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

This combination of letters is a key of the pentagram. The initial A is repeated five and reproduced thirty times, thus giving the elements and numbers of the two following figures : — The isolated A represents the unity of the first principle, otherwise, the intellectual or active agent. A united to B represents the fertilisation of the duad by the monad. E is the sign of the triad, because it represents hieroglyphically the emission which results from the union of the two principles. The number 11, which is that of the letters of the word, combines the unity of the initiate with the denary of Pythagoras, and the number 66, the added total of all the letters, kabbalistically forms the number 12, which is the square of the triad, and consequently the mystic quadrature of the circle. We may remark, in passing, that the author of the Apocalypse, that key of the Christian Kabbalah, composed the number of the beast, that is to say, of idolatry, by adding a 6 to the double senary of ABEACADABRA, which gives 1 8 kabbalistically, the number attributed in the Tarot to the hieroglyphic sign of night and of the profane — the moon, together with the towers, dog, wolf, and crab — a mysterious and obscure number, the kabbahstic key of which is 9, the number of initiation. On this subject the sacred kabbalist says expressly : “ He that hath understanding (that is, the key of kabbahstic numbers), let him count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a ,man, and the number of him is 666.” It is, in fact, the decade of Pythagoras multiplied by itself and added to the sum of the triangular Pantacle of Abracadabra ; it is thus the sum of all magic of the ancient world, the entire programme of human genius which the divine genius of the Gospel sought to absorb or transplant.

These hieroglyphical combinations of letters and numbers belong to the practical part of the kabbalah, which, from this point of view, is divided into Gematriah and Temurah. Such calculations, which now seem to us arbitrary or devoid of interest, then belonged to the philosophical symbolism of the East, and were of the highest importance in the teaching of holy things emanating from the occult sciences. The absolute kabbahstic alphabet, which connected primitive ideas with allegories, allegories with letters, and letters with numbers, was then called the keys of Solomon. We have already stated that these keys, preserved to our own day, but wholly misconstrued, are nothing else than the game of Tarot, the antique allegories of which were remarked and appreciated for the first time in the modern world by the learned archaeologist. Court de Gebelin. The double triangle of Solomon is explained by St John in a remarkable manner. He says, “ There are three which give testimony in heaven — the Eather, the Word, and the Holy Spirit ; and there are three which give testimony on earth — the spirit, the water, and the blood.” Thus, St John agrees with the masters of Hermetic philosophy, who attri-

bute to their sulphur the name of ether, to their mercury that of philosophical water, and to their salt the qualification of the dragon’s blood or menstruum of the earth ; blood or salt corresponds by opposition with the Father, azotic or mercurial water with the Word or Logos, and the ether with the Holy Spirit. But the things of transcendent symbolism can only be rightly understood by the true children of science. The threefold repetition of names with varied intonations was united to triangular combinations in magical ceremonies. The magic rod was frequently surmounted with a small magnetised fork, which Paracelsus replaced by the trident represented below. This trident is a pantacle expressing the synthesis of the triad in the monad, thus completing the sacred tetrad. He ascribed to this figure all the virtues which kabbalistic Hebrews attribute to the name of Jehovah, and the thaumaturgic properties of the Abracadabra used by the hierophants of Alexandria. Let us here recognise that it is a pantacle, and consequently a concrete and an absolute sign of an entire doctrine which has been that of an immense magnetic circle, not only for ancient philosophers, but also for adepts of the middle ages. The restoration in our own day of its original value by the comprehension of its mysteries, might not that also restore all its miraculous virtue and all its power against human diseases ?

The old sorceresses, when they spent the night at the meeting-place of three cross-roads, yelled three times in honour of the triple Hecate. All these figures, all these dispositions of numbers and of characters, are, as we have already said, so many instruments for the education of the will, by fixing and determining its habits. They serve, furthermore, to conjoin all the powers of the human soul in action, and to increase the creative force of the imagination ; it is the gymnastics of thought in training for realisation ; so the effect of these practices is infallible, like nature, when they are fulfilled with absolute confidence and indomitable perseverance. The Grand Master tells us that faith could transplant trees into the sea and remove mountains. Even a superstitious and insensate practice is efficacious because it is a realisation of the will. Hence a prayer is more powerful if we go to church to say it than when it is said at home, and it will work miracles if we fare to a famous sanctuary for the purpose, in other words, to one which is strongly magnetised by the enormous number of its frequenters, traversing two or three hundred leagues with bare feet, and asking alms by the way. Men laugh at the simple woman who denies herself a pennyworth of milk in the morning that she may carry a penny taper to burn on the magic triangle in a chapel ;

but they who laugh are ignorant, and the simple woman does not pay too dearly for what she thus purchases of resignation and of courage. Great minds with great pride pass by, shrugging their shoulders ; they rise up against superstition with a din which shakes the world; and what happens ? The towers of the great minds topple over, and their ruins revert to the providers and purchasers of penny tapers, who are content to hear it everywhere proclaimed that their reign is for ever ended, provided that they rule always.

The great religions have never had more than one serious rival, and this rival is magic. Magic produced the occult associations which brought about the revolution termed the Eenaissance ; but it has been the doom of the human mind. blinded by insensate passions, to realise literally the allegorical history of the Hebrew Hercules ; by overthrowing the pillars of the temple, it has itself been buried under the ruins. The masonic associations of the present time are no less ignorant of the high meaning of their symbols than are the rabbins of the Sepher Jetzirah and the Zohar upon the ascending scale of the three degrees, with the transverse progression from right to left and from left to right of the kabbalistic septenary. The compass of the G.*. A.’, and the square of Solomon have become the gross and material level of unintelligent Jacobinism, realised by a steel triangle; this obtains both for heaven and earth. The initiated divulgers to whom the illuminated Gazette predicted a violent death have, in our own days, exceeded the sin of Adam ; having rashly gathered the fruits of the tree of knowledge, which they did not know how to use for their nourishment, they have cast it to the beasts and reptiles of the earth. So was the reign of superstition inaugurated, and it must persist until the period when true religion shall be again constituted on the eternal foundations of the hierarchy of three degrees, and of the triple power which the hierarchy exercises blindly or providentially in the three worlds.

The four elementary forms roughly separate and distinguish the created spirits which the universal movement disengages from the central fire. The spirit everywhere toils and fructifies matter by life ; all matter is animated ; thought and soul are everywhere. By possessing ourselves of the thought which produces diverse forms, we become the master of forms, and make them serve our purposes. The astral light is saturated with such souls, which it disengages in the unceasing generation of beings. These souls have imperfect wills, which can be governed and employed by more powerful wills ; then great invisible chains form, and may occasion or determine great elementary commotions. The phenomena established by the criminal trials of magic, and quite recently by M. Eudes de Mirville, have no other cause. Elementary spirits are like children : they chiefly torment those who trouble about them, unless, indeed, they are controlled by high reason and great severity. We designate these spirits under the name of occult elements, and it is these who frequently occasion our bizarre or disturbing dreams, who produce the movements of the divining rod and rappings upon walls or furniture, but they can manifest no thought other than our own, and when we are not thinking, they speak to us with all the incoherence of dreams. They reproduce good and evil indifferently, for they are without free will, and are hence irresponsible ; they exhibit themselves to ecstatics and somnambulists under incomplete and fugitive forms. This explains the nightmares of St Anthony, and most probably the visions of Swedenborg. Such creatures are neither damned nor guilty, they are curious and innocent. We may use or abuse them like animals or children. Therefore the magus who makes use of them assumes a terrible responsibility, for he must expiate all the evil which he causes them to accomplish, and the intensity of his punishment will be in proportion to the extent of the power which he may have exercised by their mediation.

To govern elementary spirits, and thus become the king of the occult elements, we must first have undergone the four ordeals of ancient initiations ; and seeing that these initiations exist no longer, we must have substituted analogous experiences, such as exposing ourselves boldly in a fire, crossing an abyss by means of the trunk of a tree or a plank, scaling a perpendicular mountain during a storm, swimming through a dangerous whirlpool or cataract. A man who is timid in the water will never reign over the undines ; one who is afraid of fire will never command salamanders ; so long as we are liable to giddiness we must leave the sylphs in peace, and forbear from irritating the gnomes ; for inferior spirits will only obey a power which has overcome them in their own element. When this in- contestable faculty has been acquired by exercise and daring, the word of our will must be imposed on the elements by special consecrations of air, fire, water, and earth. This is the indispensable preliminary of all magical operations. The air is exercised by breathing towards the four cardinal points, saying ; — The Spirit of God moved upon the waters, and breathed into the face of man the breath of life. Be Michael, my leader, and Sabtabiel, my servant, in and by the light. May my breath become a word, and I will rule the spirits of this creature of air ; I will curb the steeds of the sun by the will of my heart, and by the thought of my mind, and by the apple of the right eye. Therefore I do exorcise thee, creature of air, by Pentagrammaton, and in the name Tetragrammaton, wherein are firm will and true faith. Amen. Sela : Fiat. So be it.

The prayer of the sylphs must next be recited, after tracing their sign in the air with the quill of an eagle. Prayer of the Sylphs. Spirit of Light, Spirit of Wisdom, whose breath gives and takes away the form of all things ; Thou before whom the life of every being is a shadow which transforms and a vapour which passes away ; Thou who ascendest upon the clouds and dost fly upon the wings of the wind ; Thou who breathest out and the limitless immensities are peopled ; Thou who breathest in and all which came forth from Thee unto Thee returneth ; endless movement in the eternal stability, be Thou blessed for ever ! We praise Thee and we bless Thee in the fleeting empire of created light, of shadows, reflections, and images, and we aspire without ceasing towards Thine immutable and imperishable splendour. May the ray of Thine intelligence and the warmth of Thy love descend on us ; then what is volatile shall be fixed, the shadow shall become body, the spirit of the air shall receive a soul, and the dream be a thought. We shall be swept away no more before the tempest, but shall bridle the winged steeds of the morning, and guide the course of the evening winds, that we may flee into Thy presence. O Spirit of Spirits, 0 eternal Soul of Souls, 0 imperishable Breath of Life, 0 Creative Sigh, 0 Mouth which dost breathe forth and withdraw the life of all beings in the ebb and flow of Thine eternal speech, which is the divine ocean of movement and of truth ! Amen.

Water is exorcised by imposition of hands, breathing, and speech ; consecrated salt, and a little of the ash which remains in the pan of incense, are also mingled with it. The aspergillus is formed of twigs of vervain, periwinkle, sage, mint, ash, and basil, tied by a thread taken from a virgin’s distaff, and provided with a handle of hazelwood from a tree which has not yet fruited ; the characters of the seven spirits must be graven thereon with the magic bodkin. The salt and ash must be separately consecrated, saying : — May wisdom abide in this salt, and may it preserve our minds and bodies from all corruption, by Hochmael, and in the virtue of Buach-Hochmael ! May the phantoms of Hyle depart herefrom, that it may become a heavenly salt, salt of the earth and earth of salt, that it may feed the ' threshing ox, and strengthen our hope with the horns of 1 the flying bull ! Amen. May this ash return unto the fount of living waters, may i'it become a fertile earth, and may it bring forth the tree of life, by the Three Names, which are Netsah, Hod, and Jesod, in the beginning and in the end, by Alpha and Omega, which are in the spirit of Azoth ! Amen.

Mingling the Water, Salt, and Ash. In the salt of eternal wisdom, in the water of regeneration, and in the ash whence the new earth springeth, be all things accomplished by Eloim, Gabriel, Eaphael, and Uriel, through the ages and aeons ! Amen. Exorcism of the Water. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters ; the things which are above are like unto things which are below, and things below are like unto things above, for the performance of the wonders of one thing. The sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in the belly thereof ; it ascendeth from earth to heaven, and again it descendeth from heaven to earth. I exorcise thee, creature of water, that thou mayest become unto men a mirror of the living God in His works, a fount of life, and ablution of sins. Prayer of the Undines. Dread King of the Sea, who hast the keys of the fioodgates of heaven, and dost confine the waters of the underworld in the caverns of earth ; King of the deluge and the floods of the springtime ; Thou who dost unseal the sources of rivers and fountains ; Thou who dost ordain moisture, which is like the blood of earth, to become the sap of plants : Thee we adore and Thee we invoke ! Speak unto us. Thine inconstant and unstable creatures, in the great tumults of the sea, and we shall tremble before Thee ; speak unto us also in the murmur of limpid waters, and we shall yearn for Thy love ! O Immensity into which flow

all the rivers of life, to be continually reborn in Thee ! O ocean of infinite perfections ! Height which reflects Thee in the depth, depth which exhales Thee to the height, lead us unto true life by intelligence and love ! Lead us to immortality by sacrifice, that we may be found worthy one day to offer Thee water, blood, and tears, for the remission of sins ! Amen. Fire is exorcised by the sprinkling of salt, incense, white resin, camphor, and sulphur, by thrice pronouncing the three names of the genii of fire : Mjchael, king of the sun and the lightning ; Samael, king of volcanoes ; and Anael, prince of the astral light ; and, finally, by reciting the Prayer of the SalaTnanders. Immortal, eternal, ineffable, and uncreated Father of all things, who art borne upon the ever-rolling chariot of worlds which revolve unceasingly ; Lord of the ethereal immensities, where the throne of Thy power is exalted, from which height Thy terrible eyes discern aU things, and Thy holy and beautiful ears unto all things hearken, hear Thou Thy children, whom Thou didst love before the ages began ; for Thy golden. Thy grand. Thine eternal majesty shines above the world and the heaven of stars ! Thou art exalted over them, 0 glittering fire ! There dost thou shine, there dost Thou commune with Thyself by Thine own splendour, and inexhaustible streams of light pour from Thine essence for • the nourishment of Thine infinite spirit, which itself doth nourish all things, and forms that inexhaustible treasure of substance ever ready for generation, which adapts it and t appropriates the forms Thou hast impressed on it from the beginning !

