who are impressionable and weak, nervous organisations, temperaments inclined to hysteria or hallucination. Such people soon become powerful vehicles of magical force and efficiently project the astral light in the direction of the current itself ;

opposition at such a time to the manifestations of the force is, to some extent, a struggle with fatality. When the youthful Pharisee Saul, or Schol, threw himself, with all the fanaticism and all the determination of a sectarian, across the aggressive line of Christianity, he unconsciously placed himself at the mercy of a power against which he thought to prevail, and hence he was struck down by a formidable magnetic flash, doubtless the more instantaneous by reason of the combined effect of cerebral congestion and sunstroke. The conversion of the young Israelite, Alphonsus of Eatisbonne, is a contemporary fact which is absolutely of the same nature. We are acquainted with a sect of enthusiasts whom it is common to deride at a distance, and to join, despite one’s self, as soon as they are approached, even with a hostile intention. I will go further, and affirm that magical circles and magnetic currents establish themselves, and have an influence, according to fatal laws, upon those on whom they can act. Each one of us is drawn within a circle of relations which constitutes his

world, and to the influence of which he is made subject. The lawgiver of the Trench Eevolution, that man whom the most spiritual nation in the whole world acknowledged as the incarnation of human reason, Jean Jacques Kousseau, was drawn into the most lamentable action of his life, the desertion of his children, by the magnetic influence of a libertine circle and a magical current of tdble-d'hdte. He describes it simply and ingenuously in his Confessions, but it is a fact which has remained, unobserved. Great circles very often make great men, and vice-versd. There are no unrecognised geniuses, there are eccentric men, and the term would seem to have been invented by an adept. The man who is eccentric in his genius is one who attempts to form a circle by combating the central attractive force of established chains and currents. It is his destiny to be broken or to succeed. How, what is the twofold condition of success in such a case ? A central point of stability and a persevering circular action of initiative. The man of genius is one who has discovered a real law, and is thereby possessed of an invincible, active, and grinding power. He may die in the midst of his work, but that which he has willed comes to pass, in spite of his death, and is indeed often ensured thereby, because death is a veritable assumption for genius. “ When I shall be lifted up from the earth,” said the greatest of the initiators, “ I will draw all things after me.”

The law of magnetic currents is that of the movement of the astral light itself, which is always double, and augments in an opposite sense. A great action invariably paves the way for a reaction of equal magnitude, and the secret of phenomenal successes consists entirely in the foreknowledge of reactions. Thus did Chateaubriand, penetrated with disgust at the saturnalia of the revolution, foresee and prepare the immense success of his “ Genius of Christianity.” To oppose one’s self to a current at the beginning of its revolution is to court being destroyed by that current, like the great and unfortunate Emperor Julian ; to oppose one’s self to a current which has run its round is to take the lead of a contrary current. The great man is he who comes seasonably and knows how to innovate opportunely. In the days of the apostles, Voltaire would have found no echo for his utterances, and might have been merely an ingenious parasite at the banquets of Trimalcyon. Now, at the epoch wherein we live, everything is ripe for a fresh outburst of evangelical zeal and Christian self-devotion, precisely by reason of the prevailing general disillusion, egoistic positivism, and public cynicism of the coarsest interests. The success of certain books and the mystical tendencies of minds are unequivocal symptoms of this widespread disposition. We restore and we build churches only to realise more keenly that we are void of belief, only to long the more for it ;

once more does the whole world await its Messiah, and he cannot tarry in his coming. Let a man, for example, come forward, who by rank or by fortune is placed in an exalted position — a pope, a king, even a Jewish millionaire — and let this man publicly and solemnly sacrifice all his material interests for the weal of humanity ; let him make himself the saviour of the poor, the disseminator, and even the victim, of doctrines of renunciation and charity, and he will draw round him an immense following ; he will accompHsh a complete moral revolution in the world. But the high place is before all things necessary for such a personage, because, in these days of meanness and trickery, any Word issuing from the lower ranks is suspected of interested ambition and imposture. Ye, then, who are nothing, ye who possess nothing, aspire not to be apostles or messiahs. If you have faith, and would act in accordance therewith, get possession, in the first place, of the means of action, which are the influence of rank and the prestige of fortune. In olden times gold was manufactured by science ; nowadays science must be remade by gold. We have fixed the volatile, and we must now volatilise the fixed — in other words, we have materialised spirit, and we must now spiritualise

matter. The most sublime utterance now passes unheeded if it goes forth without the guarantee of a name — that is to say, of a success which represents a material value. What is the worth of a manuscript ? That of the author’s signature among the booksellers ? That established reputation known as Alexander Dumas et C^® represents one of the literary guarantees of our time, but the house of Dumas is in repute only for the romances which are its exclusive productions. Let Dumas devise, a magnificent Utopia, or discover a splendid solution of the religious problem, and no one will take them seriously, despite the European celebrity of the Panurge of modern literature. We are in the age of acquired positions, where every one is appraised according to his social and commercial standing. Unlimited freedom of speech has produced such a strife of words that no one inquires what is said, but who has said it. If it be Eothschild, his Holiness Pius the Ninth, or even Monseigneur Dupanloup, it is something ; but if it be Tartempion, it is nothing, were he even — which is possible, after all — an imrecognised prodigy of genius, knowledge, and good sense. Hence to those who would say to me : If you possess the secret of great successes, and of a force which can transform the world, why do you not make use of them ? I would answer :

This knowledge has come to me too late for myself, and I have spent over its acquisition the time and the resources which might have enabled me to apply it ; I offer it to those who are in a position to avail themselves of it. Illustrious men, rich men, great ones of this world, who are dissatisfied with that which you have, who are conscious of a nobler and larger ambition, will you be fathers of a new world, kings of a rejuvenated civilisation ? A poor and obscure scholar has found the lever of Archimides, and he offers it to you for the good of humanity alone, asking nothing whatsoever in exchange.

The phenomena which have quite recently perturbed America and Europe, as regards table-turning and fluidic manifestations, are simply magnetic currents at the be- ginning of their formation, appeals on the part of nature inviting us, for the good of humanity, to re-establish the great sympathetic and religious chains. As a fact, stagnation in the astral light would mean death to the human race, and torpor in this secret agent has already been manifested by alarming symptoms of decomposition and death. For example, cholera-morbus, the potato disease, and the blight of the grape, are traceable solely to this cause, as the two young shepherds of la Salette saw darkly and symbolically in their dream. The unlooked-for credit which awaited their narrative, and the vast concourse of pilgrims attracted by a statement so singular and at the same time so vague as that of these two children without instruction and almost without morality, are proofs of the magnetic reality of the fact, and the fluidic tendency of the earth itself to operate the cure of its inhabitants. Superstitions are instinctive, and all that is instinctive is founded in the very nature of things, to which fact the sceptics of all times have given insufficient attention. We attribute, then, all the strange phenomena of table-turning to the universal magnetic agent in search of a chain of enthusiasms with a view to the formation of fresh currents. The force of itself is blind, but it can be directed by the will of man, and is influenced by prevailing opinions.

