Lest we should be accused of injustice towards one whose works have

proved useful to ourselves, and whose eulogium has been pronounced

in our former publications, we will give verbatim the passage in

Wronski’s _Reform of Philosophy_, p. 512, which calls the attention of

an indifferent universe to the pamphlet above mentioned. It will also

offer a curious specimen of the style adopted by this merchant in the

Absolute.

“This fact of the discovery of the Absolute, against which people have

appeared to rebel so strongly, has already been established undeniably

by means of a great scandal, that of the famous _Yes or No_, not less

decisive by the brilliant victory of truth which followed therefrom

than remarkable by the sudden manifestation of the symbolic being

foreshadowed in the _Apocalypse_, the monster of creation who bears

the name Mystery on his forehead, and who on this occasion, fearing

to be mortally wounded, can no longer hide his hideous contortions in

darkness, but comes through the medium of newspapers and by other modes

of publicity to expose in the open day his infernal rage and the height

of his imposture, &c.”

It is good to know that this unfortunate Arson, here accused, had

already expended on the hierophant some forty or fifty thousand francs.

We have attained after Wronski that Absolute which he sold so dearly,

and we have given it without price to our readers, for truth is due

to the world, and none has the right to appropriate or turn it into

trade and merchandise. May this one act of justice atone for the error

of a man who perished in a condition approaching want after having

worked so hard, though not indeed for science, but to enrich himself by

means of knowledge that he may have been unworthy to understand or to

possess.[351]

CHAPTER II

HALLUCINATIONS

A root of ambition or cupidity is found invariably beneath the

fanaticism of all the sects. Christ Jesus Himself reprimanded often and

severely those of His disciples who cleaved to Him, during the days of

His privations and exile in His own land, with the hope that they would

come into a kingdom wherein they would occupy the seats of the mighty.

The more egregious the expectations are, the more they inveigle some

imaginations; and people are then prepared to pay for the felicity of

hope with their whole purse and indeed their whole personality. It is

thus that the god Wronski ruined those imbeciles to whom he promised

the Absolute; it is thus that the god Auguste Comte drew an annuity

of 6000 francs at the expense of his worshippers, among whom he had

distributed fantastic dignities in advance, to become realisable when

his doctrine should have conquered the world. It is thus that certain

mediums draw money from innumerable dupes by promising them treasures

which the spirits always make away with. Some of these impostors really

believe in their promises, and it is these precisely who are the

most unwearying and the boldest in their intrigues. Money, miracles,

prophecies, none of these fail them, because theirs is that absolute of

will and action which really works wonders, so that they are magicians

without knowing it.

From this point of view, that sect which may be termed the Saviours of

Louis XVII belongs to the history of Magic. The mania of these people

is so contagious that it draws within the circle of their belief even

those who have come forward to combat them. They procure the most

important and rare documents, collect the most exceptional testimonies,

evoke forgotten memories, command the army of dreams, insure the

apparition of angels to Martin, of blood to Rose Tamissier, of an angel

in tatters to Eugène Vintras. The last history is curious on account or

its extraordinary consequences, and we shall therefore recite it.

In 1839, the Saviours of Louis XVII, who had filled the almanacs with

prophecies for 1840, seemed to have assumed that if the whole world

could be made to expect a revolution, that revolution would not fail to

be accomplished; but having no longer their prophet Martin, they set

about to secure another. Some of their most zealous agents were then in

Normandy, of which the pretended Louis XVII claimed to be Duke. They

cast their eyes on a devout labourer, with an excitable but weak brain,

and they planned the following device. They framed a letter addressed

to the prince, meaning the pretender, filled it with emphatic promises

concerning the reign to come, in combination with mystical expressions

calculated to influence a person of feeble mentality, and then arranged

that it should come into the hands of the peasant in question, who was

named Eugène Vintras, under circumstances as to which he may be left to

speak for himself.

“_August 6, 1839._

“Towards nine o’clock I was occupied in writing, when there was a

knock at the door of the room in which I sat, and supposing that it

was a workman who came on business, I said rather brusquely: ‘Come

in.’ Much to my astonishment, in place of the expected workman, I saw

an old man in rags. I asked merely what he wanted. He answered with

much tranquillity, ‘Don’t disturb yourself, Pierre Michel.’ Now, these

names are never used in addressing me, for I am known everywhere as

Eugène, and even in signing documents I do not make use of my first

names. I was conscious of a certain emotion at the old man’s answer,

and this increased when he said: ‘I am utterly tired, and wherever I

appear they treat me with disdain, or as a thief.’ The words alarmed

me considerably, though they were spoken in a saddened and even a

woeful tone. I arose and placed a ten sous piece in his hand, saying,

‘I do not take you for that, my good man,’ and while speaking, I made

him understand that I wished to see him out. He received it in silence

but turned his back with a pained air. No sooner had he set foot on

the last step than I shut the door and locked it. I did not hear him

go down, so I called a workman and told him to come up to my room.

Under some business pretext, I was wishing him to search with me all

the possible places which might conceal my old man, whom I had not

seen go out. The workman came accordingly. I left the room in his

company, again locking my door. I hunted through all the nooks and

corners, but saw nothing.

“I was about to enter the factory when I heard on a sudden the bell

ringing for mass and felt glad that, notwithstanding the disturbance,

I could assist at the sacred ceremony. I ran back to my room to obtain

a prayer book and, on the table where I had been writing, I found a

letter addressed to Mme. de Generès in London; it was written and

signed by M. Paul de Montfleury of Caen, and embodied a refutation

of heresy, together with a profession of orthodox faith. The address

notwithstanding, this letter was intended to place before the Duke of

Normandy the most important truths of our holy Catholic, Apostolic and

Roman religion. On the document was laid the ten sous piece which I

had given to the old man.”

In another communication, Pierre Michel admits that the face of his

visitor was not unknown to him, but that he was struck with strange

fear by his sudden appearance, that he barred and barricaded the door

when he went out and listened a long time, hoping to hear him go down.

As Vintras heard nothing, there is no doubt that the mendicant took off

his shoes so that he might descend, making no noise. Vintras ran to the

window but did not see him depart, the explanation being that he had

done so some time previously. Our witness, in the end, is upset, calls

for help, looks everywhere, finally coming across the letter which he

was meant to read, but it is for him evidently a letter fallen from

heaven. Behold Vintras, devoted henceforth to Louis XVII, behold him

also a visionary for the rest of his days, as the apparition of the old

mendicant never quits him henceforward. Then seeing that he addressed

Vintras as Pierre Michel, the latter regards him as the archangel

Michael, by an association of ideas which is analogous to that of

dreams.[352] The deluded supporters of Louis XVII had divined, with the

second sight of maniacs, the right moment for impressing the feeble

wits of Vintras so as to make him by a single experience at once an

_illuminé_ and a prophet.