From this spirit the three most holy kings who surround Thy throne and constitute Thy court, derive also t their origin, 0 universal Father ! 0 sole and only Father t of blessed mortals and immortals ! In particular Thou hast c created powers which are marvellously like unto Thine s eternal thought and Thine adorable essence ; Thou hast

established them higher than the angels, who proclaim Thy will to the world ; finally, Thou hast created us third in rank within our elementary empire. There our unceasing exercise is to praise Thee and adore Thy good pleasure ; there we burn continually in our aspiration to possess Thee. 0 Father ! 0 Mother, most tender of all mothers ! 0 admirable archetype of maternity and of pure love ! 0 son, flower of sons ! 0 form of all forms, soul, spirit, harmony, and number of all things ! Amen. The earth is exorcised by aspersion of water, by breathing, and by fire, with the perfumes proper for each day, and the Prayer of the Gnomes. King invisible, who, taking the earth as a support, didst furrow the abysses to fill them with Thine omnipotence; Thou whose name doth shake the vaults of the world. Thou who causest the seven metals to flow through the veins of the rock, monarch of the seven lights, rewarder of the subterranean toilers, lead us unto the desirable air, and to the realm of splendour. We watch and we work unremittingly, we seek and we hope, by the twelve stones of the Holy City, by the hidden talismans, by the pole of loadstone which passes through the centre of the world ! Saviour, Saviour, Saviour, have pity on those who sufier, expand our hearts, detach and elevate our minds, enlarge our entire being !

0 stability and motion ! 0 day clothed with night ! 0 darkness veiled by light ! 0 master who never keepest back the wages of Thy labourers ! 0 silver whiteness ! 0 golden splendour ! 0 crown of living and melodious diamonds ! Thou who wearest the heaven on Thy finger like a sapphire ring. Thou who concealest under the earth, in the stone kingdom, the marvellous seed of stars, live, reign, be the eternal dispenser of the wealth whereof Thou hast made us the warders ! Amen.

It must be borne in mind that the special kingdom of the gnomes is at the north, that of the salamanders at the south, that of the sylphs at the east, and that of the undines at the west. These beings influence the four temperaments of man, that is to say, the gnomes afiect the melancholy, salamanders the sanguine, undines the phlegmatic, and sylphs the bilious. Their signs are — the hieroglyphs of the bull for the gnomes, who are commanded with the sword ; those of the lion for the salamanders, who are commanded with the bifurcated rod or the magic trident; those of the eagle for the sylphs, who are commanded by the holy pantacles ; finally, those of the water-carrier for the undines, who are commanded by the cup of libations. Their respective sovereigns are Gob for the gnomes, Djin for the salamanders, Paralda for the sylphs, and Mcksa for the undines. When an elementary spirit torments, or, at least, vexes, the inhabitants of this world, it must be conjured by air, water, fire, and earth, by breathing, sprinkling, burning of perfumes, and by tracing on the earth the star of Solomon and the sacred pentagram. These figures must be perfectly correct, and drawn either with the charcoal of consecrated fire, or with a reed dipped in various colours, mixed with powdered loadstone. Then, holding the pantacle of Solomon in one hand and taking up successively the sword, rod, and ' cup, the conjuration of the four should be recited with a loud voice, after the following manner : — Caput mortuum, ■ the Lord command thee by the living and votive serpent ! I Cherub, the Lord command thee by Adam Jotchavah ! ' W andering Eagle, the Lord command thee by the wings of • the Bull ! Serpent, the Lord Tetragrammaton command

I thee by the angel and the lion ! Michael, Gabriel, Eaphael, and Anael ! Flow, moisture, by the spirit of Eloim. : FIRMAMENT, by Jahuvehu Zebaoth. Fulfil, judgment, by 'fire in the virtue of Michael. Angel of the blind eyes, ' obey, or pass away with this holy water ! Work, winged tbull, or revert to the earth, unless thou wilt that I should pierce thee with this sword ! Chained eagle, obey my sign, or fly before this breathing! Writhing serpent, crawl at my feet, or be tortured by the sacred fire, and give way before the perfumes that I burn in it I Water return to water, fire burn, air circulate, earth revert to earth, by virtue of the pentagram, which is the morning star, and by the name of the Tetragram, which is written in the centre of the cross of light 1 Amen. The sign of the cross adopted by Christians does not belong to them exclusively. It is also kabbalistic, and represents the oppositions and tetradic equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult versicle of the Lord’s Prayer, which we have cited in our Doctrine, that it was originally made after two manners, or at least that it was characterised by two entirely different formulae, one reserved for priests and initiates, the other imparted to neophytes and the profane. For example, the initiate said, raising his hand to his forehead, “For thine,”

then added “ is,” and continuing as he brought down his hand to his breast, “ the kingdom,” then to the left shoulder, “ the justice,” afterwards to the right shoulder, “ and the mercy ” — then clasping his hands, he added, “ in the generating ages.” Tibi sunt Mcdchut et Geburah et Chesed per ceonas — a sign of the cross which is absolutely and magnificently kabbalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism have completely lost to the official and militant Church. This sign, made after this manner, should precede and terminate the conjuration of the four.

To overcome and subjugate the elementary spirits, we must never yield to their characteristic defects. Thus, a shallow and capricious mind will never rule the sylphs ; an irresolute, cold, and fickle nature will never master the undines ; passion irritates the salamanders, and avaricious greed makes its slaves the sport of the gnomes. But we must be prompt and active, like the sylphs ; pliant and attentive to images, like the undines ; energetic and strong, like the salamanders ; laborious and patient like the gnomes; in a word, we must overcome them in their strength without ever being overcome by their weaknesses. Once we are well established in this disposition, the whole world will be at the service of the wise operator. He will pass through the storm, and the rain will not moisten his head ; the wind will not move even a fold of his garments ; he will go through fire and not be burned ; he will walk upon the water, and will behold diamonds within the crust of the earth. These promises may appear hyperbolic, but only to vulgar understanding, for if the sage do not materially and actually perform these things, he accomplishes others which are much greater and more admirable. At the same time, it is indubitable that we may direct the elements by our will up to a certain point, and can really change or hinder their effects. For example, if it be established that persons in an ecstatic state lose their weight for the time being, why should it be impossible to walk upon the water ?

The convulsionaries of Saint M4dard felt neither fire nor steel, and begged for the most violent blows and incredible tortures as a relief. The extraordinary climbings and miraculous equilibrium of some somnambulists are a revelation of these concealed forces of nature. But we live in a century when no one has the courage to confess the wonders he has witnessed, and did any one say : “ I have myself beheld or performed the things which I am describing,” he would be answered : “You are amusing yourself at our expense, or, otherwise, you are ill.” It is far better to be silent and to act.

The metals which correspond to the four elementary forms are gold and silver for the air, mercury for water, iron and copper for fire, lead for earth. Talismans are composed from these, relative to the forces which they signify and to the effects which it is designed to obtain from them. Divination by the four elementary forms, respectively known as ceromancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, and geomancy, is performed after various manners, which all depend on the will and the translucid, or imagination, of the operator. In fact, the four elements are only instruments which assist second sight. Now, second sight is the faculty of seeing in the astral light, and it is natural as the first or sensible and ordinary sight, but it can only operate by the abstraction of the senses. Somnambulists and ecstatics enjoy second sight naturally, but this sight is more lucid when the abstraction is more complete. Abstraction is produced by astral intoxication, that is, by an excess of light which completely saturates, and hence stupefies, the nervous system. Sanguine temperaments are disposed to aeromancy, the bilious to pyromancy, the phlegmatic to hydromancy, and the melancholic to geomancy. -^romancy is confirmed by oneiromancy, or divination by dreams ; pyromancy is supplemented by magnetism ; hydromancy by crystallomancy ; and geomancy by cartomancy. These are transpositions and completement of methods. But divination, however operated, is dangerous, or, to say the least, useless, for it disheartens will, as a consequence, impedes liberty, and tires the nervous system.

We proceed to the explanation and consecration of the sacred and mysterious pentagram. At this point, let the ignorant and superstitious close the book ; they will either see nothing but darkness, or they will be scandalised. The pentagram, which, in gnostic schools, is called the blazing star, is the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. It is the star of the magi ; it is the sign of the Word made flesh ; and, according to the direction of its points, this absolute magical symbol represents order or confusion, the divine lamb of Ormuz and St John, or the accursed goat of Mendes. It is initiation or profanation ; it is Lucifer or Vesper, the star of the morning or the evening. It is Mary or Lilith, victory or death, day or night. The pentagram with two points in the ascendant represents Satan as the goat of the Sabbath ; when one point is in the ascendant, it . is the sign of the Saviour. The pentagram is the figure of the human body, having the four limbs, and a single point 1 representing the head. A human figure, head downwards, 1 naturally represents a demon ; thaL is, intellectual subver- 'sion, disorder, or madness. Now, if magic be a reality, if f occult science be really the true law of the three worlds, •this absolute sign, this sign ancient as history, and more f ancient, should and does actually exercise an incalculable i influence upon spirits set free from their material envelope.

The sign of the pentagram is called also the sign of the rmicrocosm, and it represents what the Kabbalists of the [book of Zohar term the microprosopus. The complete [comprehension of the pentagram is the key of the two worlds. It is the absolute philosophy and natural science, rrhe sign of the pentagram should be composed of the seven etals, or at least traced in pure gold upon white marble, [t may also be drawn with vermilion upon an unblemished vambskin — the symbol of integrity and light. The marble I'.hould be virgin, that is, should never have been used for :mother purpose ; the lambskin should be prepared under ihe auspices of the sun. The lamb must have been slain at ’Paschal time, with a new knife, and the skin must be salted vith salt consecrated by magical operations. The omision of even one of these difficult and apparently arbitrary eremonies makes void the entire success of the great works f science. The pentagram is consecrated with the four elements ; he magical figure is breathed on five times ; it is sprinkled yith consecrated water ; it is dried by the smoke of five erfumes, namely, incense, myrrh, aloes, sulphur, and iraphor, to which a little white resin and ambergris may

be added. The five breathings are accompanied by the utterance of the names attributed to the five genii, who are Gabriel, Raphael, Anael, Samael, and Oriphiel ; afterwards the pentacle is placed successively at the north, south, east, west, and centre of the astronomical cross, pronouncing at the same time, one after another, the letters of the sacred tetragram, and then, in an undertone, the blessed names of Aleph and the mysterious Thau, united in the-Kabbalistic name of Azoth. The pentagram should be placed upon the altar of perfumes, and under the tripod of evocations. The operator should also wear the sign as well as that of the macrocosm, which is composed of two crossed and superposed triangles. When a spirit of light is evoked, the head of the star — that is, one of its points — should be directed towards the tripod of evocations, and the two inferior points towards the altar of perfumes. In the case of a spirit of darkness, the opposite course is pursued, but then the operator must be careful to set the end of the rod or the point of the sword upon the head of the pentagram. We have already said that signs are the active voice of the verb of will. Now, the word of will must be given in its completeness, so that it may be transformed into action ; and a single negligence, representing an idle speech or a doubt, falsifies and paralyses the whole operation, turning back upon the operator all the forces thus expended in vain. We must, therefore, absolutely abstain from magical ceremonies or scrupulously and exactly fulfil them all.

The pentagram, engraved in luminous lines upon glass by the electrical machine, also exercises a great influence upon spirits, and terrifies phantoms. The old magicians traced the sign of the pentagram upon their door-steps, to prevent evil spirits from entering and good spirits from departing. This constraint followed from the direction of the points of the star. Two points on the outer side drove away the evil ; two points on the inner side imprisoned them ; one only on the inner side held good spirits captive. All these magical theories, based upon the one dogma of Hermes and on the analogical deductions of science, have been invariably confirmed by the visions of ecstatics and by the convulsions of cataleptics saying that they are possessed with spirits. The G which Freemasons place in the middle of the blazing star signifies Gnosis and Generation, the two sacred words of the ancient Kabbalah. It signifies also Grand Architect, for the pentagram on every side represents an A. By placing it in such a way that two of its points are in the ascendant and one is below, we may see the horns, ears and beard of the hierarchic goat of Mendes, when it becomes the sign of infernal evocations.