This universal fluid — if we decide to regard it as a fluid — being the common medium of all nervous organisms, and the vehicle of all sensitive vibrations, establishes an actual physical solidarity between impressionable persons, and transmits from one to another the impressions of imagination and of thought. The movement of the inert object, determined by the undulations of the universal agent, obeys the ruling impression, and reproduces in its revelations at one time all the lucidity of the most wonderful visions, and at another all the eccentricity and falsehood of the most vague and incoherent dreams. The blows resounding on furniture, the clattering of dishes, the self-playing of musical instruments, are illusions produced by the same cause. The

miracles of the convulsionaries of Saint M^dard were of the same order, and seemed frequently to suspend the laws of nature. On the one hand, exaggeration produced by fascination, which is the special quality of intoxication occasioned by congestions of the astral light ; on the other, actual oscillations or movements impressed upon inert matter by the subtle and universal agent of motion and life. Such is the sole foundation of these occurrences which look so marvellous, as we may easily demonstrate at will by reproducing, in accordance with rules laid down in the Eitual, the most astounding of these phenomena, establishing, as can be done quite simply, the absence of trickery, hallucination, or error. It has frequently happened to me after experiments in the magic chain, performed with persons devoid of good intention or sympathy, that I have been awakened with a start in the night by truly alarming impressions and sensations. On one such occasion I felt vividly the pressure of an unknown hand attempting to strangle me ; I rose up, lighted my lamp, and set myself calmly to work, seeking to profit by my wakefulness and to drive away the phantoms of sleep. The books about me were moved with much noise, papers were disturbed and rubbed one against another, timber creaked as if on the point of splitting, and heavy blows resounded on the ceiling. With curiosity but also with tranquillity I observed all these phenomena, which would not have been less wonderful had they been only the product of my imagination, so real did they seem.

Tor the rest, I may state that I was in no sense frightened, and during this occurrence I was engaged upon something quite foreign to the occult sciences. By the repetition of similar phenomena I was led to attempt the experience of evocation, assisted by the magical ceremonies of the ancients, when I obtained truly astounding results, which will be set forth in the thirteenth chapter of this work.

The great work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future ; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will, assuring him universal dominion over Azoth and the domain of Magnesia, in other words, full power over the universal magical agent. This agent, disguised by the ancient philosophers under the name of the first matter, determines the forms of modifiable substance, and we can really arrive by means of it at metallic transmutation and the universal medicine. This is not a hypothesis, it is a scientific fact already established and rigorously demonstrable. Nicholas Flamel and Raymond Lully, both of them poor, indubitably distributed immense riches. Agrippa never proceeded beyond the first part of the great work, and he died in the ordeal, fighting to possess himself and to fix his independence. Now, there are two Hermetic operations, the one spiritual, the other material, and these are mutually dependent. For the rest, all Hermetic science is contained in the doctrine of Hermes, which is said to have been originally inscribed upon an emerald tablet. Its first articles have been already expounded, and those follow which are concerned with the operation of the great work : — “ Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently, with great industry. It rises from earth to heaven, and again it descends to earth, and it receives the power of things above and of things below. By this means shalt thou obtain the glory of the whole world, and all darkness shall depart from thee. It is the strong power of every power, for it will overcome all that is subtle and penetrate all that is solid.

Thus was the world created.” To separate the subtle from the gross, in the first operation, which is wholly interior, is to set the soul free from all prejudice and all vice, which is accomplished by the use of the philosophical salt, that is to say, wisdom ; of mercury, that is, personal skill and application ; finally, of sulphur, representing vital energy and fire of will. By these are we enabled to change into spiritual gold things which are of all least precious, even the refuse of the earth. In this sense we must interpret the parables of the choir of philosophers, Bernard Trevisan, Basil Valentine, Mary the Egyptian and other prophets of alchemy ; but in their works, as in the great work, we must adroitly separate the subtle from the gross, the mystical from the positive, allegory from theory. If we would read them with profit and understanding, we must take them first of all as allegorical in their entirety, and then descend from allegories to realities by the way of the correspondences or analogies indicated in the one dogma : — That which is above is proportional to that which is below, and reciprocally. The word Art when reversed, or read after the manner of sacred and primitive characters from right to left, gives three initials which express the different grades of the great work. T signifies triad, theory, and travail ; E, realisation ; A, adaptation.

In the twelfth chapter of the Eitual, we shall give the processes for adaptation, in use among the great masters, especially that which is contained in the Hermetic Citadel of Henry Khunrath. In this place we may indicate for the researches of our readers an admirable treatise attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, entitled Minerva Mundi. It is found only in certain editions of Hermes, and contains, beneath allegories full of profundity and poetry, the doctrine of individual self-creation, or the creative law consequent on the accordance between two forces, which are termed fixed and volatile by alchemists, and are necessity and liberty in the absolute order. The diversity of the forms which abound in nature is explained, in this treatise, by the diversity of spirits, and monstrosities

by the divergence of efforts ; its reading and assimilation are indispensable for all adepts who would fathom the mysteries of nature and devote themselves seriously to the search after the great work. When the masters in alchemy say that a short time and little money are needed to accomplish the works of science, above all when they affirm that one vessel is alone needed, when they speak of the great and unique athanor, which all can use, which is ready to each man’s hand, which all possess without knowing it, they allude to philosophical and moral alchemy. As a fact, a strong and determined will can arrive in a short time at absolute independence, and we are all in possession of the chemical instrument, the great and sole athanor which answers for the separation of the subtle from the gross and the fixed from the volatile. This instrument, complete as the world and precise as mathematics, is represented by the sages under the emblem of the pentagram or five-pointed star, which is the absolute sign of human intelligence. I will follow the example of the wise by forbearing to name it ; it is too easy to guess it.

The Tarot figure which corresponds to this chapter was misconstrued by Court de Gebelin and Etteilla, who regarded it as a blunder of a German cardmaker. It represents a man with his hands bound behind him, having two bags of silver attached to the armpits, and being suspended by one foot from a gibbet formed by the trunks of two trees, each with a root of six lopped branches, and by a crosspiece, thus completing the figure of the Hebrew tau n ; the legs of the victim are crossed, and his head and elbows form a triangle. Now, the triangle surmounted by a cross signifies, in alchemy, the end and perfection of the great work, a signification which is identical with that of the letter tau, the last of the sacred alphabet. This hanged man is, consequently, the adept, bound by his engagements, and spiritualised, that is, having his feet turned towards heaven ; it is also the antique Prometheus, expiating by everlasting torture the penalty of his glorious theft ; vulgarly, it is the traitor Judas, and his punishment threatens betrayers of the great arcanum. Finally, for Kabbahstic Jews, the hanged man, who corresponds to their twelfth doctrine, that of the promised Messiah, is a protestation against the Saviour acknowledged by Christians, and they seem to say unto him still : — How canst thou save others, since thou canst not save thyself ?