The sect of Louis XVII consists more especially of persons belonging to

the service of the legitimate royalty, and when Vintras became their

medium, he was the faithful mirror of their imaginations filled with

romanesque memories and obsolete mysticism. In the visions of the new

prophet there were everywhere lilies steeped in blood,[353] angels

habited like knights, saints disguised as troubadours. Thereafter

came hosts affixed on blue silk. Vintras had bloody sweats, his blood

appeared on hosts, where it pictured hearts with inscriptions in the

handwriting and spelling of Vintras; empty chalices were filled

suddenly with wine, and where the wine fell the stains were like those

of blood. The initiates believed that they heard delightful music and

breathed unknown perfumes; priests, invited to witness the prodigies,

were carried away in the current of enthusiasm. One of them, from

the diocese of Tours, an old and venerable ecclesiastic, left his

cure to follow the prophet.[354] We have personally seen this priest;

he has narrated the marvels of Vintras with the most perfect accent

of conviction; he has shewn us hosts intincted with blood in a most

inexplicable manner; he has communicated to us copies of official

proceedings signed by more than fifty witnesses, all honorable persons,

occupying positions in the world—artists, physicians, lawyers, a

Chevalier de Razac and a Duchesse d’Armaillé. Doctors have analysed the

crimson fluid which flowed from the hosts and have certified that it

was human blood; the very enemies of Vintras, and he has cruel enemies,

do not dispute the miracles, but refer them to the devil. “Now,” said

the Abbé Chavoz, the priest of Touraine whom we have mentioned, “can

you tolerate the notion of the demon falsifying the blood of Christ

Jesus on hosts which have been regularly consecrated?” Abbé Chavoz is a

real priest, and the signs in question appeared in hosts which had been

hallowed by him. This notwithstanding, the sect of Vintras is anarchic

and absurd, and God would not therefore perform miracles in its favour.

There remains the natural explanation of such phenomena, and in the

course of the present work it has been indicated sufficiently to make

further development needless.

Vintras, whom his partisans represent as a new Christ, has also had his

Iscariots; two members of the sect, a certain Gozzoli and another named

Alexandre Geoffroi, published the most scandalous revelations against

him.[355] According to them, the devotees of Tilly-sur-Seules—which

was the place of their residence—were given over to the most obscene

practices; they celebrated in their private chapel, which they termed

the upper chamber, sacrilegious masses, at which the elect assisted

in a state of complete nudity. At a given moment all present fell

into a paroxysm, and with tears and cries of “Love, Love,” they cast

themselves into each other’s arms; the rest we may be permitted to

suppress. It was like the orgies of the old Gnostics, but without even

taking the precaution to extinguish the lights. Alexandre Geoffroi

testifies that Vintras initiated him into a kind of prayer which

consisted in the monstrous act of Onan, committed at the foot of the

altar, but here the accuser is too odious to be believed on his own

word. Abbé Chavoz, to whom we mentioned these infamous impeachments,

explained that they must be attributed to the hatred of two men who

had been expelled from the association for having been guilty on their

own part of the acts which they attributed to Vintras. However it may

be, moral disorders engender naturally those of a physical kind, and

abnormal excitements of the nervous system produce almost invariably

eccentric irregularities in morals: if therefore Vintras is innocent,

he might have been and may yet be guilty. His sect was condemned

formally by Gregory XVI in his brief, dated November 8, 1843.

We append a specimen of the style which this _illuminé_ adopted; he

is a man without education and his bombastic writings swarm with

grammatical errors.

“Sleep, sleep, ye indolent mortals; rest, and still rest on your soft

couches; smile at your dreams of festivals and grandeurs. The angel of

the covenant has come down on your mountains; he has written his name

even in the cups of your flowers; the rings on his feet have touched

the rivers which are your pride and hope; the oaks of your forests have

borrowed the tincture of a new morning from the radiance of his brow;

the sea has made answer to his glance with a yearning leap. She has

gone before him; prostrate yourselves upon the earth and be not alarmed

at the continuous sound heard in the graves beneath. Sleep, and still

sleep. He is engraving his name on the high hills; he is calling on

time to speed his ship, and I have seen the oldest of the old smile at

him. Sleep therefore and sleep; Elias, in the West, sets a cross at

the gate of the temple; he seals it with fire and with the steel of a

dagger.”

Still the temple, and still fire and dagger. It is strange assuredly

how the fools reflect one another; all fanaticisms interweave their

inspirations and the prophet of Louis XVII is here an echo of the

vengeance-cry of the Templars.

It is true that Vintras does not hold himself responsible for what

he writes; this is how he speaks on the subject. “If my mind counted

for anything in these condemned works, I should bow my head and fear

would possess my soul. But the work is not my work, and I have had no

concurrence therein, either by research or desire. Calm is within me;

my couch knows no vigils; watches have not wearied my eyes; my sleep is

pure, as when God first gave it; I can say to my God with a free heart:

_Custodi animam meum et erue me: non erubescam, quoniam speravi in te_.”

Another reputed reformer, he who posed as the Messiah of prisons and

the scaffold, namely, Lacenaire, with whom we do not assuredly seek

to compare Vintras, wrote thus in his prison: “As a chaste and pure

virgin, I wake and I sleep, ever in dreams of love. Who shall teach me

the meaning of remorse?” The argument of Vintras, in order to legalise

his inspiration, is not therefore conclusive, for it has also served

Lacenaire, to excuse and even legitimise not only reveries but crimes.

Condemned by the Pope, the sect of Tilly-sur-Seules condemned the

Pope in their turn, and Vintras, on his private warrant, constituted

himself sovereign pontiff. The shape of his priestly vestments was

revealed to him; he wears a golden diadem, having an Indian lingam

over the forehead; he is vested in a purple robe and carries a magical

sceptre terminated by a hand, the fingers of which are closed excepting

the thumb and little finger, being those consecrated to Venus and

Mercury, emblematic of the antique hermaphrodite, the emblem of the

old ceremonial orgies and the obscene pageants of the Sabbath. So

do the memories and reflections of Black Magic, transmitted by the

Astral Light, connect the mysteries of India and the profane worship

of Baphomet with the ecstasies of this contagious being, whose

infirmary is at London, and who continues there to make proselytes and

victims.[356]

The exaltation of the unfortunate prophet is by no means exempt from

terrors and remorse, whatever he may have alleged to the contrary, and

mournful confessions escape him from time to time. An example occurs

in a letter written to one of his most intimate friends. “I am always

expecting new torments. Tomorrow the Verger family will come, and I

shall behold in their faces the purity of their soul manifested in

their joy of spirit. It will recall my past happiness; names will be

mentioned which I pronounced lovingly myself in days not far away. That

which will be a delight for others will bring me new tortures. I shall

sit at the table, and whilst my heart is pierced with a sword, I shall

have to smile. O, if perchance those terrible words which I have heard

were not eternal, I might still embrace my cruel torment. Pardon, most

dear, I cannot live without loving God. Listen, if your human charity

permits you, as minister of the living God; I do not protest; he whom

your Master has spewed out of his mouth must be anathematised by you:

On the night of Monday, being May 17 or 18, a frightful dream struck

a mortal blow at soul and body alike. I was at Sainte-Paix, and there

was no one in the house, though the doors were open. I had ascended

hurriedly to the holy chapel and was about to open the door when I

saw emblazoned thereon in characters of fire: ‘Dare not to enter this

place, thou whom I have spewed from my mouth.’... I could not retreat;

I fell down overcome on the first step; and you can judge of my terror

when I saw on every side a vast and deep abyss, with hideous monsters

therein who hailed me as their brother. The thought came to me at that

moment that the holy archangel also once called me his brother. What a

difference. His salutation caused my soul to leap with the most intense

joy; and at theirs I writhed in convulsions similar to those which they

had experienced through the power with which God endowed my cross of

grace at their apparition on April 28 last.

“I tried to cling to something, so that I might not fall into the

bottomless gulf. I turned to the Mother of God, the divine Mary, and

called on her to help me. She was deaf to my voice. During all this

time I continued writhing, leaving strips of my skin on the rugged

points which bordered this terrible abyss. Suddenly whirlpools of flame

rose towards me from that depth wherein I was about to fall. I heard

yells of ferocious joy and could pray no longer, when a voice more

terrific than long echoes of thunder in a violent tempest filled my

ears, uttering these words: ‘You think to overcome me but it is you who

are conquered. I have taught you to be humble after my manner. Come,

taste of my sweetness; be numbered among my elect, and learn also to

know the tyrant of heaven; join with us in uttering blasphemies and

imprecations against him; all else is useless, so far as you are

concerned.’ Then after a scream of laughter the voice added: ‘Behold

Mary, her whom you called your shield against us; behold her gracious

smile and listen to her gentle voice.’

“Dear friend, I saw her above the abyss; her eyes of celestial blue

were filled with fire, her red lips were violet, her mild and divine

voice had become hard and terrible, and like thunderbolt she hurled

these words at me: ‘Writhe, proud one, in those fiery regions inhabited

by demons.’

“All my blood flowed back to my heart; it seemed that the hour had

struck wherein an earthly hell was to replace the hell that is eternal;

I could still utter a few words of the _Ave, Maria_. How the time

passed I knew not, but on returning the servant was asleep and said

that it was late. O, if only I revealed to the enemies of the Work of

Mercy that which passes within me, would they not cry victory? They

would say that here indeed was evidence of monomania. Would God that it

were so, for I should have less to lament. And yet fear nothing; if God

will not hear my voice when it pleads my own cause, I will pray Him to

double my sufferings, on condition that he hides them from my enemies.”

Here triumphant hallucination reaches the point of the sublime; Vintras

consents to be damned, provided he is not classed as a fool. It is

the last instinct of reason’s inestimable value, surviving reason

itself. The drunken man is afraid only of being regarded as drunk;

the monomaniac chooses death rather than admit his delirium. The

explanation is that, according to the beautiful sentence of Cebes,

already quoted, there is only one good desirable for man; it is that

wisdom which is the practice of reason: there is also one only true and

supreme misfortune to dread, which is madness.

CHAPTER III

MESMERISTS AND SOMNAMBULISTS

The Church in its great wisdom forbids us to consult oracles and to

violate by indiscreet curiosity the secrets of futurity. In our day

the voice of the Church is no longer heeded; the people go back to

diviners and pythonesses; the somnambulists have become prophets for

those who believe no longer in the gospel precepts. It is not realised

that preoccupation over a predicted event suppresses our freedom in

a sense and paralyses our means of defence; by consulting Magic, to

foresee future events, we give earnests to fatality. The somnambulists

are the sibyls of our epoch, as the sibyls were somnambulists of

antiquity; happy are those querents who do not place their credulity at

the service of immoral or senseless magnetists, for by the very fact of

their friendly consultations they place themselves in communion with

the immorality or folly of those who inspire the oracle; the business

of the mesmerist is easy and his dupes are manifold. Among those who

are devoted to magnetism it is therefore important to know who are in

earnest.

Among these, M. le Baron Du Potet must be placed in the front rank, and

his conscientious work has already done much to advance the science

of Mesmer. He has opened at Paris a practical school of magnetism,

to which the public is admitted for instruction in the processes and

verification of the phenomena obtained.

Baron Du Potet is of an exceptional and highly intuitive nature. Like

all our contemporaries, including the most instructed, he knows nothing

of the Kabalah and its mysteries, but magnetism has notwithstanding

revealed to him the science of Magic, and as it is still dread in his

eyes, he has concealed that which he has found, even while feeling

it necessary to reveal it. The book which he has written on the

subject is sold only to his adepts and then under the seal absolute

of secrecy.[357] We have entered into no bond with M. Du Potet,

but we shall reserve his secret out of respect for the convictions

of a hierophant. It is sufficient to say that his work is the most

remarkable of all products of pure intuition. We do not regard it as

dangerous, because the writer indicates forces without being precise

as to their use. He is aware that we can do good or evil, can destroy

or save by means of magnetic processes, but the nature of these is

not clearly and practically put forward, on which we offer him our

felicitations, for the right of life and death presupposes a divine

sovereignty, and we should regard its possessor as unworthy if he

consented to sell it—in what manner soever.

M. Du Potet establishes triumphantly the existence of that universal

light wherein lucids perceive all images and all reflections of

thought. He assists the vital projection of this light by means of an

absorbent apparatus which he calls the Magic Mirror; it is simply a

circle or square covered with powdered charcoal, finely sifted. In this

negative space, the combined light projected by the magnetic subject

and the operator soon tinges and realises the forms corresponding to

their nervous impressions. The somnambulist sees manifested therein all

dreams of opium and hasheesh, and if he were not distracted from the

spectacle convulsions would follow.