The allegorical star of the magi is no other than the mysterious pentagram ; and those three kings, sons of Zoroaster, conducted by the blazing star to the cradle of ; the microcosmic God, are enough in themselves to demon- • strate the wholly kabbalistic and truly magical beginnings of Christian doctrine. One of these kings is white, another black, and the third brown. The white king offers gold, ^ symbol of light and life ; the black king presents myrrh, i image of death and of darkness ; the brown king sacrifices i incense, emblem of the conciliating doctrine of the two {principles. Then they return into their own land by ^another road, to show that a new cultus is only a new {path, conducting man to the one religion, that of the sacred t triad and the radiant pentagram, the sole eternal Catholicism. i^St John, in the Apocalypse, beholds this same star fall from I heaven to earth. It is then called absynth or wormwood, Jind all the waters of the sea become bitter — striking image )of the materialisation of dogma, which produces fanaticism and the acridities of controversy. Then unto Christianity t.tself may be applied those words of Isaiah : “ How hast llliou fallen from heaven, bright star, which wast so Kiplendid in thy prime ! ” But the pentagram, profaned '»py men, burns ever unclouded in the right hand of (llhe Word of Truth, and the inspired voice promises i*o him that overcometh the possession of the morning

star — solemn restitution held out to the star of Lucifer. As will be seen, all mysteries of magic, all symbols of the gnosis, all figures of occultism, all kabbalistic keys of prophecy, are summed up in the sign of the pentagram, which Paracelsus proclaims to be the greatest and most potent of all signs. Is there any cause now for astonishment at the conviction of the magus as to the real influence exercised by this sign over the spirits of all hierarchies ? Those who defy the sign of the cross tremble before the star of the microcosm. On the contrary, when he is conscious of failing will, the magus turns his eyes towards this symbol, takes it in his right hand, and feels armed with intellectual omnipotence, proAuded that he is truly a king, worthy to be conducted by the star to the cradle of divine realisation ; provided that he knoivs, dares, wills, and keeps silent ; provided that he is familiar with the usages of the pantacle, the cup, the wand, and the sword ; provided, finally, that the intrepid gaze of his soul corresponds to those two eyes which the ascending point of our pentagram ever presents open.

Two things, as we have already said, are necessary for the acquisition of magical power — the emancipation of the will from all servitude, and its instruction in the art of domination. The sovereign will is represented in our symbols by the woman who crushes the serpent’s head, and by the radiant angel who restrains and constrains the dragon with lance and heel. In this place let us affirm without evasions that the great magical agent — the dual current of light, the living and astral fire of the earth — was represented by the serpent with the head of an ox, goat, or dog, in ancient theogonies. It is the double serpent of the caduceus, the old serpent of Genesis, but it is also the brazen serpent of Moses, twisted round the tau, that is, the generating lingam. It is, further, the goat of the Sabbath and the Baphomet of the Templars ; it is the Hyle of the Gnostics ; it is the double tail of the serpent which forms the legs of the solar cock of Abraxas. In fine, it is the devil of M. Eudes de Mirville, and is really the blind force which souls must overcome if they would be free from the chains i of earth ; for, unless their will can detach them from this 1 fatal attraction, they will be absorbed in the current by the ; force which produced them, and will return to the central i and eternal fire.

The whole magical work consists, there- : fore, in our liberation from the folds of the ancient serpent, r then in setting a foot upon its head, and leading it where we will. “ I will give thee all the kingdoms of the earth, 1 if thou wilt fall down and adore me,” said this serpent in t the evangelical mythos. The initiate should make answer : “ I will not fall down, and thou shalt crouch at my feet ; i.nothing shalt thou give me, but I will make use of thee, and vwill take what I require, for I am thy lord and master” — sa reply which, in a veiled manner, is contained in that of tthe Saviour.

We have already said that the devil is not a person. It is a misdirected force, as its name indicates. An odic or magnetic current, formed by a chain of perverse wills, constitutes this evil spirit, which the Gospel calls legion, and this it is which precipitated the swine into the sea — another allegory of the attraction exercised on beings of inferior instincts by the blind forces that can be put in operation by error and evil will. This symbol may be compared with that of the comrades of Ulysses transformed into swine by the sorceress Circe. Eemark what was done by Ulysses to preserve himself and deliver his associates : he refused the cup of the enchantress, and commanded her with the sword. Circe is nature, with all her delights and allurements — to enjoy her we must overcome her. Such is the significance of the Homeric fable, for the poems of Homer, the true sacred books of ancient Hellas, contain all the mysteries of high oriental initiation. The natural medium is, therefore, the serpent, ever active and ever seducing, of idle wills, which we must continually withstand by their subjugation. Amorous, gluttonous, passionate, or idle magicians are impossible monstrosities. The magus thinks and wills ; he loves nothing with desire ; he rejects nothing in rage. The word passion signifies a passive state, and the magus is invariably active, invariably victorious. The attainment of this realisation is the crucial difficulty of the transcendent sciences ;

so when the magus accomplishes his own creation, the great work is fulfilled, at least as concerns cause and instrument. The great agent or natural mediator of human omnipotence cannot be overcome or directed save by an extra-natural mediator, which is an emancipated will. Archimedes postulated a fulcrum outside the world in order to raise the world. The fulcrum of the magus is the intellectual cubic stone, the philosophical stone of Azoth — that is, the doctrine of absolute reason and universal harmonies by the sympathy of contraries.

One of our most fertile writers, and one of those who are the least fixed in their ideas, M. Eugene Sue, has founded a vast romance-epic upon an individuality whom he strives to render odious, who becomes interesting against the will of the novelist, so abundantly does he gift him with patience, audacity, intelligence, and genius. We are in the presence of a kind of Sixtus V. — poor, temperate, passionless, holding the entire world entangled in the web of his skilful combinations. This man excites at will the passions of his enemies, destroys them by means of one another, invariably reaches the point he has kept in view, and this without noise, without ostentation, and without imposture. His object is to free the world of a society which the author of the book believes to be dangerous and malignant, and to attain it no cost is too great ; he is ill lodged, ill clothed, nourished like the refuse of humanity, but ever fixed upon his work. Consistently with his intention, the author depicts him as wretched, filthy, hideous, repulsive to the touch, and horrible to the sight. But supposing this very exterior is a means of disguising the enterprise, and so of more surely attaining it, is it not proof positive of sublime courage ? When Eodin becomes pope, do you think that he will still be ill clothed and dirty ? Hence M. Eugene Sue has missed his point ; his object was to deride superstition and fanaticism, but what he attacks is intelligence, strength, genius, the most signal human virtues. Were there many Eodins among the Jesuits, were there one even, I would not give much for the success of the opposite party, in spite of the brilliant and maladroit special pleadings of its illustrious advocates.

To will well, to will long, to will always, but never to lust after anything, such is the secret of power, and this is the magical arcanum which Tasso brings forward in the persons of the two knights who come to deliver Einaldo and to destroy the enchantments of Armida. Tliey withstand equally the most charming nymphs and the most terrible wild beasts. They remain without desires and without fear, and hence they attain their end. Does it follow from this that a true magician inspires more fear than love ? I do not deny it, and while abundantly recognising how sweet are the allurements of life, while doing full justice to the gracious genius of Anacreon, and to all the youthful efflorescence of the poetry of love, I seriously invite the estimable votaries of pleasure to regard the transcendental sciences merely as a matter of curiosity, and never to approach the magical tripod; the great works of science are deadly for pleasure. The man who has escaped from the chain of instincts will first of all realise his omnipotence by the submissiveness of animals. The history of Daniel in the lions’ den is no fable, and more than once, during the persecutions of infant Christianity this phenomenon recurred in the presence of the whole Roman people. A man seldom has anything to fear from an animal of which he is not afraid. The bullets of Jules G4rard, the lion-killer, are magical and intelligent.

Once only did he run a real danger ; he allowed a timid companion to accompany him, and, looking upon this imprudent person as lost beforehand, he also was afraid, not for himself but for his comrade. Many persons will say that it is difficult and even impossible to attain such resolution, that strength in volition and energy in character are natural gifts. I do not dispute it, but I would point out also that habit can reform nature ; volition can be perfected by education, and, as I have before said, all magical, like all religious, ceremonial has no other end but thus to test, exercise, and habituate the will by perseverance and by force. The more difficult and laborious the exercises, the greater their effect, as we have now advanced far enough to see.

If it have been hitherto impossible to direct the phenomena of magnetism, it is because an initiated and truly emancipated operator has not yet appeared. Who can boast that he is such ? Have we not ever new self-conquests to make ? At the same time, it is certain that nature will obey the sign and the word of one who feels himself strong enough to be convinced of it. I say that nature will obey ; I do not say that she will bely herself or disturb the order of her possibilities. The healing of nervous diseases by word, breath, or contact ; resurrection in certain cases ; resistance of evil wills sufficient to disarm and confound murderers ; even the faculty of making one’s self invisible by troubling the sight of those whom it is important to elude ; all this is a natural effect of projecting or withdrawing the astral light. Thus was Yalentius dazzled and terror-struck on entering the temple of Cesarea, even as Heliodorus of old, overcome by a sudden madness in the temple of Jerusalem, believed himself scourged and trampled by angels. Thus also the Admiral de Coligny imposed respect on his assassins, and could only be despatched by a madman who fell upon him with averted head. What rendered Joan of Arc invariably victorious was the fascination of her faith and the miracle of her audacity ; she paralysed the arms of those who would have assailed her, and the English may have very well been sincere in regarding her as a witch or a sorceress. As a fact, she was a sorceress unconsciously, herself believing that she acted supernaturally, while she was really disposing of an occult force which is universal and invariably governed by the same laws.

The magus-magnetiser should have command of the natural medium, and, consequently, of the astral body by which our soul communicates with our organs. He can say to the material body, “ Sleep ! ” and to the sidereal body, “ Dream ! ” Thereupon, the aspect of visible things changes, as in haschish- visions. Cagliostro is said to have possessed this power, and he increased its action by means of fumigations and perfumes ; but true magnetic ability should transcend these auxiliaries, all more or less inimical to reason and destructive of health. M. Kagon, in his learned work on Occult Masonry, gives the recipe for a series of medicaments suitable for the exaltation of somnambulism. It is ; by no means a knowledge to be despised, but prudent : magists should avoid its practice. The astral light is projected by glance, by voice, and by t the thumb and palm of the hand. Music is a potent • auxiliary of the voice, and hence comes the word enchant- ment. No musical instrument has more enchantment than the human voice, but the far away notes of a violin or harmonica may augment its power. The subject whom it is proposed to overcome is in this way prepared ; then, when he is half-deadened and, as it were, enveloped by the charm, the hands should be extended towards him, he should be commanded to sleep or to see, and he will obey despite himself. Should he resist, a fixed glance must be directed towards him, one thumb must be placed between his eyes and the other on his breast, touching him lightly with a single and swift contact ; the breath must be slowly drawn in and again breathed gently and warmly forth, repeating in a low voice, “ Sleep ! ” or “ See ! ”

Ceremonies, vestments, perfumes, characters and figures, being, as we have stated, necessary to enlist the imagination in the education of the will, the success of magical works depends upon the faithful observation of all the rites, which are in no sense fantastic or arbitrary, having been transmitted to us by antiquity, and permanently subsisting by the essential laws of analogical realisation and of the correspondence which inevitably connects ideas and forms. Having spent many 3'ears in consulting and comparing all the most authentic grimoires and magical rituals, we have succeeded, not without labour, in reconstituting the ceremonial of universal and primeval magic. The only serious books which we have seen upon this subject are in manuscript, written in conventional characters which we have deciphered by the help of the polygraph y of Trithemius. The importance of others consists wholly in the hieroglyphs and symbols which adorn them, the truth of the images being disguised under the superstitious fictions of a mystifying text. Such, for example, is the “ Enchiridion ” of Pope Leo III., which has never been printed with its true figures, and we have reconstructed it for our own use after an ancient manuscript. The rituals known under the name of the “ Clavicles of Solomon ” are very numerous. Many have been printed, while others remain in manuscripts, transcribed with great care. An exceedingly fine and elegantly written example is preserved in the Imperial Library ; it is enriched with pantacles and characters most of which have been reproduced in the magical calendars of Tycho-Brahe and Duchentau. Lastly, there are printed clavicles and grimoires which are catch-penny mystifications and impostures of dishonest publishers. The book so notorious and decried formerly under the name of “ Little Albert ” belongs mainly to the latter category ; some talismanic figures, and some calculations borrowed from Paracelsus, are its only serious parts.