In the Sepher - Toldos - Jeschu, an anti-christian rabbinical compilation, there occurs a singular parable. Jeschu, says the rabbinical author of the^ legend, was travelling with Simon-Barjona and Judas Iscariot. Late and weary they came to a lonely house, and, being very hungry, could find nothing to eat except an exceedingly lean gosling. It was insufficient for three persons, and to divide it would be to sharpen without satisfying hunger. They agreed to draw lots, but as they were heavy with sleep, “ Let us first of all slumber,” said Jeschu, “ whilst the supper is preparing ; when we wake we will tell our dreams, and he who has had the most beautiful dream shall have the whole gosling to his own share. So it was arranged ; they slept and they woke. As for me, said St Peter, I dreamed that I was the vicar of God. And I, said Jeschu, that I was God himself. For me, said Judas hypocritically, I dreamed that, being in sonmambulism, I arose, went softly downstairs, took the gosling from the spit, and ate it. Thereupon they also went down, but the gosling had completely vanished. Judas had a waking dream.

This anecdote is given, not in the text of the SepherToldos- Jeschu itself, but in the rabbinical commentaries on that work. The legend is a protest of Jewish positivism against Christian mysticism. As a fact, while the faithful surrendered themselves to magnificent dreams, the proscribed Israelite, Judas of the Christian civilisation, worked, sold, intrigued, became rich, possessed himself of this life’s realities, so that he became in a position to advance the means of existence to the very forms of worship which had so long outlawed him. The ancient adorers of the ark remained true to the cultus of the strong box ; the exchange is now their temple, and thence they govern the Christian world. The laugh is indeed with Judas, who can congratulate himself upon not having slept like St Peter. In archaic writings preceding the Captivity, the Hebrew tau was cruciform, which further confirms our interpretation of the twelfth plate of the Kabbalistic Tarot. The cross, which produces four triangles, is also the sacred sign of the duodenary, and on this account it was called the Key of heaven by the Egyptians. So Etteilla, confused by his protracted researches for the conciliation of the analogical necessities of this symbol with his own personal opinion, in which he was infiuenced by the erudite Court de Gebelin, placed in the hand of his upright hanged man, by him interpreted as Prudence, a Hermetic caduceus, formed by two serpents and a Greek tau.

Seeing that he understood the necessity for the tau or cross on the twelfth leaf of the book of Thoth, he should also have seen the multiple and magnificent meaning of the Hermetic hanged man, the Prometheus of science, the living man who makes contact with earth by his thought alone, whose firm ground is heaven, the free and immolated adept, the revealer menaced with death, the conjuration of Judaism against Christ, which seems to be an involuntary admission of the secret divinity of the Crucified, lastly, the sign of the work accomplished, the cycle terminated, the intermediary tau, which resumes for the first time, before the final denary, the signs of the sacred alphabet.

We have said that the images of persons and things are preserved in the astral light. Therein also can be evoked the forms of those who are in oiir world no longer, and by this means are accomplished those mysteries of necromancy which are so contested and at the same time so real. The Kabbalists who have discoursed concerning the world of spirits have simply described what they have seen in their evocations. Eliphas Levi Zahed,"^ who writes this book, has evoked, and he has seen. Let us state, in the first place, what the masters have written of their visions or their intuitions in that which they term the light of glory. We read in the Hebrew book concerning the Revolution of Souls that there are three classes of souls — the daughters of Adam, the daughters of angels, and the daughters of sin. According to the same book, there are also three kinds of spirits — captive spirits, wandering spirits, and free spirits. Souls are sent forth in couples ; at the same time certain souls of men are born widowed, and their spouses are held captive by Lilith and Naemah, the queens of the stryges ; they are souls condemned to expiate the temerity of a celibate’s vow. Hence, when a man renounces the love of women from his infancy, he makes the bride who was destined for him a slave to the demons of debauch. Souls grow and multiply in heaven as bodies do upon earth. Immaculate souls are the daughters of the kisses of angels.

Nothing can enter heaven save that which comes from neaven. Hence, after death, the divine spirit which animated man returns alone to heaven and leaves two corpses, one upon earth, the other in the atmosphere ; one * These Hebrew names translated into French are Alphonse Louis Constant. terrestrial and elementary, the other aerial and sidereal, one already inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of the soul of the world, yet destined to die slowly, absorbed by the astral forces which produced it. The terrestrial body is visible ; the other is unseen by the eyes of earthly and living bodies, nor can it be beheld except by the application of the astral light to the translvxid, which conveys its impressions to the nervous system, and thus influences the organ of sight so as to make it perceive the forms which are preserved and the words which are written in the book of vital light. When a man has lived well the astral body evaporates like a pure incense ascending towards the upper regions ; hut should he have lived in sin, his astral body, which holds him prisoner, still seeks the objects of its passions, and wishes to return to life. It torments the dreams of young girls, bathes in the steam of spilt blood, and floats about the places where the pleasures of its life elapsed; it still watches over treasures which it possessed and buried;

it expends itself in painful efforts to make fresh material organs and so live again. But the stars draw it up and absorb it ; its feels its intelligence weaken, its memory gradually vanishes, all its being dissolves. ... Its former vices rise up before it, assume monstrous shapes, and pursue it ; they attack and devour it. . . . The unfortunate creature thus successively loses all the members which have ministered to his iniquities ; then he dies a second time and for ever, because he loses his personality and his memory. Souls which are destined to live, but are not yet completely purifled, remain captive for a longer or shorter period in the astral body, wherein they are burned by the odic light, which seeks to absorb and dissolve them. It is in order to escape from this body that suffering souls sometimes enter the bodies of the living and therein dwell in that state which Kabbalists term embryonic. Now, it is these aerial bodies which are evoked by necromancy. We enter into connection with larvae, with dead or perishing substances,

by this operation. The beings in question, for the most part, cannot speak except by the tingling of our ears produced by the nervous shock to which I have referred, and commonly they can only reason by reflecting our thoughts and our reveries. To behold these strange forms, we must put ourselves in abnormal condition akin to sleep or death, in other words, we must magnetise ourselves and enter into a kind of lucid and waking somnambulism. Then necromancy has real results, and then the evocations of magic can produce actual visions. We have said that in the great magical agent, which is the astral light, there are preserved all impressions of things, all images formed either by rays or reflections ; in this same light our visions come to us, and it is this which intoxicates the insane, and leads away their dormant judgment in pursuit of the most bizarre phantoms. To insure vision without illusion in this light, a powerful will must be with us to isolate reflections and attract rays only. To dream awake is to see in the astral light, and the orgies of the Sabbath, described by so many sorcerers in their criminal trials, came to them solely in this manner. The preparations and the substances used to obtain this result were often horrible, as we shall see in the Ritual, but the result itself was never doubtful. They beheld, they heard, they handled the most abominable, most fantastic, most impossible things. We shall return to this subject in our fifteenth chapter ; at the present moment we are concerned only with the evocations of the dead.