The phenomena are analogous to those of hydromancy as practised by

Cagliostro; the process of staring at water dazzles and troubles the

sight; the fatigue of the eye, in its turn, favours hallucinations

of the brain. Cagliostro sought to secure for his experiments

virgin subjects in a state of perfect innocence, so as to set

aside interference due to nervous divagations occasioned by erotic

reminiscences. Du Potet’s Magic Mirror is perhaps more fatiguing for

the nervous system as a whole, but the dazzlements of hydromancy would

have a more dangerous effect upon the brain.[358]

M. Du Potet is one of those deeply convinced men who suffer bravely the

disdain of science and the prejudgment of opinion, repeating beneath

his breath the profession of secret faith cherished by Galileo: _E

pur si muove_. It has been discovered quite recently that the tables

turn, as the earth itself turns, and that human magnetisation imparts

to portable articles, made subject to the influence of mediums, a

specific movement of rotation. Objects of extraordinary weight can be

lifted and transported through space by this force, for weight exists

only by reason of equilibrium between the two forces of the Astral

Light. Augment the action of one of them and the other will give way

immediately. Now, if the nervous apparatus indraws and expels this

light, rendering it positive or negative according to the personal

super-excitation of the subject, all inert bodies submitted to its

action and impregnated with its life will become lighter or heavier,

following the flux and reflux of the light which—in the new equilibrium

of its movement—draws porous bodies and non-conductors about a living

centre, as planets in space are drawn, balanced and gravitate about

their sun.

This excentric power of attraction or projection supposes invariably

a diseased condition in the person who is the subject thereof; the

mediums are all excentric and badly equilibrated beings; mediomania

supposes or occasions a sequence of other nervous manias, fixed

notions, deordinated appetites, disorderly erotomania, tendencies to

murder or suicide. Among persons so affected moral responsibility

seems to exist no more; they do evil with good as their motive; they

shed tears of emotion in a church and may be surprised at bacchanalian

orgies. They have a way of explaining everything—by the devil or the

spirits which obsess and carry them away. What would you have of them?

They live no more in themselves; some mysterious creature animates them

and acts in their place; this being is named “Legion.”

The reiterated efforts of a healthy person to develop mediumistic

faculties cause fatigue, disease and may even derange reason. It

is this which happened to Victor Hennequin, formerly an editor of

_La Démocratie Pacifique_ and, after 1848, a member of the National

Assembly. He was a young barrister, with a plentiful flow of eloquence,

wanting neither education nor talent, but he was infatuated with the

reveries of Fourier. Being banished as an after consequence of December

2, he took up table-turning during his enforced inactivity; he fell a

victim all too soon to mediomania and believed himself an instrument

for the revelations of the soul of the earth. He published a book

entitled: _Save the Human Race_; it was a medley of socialistic and

Christian reminiscences; a last gleam of reason flickered therein; but

the experiences continued and folly triumphed. In a final work, of

which only one volume was issued, Victor Hennequin represents God in

the guise of an immense polypus located at the centre of the earth,

having antennae and horns turned inwards like tendrils all over his

brain, as also over that of his wife Octavia. Soon afterwards it was

reported that Victor Hennequin had died from the consequences of a

maniacal paroxysm in a madhouse.[359]

We have also heard of a lady belonging to the aristocracy who gave

herself up to communications with pretended spirits in tables and who,

scandalised beyond measure at the unsuitable replies of her particular

piece of furniture, undertook a journey to Rome to submit the heretical

article to the chair of St. Peter. She carried it with her and had an

_auto-da-fé_ in the capital of the Christian world. Better to burn

her furniture than to court madness, and to say the truth it was an

imminent danger for the lady here in question. Let us not laugh at

the episode—for we are children of an age of reason in which men who

pass as serious, like the Comte de Mirville, ascribe to the devil

unexplained phenomena of Nature.

In a drama which is well known on the boulevards there is much to be

heard of a magician who, requiring a formidable auxiliary, created an

automaton, being a monster with the paws of a lion, a bull’s horns

and the scales of leviathan. To this hybrid sphinx he imparted life,

but took flight incontinently, being terrified at the work of his

hands. The monster followed in pursuit, appeared between him and his

betrothed, set fire to his house, burnt his father, carried off his

son, and continuing the chase to the sea, followed him on board a ship

which he caused to be engulphed, but finally made an end of himself

amidst thunder. This awful spectacle, rendered visible by fear, has

been realised in the history of humanity; poetry has personified the

phantom of evil and has endowed it with all forces of Nature. It has

sought to enlist the chimera as an aid to morality, and has then

gone in fear of the ugliness begotten by its own dreams. From this

time forward, the monster has pursued us through the ages; it makes

grimaces between us and the objects of our love; an impure nightmare,

it strangles our children in their sleep; it carries through creation,

that father’s house of humanity, the inextinguishable torch of hell;

it burns and tortures our parents everlastingly; it spreads black

wings to hide heaven from our eyes; it shrieks to us: “Hope no more.”

It mounts the crupper and gallops behind us like remorse; it plunges

into the ocean of despair the last rock of our hopes; it is the old

Persian Ahriman, the Egyptian Typhon, the darksome god confessed by the

heretics of Manes, the Comte de Mirville and the Black Magic of the

devil; it is the world’s horror and the idol of bad Christians. Men

have tried to laugh at it and have been afraid; they have caricatured

it and then trembled, for the cartoons have seemed to take life and

to mock at those who made them. All this notwithstanding, its reign

is over, though it will not perish overwhelmed by a bolt from heaven;

science has conquered the lightning and converted it into torches; the

monster will dissolve before the brightness of science and truth; the

genius of ignorance and darkness can only be blasted by the light.

CHAPTER IV

THE FANTASTIC SIDE OF MAGICAL LITERATURE

It is now twenty years since Alphonse Esquiros,[360] one of the

friends of our childhood, issued a work of high fantasy, entitled

the _Magician_. All that the romanticism of that period conceived to

be most bizarre was embodied in the story; the author provided his

magus with a seraglio of dead ladies, embalmed according to a process

which has since been discovered by Gannal. The characters included

an automaton of bronze who preached chastity, a hermaphrodite who

was in love with the moon and conducted a regular correspondence

with that satellite: there were other wonderful things which one has

forgotten at this day. Alphonse Esquiros may be said to have founded

a school of fantasiasts in Magic by the publication of this romance,

its most distinguished present representative being the young and

interesting Henri Delaage, who is a productive writer, an unrecognised

thaumaturgist and a gifted charmer. His style is not less astonishing

than were the notions of Alphonse Esquiros, his initiator and master.

Thus, in his book dealing with those who have risen from the dead, he

remarks as follows concerning some objection against Christianity: “I

take this objection by the throat and, when I loose my grasp, the earth

shall resound sullenly under the weight of its strangled corpse.” It

is true that his reply to the objection comes to very little; but what

would you, when an objection has been strangled and when the earth has

resounded sullenly under the weight of its body?

We have said that Henri Delaage is an unrecognised thaumaturgist. As a

fact he has informed a person of our acquaintance that during a winter

when influenza was prevalent, it was sufficient for him to enter a

room and every one who happened to be therein was cured immediately.