In any matter of realisation and ritual, Paracelsus is an imposing magical authority. No one has accomplished works greater than his, and for that very reason he conceals the virtue of ceremonies and merely teaches in his occult philosophy the existence of the magnetic agent of the omnipotence of will ; he also sums the whole science of characters in two signs, the macrocosmic and microcosmic stars. It was sufficient for the adepts, and it was important not to initiate the vulgar. Paracelsus, therefore, did not teach the ritual, but he practised, and his practice was a sequence of miracles. We have spoken of the magical importance of the triad and tetrad. Their combination constitutes the great religious and kabbalistic number which represents the universal synthesis and comprises the sacred septenary. In the belief of the ancients, the world is governed by seven < secondary causes — sccundcci, as Trithemius calls them — which are the universal forces designated by Moses under THE lilTUAL OF TKANSCENDENT MAGIC the plural name of Eloim, gods. These forces, analogous and contrary to one another, produce equilibrium by their contrasts, and rule the motion of the spheres. The Hebrews termed them the seven great archangels, giving them the names of Michael, Gabriel, Kaphael, Anael, Samael, Zadkiel, and Oriphiel. The Christian Gnostics named the four last Uriel, Barachiel, Sealtiel, and Jehudiel. Other nations attributed to these spirits the government of the seven chief planets, and gave them the names of their chief divinities.

All believed in their relative influence ; astronomy divided the antique heaven between them, and allotted the seven days of the week to their successive government. Such is the reason of the various ceremonies of the magical week and the septenary cultus of the planets. We have already observed that here the planets are signs and nothing else ; they have the influence which universal faith attributes because they are more truly the stars of the human mind than the orbs of heaven. The sun, which antique magic always regarded as fixed, could only be a planet for the vulgar ; hence it represents the day of repose in the week, which we term Sunday without knowing why, the day of the sun among the ancients.

The seven magical planets correspond to the seven colours of the prism and the seven notes of the musical octave ; they represent also the seven virtues, and, by opposition, the seven vices of Christian ethics. The seven sacraments correspond equally to this great universal septenary. Baptism, which consecrates the element of water, corresponds to the moon ; ascetic penance is under the auspices of Samael, the angel of Mars ; confirmation, which imparts the spirit of understanding and communicates to the true believer the gift of tongues, is under the auspices of Eaphael, the angel of Mercury ; the Eucharist substitutes the sacramental realisation of God made man for the empire of Jupiter; marriage is consecrated by the angel Anael, the purifying genius of Venus ; extreme unction is the safeguard of the sick about to fall under the scythe of Saturn, and orders, consecrating the priesthood of light, is marked, more especially by the characters of the sun. Almost all these analogies were observed by the learned Dupuis, who thence concluded that all religions were false, instead of recognising the sanctity and perpetuity of a single dogma, ever repro- ’ duced in the universal symbolism of successive religious forms. He failed to understand the permanent revelation transmitted to human genius by the harmonies of nature, and beheld only a catalogue of errors in that chain of ingenious images and eternal truths.

Magical works are also seven in number : 1 , works of light and riches, under the auspices of the sun ; 2, works of divination and mystery, under the invocation of the moon ; 3, works of skill, science, and eloquence, under the protection of Mercury ; 4, works of wrath and chastisement, consecrated to Mars ; 5, works of love, favoured by Yenus ; ! 6, works of ambition and intrigue, under the auspices of Jupiter ; 7, works of malediction and death, under the patronage of Saturn. In theological symbolism, the sun represents the word of truth ; the moon, religion itself ; Mercury, the interpretation and science of mysteries ; Mars, justice; Venus, mercy and love; Jupiter, the risen and 'glorious Saviour ; Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of Moses. In the human body, the sun is analogous to the heart, the moon to the brain, Jupiter to the right hand, Saturn to the left. Mars to the left foot, Yenus to the right. Mercury to the generative organs, whence an androgyne figure is sometimes attributed to this planet. In the human face, the sun governs the forehead, Jupiter the right and Saturn the left eye ; the moon rules between both at the root of the nose, the two phlanges of which are governed by Mars and Yenus ; finally, the influence of Mercury is exercised on mouth and chin. Among the ancients these notions constituted the occult science of physiognomy, afterwards imperfectly recovered by Lavater.

The magus who intends undertaking the works of light must operate on a Sunday, from midnight to eight in the morning, or from three in the afternoon to ten in the evening. He should wear a purple vestment, with tiara and bracelets of gold. The altar of perfumes and the tripod of sacred fire must be encircled by wreaths of laurel, heliotrope, and sunflowers ; the perfumes are cinnamon, strong incense, saffron, and red sandal ; the ring must be of gold, with a chrysolith or ruby ; the carpet must be of lion skins, the fans of sparrow-hawk feathers. On Monday the robe is white, embroidered with silver, and having a triple collar of pearls, crystals, and selenite ; the tiara must be covered with yellow silk, emblazoned with silver characters forming the Hebrew monogram of Gabriel, as given in the “ Occult Philosophy ’’ of Agrippa ; the perfumes are white sandal, camphor, amber, aloes, and pulverised seed of cucumber; the wreaths are mugwort, moon wort, and yellow ranunculuses. Tapestries, garments, and objects of a black colour must be avoided ; and no metal except silver should be worn on the person. On Tuesday, a day for the operations of vengeance, the colour of the vestment should be that of flame, rust, or blood, with belt and bracelets of steel. The tiara must be bound with gold ; the rod must not be used, but only the magical dagger and sword ;

the wreaths must be of absynth and rue, the ring of steel, with an amethyst for precious stone. On Wednesday, a day favourable for transcendent science, the vestment should be green, or shot with various colours, the necklace of pearls in hollow glass beads containing mercury, the perfumes benzoin, mace, and storax, the flowers, narcissus, lily, herb mercury, fumitory, and marjolane ; the jewel should be the agate. On Thursday, a day of great religious and political operations, the vestment should be scarlet, and on the forehead should be worn a brass tablet with the character of the spirit of Jupiter and the three words : Giarar, Bethor, Samgabiel ; the perfumes are incense, ambergris, balm, grain of paradise, macis, and saffron ; the ring must be enriched with an emerald or sapphire ; the wreaths and crowns should be oak, poplar, fig and pomegranate leaves. On Friday, the day for

amorous operations, the vestment should be of sky blue, the hangings of green and rose, the ornaments of polished copper, the crowns of violets, the wreaths of roses, myrtle, and olive ; the ring should be enriched with a turquoise ; lapis-lazuli and beryl will answer for tiara and clasps ; the fans must be of swan’s feathers, and the operator must wear upon his breast a copper talisman with the character of Anael and the words : Aveeva Vadelilith. On Saturday, a day of funeral operations, the vestment must be black or brown, with characters embroidered in black or orange coloured silk ; on the neck must 'be worn a leaden medal with the character of Saturn and the words : Almalec, Aphiel, Zakahiel ; the perfumes should be diagridrium, scammony, alum, sulphur, and assafoetida ; the ring should be adorned with an onyx, the garlands should be of ash, cypress, and hellebore ; on the onyx of the ring, during the hours of Saturn, the double head of Janus should be engraved with the consecrated awl. Such are the antique magnificences of the secret cultus of the magi. With similar appointments the great magicians of the Middle Ages proceeded to the daily consecration of talismans corresponding to the seven genii. We have already said that a pantacle is

a synthetic character resuming the entire magical doctrine in one of its special conceptions. It is, therefore, the full expression of a completed thought and will ; it is the signature of a spirit. The ceremonial consecration of this sign attaches to it still more strongly the intention of the operator, and establishes a veritable magnetic chain between himself and the pantacle. Pantacles may be indifferently traced upon virgin parchment, paper, or metals. What is termed a talisman is a sheet of metal, bearing either pantacles or characters, and having received a special consecration for a defined intention. In a learned work on magical antiquities, Gaffarel has scientifically demonstrated the real power of talismans, and the confidence in their virtue is otherwise so strong in nature that we gladly bear about US some memorial of those we love, persuaded that such keepsakes will preserve us from danger and increase our happiness. Talismans are made of the seven Kabbalistic metals, and, when the days and hours are favourable, the required and determined signs are engraved upon them. The figures of the seven planets, with their magical squares, following Paracelsus, are found in the “ Little Albert.” It should be observed that Paracelsus replaces the figure of Jupiter by that of a priest, a substitution not wanting in a well-defined mysterious intention. But the allegorical and mythological figures of the seven spirits have now become too classical and too vulgar to be any longer successfully engraved on talismans ;

we must recur to more learned and expressive signs. The pentagram' should be invariably engraved upon one side of the talisman, with a circle for the sun, a crescent for the moon, for Mars a sword, a G for Venus, for Jupiter a crown, and a scythe for Saturn. The other side must bear the sign of Solomon, that is, the six-pointed star composed of two superposed triangles ; in the centre there is placed a human figure for the talismans of the sun, a chalice for those of the moon, a dog’s head for those of Mercury, an eagle’s for those of Jupiter, a lion’s head for those of Mars, a dove’s for those of Venus, and a bull’s or goat’s for those of Saturn. The names of the seven angels are added either in Hebrew, in Arabic, or in magical characters like those of the alphabet of Trithemius. The two triangles of Solomon may be replaced by the double cross of the wheels of Ezekiel, which is found on a great number of ancient pantacles, and is, as we have observed in our Doctrine, the key to the trigrammes of Pohi.

Precious stones may also be employed for amulets and talismans ; but aU objects of this nature, whether metals or gems, must be carefully kept in silken bags of a colour analogous to that of the spirit of the planet, perfumed with the perfumes of the corresponding day, and preserved from all impure glances and contacts. Thus, pantacles and talismans of the sun must not be seen or touched by deformed or misshapen persons, or by immoral women ; those of the moon are profaned by the looks and hands of debauched men and menstruating females ; those of Mercury lose their virtue if seen or touched by paid priests ; those of Mars must be concealed from cowards ; those of Venus from depraved men and men under a vow of celibacy ; those of J upiter from the impious ; those of Saturn from virgins and children, not that their looks or touches can ever be impure, but because the talisman would bring them misfortune and thus lose all its virtue. ' Crosses of honour and other kindred decorations are veritable talismans, which increase personal value and merit ; they are consecrated by solemn investiture, and public opinion can impart to them a prodigious power. Sufficient attention has not been paid to the reciprocal influence of signs on ideas and of ideas on signs ; it is not less true that the revolutionary work of modern times, for t example, has been symbolically resumed in its entirety by tthe Napoleonic substitution of the Star of Honour for the (.Cross of St Louis.

It is the pentagram in place of the llabarum, it is the reconstitution of the symbol of light, it is the Masonic resurrection of Adonhiram. They say that N'apoleon believed in his star, and could he have been persuaded to explain what he meant by this star, it would iiave proved to be his genius ; he would therefore have idopted the pentagram for his sign, that symbol of human lovereignty by intelligent initiative. The mighty soldier of i he Kevolution knew little, but he divined almost everything ; so was he the greatest instinctive and practical Qagician of modern times; the world is still full of his airacles, and the country people will never believe that he j dead.

Blessed and indulgenced objects, touched by holy images r venerable persons ; chaplets from Palestine ; the Agnus ■hi, composed of the wax of the Paschal candle, and the inual remnants of holy chrism ; scapulas and medals, are .1 true talismans. One such medal has become popular in our own day, and even those who are devoid of religion suspend it from the necks of their children. Moreover, its figures are so perfectly Kabbalistic that it is truely a marvellous double pantacle. On the one side is the great initiatrix, the heavenly mother of the Zohar, the Isis of Egypt, the Venus-XJrania of the Platonists, the Mary of Christianity, throned upon the world, and setting one foot upon the head of the magical serpent. She extends her two hands in such a manner as to form a triangle, of which her head is the apex ; her hands are open and radiant, thus making a double triangle, with all the beams directed towards the earth, evidently representing the emancipation of intelligence by labour. On the other side is the double Tau of the hierophants, the Lingam with the double Cteis, or the triple Phallus, supported, with interlacement and repeated insertion, by the kabbalistic and masonic M, representing the square between the two pillars J AKIN and Bohas ; below are placed, upon the same plane, two loving and suffering hearts, with twelve pentagrams around them. Every one will tell you that the wearera of this medal do not attach such significance to it, but it is only on that account more absolutely magical ; having a double sense, and, consequently, a double virtue. The ecstatic on the authority of whose revelations this talisman was engraved, had already beheld it existing perfectly in the astral light, which once more demonstrates the intimate connection of ideas and signs, and gives a new sanction to the symbolism of universal magic.