In the spring of the year 1854 I had undertaken a journey to London, that I might escape from internal disquietude, and devote myself, without interruption, to science. I had letters of introduction to persons of eminence, who were anxious for revelations from the supernatural world. I made the acquaintance of several, and discovered in them, amidst much that was courteous, a depth of indifference or trifling. They asked me forthwith to work wonders, as if I were a charlatan, and I was somewhat discouraged, for, to speak frankly, far from being inclined to initiate others into the mysteries of ceremonial magic, I had myself shrunk all along from its illusions and weariness ; moreover, such ceremonies necessitated an equipment which would be expensive and hard to collect. I buried myself, therefore, in the study of the transcendent Kabbalah, and concerned myself no further with English adepts, when, returning one day to my hotel, I found a note awaiting me. This note contained half of a card, divided transversely, on which I immediately recognised the seal of Solomon. It was accompanied by a small sheet of paper, on which these words were pencilled : — “ To-morrow, at three o’clock, in front of Westminster Abbey, the second half of this card will be given you.” I kept this Curious assignation. At the appointed spot I found a carriage drawn up, and as I held unaffectedly the morsel of card in my hand, a footman approached, making a sign as he did so, and then opened the door of the equipage.

It contained a lady in black, wearing a thick veil ; she motioned to me to take a seat beside her, shewing me at the same time the other half of the card. The door closed, the carriage drove off, and, the lady raising her veil, I saw that my appointment was with an elderly person, with grey eyebrows and black eyes of unusual brilliance, and strangely fixed in expression. “ Sir,” she began, with a strongly marked English accent, “ I am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous amongst adepts ; a friend of Sir

B L , who has seen you, knows that you have been asked for phenomena, and that you have refused to gratify such curiosity. You are possibly without the materials ; I should like to shew you a complete magical cabinet, but I must exact beforehand the most inviolable silence. If you will not give me this pledge upon your honour, I shall give orders for you to be driven to your home.” I made the required promise, and faithfully keep it by divulging neither the name, position, nor abode of this lady, whom I soon recognised as an initiate, not exactly of the first order, but still of a most exalted grade. We had a number of long conversations, in the course of which she invariably insisted upon the necessity of practical experience to complete initiation. She shewed me a collection of magical vestments and instruments, lent me some rare books, which I needed ; in short, she determined me to attempt, at her house, the experiment of a complete evocation, for which I prepared during a period of twenty-one days, scrupulously observing the rules laid down in the thirteenth chapter of the Eitual. The probation terminated on .the 24th of July; it was proposed to evoke the phantom of the divine Apollonius, and to question it upon two secrets, one which concerned myself, and one which interested the lady. She had counted on taking part in the evocation with a trustworthy person, but this person proved nervous at the last moment, and, as the triad or unity is indispensable for magical rites, I was left to my own resources.

The cabinet prepared for the evocation was situated in a turret ; it contained four concave mirrors, and a species of altar having a white marble top, encircled by a chain of magnetized iron. The sign of the pentagram, as given in the fifth chapter of this work, was carved and gilded on the white marble surface ; it was drawn also in various colours upon a new white lambskin stretched beneath the altar. In the middle of the marble table there was a small copper chafing-dish, containing charcoal of alder and laurel wood ; another chafing-dish was set before me on a tripod. I was clothed in a white garment, very similar to the vestments of our catholic priests, but longer and wider, and I wore upon my head a crown of vervain leaves, intertwined with a golden chain, I held a new sword in one hand, and in the other the Ritual. I kindled two fires with the required and prepared substances, and I began reading the evocations of the Eitual in a voice at first low, but rising by degrees. The smoke spread, the flame caused the objects upon which it fell to waver, then it went out, the smoke still floating white and slow about the marble altar ; I seemed to feel a kind of quaking of the earth, my ears tingled, my heart beat quickly.

I heaped more twigs and perfumes on the chafing-dishes, and as the flame again burst up, I beheld distinctly, before the altar, the figure of a man of more than normal size, which dissolved and vanished away. I recommenced the evocations, and placed myself within a circle which I had drawn previously between the tripod 'and the altar. Thereupon the mirror which was behind the altar seemed to brighten in its depth, a wan form was outlined therein, which increased, and seemed to approach by degrees. Three times, and with closed eyes, I invoked Apollonius. When I again looked forth there was a man in front of me, wrapped from head to foot in a species of shroud, which seemed more grey than white ; he was lean, melancholy and beardless, and did not altogether correspond to my preconceived notion of Apollonius. I experienced an abnormally cold sensation, and when I endeavoured to question the phantom I could not articulate a syllable. I therefore placed my hand upon the sign of the pentagram, and pointed the sword at the figure, commanding it mentally to obey and not alarm me, in virtue of the said sign. The form thereupon became vague, and suddenly disappeared. I directed it to return, and presently felt, as it were, a breath close by me, something touched my hand which was holding the sword, and the arm became immediately benumbed as far as the elbow. I divined that the sword displeased the spirit, and I therefore placed its point downwards, close by me, within the circle.

The human figure reappeared immediately, but I experienced such an intense weakness in all my limbs, and a swooning sensation came so quickly over me, that I made two steps to sit down, whereupon I fell into a profound lethargy, accompanied by dreams, of which I had only a confused recollection when I came again to myself. Tor several subsequent days my arm remained benumbed and painful. The apparition did not speak to me, but it seemed that the questions I had designed to ask answered themselves in my mind. To that of the lady an interior voice replied — Death ! — it was concerning a man

of whom she desired information. As for myself, I sought to know whether reconciliation and forgiveness were possible between two persons who occupied my thoughts, and the same inexorable echo within me also answered — Dead ! I am stating facts as they occurred, but I would impose faith on no one. The consequence of this experience on myself was something inexplicable. I was no longer the same man ; something of another world had passed into me ; I was no longer either sad or cheerful, but I felt a singular attraction towards death, unaccompanied, however, by any suicidal tendency. I analysed my experience carefully, and, notwithstanding a lively nervous repugnance, I twice repeated the same experiment, allowing some days to elapse between each; there was not, however, sufl&cient difference between the phenomena to warrant me in protracting a narrative which is perhaps already too long. But the net result of these two additional evocations was for me the revelation of two Kabbalistic secrets which might change, in a short space of time, the foundations and laws of society at large, if they came to be known generally. Am I to conclude from all this that I really evoked, saw, and touched the great Apollonius of Tyana ? I am not so hallucinated as to affirm or so unserious as to believe it. The effect of the probations, the perfumes, the mirrors, the pantacles, is an actual drunkenness of the imagination, which must act powerfully upon a person otherwise nervous and impressionable.

I do not explain the physical laws by which I saw and touched; I affirm solely that I did see and that I did touch, that I saw clearly and distinctly, apai’t from dreaming, and this is sufficient to establish the real efficacy of magical ceremonies. For the rest, I regard the practice as destructive and dangerous ; if it became habitual, neither moral nor physical health would be able to withstand it. The elderly lady whom I have mentioned, and of whom I subsequently had reason to complain, was a case in

point ; despite her asseverations to the contrary, I have no doubt that she was addicted to necromancy and goetia. She at times lost all self-control, at others yielded to senseless fits of passion, for which it was difficult to discover a cause. I left London without bidding her adieu, and I shall faithfully adhere to my engagement by giving no clue to her identity, which might connect her name with practices, pursued in all probability without the knowledge of her family, which I believe to be large and of very considerable position. There are evocations of intelligence, evocations of love, and evocations of hate ; but, once more, there is no proof whatsoever that spirits really leave the higher spheres to communicate with us ; the opposite, as a fact, is more probable. We evoke the memories which they have left in the astral light, or common reservoir of universal magnetism. It was in this light that the Emperor Julian once saw the gods manifest, looking old, ill, and decrepit — fresh proof of the influence exercised by current and accredited opinions on the reflections of this same magical agent which makes our tables talk and answers by taps on the walls. After the evocation I have described, I re-read carefully the life of Apollonius, who is represented by historians as an ideal of antique beauty and elegance, and I then observed that towards the end of his life he was starved and tormented in prison.