Unhappily he became himself a victim of the miracle, for he contracted

a slight hoarseness which has never left him. Many of our friends

declare that he has the gift of ubiquity; he is left at the office of

_La Patrie_ and is found again with his publisher Dantu; one retires in

dismay and goes home, there to find—Delaage awaiting one’s arrival. He

is a skilful charmer. A society lady who had been reading one of his

books testified that she knew nothing better written or more beautiful,

but it is not to his works alone that Delaage imparts beauty. We had

been reading an article signed Fiorentino which said that the physical

attractions of the young magician equalled or even surpassed those of

angels. We encountered Delaage and questioned him with curiosity on

this singular revelation. Delaage then put his hand in his waistcoat,

turned three parts round and looked smiling to heaven; it happened

fortunately that we were carrying the _Enchiridion_ of Leo III, which

is known to preserve from enchantments, so that the charmer’s angelical

beauty was hidden from our eyes. Let us offer on our part a more

serious eulogium to Henri Delaage than do those who admire his good

looks; he is sincere when he says that he is a catholic and when he

proclaims loudly his love and respect for religion. Now religion can

make you a saint, and this title is more estimable and glorious than

that of a sorcerer.[361]

It is owing to his rank as a publicist that we have placed this young

man in the first place among the Fantasiasts of Magic, but in all other

respects it belongs to the Comte D’Ourches, a man of venerable age who

has devoted his life and fortune to mesmeric experiments. Ladies in a

state of somnambulism, and any furniture at his house, give themselves

up to frenzied dances; the furniture becomes worn out and is broken,

but it is said that the ladies are all the better for their gyrations.

For a long time the Comte D’Ourches has been dominated by a fixed idea,

which is the fear of being buried alive, and he has written a number of

memorials on the need for verifying decease in a more certain way than

obtains usually. He has some justification for such a fear on his own

part because his temperament is plethoric, while his extreme nervous

susceptibility, continually superexcited by experiments with fair

somnambulists, may expose him to attacks of apoplexy. In magnetism he

is the pupil of Abbé Faria and in necromancy he belongs to the school

of Baron de Guldenstubbé. The latter has published a work entitled

_Practical Experimental Pneumatology, or the Reality of Spirits and the

Marvellous Phenomenon of their Direct Writing_. He gives an account

of his discovery as follows: “It was in the course of the year 1850,

or about three years prior to the epidemic of table-rapping, that

the author sought to introduce into France the circles of American

spiritualism, the mysterious Rochester knockings and the purely

automatic writing of mediums. Unfortunately he met with many obstacles

raised by other mesmerists. Those who were committed to the hypothesis

of a magnetic fluid, and even those who styled themselves Spiritual

Mesmerists, but who were really inferior inducers of somnambulism,

treated the mysterious knockings of American Spiritualism as visionary

follies. It was therefore only after more than six months that the

author was able to form his first circle on the American plan, and

then thanks to the zealous concurrence of M. Roustan, a former member

of the _Société des Magnétiseurs Spiritualistes_, a simple man who was

full of enthusiasm for the holy cause of spiritualism. We were joined

by a number of other persons, amongst whom was the Abbé Châtel,[362]

founder of the Église Française, who, despite his rationalistic

tendencies, ended by admitting the reality of objective and

supernatural revelation, as an indispensable condition of spiritualism

and all practical religions. Setting aside the moral conditions, which

are equally requisite, it is known that American circles are based on

the distinction of positive and electric or negative magnetic currents.

“The circles consist of twelve persons, representing in equal

proportions the positive and negative or sensitive elements. This

distinction does not follow the sex of the members, though generally

women are negative and sensitive, while men are positive and magnetic.

The mental and physical constitution of each individual must be studied

before forming the circles, for some delicate women have masculine

qualities, while some strong men are, morally speaking, women. A table

is placed in a clear and ventilated spot; the medium is seated at one

end and entirely isolated; by his calm and contemplative quietude he

serves as a conductor for the electricity, and it may be noted that a

good somnambulist is usually an excellent medium. The six electrical

or negative dispositions, which are generally recognised by their

emotional qualities and their sensibility, are placed at the right of

the medium, the most sensitive of all being next him. The same rule is

followed with the positive personalities, who are at the left of the

medium, with the most positive among them next to him. In order to form

a chain, the twelve persons each place their right hand on the table

and their left hand on that of their neighbour, thus making a circle

round the table. Observe that the medium or mediums, if there be more

than one, are entirely isolated from those who form the chain.

“After a number of séances, certain remarkable phenomena have been

obtained, such as simultaneous shocks, felt by all present at the

moment of mental evocation on the part of the most intelligent persons.

It is the same with mysterious knockings and other strange sounds;

many people, including those least sensitive, have had simultaneous

visions, though remaining in the ordinary waking state. Sensitive

persons have acquired that most wonderful gift of mediumship, namely,

automatic writing as the result of an invisible attraction which uses

the non-intelligent instrument of a human arm to express its ideas.

For the rest, nonsensitive persons experience the mysterious influence

of an external wind, but the effect is not strong enough to put their

limbs in motion. All these phenomena, obtained according to the mode

of American spiritualism, have the defect of being more or less

indirect, because it is impossible in these experiences to dispense

with the mediation of a human being or medium. It is the same with the

table-turning which invaded Europe in the middle of the year 1853.

“The author has had many table experiences with his honourable friend,

the Comte d’Ourches, one of the most instructed persons in Magic and

the Occult Sciences. We attained by degrees the point when tables

moved apart from any contact whatever, while the Comte d’Ourches has

caused them to rise, also without contact. The author has made tables

rush across a room with great rapidity and not only without contact

but without the magnetic aid of a circle of sitters. The vibration of

piano-chords under similar circumstances took place on January 20,

1856, in the presence of the Comte de Szapary and Comte d’Ourches. Now

all such phenomena are proof positive of certain occult forces, but

they do not demonstrate adequately the real and substantial existence

of unseen intelligences, independent of our will and imagination,

though the limits of these have been vastly extended in respect

of their possibilities. Hence the reproach made against American

spiritualists, because their communications with the world of spirits

are so insignificant in character, being confined to mysterious

knockings and other sound vibrations. As a fact, there is no direct

phenomenon at once intelligent and material, independent of our will

and imagination, to compare with the direct writing of spirits, who

have neither been invoked nor evoked, and it is this only which offers

irrefutable proof as to the reality of the supernatural world.

“The author, being always in search of such proof, at once intelligent

and palpable, concerning the substantial reality of the supernatural

world, in order to demonstrate by certain facts the immortality of

the soul, has never wearied of addressing fervent prayers to the

Eternal, that He might vouchsafe to indicate an infallible means for

strengthening that faith in immortality which is the eternal basis of

religion. The Eternal, Whose mercy is infinite, has abundantly answered

this feeble prayer. On August 1st, 1856, the idea came to the author

of trying whether spirits could write directly, that is, apart from

the presence of a medium. Remembering the marvellous direct writing of

the Decalogue, communicated to Moses, and that other writing, equally

direct and mysterious, at the feast of Belshazzar, recorded by Daniel;

having further heard about those modern mysteries of Stratford in

America, where certain strange and illegible characters were found

upon slips of paper, apparently apart from mediumship, the author

sought to establish the actuality of such important phenomena, if

indeed within the limits of possibility.