The greater the importance and solemnity brought to bear on the confection and consecration of talismans and pentacles, the more virtue they acquire, as will be understood upon the evidence of the principles which we have established. This consecration should take place on the days we have indicated, with the appointments which we have given in detail. Talismans are consecrated by the four exorcised elements, after conjuring the spirits of darkness by the Conjuration of the Eour. Then, taking up the pantacle, and sprinkling it with some drops of magical water, say : In the name of Elohim and by the spirit of the living waters, be thou unto me a sign of light and a sacrament of will ! Presenting it to the smoke of the perfumes : By the brazen serpent which destroyed the serpents of fire, be thou, &c. Breathing seven times upon the pantacle or talisman ; By the firmament and spirit of the voice, be thou, &c. Lastly, placing some particles of purified earth or salt triadwise upon it : In the salt of' earth, and by the virtue of eternal life, be thou, &c. Then recite the Conjuration of the Seven as follows, alternately casting a pastille of the seven perfumes into the sacred fire ;

In the name of Michael, may Jehovah command thee, and drive thee hence, Chavajoth ! In the name of Gabriel, may Adonai command thee, and drive thee hence, Belial ! In the name of Eaphael, begone before Elchim, Sachabiel ! By Samael Zebaoth, and in the name of Eloim Gibor, get thee hence, Adrameleck ! By ^achariel and Sachiel-Meleck, be obedient unto Elvah, Samgabiel ! By the divine and human name of Schaddai, and by the sign of the pentagram which I hold in my right hand, in the name of the angel Anael, by the power of Adam and of Heva, who are Jotchavah, begone, Lilith ! Let us rest in peace, Nahemah ! By the holy Eloim and by the names of the genii ' Cashiel, Sehaltiel, Aphiel, and Zarahiel, at the command of Orifiel, depart from us, Moloch ! We deny thee our children to devour. h sword, the lamp, the chalice, the altar, and the tripod. In I the operations of transcendent and divine magic, the lamp, f rod, and chalice are used ; in the works of black magic, the rod is replaced by the sword and the lamp by the candle of Cardan. We shall explain this difference in the chapter devoted to black magic. Let us come now to the description and consecration of the instruments. The magical rod, which must not be confounded with the simple divining rod, with the fork of necromancers, or the trident of Paracelsus, the true and absolute magical rod, must be one perfectly straight beam of almond or hazel, cut at a single blow with the magical pruning - knife or golden sickle, before the rising of the sun, at that moment when the tree is ready to blossom.

It must be pierced through its whole length without splitting or breaking it, and a long needle of magnetized iron must fill its entire extent ; to one of its extremities must be fitted a polyhedral prism, cut in a triangular shape, and to the other a similar figure of black resin. Two rings, one of copper, and one of zinc, must be placed at the centre of the rod ; subsequently, the rod must be gilt at the resin end, and silvered at the prism end as far as the ringed centre ; it must then be covered with silk, the extremities not included. On the copper ring these characters must be engraved : and on the zinc

ring ; rKh'\^ The consecration of the rod must last seven days, beginning at the new moon, and should be made by an initiate possessing the great arcana, and having himself a consecrated rod. This is the transmission of the magical secret, which has never ceased since the shrouded origin of the transcendent science. The rod and the other instruments, but the rod above all, must be concealed with care, and under no pretext should the magus permit them to be seen or touched by the profane ; otherwise they will lose all their virtue. The mode of transmitting the rod is one of the arcana of science, the revelation of which is never permitted. The length of the magical rod must not exceed that of the operator’s arm ; the magician must never use it unless he is alone, and should not even then touch it without necessity. Many ancient magi made it only the length of the forearm and concealed it beneath their long mantles, shewing only the simple divining rod in public, or some allegorical sceptre made of ivory or ebony, according to the nature of the works. Cardinal Eichelieu, always athirst for power, sought through his whole life the transmission of the rod, without being able to find it. His Kabbalist Gaffarel could furnish him with sword and talismans alone ; this was possibly the secret motive for the cardinal’s hatred of TJrbain Grandier, who knew something of his weaknesses. The secret and prolonged conversations of Laubardement with the unhappy priest some hours before his final torture, and those words of a friend and confidant of the latter, as he went forth to death — “ You are a clever man, monsieur, do not destroy yourself ” — afford considerable food for thought.

The magical rod is the verendum of the magus ; it must not even be mentioned in any clear and precise manner ; no one should boast of its possession, nor should its consecration ever be transmitted except under the conditions of absolute discretion and confidence. The sword is less occult, and is made in the following manner : — It must be of pure steel, with a cruciform copper handle having three pommels, as represented in the enchiridion of Leo III, or with the guard of a double crescent, as in our own figure. On the middle knot of the guard, which should be covered with a golden plate, the sign of the macrocosm must be chased on one side, and that of the microcosm on the other. The Hebrew monogram of Michael, as found in Agrippa, must be engraved on the pommel; on the one side of the blade must be these characters : riDDD 'O nin' and on the other the mono- gram of the Labarum of Constantine, followed by the words : Vince in hoc, Deo duce, comite fcrro. For the authenticity and exactitude of these figures, see the best ancient editions of the “ Enchiridion.” The consecration of the sword must take place on a Sunday, during the hours of the sun, under the invocation of Michael. The blade of the sword must be placed in a fire of laurel and cypress ; it must then be

dried and polished with ashes of the sacred fire, moistened with the blood of a mole or serpent, the following words being said : — Be thou unto me as the sword of Michael, byvirtue of Eloim Sabaoth, may spirits of darkness and reptiles of earth flee away from thee ! — It is then fumigated with the perfumes of the sun, and wrapped up in silk, together with branches of vervain, which should be burned on the seventh day. The magical lamp must be composed of the four metals — gold, silver, brass and iron ; the pedestal should be of iron, the mirror of brass, the reservoir of silver, the triangle at the apex of gold. It should be provided with two arms composed of a triple pipe of three intertwisted metals, in such a manner that each arm has a triple conduit for the oil ; there must be nine wicks in all, three at the top and three in each arm. The seal of Hermes must be engraved on the pedestal, over which must be the two-headed androgyne of Klumrath. A serpent devouring its own tail must encircle the lower part. The sign of Solomon must be chased on the reservoir. Two globes must be fitted to this lamp, one adorned with transparent pictures, representing the seven genii, while the other, of larger size and duplicated, should contain variously tinted waters in four compartments. The whole instrument should be placed in a wooden pillar, revolving on its own axis, and permitting a ray of light to escape, as required, and fall on the altar smoke at the moment for the invocations.

This lamp is a great aid to the intuitive operations of slow imaginations, and for the immediate creation in the presence of magnetised persons of forms alarming in their actuality, which, being multiplied by the mirrors, will magnify suddenly, and transform the operator’s cabinet into a vast hall filled with visible souls ; the intoxication of the perfumes and the exaltation of the invocations will speedily change this fantasia into a real dream ; persons formerly known will be recognised, phantoms will speak, and something extraordinary and unexpected will follow the closing of the light within the pillar and the ! n crease of the fumigations.

The operations of science are not devoid of danger, as we have stated several times. They may end in madness for those who are not established firmly on the basis of supreme, absolute, and infallible reason. Terrible and incurable diseases can be occasioned by excessive nervous excitement. Swoons and death itself, as a consequence of cerebral congestion, may result from imagination when it is unduly impressed and terrified. We cannot sufficiently dissuade nervous persons, and those who are naturally disposed to exaltation, women, young people, and all who are not habituated in perfect self-control and the command of their fear. In the same way, there can be nothing more dangerous than to make magic a pastime, or, as some do, a part of an evening’s entertainment. Even magnetic experiments, performed under such conditions, can only exhaust the subjects, mislead opinions, and defeat science. The mysteries of life and death cannot be made sport of with impunity, and things which are to be taken seriously must be treated not only seriously but also with the greatest reserve. Never yield to the desire of convincing others by phenomena. The most astounding phenomena would not be proofs for those who are not already convinced. They can always be attributed to ordinary artifices and the magus included among the more or less skilful followers of Robert Houdin or Hamilton. To require prodigies as a warrant for believing in science is to shew one’s self unworthy or incapable of science. Sancta Sanctis. Contemplate the twelfth figure of the Tarot-keys, remember the grand symbol of Prometheus, and be silent. All those magi who divulged their works died violently, and many were driven to suicide, like Cardan, Schroppfer, Cagliostro, and others. The magus should live in retirement, and be approached with difficulty. This is the significance of the ninth key of the Tarot, where the initiate appears as

a hermit completely shrouded in his cloak. Such retirement must not, however, be one of isolation ; attachments and friendships are necessary, but he must choose them with care and preserve them at all price. He must also have another profession than that of magician; magic is not a trade. In order to devote ourselves to ceremonial magic, we must be free from anxious preoccupations ; we must be in a position to procure all the instruments of the science, and be able to make them when needed ; we must also possess an inaccessible laboratory, in which there will be no danger of ever being surprised or disturbed. Then, and this is an indispensable condition, we must know how to equilibrate forces and restrain the zeal of our initiative. This is the meaning of the eighth key of Hermes, wherein a woman is seated between two pillars, with an upright sword in one hand and a balance in the other. To equilibrate forces they must be simultaneously maintained and made to act alternately ; the use of the balance represents this double action. The same arcanum is typified by the dual cross in the pantacles of Pythagoras and Ezekiel (see the plate which appears on p. 166 in the “ Doctrine where the crosses equihbrate each other and the planetary signs are always in opposition. Thus, Yenus is the equilibrium of the works of Mars ; Mercury moderates and fulfils the operations of the Sun and Moon ;

Saturn balances Jupiter. It was by means of this antagonism between the ancient gods that Prometheus, that is to say, the genius of science, contrived to enter Olympus and carry off fire from heaven. Is it necessary to speak more clearly ? The milder and calmer you are, the more effective will be your anger ; the more energetic you are, the more precious will be your forbearance ; the more skilful you are, the better will you profit by your intelhgence and even by your virtues ; the more indifferent you are, the more easily will you make yourself loved. This is a matter of experience in the moral order, and is literally realised in the sphere of action. Human passions produce blindly the opposites of their unbridled desire, when

they act without direction. Excessive love produces antipathy ; blind hate counteracts and scourges itself ; vanity leads to abasement and the most cruel humiliations. Thus, the Great Master revealed a mystery of positive magical science when He said, “ Forgive your enemies, do good to those that hate you, so shall ye heap coals of fire upon their heads.” Perhaps this kind of pardon seems hypocrisy and bears a strong likeness to refined vengeance. But we must remember that the magus is sovereign, and a sovereign never avenges because he has the right to punish ; in the exercise of this right he performs his duty, and is implacable as justice. Let it be observed, for the rest, so that no one may misinterpret my meaning, that it is a question of chastising evil by good and opposing mildness to violence. If the exercise of virtue be a flagellation for vice, no one has the right to demand that it should be spared, or that we should take pity on its shame and its sufierings. The man who dedicates himself to the works of science must take moderate daily exercise, abstain from prolonged vigils, and follow a wholesome and regular rule of life. He must avoid the effluvia of putrefaction, the neighbourhood of stagnant water, and indigestible or impure food. Above all, he must daily seek relaxation from magical preoccupations amongst material cares, or in labour, whether artistic, industrial, or commercial. The way to see well is not to be always looking ; and he who spends his whole life upon one object will end without attaining it. Another precaution must be equally observed, and that is never to experiment when ill.

The ceremonies being, as we have said, artificial methods for creating a habit of will become unnecessary when the habit is confirmed. It is in this sense, and addressing himself solely to perfect adepts, that Paracelsus proscribes their use in his Occult Philosophy. They must be progressively simplified before they are dispensed with altogether, and in proportion to the experience we obtain in acquired powers, and established habit in the exercise of extra-natural will. The science is preserved by silence and perpetuated by initiation. The law of silence is not, therefore, absolute and inviolable, except relatively to the uninitiated multitude. The science can only be transmitted by speech. The sages must therefore speak occasionally. Yes, they must speak, not to disclose, but to lead others to discover. Noli ire, fac venire, was the device of Rabelais, who, being master of all the sciences of his time, could not be unacquainted with magic. We have, consequently, to reveal here the mysteries of initiation. The destiny of man, as we have said, is to make or create himself ; he is, and he will be, the son of his works, both for time and eternity. All men are called on to compete, but the number of the elect — that is, of those who succeed — is invariably small. In other words, the men who are desirous to attain are numbered by multitudes, but the chosen are few. Now, the government of the world belongs by right to the flower of mankind, and when any combination or usurpation prevents their possessing it, a political or social cataclysm ensues.