This circumstance, which may have remained in my memory without my being aware of it, possibly determined the unattractive form of my vision, which I regard solely as the voluntary dream of a waking man. I have seen two other persons, whom there is no occasion to name, both differing, as regards costume and appearance, from what I had expected. For the rest, I commend the greatest caution to those who propose devoting themselves to similar experiences ; their result is intense exhaustion, and frequently a shock sufficient to occasion illness.

I must not conclude this chapter without mentioning the curious opinions of certain Kabbalists, who distinguish be- tween apparent and real death, holding that the two are seldom simultaneous. In their idea, the majority of persons who are buried are still alive, while a number of others who are regarded as living are in reality dead. Incurable madness, for example, would be with them an incomplete but real death, leaving the terrestial body under the purely instinctive control of the sidereal body. When the human soul experiences a greater blow than it can bear, it would thus become separated from the body, leaving the animal soul, or sidereal body, in its place, and these human remains would be to some extent less alive really than a mere animal. Dead persons of this kind are said to be recognised by the complete extinction of the moral and affectionate sense ; they are neither bad nor good ; they are dead. Such beings, who are the poisonous fungi of the human race, absorb the life of living beings to their fullest possible extent, and this is why their proximity benumbs the soul and chills the heart. If such corpse-like creatures really existed, they would realise all that was recounted in former times about brocalaques and vampires. Now, are there not certain persons in whose presence one feels less intelligent, less good, sometimes even less honest ? Are there not some whose vicinity extinguishes all faith and all enthusiasm, who draw you by your weaknesses, who govern you by your evil propensities, and make you die slowly to morality in a torment like that of Mezentius ? These are dead people whom we mistake for living beings ; these are vampires whom we regard as friends !

St Augustine questioned seriously whether Apuleius could have been changed into an ass by a Thessalian sorceress, and theologians have long debated about the transformation of Nebuchadnezzar into a wild beast, which things merely prove that the eloquent doctor of Hippo was unacquainted with magical secrets and that the theologians in question have not advanced far in exegesis. We are concerned in this chapter with different and more incredible marvels, which are at the same time incontestable. I refer to lycanthropy, or the nocturnal transformation of men into wolves, so celebrated in rural tales of the twilight by the histories of were-wolves. These histories are so well attested that, with a view to their explanation, sceptical science has recourse to furious mania and masquerading as animals. But such hypotheses are puerile and explain nothing. Let us seek elsewhere for the secret of the phenomena which have been observed on this subject, and begin with establishing ; — 1, That no one has ever been killed by a were- wolf, except by suffocation, without effusion of blood and without wounds ; 2, That were-wolves, though tracked, pursued, and even wounded, have never been killed on the spot ; 3, That persons suspected of these transformations have always been found at home, after a were- wolf chase, more or less maimed, sometimes dying, but invariably in their natural form.

Let us, next, establish phenomena of a different order. Nothing in the world is better borne out by evidence than the visible and real presence of P. Alphonsus Ligouri beside the dying pope, whilst the same personage was simultaneously seen at home, far from Eome, in prayer and ecstasy. Further, the simultaneous presence of the missionary Francis Xavier in several places at one time has been no less strictly demonstrated. It will be said that these are miracles, but we reply that miracles when they are genuine are simply facts for science. Apparitions of persons dear to us coincident with the moment of their death are phenomena of the same order and attributable to the same cause. We have spoken of the sidereal body which is intermediary between the soul and the physical body. 'Now, this body frequently remains awake while the latter sleeps, and passes through all space which universal magnetization opens to it. It lengthens without breaking the sympathetic chain which attaches it to our heart and brain, and it is for this reason that it is so dangerous to awaken dreamers suddenly. As a fact, too great a start may break the chain in an instant and cause death immediately. The form of our sidereal body is conformed to the habitual condition of our thoughts, and it modifies, in the long run, the characteristics of the material body. This is why Swedenborg, in his somnambulistic intuitions, frequently beheld spirits in the shape of various animals.

Let us now make bold to say that a were-wolf is nothing else but the sidereal body of a man whose savage and sanguinary instincts are typified by the wolf ; who, further, whilst his phantom wanders over the country, is sleeping painfully in his bed, and dreams that he is actually a wolf. What makes the were-wolf visible is the almost somnambulistic excitement caused by the fright of those who behold it, or else the tendency, more particularly in simple country persons, to enter into direct communication with the astral light, which is the common medium of visions and dreams. The hurts inflicted on the were-wolf really wound the sleeping person by the odic and sympathetic congestion of the astral light, and by the correspondence of the immaterial with the material body. Many persons will believe that they are dreaming when they read such things as these, and will ask whether we are really ourselves awake ; but we will only request men of science to reflect upon the phenomena of gestation, and upon the influence of the imagination of women on the form of their offspring. A woman who had been present at the execution of a man who was broken upon a wheel gave birth to a child with all its limbs shattered. Let anyone explain to us how the impression produced upon the soul of the mother by a horrible spectacle could so have reacted on the child, and we in turn will explain why blows received in dreams can really bruise and even grievously wound the body of him who receives them in imagination, above all when his body is suffering and subjected to nervous and magnetic influences.

To these phenomena and to the occult laws which govern them must be referred the effects of bewitchment, of which we shall speak hereafter. Diabolical obsessions, and the majority of nervous diseases which affect the brain, are wounds inflicted on the nervous mechanism by the astral light when perverted, that is, absorbed or projected in abnormal proportions. All extraordinary and extra-natural tensions of the will predispose to obsessions and nervous diseases ; enforced celibacy, asceticism, hatred, ambition, re^ jected love, are so many generative principles of infernal forms and influences. Paracelsus says that the menstruations of women beget phantoms in the air, and from this standpoint convents would be seminaries for nightmares, while the devils might be compared to those heads of the hydra of Lerne which were reproduced eternally and propagated in. the very blood from their wounds. The phenomena of possession amongst the Ursulines of Loudun, so fatal to Urban Grandier, have been misconstrued. The nuns were really possessed by hysteria and fanatical imitation of the secret thoughts of their exorcists, which were transmitted to their nervous system by the astral light. They received the impression of all the hatreds which this unfortunate priest had conjured up against him, and this wholly interior communication seemed diabolical and miraculous to themselves. Hence in this tragical affair everyone acted sincerely, even

to Laubardemont, who, in his blind execution of the prejudged verdicts of Cardinal Eichelieu, believed that he was fulfilling at the same time the duties of a true judge, and as little suspected himself of being a follower of Pontius Pilate as he would have recognised in the sceptical and libertine cure of Saint-Pierre-du March4, a disciple and martyr of Christ. The possession of the nuns of Louvier is scarcely more than a copy of those of Loudun ; the devils invent little and plagiarise one 'another. The process of Gaufridi and Magdalen de la Palud possesses stranger features, for in this case the victims are their own accusers. Gaufridi confessed that he was guilty of depriving a number of women of the power to defend themselves against his seductions by simply breathing in their nostrils. A young and beautiful girl, of noble family, who had been thus insufflated, described, in the greatest detail, scenes wherein the unchaste seemed to vie with the monstrous and grotesque. Such are the ordinary hallucinations of false mysticism and ill-kept celibacy. Gaufridi and his mistress were obsessed by their mutual chimeras, and the brain of the one reflected the nightmares of the other. Was not the Marquis of Sade himself infectious for certain depleted and diseased natures ?