“He therefore placed a sheet of blank letter paper and a sharply

pointed pencil in a box, which he then locked and carried the key about

him, imparting his design to no one. Twelve days he waited in vain, but

what was his astonishment on August 13, 1856, when he found certain

mysterious characters traced on the paper. He repeated the experiment

ten times on that day, placing a new sheet of paper each time in the

box, with the same result invariably. On the following day he made

twenty experiments but left the box open, without losing sight of it.

He witnessed the formation of characters and words in the Esthonian

language with no motion of the pencil. The latter being obviously

useless he decided to dispense with it and placed blank paper sometimes

on a table of his own, sometimes on the pedestals of old statues, on

sarcophagi, on urns, &c., in the Louvre, at St. Denis, at the church

of St. Étienne du Mont, &c. Similar experiments were made in different

cemeteries of Paris, but the author has no liking for cemeteries, while

most spirits prefer the localities where they have lived on earth to

those in which their mortal remains are laid to rest.”

We are far from disputing the singular phenomena observed by Baron de

Guldenstubbé, but would point out to him that the discovery had been

made previously by Lavater and that the water-colour portrait[363]

painted by the Kabalist Gablidone is of far greater importance than

the few lines of writing obtained on his part. Speaking next in the

name of science, we would tell him, not indeed for his benefit, seeing

that he will not believe us, but for serious observers of these strange

phenomena, that the writings obtained by him do not come from the

other world but have been made unconsciously by himself. We would say

to him that your experiments, so unduly multiplied, and the excessive

tension of your will, have destroyed the equilibrium of your fluidic

and astral body; you have compelled it to realise your dreams and it

has traced, in characters borrowed from your own remembrance, the

reflections of your imagination and of your thoughts. Had you been

placed in a perfectly lucid state of magnetic sleep, you would have

seen a luminous counterpart of your hand, lengthened out like a shadow

in the setting sun; you would have seen it trace on the paper prepared

by yourself or your friends those characters which have so much

surprised you. That corporeal light which emanates from the earth and

from you is contained by a fluidic envelope of extreme elasticity, and

that envelope is formed from the quintessence of your vital spirits

and your blood. This quintessence derives from the light a colour

determined by your secret will; it is made in the likeness of your

dream, and the characters are impressed on the paper as signs on the

bodies of unborn children are imprinted by the imagination of their

mothers. That which seems to you ink is your blackened and transfigured

blood. You are expending yourself in proportion as such writings

multiply. If you continue your experiments, your brain will be weakened

gradually and your memory will suffer. You will experience unspeakable

pains in the joints of the limbs and fingers, and you will finally die,

either struck down suddenly or after a prolonged agony, characterised

by hallucinations and madness. So much for Baron de Guldenstubbé.

To the Comte d’Ourches we would say: You will not be buried alive,

but you run the risk of dying by the very precautions which you

are taking against such a possibility. The awakening of those who

are so buried can only be rapid and brief, but they may live long

underground, conserved by the Astral Light in a complete state of lucid

somnambulism. Their souls are then bound to the sleeping body by an

invisible chain, and if those souls are greedy and criminal, they can

draw on the quintessence of the blood in persons who are naturally

asleep; they can transmit this sap to their interred bodies for their

longer preservation, in the vague hope that they may be restored

ultimately to life. It is this frightful phenomenon which is called

vampirism, and its reality has been established by many cases as well

attested as the most serious things in history. If you question the

possibility of this magnetic life of the human body under earth, read

the following account of an English officer, named Osborne, the good

faith of which was attested to Baron du Potet by General Ventura.

“On June 6, 1838,” says Mr. Osborne, “the monotony of our camp-life

was happily interrupted by the arrival of an individual who was famous

throughout the Punjaub. He was the subject of great veneration among

the Sikhs because of his power to remain buried underground for so

long a time as he pleased. Such extraordinary stories are told of this

man, and their authenticity has been guaranteed by so many reputable

persons, that we were most anxious to see him. He told us on his own

part that he had followed this business of interment for a number of

years in various parts of India. Among serious and creditable people

who have borne witness in his favour I may mention Captain Wade, the

political agent at Lodhran. This officer has told me most seriously

that he himself assisted at the resurrection of the said fakir after

a burial which took place several months previously, in the presence

of General Ventura, the Maharajah and the principal Sikh chiefs. The

details concerning the interment as given to Captain Wade, and those

which he added on his own authority respecting the exhumation are as

follows.

“After certain precautions which lasted for several days and the

details of which are distasteful, the fakir announced that he was ready

to undergo the trial. The Maharajah, Sikh chiefs and General Ventura

assembled round a grave of stone-work constructed for the express

purpose. In their presence the fakir sealed up with wax every opening

of his body by which air could enter, with the exception of the mouth;

he then cast off his garments, was enveloped in a linen bag and, by his

own wish, his tongue was turned back so that it obstructed the gullet.

He fell after this into a kind of lethargy. The bag which contained him

was closed up, and a seal was placed therein by the Maharajah. It was

then put into a sealed and padlocked chest, which was lowered into the

grave. A large quantity of earth was thrown on it; it was trodden down

and barley was sown therein. Finally, sentinels were stationed round

the spot, with orders to watch day and night.

“These precautions notwithstanding, the Maharajah still had doubts;

thrice during the period of ten months, during which the fakir was

to remain interred, he visited the grave and had it opened in his

presence, but the body was in the sack, just as it had been placed

therein, cold and inanimate to all appearance. When the ten months had

expired, the fakir was exhumed finally. General Ventura and Captain

Wade undid the padlocks, broke the seals and raised the chest from the

grave. The fakir was taken out, but there was no indication of life

either at heart or pulse. As a first means to reanimate him, one of the

spectators inserted his finger very gently in the mouth and restored

the tongue to its natural position. The top of the head was the sole

seat of any sensible heat. By pouring warm water slowly over the

body, some signs of life were obtained by degrees. After two hours of

attention, the fakir rose up and began to move about smiling.

“The extraordinary being declared that he had delicious dreams during

his entombment, but that the time of awaking was always exceedingly

painful and that he was in a state of vertigo before his return

to consciousness; his age is about thirty years, his countenance

is ill-favoured and his expression somewhat crafty. We had long

conversations with him, and he offered to be buried in our presence.

We took him at his word and appointed a meeting at Lahore, where we

promised that he would remain underground throughout our stay in that

city.”