Men who are masters of themselves become easily masters of others ; but it is possible for them to hinder one another if they disregard the laws of discipline and of the universal hierarchy. To be subject to a discipline in common, there must be a community of ideas and desires, and such a communion cannot be attained except by a common religion established on the very foundations of intelligence and reason. This religion has always existed in the world, and is that only which can be called one, infallible, indefectible, and veritably catholic — that is, universal. This religion, of which all others have been successively the veils and the shadows, is that which demonstrates being by being, 1 truth by reason, reason by evidence and common sense. It

is that which proves by realities the reasonable basis of hypotheses, and forbids reasoning upon hypotheses independently of realities. It is that which is grounded on the doctrine of universal analogies, but never confounds the things of science with those of faith. It can never be of faith that two and one make more or less than three ; that in physics the contained can exceed the container ; that a solid body, as such, can act like a fluidic or gaseous body ; that, for example, a human body can pass through a closed door without dissolution or opening. To say that one believes such a thing is to talk like a child or a fool ; yet it is no less insensate to define the unknown, and to argue from hypothesis to hypothesis, till we come to deny evidence d, priori for the affirmation of precipitate suppositions. The wise man affirms what he knows, and believes in what he does not know only in proportion to the reasonable and known necessities of hypothesis. But this reasonable religion is unadapted for the multitude, for which fables, mysteries, definite hopes, and terrors having a physical basis, are needful. It is for this reason that the priesthood has been established in the world. Now, the priesthood is recruited by initiation. Eeligious forms perish when initiation ceases in the sanctuary, whether by the betrayal of the mysteries, or by their neglect and oblivion.

The Gnostic disclosures, for example, alienated the Christian Church from the high truths of the Kabbalah, which contains all the secrets of transcendental theology. Hence, the blind, having become leaders of the blind, great obscurities, great lapses, and deplorable scandals have followed. Subsequently, the sacred books, of which the keys are all kabbalistic, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, have become so little intelligible to Christians, that pastors have reasonably judged it necessary to forbid their being read by the uninstructed among believers. Taken literally, and understood materially, these books would be only an inconceivable tissue of absurdities and scandals, as the school of Voltaire has too well demonstrated. It is the same with

all the ancient dogmas, their brilliant theogonies and poetic legends. To say that the ancients of Greece believed in the love-adventures of Jupiter, or those of Egypt in the cynocephalus and sparrow-hawk, is to exhibit as much ignorance and bad faith as would be shown by maintaining that Christians adore a triple God, composed of an old man, an executed criminal, and a pigeon. The ignorance of symbols is invariably calumnious. Eor this reason we should always guard against the derision of that which we do not know, when its enunciation seems to involve some absurdity or even singularity, as a course no less wanting in good sense than to admit the same without discussion and examination. Prior to anything which may please or displease ourselves, there is a truth — that is to say, a reason — and by this reason must our actions be regulated rather than by our desires, if we would create that intelligence within us which is the raison d’etre of immortality, and that justice which is the law thereof. A man who is truly man can only will that which he should reasonably and justly do ; so does he silence lusts and fears that he may hearken solely to reason. Now, such a man is a natural king and a spontaneous priest for the wandering multitudes. Hence it was that the end of the old initiations was indifferently termed the sacerdotal art and the royal art.

The antique magical associations were seminaries for priests and kings, and admission could only be obtained by truly sacerdotal and royal works ; that is, by placing one’s self above all the weaknesses of nature. We will not repeat here what is found everywhere concerning the Egyptian initiations, perpetuated, but with diminished power, in the secret societies of the Middle Ages. Christian radicalism, founded upon a false understanding of the words : “ Ye have one father, one master, and ye are all brethren,” dealt a terrible blow at the sacred hierarchy. Since that time, sacerdotal dignities have become a matter of intrigue or of chance ; energetic mediocrity has managed to supplant modest superiority, misunderstood because of its

modesty ; yet, and notwithstanding, initiation being an essential law of religious life, a society which is instinctively magical formed at the decline of the pontifical power, and speedily concentrated in itself alone the entire strength of Christianity, because, though it only understood vaguely, it exercised positively the hierarchic power resident in the ordeals of initiation, and the omnipotence of faith in passive obedience. What, in fact, did the candidate in the old initiations ? He entirely abandoned his life and liberty to the masters of the temples of Thebes or Memphis ; he advanced resolutely through unnumbered terrors, which might have led him to imagine that there was a premeditated outrage intended against him ; he ascended funeral pyres, swain torrents of black and raging water, hung by unknown counterpoises over unfathomed precipices ... Was not all this a blind obedience in the full force of the term ? Is it not the most absolute exercise of liberty to abjure liberty for a time so that we may attain emancipation ? How, this is precisely what must be done, and what has been done invariably, by those who aspire to the sanctum regnum of magical omnipotence. The disciples of Pythagoras condemned themselves to inexorable silence for many years ; even the sectaries of Epicurus only comprehended the sovereignty of pleasure by the acquisition of sobriety and calculated temperance. Life is a warfare in which we must give proofs if we would advance ; power does not surrender of itself ; it must be seized.

Initiation by contest and ordeal is therefore indispensable for the attainment of the practical science of magic. We have already indicated after what manner the four elementary forms may be overcome, and will not repeat it here ; ■we refer those of our readers who would inquire into the ceremonies of ancient initiations to the works of Baron Tschoudy, author of the “ Blazing Star,” “ Adonhiramite Masonry,” and some other most valuable masonic treatises. Here we would insist upon a reflection, namely, that the intellectual and social chaos in the midst of which we are perishing, has been caused by the neglect of initiation, with its ordeals and its mysteries. Men, whose zeal was greater than their science, carried away by the popular maxims of the Gospel, came to believe in the primitive and absolute equality of men. A famous hallucini,, the eloquent and unfortunate Eousseau, propagated this paradox with all the magic of his style — that society alone depraves men — much as if he had said that competition and emulation in labour renders workmen idle. The essential law of nature, that of initiation by works and of voluntary and toilsome progress, has been fatally misconstrued ; masonry has had its deserters, as Catholicism its apostates. What has been the consequence ? The substitution of the steel plane for the intellectual and symbolical plane. To preach equality to what is beneath, without instructing it how to rise upward, is not this binding us to descend ourselves ?

And hence we have descended to the reign of the carmagnola, the sanscuUotes, and Marat. To restore tottering and distracted society, the hierarchy and initiation must be again established. The task is difficult, but the whole intelligent world feels that it is necessary to undertake it. Must we pass through another deluge before succeeding ? We earnestly trust not, and this book, perhaps the greatest but not the last of our audacities, is an appeal unto all that is yet alive for the reconstitution of life in the very middle of decomposition and death.

Let us now examine the question of pantacles, for all magical virtue is there, since the secret of force is in the intelligence which directs. We have already given the symbol and interpretation of the pantacles of Pythagoras and Ezekiel, so that we have no need to recur to these ; we shall prove in a later chapter that all the instruments of Hebrew worship were pantacles, and that the first and final word of the Bible was written in gold and in brass by Moses, in the tabernacle and on all its accessories. But each magus can and should have his individual pantacle, for, understood accurately, a pantacle is the perfect summary of a mind. Hence we find in the magical calendars of Tycho Brahe and Duchentau, the pantacles of Adam, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and of all the other great prophets who have been, each in his turn, the kings of the Kabbalah and the grand rabbins of science. The pantacle, being a complete and perfect synthesis, expressed by a single sign, serves to focus all intellectual strength into a glance, a recollection, a touch. It is, so to speak, a starting-point for the efficient projection of the will. Nigromancers and goetic magicians traced their infernal pantacles on the skin of the victims they immolated. The sacrificial ceremonies, the manner of skinning the kid, then of salting, drying, and whitening the skin, are given in a number of clavicles and grimoires. Some Hebrew kabbalists fell into similar follies, forgetting the anathemas pronounced in the Bible against those who sacrifice on high places or in the caverns of the earth. All spilling of blood operated ceremonially is abominable and impious, and since the death of Adonhiram the Society of true Adepts has a horror of blood — Ecclesia dbhorret d, sanguine.

The initiatory symbolism of pantacles adopted throughout the east is the key of all ancient and modern mythologies. Apart from the knowledge of the hieroglyphic alphabet, one would be lost among the obscurities of the Yedas, the ZendAvesta, and the Bible. The tree which brings forth good and evil, the source of the four rivers, one of which waters the land of gold, that is, of light, and another flows through Ethiopia, or the kingdom of darkness ; the magnetic serpent who seduces the woman, and the woman who seduces the man, thus making known the law of attraction ; subsequently the Cherub or Sphinx placed at the gate of the Edenic sanctuary, with the fiery sword of the guardians of the symbol ; then regeneration by labour and propagation by sorrow, which is the law of initiations and ordeals ; the division of Cain and Abel, which is the same symbol as the strife of Anteros and Eros ; the ark borne upon the waters of the deluge like the coffer of Osiris ; the black raven who does not return and the white dove who does, a new setting forth of the dogma of antagonism and balance — all these magnificent kabbalistic allegories of Genesis, which, taken literally, and accepted as actual histories, merit even more derision and contempt than Voltaire heaped upon them, become luminous for the initiate, who still hails with enthusiasm and love the perpetuity of the true doctrine and the universality of initiation identical in all sanctuaries of the world.

The five books of Moses, the prophecy of Ezekiel, and the Apocalypse of St John are the three kabbalistic keys of the whole Biblical edifice. The sphinxes of Ezekiel are identical ' with those of the sanctuary and the ark, and are a quadruple ! reproduction of the Egyptian tetrad ; the wheels revolving 1 in one another are the harmonious spheres of Pythagoras ; tthe new temple, the plan of which is given according to h wholly kabbalistic measures, is the type of the labours of primitive masonry. St John, in his Apocalypse, reproduces the same images and the same numbers, and reconstructs the Edenic world ideally in the New Jerusalem ; but at the source of the four rivers the solar lamb replaces the mysteri- ous tree. Initiation by toil and blood has been accomplished, and there is no more temple because the light of truth is universally diffused, and the world has become the temple of justice. This splendid final vision of the Holy Scriptures, this divine Utopia which the Church has referred with good reason for its realisation to a better life, has been the pitfall of all ancient arch-heretics and of many modern idealists. The simultaneous emancipation and absolute equality of all men involve the arrest of progress and consequently of life ; in a world where all are equal there could no longer be infants or the aged ; birth and death could not therefore be admitted. This is sufficient to demonstrate that the New Jerusalem is no more of this world than the primeval paradise, wherein there was no knowledge of good or evil, of liberty, of generation, or of death ; the cycle of our religious symbolism begins and ends therefore in eternity.

Dupuis and Volney lavished their great erudition to discover this relative identity of all symbols, and arrived at the negation of every religion. We attain by the same path to a diametrically opposed affirmation, and we recognise with admiration that there have never been any false religions in the civilised world ; that the divine light, the splendour of the supreme reason of the Logos, of that word which enlightens every man coming into the world, has been no more wanting to the children of Zoroaster than to the faithful sheep of St Peter ; that the permanent, the one, the universal revelation, is written in visible nature, ex-, plained in reason, and completed by the wise analogies of faith ; that there is, finally, but one true religion, one doctrine, and one legitimate belief, even as there is but one God, one reason, and one universe ; that revelation is obscure for no one, since the whole world understands more or less both truth and justice, and since all that is possible can only exist analogically to what is. Being is being, n-nx n'nx. The apparently bizarre figures presented by the Apocalypse of St John are hieroglyphics, like those of all oriental mythologies, and can he comprised in a series of pantacles. The initiator, clothed in white, standing between seven golden candlesticks and holding seven stars in his hand, represents the unique doctrine of Hermes and the universal analogies of the light.