The scandalous trial of Father Girard is a new proof of the deliriums of mysticism and the singular nervous affections which it may entail. The trances of la Cadi^re, her ecstacies, her stigmatas, were all as real as the insensate and perhaps involuntary debauchery of her director. She accused him, when he wished to withdraw from her, and the conversion of this young woman was a revenge, for there is nothing more cruel than depraved passions. An influential body, which intervened in the trial of Grandier for the destruction of the possible heretic, in this case rescued Father Girard for the honour of the order. Moreover, Grandier and Girard attained the same results by very different means, with which we shall be specially concerned in the sixteenth chapter. We operate by our imagination on the imagination of others, by our sidereal body on theirs, by our organs on their organs, in such a way that, by sympathy, whether of inclination or obsession, we reciprocally possess one another, and identify ourselves with those upon whom we wish to act. Eeactions against such dominations frequently cause the most pronounced antipathy to succeed the keenest sympathy. Love has a tendency to unify beings ; in thus identifying, it frequently renders them rivals, and, consequently, enemies, if in the depth of the two natures there is an unsociable disposition, like pride. To permeate two united souls in an equal degree with pride is to disjoin them by making them rivals. Antagonism is the necessary consequence of a plurality of gods.

When we dream of a living person, either their sidereal body presents itself to ours in the astral light, or at least the reflection thereof, and our impressions at the meeting often make known the secret dispositions of the person in our regard. For example, love fashions the sidereal body of the one in the image and likeness of the other, so that the psychal medium of the woman is like a man, and that of the man like a woman. It was this transfer which the Kabbalists sought to express in an occult manner when they said, in explanation of an obscure term of Genesis : — “ God created love by placing a rib of Adam in the breast of the woman, and a portion of the flesh of Eve in the breast of the man, so that at the bottom of woman’s heart there is the bone of man, while at the bottom of man’s heart there is the flesh of woman,” — an allegory which is certainly not devoid of depth and beauty. We have referred, in the previous chapter, to what the masters in Kabbalah call the embryonic condition of souls. This state, completed after the death of the person who thereby possesses another, is often commenced in life, whether by obsession or by love. I knew a young woman, whose parents inspired her with a great terror, who took suddenly to inflicting upon an inoffensive person the very

acts she dreaded in them. I knew another who, after participating in an evocation concerned with a guilty woman suffering in the next world for certain eccentric acts, began to imitate, without any reason, the actions of the dead person. To this occult power must be attributed the terrible influence resident in parental malediction, which is feared by all nations on earth, as also the imminent danger of magical operations when anyone has not reached the isolation of true adepts. This virtue of sidereal transmutation, which really exists in love, explains the allegorical marvels of the wand of Circe. Apuleius speaks of a Thessalian woman who changed herself into a bird ; he won the affections of her servant to discover the secrets of the mistress, and succeeded only in transforming himself into an ass. This allegory contains the most concealed secrets of love. Again, the Kabbalists say that when a man falls in love with a female elementary — undine, sylphide, or gnomide, as the case may be — she becomes immortal with him, or otherwise he dies with her. We have already seen that elementaries are imperfect and as yet mortal men. The revelation we have mentioned, which has been regarded merely as a fable, is therefore the dogma of moral solidarity in love, which is itself the foundation of love, and alone explains all its sanctity and all its power. Who, then, is this Circe, that changes her worshippers into swine, while, so soon as she is subjected to the bond of love, her enchantments are destroyed ? She is the ancient courtesan, the marble woman of all the ages. A woman who is without love absorbs and degrades all who come near her ; she who loves, on the other hand, diffuses enthusiasm, nobility, and life.

There was much talk in the last century about an adept accused of charlatanism, who was termed in his lifetime the divine Cagliostro. It is known that he practised evocations, and that in this art he was surpassed only by the illuminated Schroepffer.* It is said also that he boasted of his power * See, in the Ritual, Schrcepffer’s secrets and formulas for evocation. in binding sympathies, and that he claimed to be in possession of the secret of the great work ; but that which rendered him still more famous was a certain elixir of life, which immediately restored to the aged the strength and vitality of youth. The basis of this composition was malvoisie wine, and it was obtained by distilling the sperm of certain animals with the sap of certain plants. We are in possession of the recipe, but our reasons for withholding it will be readily understood. We approach the mystery of black magic. We are about to confront, even in his own sanctuary, the black god of the Sabbath, the formidable goat of Mendes. At this point those who are subject to fear should close the book ; even persons who are a prey to nervous impressions will do well to divert themselves or to abstain. We have set ourselves a task, and we must complete it. Let us first of all address ourselves frankly and boldly to the question : Is there a devil ? What is the devil ? As to the first point, science is silent, philosophy denies it on chance, religion only answers in the affirmative. As to the second point, religion states that the devil is the fallen angel ; occult philosophy accepts and explains this definition. It will be unnecessary to repeat what we have already said on the subject ; we will add here a further revelation : —

In Black Magic, the devil is the great magical agent The old serpent of the legend is nothing else than the universal agent, the eternal fire of terrestrial life, the soul of the earth, and the living fount of hell. We have said that the astral light is the receptacle of forms, and these when evoked by reason are produced harmoniously, but when evoked by madness they appear disorderly and monstrous ; so originated the nightmares of St Anthony and the phantoms of the Sabbath. Do, therefore, the evocations of goetia and demonomania possess a practical result ? Yes, certainly — one which cannot be contested, one more terrible than could be recounted by legends ! When any one invokes the devil with intentional ceremonies, the devil comes, and is seen. To escape dying from horror at the sight, to escape catalepsy or idiocy, one must be already mad. Grandier was a libertine through indevotion, and perhaps also through scepticism ; excessive zbbI, following on the aberrations of asceticism and blindness of faith, depraved Girard, and made him deprave in his turn. In the fifteenth chapter of our Eitual we shall give all the diabohcal evocations and practices of black magic, not that they may be used, but that they may be known and judged, and that such insanities may be put aside for ever.