Such was the story of Osborne. The question was whether the fakir would

really allow himself to be interred once more. The new experiment might

well be decisive. But that which happened was as follows.

“Fifteen days after the fakir’s visit to their camp, the English

officers arrived at Lahore. They chose a spot which seemed favourable

for the coming operation, had a mural tomb constructed, as well

as a very solid chest, and then awaited the fakir. He came on the

day following, expressing an ardent desire to prove that he was no

impostor. He stated further that he had made the necessary preparations

for an experiment, but his demeanour evidenced a certain disquiet

and despondency. He began to stipulate concerning his compensation,

which was fixed at fifteen hundred rupees down and two thousand rupees

annually, which the officers undertook to obtain from the king.

Satisfied on this point, he wished to be informed as to the precautions

that they were proposing to take. The officers shewed him the chest,

the keys belonging thereto, and warned him that sentinels chosen among

the English soldiers would watch round the place for a week. The

fakir cried out and gave vent to much abuse of the _Firinghees_ and

sceptics, who sought to rob him of his reputation. He expressed also

a fear that some attempt would be made on his life and, refusing to

trust himself entirely to the surveillance of Europeans, he demanded

that duplicate keys should be committed to one of his co-religionists,

further insisting—and this indeed above all—that the sentries should

not be enemies of his faith. The officers declined to entertain these

conditions; several interviews followed, leading to no result; and

finally the fakir intimated, through one of the Sikh chiefs, that the

Maharajah having menaced him with his anger if he did not fulfil his

engagement with the English, it was his wish to undertake the trial,

though he rested assured that the sole object of the officers was to

deprive him of life, and that he would never come forth from his tomb.

The officers admitted that, as to the last point, they all shared his

conviction, adding that as they did not wish to have his death as a

reproach against them, they relieved him of his promise.

“Are such hesitations and fears proof positive against the fakir? Does

it follow that all who have testified previously how they had beheld

with their own eyes the occurrences to which he owes his celebrity have

been guilty of deception themselves or were the victims of skilful

trickery? We confess that, having regard to the extent and quality

of the evidence, we cannot doubt that the fakir was frequently and

literally interred; and even admitting that after his burial he has on

each occasion continued to communicate with the world above ground, it

would still be inexplicable how he could be deprived of respiration

during the time which intervened between his burial and that moment

when his accomplices came to his aid. Mr. Osborne adds in a note a

quotation from the _Medical Topography of Lodhiana_, by Dr. MacGregor,

an English physician, who assisted at one of the exhumations, was

a witness of the fakir’s lethargy, of his gradual return to life,

and who tries seriously to explain it. Mr. Boileau, another English

officer, in a work published some years ago, recounts how he witnessed

another experience which reproduced all the facts in precisely the

same manner. Those who are anxious to satisfy their curiosity more

fully, those who discern in the narrative an indication of a curious

physiological fact, may refer with confidence to the sources which are

here indicated.”

A number of official records of the exhumation of vampires are

still extant. In each case the flesh was in a remarkable state of

preservation, but blood oozed from the body, the hair had grown in

an abnormal manner and protruded in tufts through the chinks of the

coffin. There was no sign of life in the respiratory apparatus, save in

the heart only, and this seemed to have become a vegetable rather than

an animal organ. To kill the vampire, a stake had to be driven through

the breast and then a frightful cry shewed that the somnambulist of

the grave had awakened with a start into a veritable death. To render

such death definitive, swords were driven point upward into the

vampire’s grave, for the phantoms of Astral Light are disintegrated by

the action of metallic points, which attract that light towards the

common reservoir and dissipate its coagulated clusters. To reassure

nervous people, it may be added that cases of vampirism are fortunately

exceedingly rare and that no one who is healthy in mind and body can be

personally victimised, unless he or she has been abandoned, body and

soul, to the creature in its lifetime by some criminal complicity or

irregular passion.

The following history of a vampire is related by Tournefort in his

_Voyage to the Levant_.[364]

“In the island of Mycona we witnessed a very singular scene, being

the alleged return of a deceased person after interment. In northern

Europe those who come back in this manner are called vampires, while

the Greeks designated them under the name of _Broucolaques_. The case

in question was that of a peasant of Mycona who was naturally gloomy

and quarrelsome. It is a circumstance worthy of note, on account of

parallel instances. He was killed in the countryside, no one knew why

or by whom. Two days after his burial in a church of the city, a report

went abroad that he was seen nightly wandering about at a great pace.

He also visited houses, turned over the furniture, put out the lights,

embraced people from behind and performed innumerable other tricks.

At first it was a laughing matter, but it took a serious turn when

reliable people began to complain. The priests themselves certified

to the fact, and no doubt they had their reasons. Recourse was had

to masses, said for the purpose, but the peasant continued the same

course with no sign of amendment. After several meetings of the chief

persons, priests and monks of the town, it was concluded to wait for

the expiration of nine days after the interment, following I know

not what ancient procedure. On the tenth day a mass was said in the

church wherein the body had been buried, for the purpose of expelling

the demon who was thought to have entered into it. The mass over, the

corpse was disinterred and the heart removed. It was necessary to burn

incense owing to the evil smell, but the combination made bad worse

and almost stifled those present. It was testified that a thick smoke

exhaled from the corpse, and we who were present at the operations did

not venture to suggest that it was really the smoke of the incense.

There were also those who affirmed that the blood of the unfortunate

person was abnormally scarlet, while yet others declared that the

flesh was still warm, whence it was concluded that the deceased person

was seriously wrong in not being properly dead, or rather in allowing

himself to be brought to life by the devil. This is precisely the

idea which obtains concerning the vampire, and that word began to be

repeated persistently. A crowd assembled, loudly protesting that the

body was obviously not rigid when it was carried to the church for

burial and that it was therefore a veritable vampire.

“Appeal being made to us, we expressed the opinion that the person was

undoubtedly dead, and as for the supposed scarlet blood, it was easy

to see that it was only bad smelling slime. For the rest, we attempted

to cure or at least not provoke further their excited imaginations

by explaining the fumes and warmth attributed to the corpse. Such

arguments notwithstanding, it was determined to burn the heart of the

deceased person, but after this had been done he was not more amenable

than formerly and indeed created greater stir. He was accused of

beating people at night, of breaking down doors and windows, tearing

garments and emptying pitchers and bottles. Altogether, the deceased

made himself highly objectionable. There is reason to believe that he

spared no house save that of the consul, in which we happened to be

lodging. Every imagination was overwrought, people of good sense being

affected as much as others. A disease of the brain seemed abroad, as

dangerous as that of madness; entire families abandoned their houses

and carried their pallets to the outskirts, there to pass the night.