The woman clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars is the celestial Isis, or the gnosis ; the serpent of material life seeks to devour her child, but she takes unto herself the wings of the eagle and flies away into the desert — a protestation of the prophetic spirit against the materialism of official religion. The mighty angel with the face of a sun, a rainbow for nimbus, and a cloud for vestment, having pillars of fire for his legs, and setting one foot upon the earth and another on the sea, is truly a kabbalistic Panthea. His feet represent the equilibrium of Briah, or the world of forms ; his legs are the two pillars of the Masonic temple, Jakin and Bohas ; his body, veiled by clouds, from which issues a hand holding a book, is the sphere of Jetzieah, or initiatory ordeals ; his solar head, crowned with the radiant septenary, is the world of Atziluth, or perfect revelation ; and we can only be excessively astonished that Hebrew kabbalists have not recognised and made known this symbolism, which so closely and inseparably connects the highest mysteries of Christianity with the secret but invariable doctrine of all the masters in Israel. The beast with seven heads, in the symbolism of St John, is the material and antagonistic negation of the luminous septenary ; the Babylonian harlot corresponds after the same manner to the woman clothed with the sun ;

the four horsemen are analogous to the four allegorical animals ; the seven angels with their seven trumpets, seven cups, and seven swords characterise the absolute of the struggle of good against evil by speech, by religious association, and by force. Thus are the seven seals of the occult book successively opened, and universal initiation is accomplished. The commentators who have sought anything else in this book of the transcendent Kabbalah have lost their

time and their trouble only to make themselves ridiculous. To discover Napoleon in the angel Apollyon, Luther in the star which falls from heaven, Voltaire or Rousseau in the grasshoppers armed like warriors, is merely high fantasy. It is the same with all the violence done to the names of celebrated persons so as to make them numerically equivalent to the fatal number 666, which we have already sufficiently explained ; and when we think that men like Bossuet and Newton amused themselves with such chimeras, we can understand that humanity is not so malicious in its nature as might be supposed from the complexion of its vices. The great work in practical magic, after the education of the will and the personal creation of the magus, is the formation of the magnetic chain, and this secret is truly that of priesthood and of royalty. To form the magnetic chain is to originate a current of ideas which produces faith and draws a large number of wills in a given circle of active manifestation. A well-formed chain is like a whirlpool which sucks down and absorbs all. The chain may be established in three ways — by signs, by speech, and by contact. The first is by inducing opinion to adopt some sign as the representation of a force. Thus, all Christians communicate by the sign of the cross, masons by that of the square beneath the sun, the magi by that of the microcosm, made by extending the five fingers, etc. Once accepted and propagated, signs acquire force of themselves. In the early centuries of our era, the sight and imitation of the sign of the cross was enough to make proselytes to Christianity. What is called the miraculous medal continues in our own.

days to effect a great number of conversions by the same magnetic law. The vision and illumination of the young Israelite, Alphonse de Eatisbonne, is the most remarkable fact of this kind. Imagination is creative not only within us but without us by means of our fluidic projections, and undoubtedly the phenomena of the labarum of Constantine and the cross of Mignd should be attributed to no other cause. The magic chain of speech was typified among the ancients by chains of gold, which issued from the mouth of Hermes. Nothing equals the electricity of eloquence. Speech creates the highest intelligence in the most grossly constituted masses. Even those who are too remote for actual hearing understand by excitement, and are carried away with the crowd. Peter the Hermit convulsed Europe by his cry of “ God wills it ! ” A single word of the Emperor electrified his army, and made France invincible. Proudhon destroyed socialism by his celebrated paradox : “ Property is robbery.” A current saying is frequently sufficient to overturn a reigning power. Voltaire knew this well — who shook the world by sarcasms. So, also, he who feared neither pope nor king, neither parliament nor Bastille, was afraid of a pun. We are on the verge of accomplishing the intentions of that man whose sayings we repeat.

The third method of establishing the magic chain is by contact. Between persons who meet frequently, the head of the current soon manifests, and the strongest will is not slow to absorb the others. The direct and positive grasp of hand by hand completes the harmony of dispositions, and it is for this reason a mark of sympathy and intimacy. Children, who are guided instinctively by nature, form the magic chain by playing at bars or rounds ; then gaiety spreads, then laughter rings. Circular tables are more favourable to convivial feasts than those of any other shape. The great circular dance of the Sabbath, which concluded the mysterious assemblies of adepts in the middle ages, was a magic chain, which joined all in the same intentions and THE lilTUAL OF TRANSCENDENT MAGIC the same acts. It was formed by standing back to back and linking hands, the face outside the circle, in imitation of those antique sacred dances, representations of which are still found on the sculptures of old temples. The electric furs of the lynx, panther, and even domestic cat, were stitched to their garments, in imitation of the ancient bacchanalia; hence comes the tradition that the Sabbath miscreants each wore a cat hung from the girdle, and that they danced in this guise.

The phenomena of tilting and talking tables has been a fortuitous manifestation of fluidic communication by means of the circular chain. Mystiflcation combined with it afterwards, and even educated and intelligent persons were so infatuated with the novelty that they hoaxed themselves, and became the dupes of their own absurdity. The oracles of the tables were answers more or less voluntarily suggested or extracted by chance ; they resembled the conversations which we hold or hear in dreams. Other and stranger phenomena may have been the external manifestations of imaginations operating in common. We, however, by no means deny the possible intervention of elementary spirits in these occurrences, as in those of divination by cards or by dreams ; but we do not believe that it has been in any sense proven, and we are therefore in no way obliged to admit it. One of the most extraordinary powers of human imagination is the realisation of the desires of the will, or even of its apprehensions and fears. We believe easily anything that we fear or desire, says a proverb; and it is true, because desire and fear impart to imagination a realising power, the effects of which are incalculable. How is one attacked, for example, by a disease about which one feels nervous ? We have already cited the opinions of Paracelsus on this point, and have established in our doctrinal part the occult laws conflrmed by experience; but in magnetic currents, and by mediation of the chain, the realisations are all the more strange because almost

invariably unexpected, at least when the chain has not been formed by an intelligent, sympathetic, and powerful leader. In fact, they are the result of purely blind and fortuitous combinations. The vulgar fear of superstitious feasters, when they find themselves thirteen at table, and their conviction that some misfortune threatens the youngest and weakest among them, is, like most superstitions, a remnant of magical science. The duodenary being a complete and cyclic number in the universal analogies of nature, invariably attracts and absorbs the thirteenth, which is regarded as a sinister and superfluous number. If the grindstone of a mill be represented by the number twelve, then thirteen is that of the grain which is to be ground. On kindred considerations, the ancients established the distinctions between lucky and unlucky numbers, whence came the observance of days of good or evil augury. It is in such concerns, above all, that imagination is creative, so that both days and numbers seldom fail to be propitious or otherwise to those who believe in their influence. Consequently, Christianity was right in proscribing the divinatory sciences, for in thus diminishing the number of blind chances, it gave further scope and empire to liberty. Printing is an admirable instrument for the formation of the magic chain by the extension of speech. No book is lost; as a fact, writings go invariably precisely where they should go, and the aspirations of thought attract speech. We have proved this a hundred times in the course of our magical initiation ;

the rarest books have ofiered themselves without seeking as soon as they became indispensable. Thus have we recovered intact that universal science which so many learned persons have regarded as engulfed by a number of successive cataclysms ; thus have we entered the great magical chain which began with Hermes or Enoch, and will only end with the world. Thus have we been able to evoke, and come face to face with, the spirits of Apollonius, Plotinus, Synesius, Paracelsus, Cardanus, Agrippa, and others

less or more known, but too religiously celebrated to make it possible for them to be named lightly. We continue their great work, which others will take up after us. But unto whom will it be given to complete it ? To be ever rich, to be always young, and to die never ; such, from all time, has been the dream of the alchemists. To change lead, mercury, and all other metals into gold, to possess the universal medicine and the elixir of life — such is the problem which must be solved to accomplish this desire and to realise this dream. Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the great work have a triple meaning ; they are religious, philosophical, and natural. The philosophical gold in religion is the absolute and supreme reason ; in philosophy, it is truth ; in visible nature, it is the sun ; in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the great work is called the search for the absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun. All masters of science recognise that it is impossible to achieve material results until we have found all the analogies of the universal medicine and the philosophical stone in the two superior degrees. Then, it is affirmed, is the labour simple, light, and inexpensive ; otherwise, it consumes to no purpose the life and fortune of the bellows-blower.

The universal medicine is, for the soul, supreme reason and absolute justice ; for the mind, it is mathematical and practical truth ; for the body, it is the quintessence, which is a combination of gold and light. In the superior world, the first matter of the great work is enthusiasm and activity ; in the intermediate world, it is intelligence and industry ; in the inferior world, it is labour ; in science it is sulphur, mercury, and salt, which, volatilised and fixed alternately, compose the Azoth of the sages. Sulphur corresponds to the elementary form of fire, mercury to air and water, salt to earth. All the masters in alchemy who have written concerning the great work have employed symbolical and figurative expressions, and have rightly done so, as much to deter the profane from a work which would, for them, be dangerous, as to make themselves intelligible to adepts, by revealing the entire world of analogies which is ruled by the one and sovereign dogma of Hermes. For such, gold and silver -are the sun and moon, or the king and queen ; sulphur is the flying eagle ; mercury is the winged and bearded hermaphrodite, throned upon a cube and crowned with flames ; matter or salt is the winged dragon ; metals in the molten state are lions of various colours ; finally, the whole work is symbolised by the pelican and phoenix. Hermetic •art is, therefore, at one and the same time, a religion, a philosophy, and a natural science.

Considered as religion, it is that of the ancient magi and the initiates of all the •ages ; as a philosophy, its principles may be found in the school of Alexandria and in the theories of Pythagoras ; as science, its principles must be sought from Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and Eaymund Lully. The science is true •only for those who accept and understand the philosophy •and religion, and its processes are successful only for the adept who has attained sovereign volition, and has thus become the monarch of the elementary world, for the great agent of the solar work is that force described in the Hermetic symbol of the Emerald Table ; it is universal magical power ; it is the igneous spiritual motor ; it is the Od of the Hebrews, and the astral light, according to the expression we have adopted in this work. There is the secret, living, •and philosophical fire, of which all Hermetic philosophers >speak only with the most mysterious reservations ; there is the universal sperm, the secret of which they guarded, re-

presenting it only under the emblem of the caduceus of Hermes. Here then is the great Hermetic arcanum, and we reveal it for the first time clearly and devoid of mystical figures ; what the adepts term dead substances are bodies as found in nature ; living substances are those which have been assimilated and magnetised by the science and will of the operator. Therefore the great work is something more than a chemical operation ; it is an actual creation of the human Word initiated into the power of the Word of God himself. b nnivn^ a'nninn -ixtjn bnb TniM ono This Hebrew text which we transcribe in proof of the authenticity and reality of our discovery, is derived from the rabbinical Jew Abraham, the master of Nicholas Mamel, and is found in his occult commentary on the Sepher Jetzirah, the sacred book of the Kabbalah. This commentary is extremely rare, but the sympathetic potencies of our chain led us to the discovery of a copy which has been preserved since the year 1643 in the Protestant church at Eouen. On its first page there is written : Ex dono, then an illegible name : Dei magni. The creation of gold in the great work takes place by transmutation and multiplication. Eaymund Lully states that in order to make gold we must have gold and mercury, while in order to make silver we must have silver and mercury. Then he adds : “ By mercury, I understand that mineral spirit which is so refined and purified that it gilds the seed of gold, and silvers the seed of silver.” Doubtless he is here speaking of Od, or astral light. Salt and sulphur are serviceable in the work only for the preparation of mercury ; it is with mercury above all that the magnetic

agent must be assimilated and incorporated. Paracelsus, Eaymund Lully, and Nicholas Plamel seem alone to have perfectly understood this mystery. Basil Valentine and Trevisan indicate it after an incomplete manner, which might be capable of another interpretation. But quite the most curious things which we have found on this subject are indicated by the mystical figures and magical legends in a book of Henry Khunrath, entitled Araphitheatrum Sapientice ASUmce. Khunrath represents and resumes the most learned Gnostic schools, and connects in symbology with the mysticism of Synesius. He affects Christianity in expressions and in signs, but it is easy t^ see that his Christ is the Abraxas, the luminous pentagram radiating on the astronomical cross, the incarnation in humanity of the sovereign sun celebrated by the Emperor Julian ; it is the luminous and living manifestation of that Ruach-Elohim which, according to Moses, brooded and worked upon the bosom of the waters at the birth of the world ; it is the man-sun, the monarch of light, the supreme magus, the master and conqueror of the serpent, and in the four-fold legend of the evangelists, Khunrath finds the allegorical key of the great work. One of the pantacles of his magical book represents the philosophical stone erected in the middle of a fortress surrounded by a wall in which there are twenty impracticable gates. One alone conducts to the sanctuary of the great work. Above the stone there is a triangle placed upon a winged dragon, , and on the stone is graven the name of Christ qualified as the symbolical image of all nature.

“ It is by him alone,” he adds, “ that thou canst obtain the universal medicine for men, animals, vegetables, and minerals.” The winged dragon, ruled by the triangle, represents, therefore, the Christ of Khunrath ; that is, the sovereign intelligence of light and life ; it is the secret of the pentagram ; it is the highest dogmatic and practical mystery of traditional magic. Thence unto the grand and ever incommunicable maxim there is only one step.

The kabbalistic figures of Abraham the Jew, which imparted to Flamel the first desire for knowledge, are no other than the twenty-two keys of the Tarot, elsewhere initiated and resumed in the twelve keys of Basil Valentine. There the sun and moon reappear under the figures of emperor and empress ; Mercury is the juggler ; the Great Hierophant is the adept or abstractor of the quintessence ; death, judgment, love, the dragon or devil, the hermit or lame elder, and, finally, all the remaining symbols are there found with their chief attributes, and almost in the same order. It could have scarcely been otherwise, since the Tarot is the primeval book and the keystone of the occult sciences ; it must be Hermetic, because it is kabbalistic, magical, and theosophical. So, also, we find in the combination of its twelfth and twenty-second keys, superposed one upon the other, the hieroglyphic revelation of the solution of the grand work and its mysteries. The twelfth key represents a man hanging by one foot from a gibbet composed of three trees or posts, forming the Hebrew letter ; the man’s arms constitute a triangle with his head, and his entire hieroglyphical shape is that of a reversed triangle surmounted by a cross, an alchemical symbol known to all adepts, and representing the accomplishment of the great work. The twenty-second key, which bears the number twenty-one, because the fool which precedes it carries no numeral, represents a youthful female divinity slightly veiled and running in a flowering circle, supported at four corners by the four beasts of the Kabbalah. In the Italian Tarot this divinity has a rod in either hand ; in the Besan9on Tarot, the two wands are in one hand while the other is placed upon her thigh, both equally remarkable symbols of magnetic action, either alternate in its polarisation, or simultaneous by opposition and transmission.