M. Eudes de Mirville, whose book upon table-turning made a certain sensation recently, will possibly be contented and discontented at the same time with the solution here given of black magic and its problems. As a fact, we maintain, like himself, the reality and prodigious nature of the facts ; with him also we assign them to the old serpent, the secret prince of this world ; but we are not agreed as to the nature of this blind agent, which, under different directions, is at once the instrument of all good and of all evil, the minister of prophets and the inspirer of pythonesses. In a word, the devil, for us, is force placed temporarily at the disposal of error, even as mortal sin is, to our thinking, the persistence of the will in what is absurd. M. de Mirville is therefore a thousand times right, but he is once and one great time wrong. What we must exclude above all from the realm of existences is the arbitrary. Nothing happens by chance, nor yet by the autocracy of a good or evil will. There are two houses in heaven, and the lower house of Satan is restrained in its extremes by the senate of divine wisdom.

When a man gazes unchastely upon any woman he profanes that woman, said the Great Master. What is willed with persistence is done. Every real will is confirmed by acts ; every will confirmed by an act is action. Every action is subject to a judgment, and such judgment is eternal. These are dogmas and principles from which it follows that the good or evil which we will, to others as to ourselves, according to the capacity of our will and within the sphere of our action, will infallibly take place, if the will be confirmed and the determination fixed by acts. The acts should be analogous to the will. The intent to do harm or to excite love, in order to be efficacious, must be confirmed by deeds of hatred or affection. Whatsoever bears the impression of a human soul belongs to that soul ; whatsoever a man has appropriated after any manner becomes his body in the broader acceptation of the term, and anything which is done to the body of a man is felt, mediately or immediately, by his soul. It is for this reason that every species of hostility towards one’s neighbour is regarded by moral theology as the beginning of homicide. Bewitchment is a homicide, and the more infamous because it eludes self-defence by the victim and punishment by law. This principle being established to exonerate our conscience, and

for the warning of the weak vessels, let us affirm boldly that bewitchment is possible. Let us even go further and lay down that it is not only possible, but in some sense necessary and fatal. It is continually going on in the social world, unconsciously both to agents and patients. Involuntary bewitchment is one of the most terrible dangers of human life. Passional sympathy inevitably subjects the hottest desire to the strongest will. Moral maladies are more contagious than physical, and there are some triumphs of infatuation and fashion which are comparable to leprosy or cholera. We may die of an evil acquaintance as well as of a contagious touch, and the frightful plague which, during recent centuries only, has avenged in Europe the profanation of the mysteries of love, is a revelation of the analogical laws of nature, and at the same time offers only a feeble image of the moral corruptions which follow daily on an equivocal sympathy. There is a story of a jealous and infamous man who, to avenge himself on a rival, contracted an incurable disorder, and made it the common scourge and anathema of a divided bed. This atrocious history is that of every magician, or rather of every sorcerer who practises bewitchments. He poisons himself in order that he may poison others ; he damns himself that he may torture others ; he draws in hell with his breath in order that he may expel it by his breath ;

he wounds himself to death that he may inflict death on others ; but possessed of this unhappy courage, it is positive and certain that he will poison and slay by the mere projection of his perverse will. There are some forms of love which are as deadly as hatred, and the bewitchments of goodwill are the torment of the wicked. The prayers offered to God for the conversion of a man bring misfortune to that man if he will not be converted. As we have already said, it is weariness and danger to strive against the fluiffic currents occasioned by the chains of wills in union.

Hence there are two kinds of bewitchment, voluntary and involuntary ; physical and moral bewitchment may be also distinguished. Power attracts power, life attracts life, health attracts health; this is a law of nature. If two children live, above all, if they sleep together, and if one be weak while the other is strong, the strong will absorb the weak, and the latter will waste away. For this reason, it is important that children should always sleep alone. In conventual seminaries certain pupils absorb the intelligence of the others, and in every given circle of men, an individual speedily appears who avails himself of the wills of the rest. Bewitchment by means of currents is exceedingly common, as we have already observed ; morally as well as physically, most of us are carried away by the crowd. What, however, we have proposed to exhibit more especially in this chapter is the almost absolute power of the human will upon the determination of its acts and the influence of every outward demonstration upon outward things. Voluntary bewitchments are still frequent in our rural places because natural forces, among ignorant and isolated persons, operate without being diminished by any doubt or any diversion. A frank, absolute hatred, unleavened by rejected passion or personal cupidity is, under certain given conditions, a death-sentence for its object. I say unmixed with amorous passion or cupidity, because a desire, being an attraction, counterbalances and annuls the power of projection.

For example, a jealous person will never efficaciously bewitch his rival, and a greedy heir will never by the mere fact of his will succeed in shortening the days of a miserly and long-lived uncle. Bewitchments attempted under such conditions reflect upon the operator and help rather than hurt their object, setting him free from a hostile action which destroys itself by excessive exaggeration. The term envoiUement (bewitchment) so strong in its Gaelic simplicity, admirably expresses what it means, the act of enveloping some one, so to speak, in a formulated will. The instrument of bewitchments is the great magic agent which, under the influence of an evil will, becomes really and positively the demon. Witchcraft, properly so called, that is,

ceremonial operation with intent to bewitch, acts only on the operator, and serves to fix and confirm his will, by formulating it with persistence and labour, the two conditions which make volition efficacious. The more difficult or horrible the operation, the greater is its power, because it acts more strongly on the imagination and confirms effort in direct ratio of resistance. This explains the bizarre nature and even atrocious character of the operations in black magic, as practised by the ancients and 'in the middle ages, the diabolical masses, administration of sacraments to reptiles, effusions of blood, human sacrifices, and other monstrosities, which are the very essence and reality of goetia or nigromancy. Such are the practices which from all time have brought down upon sorcerers the just repression of the laws. Black magic is really only a graduated combination of sacrileges and murders designed for the permanent perversion of a human will and for the realisation in a living man of the hideous phantom of the demon. It is, therefore, properly speaking, the religion of the devil, the cultus of darkness, hatred of good carried to the height of paroxysm ; it is the incarnation of death, and the persistent creation of hell.

The Kabbalist Bodin, who has been erroneously considered of a feeble and superstitious mind, had no other motive in writing his Demonomania than that of warning people against dangerous incredulity. Initiated by the study of the Kabbalah into the true secrets of magic, he trembled at the danger to which society was exposed by the abandonment of this power to the wickedness of men. Hence he attempted what at the present time M. Eudes de Mirville is attempting amongst ourselves ; he gathered facts without ; interpreting them, and affirmed in the face of inattentive or ; pre-occupied science the existence of the occult influences and criminal operations of evil magic. In his own day 1 1 Bodin received no more attention than will be given to p M. Eudes de Mirville, because it is not enough to indicate phenomena and to prejudge their cause if we would influ- ence earnest men ; we must study, explain, and demonstrate such cause, and this is precisely what we are ourselves attempting. Will better success crown our own efforts ? It is possible to die through the love of certain people as by their hate ; there are absorbing passions, under the breath of which we feel ourselves depleted like the spouses of vampires. Not only do the wicked torment the good, but unconsciously the good torture the wicked. The gentleness of Abel was a long and painful bewitchment for the ferocity of Cain.

Among evil men, the hatred of good originates in the very instinct of self-preservation ; moreover, they deny that what torments them is good, and, for their own peace, are driven to deify and justify evil. In the sight of Cain, Abel was a hypocrite and coward, who abused the pride of humanity by his scandalous submissions to divinity. How much must this first murderer have endured before making such a frightful attack upon his brother ? Had Abel understood, he would have been afraid. Antipathy is the presentiment of a possible bewitchment, either of love or hatred, for we find love frequently succeeding repulsion. The astral light warns us of coming influences by its action on the more or less sensible, more or less active, nervous system. Instantaneous sympathies, electric loves, are explosions of the astral light, which are as exactly and mathematically demonstrable as the discharge of strong magnetic batteries. Thereby we may see what unexpected dangers threaten an uninitiated person who is perpetually fooling with fire in the neighbourhood of invisible powder-mines. We are saturated with the astral light, and we project it unceasingly to make room for and to attract fresh supplies. The nervous instruments, which are specially designed either for attraction or projection, are the eyes and hands. The polarity of the hands is resident in the thumb, and hence, according to the magical tradition which still lingers in rural places, whenever anyone is in suspicious company, he should keep the thumb doubled up and hidden in the hand, and while in the main avoiding a fixed glance at any one, still being the

first to look at those whom we have reason to fear, so as to escape unexpected fluidic projections and fascinating regards. There are certain animals which have the power of breaking the currents of astral light by an absorption peculiar to themselves. They are violently antipathetic to us, and possess a certain sorcery of the eye : the toad, the basilisk, and the tard are instances. These animals, when tamed and carried alive on the person, or kept in occupied rooms, are a guarantee against the hallucinations and trickeries of ASTRAL INTOXICATION, a term we make use of here for the first time, one which explains all the phenomena of unbridled passions, mental exaltations, and folly. Tame toads and tards, my dear sir, the disciple of Voltaire will say to me ; carry them about with you, and write no more. To which I may answer, that I shall seriously think of doing so as soon as ever T feel tempted to laugh at anything I do not understand, and to treat those whose knowledge and wisdom I fail to understand, as fools or as madmen. Paracelsus, the greatest of the Christian magi, opposed bewitchment by the practices of a contrary bewitchment. He composed sympathetic remedies, and applied them, not to the siifliering members, but to representations of those members, formed and consecrated according to magical ceremonial. His successes were incredible, and never has any physician approached Paracelsus in his marvels of healing.

But Paracelsus had discovered magnetism long before Mesmer, and had carried to its final consequences this luminous discovery, or rather this initiation into the magic of the ancients, who better than us understood the great magical agent, and did not regard the astral light, azoth, the universal magnesia of the sages, as an animal and a special fluid emanating only from particular creatures. In his occult philosophy, Paracelsus opposes ceremonial magic, the terrible power of which he certainly did not ignore, but he sought to decry its practices so as to discredit black magic. He locates the omnipotence of the magus in the

interior and occult inagnes, and the most skilful magnetisers of our own day could not express themselves better. At the same time he counselled the employment of magical symbols, talismans above all, in the cure of diseases. In our eighteenth chapter we shall have occasion to return to the talismans of Paracelsus, while following Gaffarel upon the great question of occult iconography and numismatics. Bewitchment may also be cured by substitution, when that is possible, and by the rupture or deflection of the astral current. The rural traditions on all these points are admirable, and undoubtedly of remote antiquity ; they are remnants of the instruction of the Druids, who were initiated in the mysteries of Egypt and India by wandering hierophants. Now, it is well known in vulgar magic that a bewitchment — that is, a will persistently confirmed in ill doing, invariably has its result, and cannot draw back without risk of death. The sorcerer who liberates any one from a charm must have another object for his malevolence, or it is certain that he himself will be smitten, and will perish as the victim of his own spells. The astral movement being circular, every azotic or magnetic emission which does not encounter its medium returns with force to its point of departure, thus explaining one of the strangest histories in a sacred book, that of the demons sent into the swine, which thereupon cast themselves into the sea.

This act of high initiation was nothing else but the rupture of a magnetic current infected by evil wills. Our name is legion, for we are many, said the instinctive voice of the possessed sufferer. Possessions by the demon are bewitchments, and such cases are innumerable at the present day. A holy monk who has devoted himself to the service of the insane. Brother Hilarion Tissot, has succeeded, by long experience and incessant practice, in curing a number of patients, by unconsciously using the magnetism of Paracelsus. He attributes most of his cases either to disorder of the will or to the perverse influence of external wills ; he regards all crimes as acts of madness, and would treat the wicked as diseased.

instead of exasperating and making them incurable, under the pretence of punishing them. What space of time must still elapse ere poor Brother Hilarion Tissot shall be hailed as a man of genius ! And how many serious men, when they read this chapter, will say that Tissot and myself should treat one another according to our common ideas, but should refrain from publishing our theories, if we do not wish to be reckoned as physicians worthy of a hospital for incurables ! It revolves, notwithstanding, said Galileo, stamping his foot upon the e£trth. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, said the Saviour of men. It might also be added : Ye shall love justice, and justice shall make you whole men. A vice is a poison, even for the body ; true virtue is a pledge of longevity. The method of ceremonial bewitchments varies with times and persons ; all subtle and domineering people find its secrets and its practice within themselves, without even actually calculating about them or reasoning on their sequence. Herein they follow instinctive inspirations of the great agent, which, as we have already said, accommodates itself marvellously to our vices and our virtues ; it may, however, be generally laid down that we are subjected to the wills of others by the analogies of our tendencies, and above all, of our faults. To pamper the weaknesses of an individuality is to possess ourselves of that individuality and convert it into an instrument in the order of the same errors or depravities.

How, when two natures whose defects are analogous become subordinated one to another, the result is a sort of substitution of the stronger for the weaker, an actual obsession of one mind by the other. Very often the weaker may struggle and seek to revolt, but it only falls deeper in servitude. So did Louis XIII. conspire against Kichelieu, and subsequently, so to speak, sought his pardon by abandoning his accomplices. We have all a ruling defect, which is for our soul as the umbilical cord of its sinful birth, and it is by this the enemy can always seize us — for some vanity, for others idleness, for the majority egotism. Let a

wicked and crafty mind avail itself of this snare and we are lost ; we may not go mad or turn idiots, but we become positively alienated, in all the force of the expression — that is, we are subjected to a foreign impulsion. In such a state one dreads instinctively everything that might bring us back to reason, and will not even listen to representations that are opposed to our infatuation. Here is one of the most dangerous disorders which can affect the moral nature. The sole remedy for such a bewitchment is to make use of madness itself in order to cure madness, to provide the sufferer with imaginary satisfactions in the opposite order to that wherein he is now immersed. Endeavour, for example, to cure an ambitious person by making him desire the glories of heaven — mystic remedy; cure one who is dissolute by true love — natural remedy ; obtain honourable successes for a vain person ; exhibit unselfishness to the avaricious, and procure for them legitimate profit by honourable participation in generous enterprises, &c. Acting in this w.^y upon the moral nature, we may succeed in curing a number of physical maladies, for the moral affects the physical in virtue of the magical axiom ; — “ That which is above is like that which is below.” This is why the Master said, when speaking of the paralysed woman : Satan has bound her. A disease invariably originates in a deficiency or an excess, and ever at the root of a physical evil we shall find a moral disorder. This is an unchanging law of nature.