The great work of Hermes is, therefore, an essentially magical operation, and the highest of all, for it supposes the absolute in science and volition. There is light in gold, gold in light, and light in all things. The intelligent will, which assimilates the light, directs in this manner the operations of substantial form, and uses chemistry solely as a secondary instrument. The influence of human will and intelligence upon the operations of nature, dependent in part on its labour, is otherwise a fact so real that all serious alchemists have succeeded in proportion to their knowledge and their faith, and have reproduced their thought in the phenomena of the fusion, salification, and recomposition of metals. Agrippa, who was a man of immense erudition and fine genius, but pure philosopher and sceptic, could not transcend the limits of metallic analysis and synthesis. Etteilla, a confused, obscure, fantastic, but persevering kabbalist, reproduced in alchemy the eccentricities of his misconstrued and mutilated Tarot ; metals in his crucibles assumed extraordinary forms, which excited the curiosity of all Paris, with no greater profit to the operator than the fees which were paid by his visitors. An obscure bellowsblower of our own time, who died mad, poor Louis Cambriel, really cured his neighbours, and, by the evidence of all his parish, brought back to life a smith who was his friend. For him the metallic work took the most inconceivable and apparently illogical forms. One day he beheld the figure of God himself in his crucible, incandescent like the sun, transparent as crystal, his body composed of triangular conglomerations, which Cambriel naively compared to quantities of tiny pears.

One of our friends, who is a learned kabbalist, but belongs to an initiation which we regard as erroneous, performed recently the chemical operations of the great work, and succeeded in weakening his eyes through the excessive brilliance of the Athanor. He created a new metal which resembles gold, but is not gold, and hence has no value. Eaymund Lully, Nicholas Flamel, and most probably Henry Khunrath, made true gold, nor did they take away their secret with them, for it is enclosed in their symbols, and they have further indicated the sources from which they drew for its discovery and for the realisation of its effects. It is this same secret which we now ourselves make public. We have boldly declared our opinion, or rather our conviction, as to the possibility of resurrection in certain cases ; it remains for us now to complete the revelation of this arcanum and to expose its practice. Death is a phantom of ignorance ; it does not exist ; everything in nature is living, and it is because it is alive that everything is in motion and undergoes incessant change of form. Old age is the beginning of regeneration, it is the labour of renewing life, and the ancients represented the mystery we term death by the Fountain of Youth, which was entered in decrepitude and left in new childhood. The body is a garment of the soul. When this garment is completely worn out, or seriously and irreparably rent, it is abandoned and never reassumed.

But when this garment is removed by some accident without being worn out or destroyed, it can, in certain cases, be put on again, either by our own efforts or by the assistance of a stronger and more active will than ours. Death is neither the end of life nor the beginning of immortality ; it is the continuation and transformation of life. Now, a transformation being always a progress, few of those who are apparently dead will consent to return to life, that is, to reassume the vestment which they have left behind. It is this which makes resurrection one of the hardest works of the highest initiation, and hence its success is never infallible, but must be regarded almost invariably as accidental and unexpected. To raise up a dead person we must suddenly and energetically rebind the most powerful chains of attraction which connect it with the body that it has just quitted. It is, therefore, necessary to be previously acquainted with this chain, then to seize thereon, finally to produce an effort of will sufficiently powerful to instantaneously and irresistibly relink it. All this, as we say, is extremely difficult.

but is in no sense absolutely impossible. The prejudices of materialistic science exclude resurrection at present from the natural order, and hence there is a disposition to explain all phenomena of this class by lethargies more or less complicated with signs of death, and more or less long in duration. If Lazarus rose again before our doctors, they would simply record in their memorials to recognised academies a strange Case of lethargy accompanied by an apparent beginning of putrefaction and a strong corpse-like odour ; the exceptional occurrence would be labelled \yith a becoming name, and the matter would be at an end. We have no wish to frighten anyone, and if, out of respect for the men with diplomas who represent science officially, it is requisite to term our theories concerning resurrection the art of curing exceptional and aggravated trances, nothing, I hope, will hinder us from making such a concession. But if ever a resurrection has taken place in the world, it is incontestable that resurrection is possible. Now, constituted bodies protect religion, and religion positively asserts the fact of resurrections ; therefore resurrections are possible. From this escape is difficult. To say that they are possible outside the laws of nature, and by an influence contrary to universal harmony, is to affirm that the spirit of disorder, darkness, and death, can be the sovereign arbiter of life. Let us not dispute with the worshippers of the devil, but pass on.

It is not religion alone which attests the facts of resurrection ; we have collected a number of cases. An occurrence which impressed the imagination of Greuze, the painter, has been reproduced by him in one of his most remarkable pictures. An unworthy son, present at his father’s deathbed, seizes and destroys a will unfavourable to himself ; the father rallies, leaps up, curses his son, and then drops back dead a second time. An analogous and more recent fact has been certified to ourselves by ocular witnesses : a friend, betraying the confidence of one who had just died, tore up a trust-deed he had signed, whereupon the dead person rose up, and lived to defend the rights of his chosen heirs, which his false friend sought to set aside ; the guilty person went mad, and the risen man compassionately allowed him a pension. When the Saviour raised up the daughter of Jairus, He was alone with three faithful and favoured disciples ; He dismissed the noisy and the loud mourners, saying, “ The girl is not dead but sleeping.” Then, in the presence only of the father, the mother, and the three disciples, that is to say, in a perfect circle of confidence and desire, He took the child’s hand, drew her abruptly up, and cried to her, “ Young girl, I say to thee, arise ! ” The undecided soul, doubtless in the immediate vicinity of the body, and possibly regretting its extreme youth and beauty, was surprised by the accents of that voice, which was heard by her father and mother trembling with hope, and on their knees ;

it returned into the body ; the maiden opened her eyes, rose up, and the Master commanded immediately that food should be given her, so that the functions of life might begin a new cycle of absorption and regeneration. The history of Eliseus, raising up the daughter of the Shunamite, and St Paul raising Eutychus, are facts of the same order ; the resurrection of Dorcas by St Peter, narrated so simply in the Acts of the Apostles, is also a history the truth of which can scarcely be reasonably questioned. Apollonius of Tyana seems also to have accomplished similar miracles, and we ourselves have been the witness of facts which are not wanting in analogy with these, but the spirit of the century in which we live imposes in this respect the most careful reserve upon us, the thaumaturge being liable to a very indifferent reception at the hands of a discerning public — all which does not hinder the earth from revolving, or Galileo from having been a great man.

The resurrection of a dead person is the masterpiece of magnetism, because it needs for its accomplishment the exercise of a kind of sympathetic omnipotence. It is possible in the case of death by congestion, by suffocation, by exhaustion, or by hysteria. Eutychus, who was resuscitated by St Paul, after falling from a third storey, was doubtless not seriously injured internally, but bad succumbed to asphyxia, occasioned by the rush of air during his fall, or alternatively to the violent shock and to terror. In a parallel case, he who feels conscious of the power and faith necessary for such an accomplishment, must, like the apostle, practise insufflation, mouth to mouth, combined with contact of the extremities for the restoration of warmth. Were it simply a matter of what the ignorant call miracle, Elias and St Paul, who made use of the same procedure, would simply have spoken in the name of Jehovah or of Christ. It is occasionally enough to take the person by the hand, and raise them quickly, calling them in a loud voice. This procedure, which commonly succeeds in swoons, may even have effect upon the dead, when the magnetizer who exercises it is endowed with speech powerfully sympathetic and possesses what may be called eloquence of tone. He must also be tenderly loved or greatly respected by the person on whom he would operate, and he must perform the work with a great burst of faith and will, which we do not always find ourselves to possess in the first shock of a great sorrow.

What is vulgarly called necromancy has nothing in common with resurrection, and it is at least highly doubtful that in operations connected with this application of magical power, we really come into correspondence with the souls of the dead whom we evoke. There are two kinds of necromancy, that of light and that of darkness, the evocation by prayer, pantacle, and perfumes, and the evocation by blood, imprecations, and sacrileges. We have only practised the first, and advise no one to devote themselves to the second. It is certain that the images of the dead do appear to the magnetized persons who evoke them ; it is certain also that they never reveal any mysteries of the life beyond. They are beheld as they still exist in the memories of those who knew them, and, doubtless, as their reflections have left them impressed on the astral light. When evoked spectres reply to questions addressed them, it is always by signs or by interior and imaginary impression, never with a voice which really strikes the ears, and this is comprehensible enough, for how should a shadow speak ? With what instrument could it cause the air to vibrate by impressing it in such a manner as to make distinct sounds ? At the same time, electrical contacts are experienced from apparitions, and sometimes appear to be produced by the hand of the phantom, but the phenomenon is wholly subjective, and is occasioned solely by the power of imagination and the local wealth of the occult force which we term the astral light. The proof of this is that spirits, or at least the spectres pretended to be such, may indeed occasionally touch us, but we cannot touch them, and this is one of the most affrighting characteristics of these apparitions, which are at times so real in appearance that we cannot unmoved feel the hand pass through that which seems a body without touching or meeting anything.

We read in ecclesiastical historians that Spiridion, Bishop of Tremithonte, afterwards invoked as a saint, called up the spirit of his daughter, Irene, to ascertain from her the whereabouts of some concealed money which she had taken in charge for a traveller. Swedenborg communicated habitually with the so-called dead, whose forms appeared to him in the astral light. Several credible persons of our acquaintance have assured us that they have been revisited for years by the dead who were dear to them. The celebrated atheist Sylvanus Mar^chal manifested to his widow and one of her friends, to acquaint her concerning a sum of 1500 francs which he had concealed in a secret drawer. This anecdote was related to us by an old friend of the family. Evocations should have always a motive and a becoming end ; otherwise, they are works of darkness and folly, most dangerous for health and reason. To evoke out of pure curiosity, and to find out whether we shall see anything, is to be predisposed to fruitless fatigue. The transcendental sciences admit of neither doubt nor puerility. The permissible motive of an evocation may be either love or intelligence. Evocations of love require less apparatus and are in every respect easier. The procedure is as follows : We must, in the first place, carefully collect the memorials of him (or her) whom we desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impression remains ;

we must also prepare an apartment in which the person lived, or otherwise one of similar kind, and place his portrait veiled in white therein, surrounded with his favourite flowers, which must be renewed daily. A fixed date must then be observed, either the birthday of the person, or that day which was most fortunate for his and our own affection, one of which we may believe that his soul, however blessed elsewhere, cannot lose the remembrance ; this must be the day for the evocation, and we must provide for it during the space of fourteen days. Throughout this period we must refrain from extending to any one the same proofs of affection which we have the right to expect from the dead ; we must observe strict chastity, live in retreat, and take only one modest and light collation daily. Every evening at the same hour we must shut ourselves in the chamber consecrated to the memory of the lamented person, using only one small light, such as that of a funeral lamp or taper. This light should be placed behind us, the portrait should be uncovered, and we should remain before it for an hour, in silence ; finally, we should fumigate the apartment with a little good incense, and go out backwards. On the morning of the day fixed for the evocation, we should adorn ourselves as if for a festival, not salute any one first, make but a single repast of bread, wine, and roots, or fruits ;

the cloth should be white, two covers should be laid, and one portion of the bread broken should be set aside ; a little wine should also be placed in the glass of the person we design to invoke. The meal must be eaten alone in the chamber of evocations, and in presence of the veiled portrait ; it must be all cleared away at the end, except the glass belonging to the dead person, and his portion of bread, which must be placed before the portrait. In the evening,

at the hour for the regular visit, we must repair in silence to the chamber, light a clear fire of cypress-wood, and cast incense seven times thereon, pronouncing the name of the person whom we desire to behold. The lamp must then be extinguished, and the fire permitted to die out. On this day the portrait must not be unveiled. When the flame is extinct, put more incense on the ashes, and invoke God according to the forms of the religion to which the dead person belonged, and according to the ideas which he himself possessed of God. While making this prayer, we must identify ourselves with the evoked person, speak as he spoke, believe in a sense as he believed ; then, after a silence of fifteen minutes, we must speak to him as if he were present, with affection and with faith, praying him to manifest to us. Eenew this prayer mentally, covering the face with both hands; then call him thrice with a loud voice ; tarry on our knees, the eyes closed or covered, for some minutes ; then again call thrice upon him in a sweet and affectionate tone, and slowly open the eyes. Should nothing result, the same experiment must be renewed in the following year, and if necessary a third time, when it is certain that the desired apparition will be obtained, and the longer it has been delayed the more realistic and striking it will be.