Even then they complained of fresh insults, and the most sober retired

into the country. Citizens who were imbued with a sense of public

zeal decided that one essential detail had been missed, so far, in

the observance; from their point of view, the mass should have been

celebrated after and not before removing the heart from the body. With

this precaution it was pretended that the devil would have been taken

by surprise and would not have attempted to return; but unfortunately

they began with the mass, which gave him time to depart and he was able

to come back at his ease. These considerations left matters in their

original state of difficulty. There were meetings and still meetings,

both evening and morning; there were processions for three days and

three nights; fasts were imposed on the priests; houses were visited

by them, _aspergillus_ in hand; there was sprinkling with holy water

and doors were purified. Even the mouth of the miserable vampire was

filled with holy water.

“In the midst of such prepossessions, our course was to say nothing;

we should have been regarded as jesters and infidels. What however

was to be done to help the inhabitants? Every morning brought a fresh

scene in the comedy by the recital of new pranks of this nightbird,

who was even accused of committing the most abominable crimes. We

did, however, represent more than once to the governor of the town

that in our own country, under such circumstances, a watch would

not fail to be set, to take note of what passed. The precaution was

ultimately taken and led to the arrest of some vagabonds who were

undoubtedly at the bottom of the disorder. It was, of course, relaxed

too soon, and two days subsequently, to atone for the fast which the

said wastrels had undergone in prison, they betook themselves to

emptying the wine jars in some of the abandoned houses. After driving

in numberless drawn swords over the grave of the body, people now

returned to their prayers, combined with disinterring the corpse as

caprice led them, when an Albanian, who happened to be there, pointed

out in an authoritative tone that it was highly ridiculous, in a case

of the kind, to make use of the swords of Christians; these being

cross-handled effectually prevented the devil from leaving the body

and his recommendation was therefore to substitute Turkish sabres.

The advice of this expert came to nothing; the vampire was not more

tractable, and they knew not what saint to invoke, when all with one

voice, as if a word of command had been given, cried out through the

whole town that the vampire must be burned completely, after which they

might defy the devil, and that certainly it was better to have recourse

to this extremity rather than that the island should be deserted. As a

fact, certain families were preparing already for their departure.

“The vampire was therefore carried, by order of the governors, to

the extremity of the isle of St. George, where a great pyre had been

prepared with tar, lest even dry wood should not kindle quickly enough.

What remained of the miserable body was cast therein and speedily

consumed. This was on the first day of January, 1701. Henceforth there

were no complaints against the vampire; it was agreed that the devil

had that time been overreached and songs were made to deride him.”

It is to be observed in this account of Tournefort that he admits

the reality of the visions which paralysed the whole people. He

does not deny the flexibility or warmth of the corpse but seeks to

explain these with the praiseworthy object of reassuring those who

were concerned. He does not mention the decomposition of the body

but only its evil smell, which is not less characteristic of vampire

corpses than of venomous toadstools. Finally he allows that once the

body was burned, the wonders and visions ceased. But we have wandered

far from the subject of Fantasiasts in Magic; let us return to them

and, forgetting the problem of vampires, a word shall be said on

the cartomancist, Edmond. He is the pet sorcerer of ladies in the

Quartier de Notre Dame de Lorette and he occupies, in the Rue Fontaine

St. Georges, No. 30, a dainty little room, where the vestibule is

always full of clients, including those occasionally of the male sex.

Edmond is a man of tall stature, somewhat stout, of pale complexion,

open countenance and sympathetic voice. He appears to believe in

his own art and carries on conscientiously the methods of people

like Etteilla and Mdlle. Lenormand. We have questioned him as to his

processes, and he has answered frankly and civilly that he has been

passionately devoted to the occult sciences from childhood; that he

began divination early; that he is unacquainted with the philosophical

secrets of transcendental knowledge; and that the keys of the Kabalah

of Solomon are not in his possession. He states, however, that he is

highly sensitive and that the mere proximity of his clients impresses

him so keenly that in a way he feels their destiny. “I seem to hear

singular noises and clankings of chains about those who are doomed

to the scaffold, cries and moans round those who will die violently.

Supernatural odours assail and almost stifle me. One day, in the

presence of a veiled lady, clothed in black, I began to tremble at

an odour of straw and blood. ‘Madam,’ I cried, ‘pray leave here, for

you are surrounded by an atmosphere of murder and prison.’ ‘You say

truly,’ she answered, unveiling her pale face, ‘I have been accused of

infanticide and have just come out of prison. Since you have seen the

past, tell me also the future.’”

One of our friends and disciples in Kabalism, utterly unknown to

Edmond, went on a day to consult him and having paid in advance he

awaited the oracles, when Edmond, rising respectfully, begged him to

take back his money. “I have nothing to tell you,” he explained; “your

destiny is closed against me by the key of occultism; whatsoever I

might say you would know already as well as myself.” He shewed him out

with many bows.

Edmond is also occupied with judicial astrology; he erects horoscopes

and judges nativities at very moderate prices. In a word he deals

with everything belonging to his business, which is otherwise a

wearisome and disenchanting thing. With how many disordered brains and

diseased hearts must he be continually in relation, and the imbecile

requirements of some, the unjust reproaches of others, the tiring

confidences, the demands for philtres and spells, the obsessions of

fools, all combine in making him gain his income hardly. To sum up,

Edmond is a somnambulist like Alexis; he is self-magnetised by his

cards and by the diabolical figures which adorn them; he wears black

and gives his consultations in a black cabinet; in a word, he is the

prophet of mystery.

CHAPTER V

SOME PRIVATE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WRITER

On a certain morning in 1839 the author of this book had a visit

from Alphonse Esquiros, who said: “Let us pay our respects to the

Mapah.”[365] The natural question arose: “But in any case, who or what

is the Mapah?” ... “He is a god,” was the answer.... “Many thanks,”

said the author, “but I pay my devotions only to gods unseen.”... “Come

notwithstanding; he is the most eloquent, most radiant and magnificent

fool in the visible order of things.... “My friend, I am in terror of

fools: their complaint is contagious.” ... “Granted, _dilectissime_,

and yet I am calling on you.”... “Admitted, and things being so, we

will pay our respects to the Mapah.”

In an appalling garret there was a bearded man of majestic demeanour

who invariably wore over his clothes the tattered cloak of a woman,

and had in consequence rather the air of a destitute dervish. He was

surrounded by several men, bearded and ecstatic like himself, and in

addition to these there was a woman with motionless features, who

seemed like an entranced somnambulist. The prophet’s manner was

abrupt and yet sympathetic; he had hallucinated eyes and an infectious

quality of eloquence. He spoke with emphasis, warmed to his subject

quickly, chafed and fumed till a white froth gathered on his lips.

Abbé Lamennais was once termed “old ninety-three fulfilling its

Easter duties.” The catch phrase is more suited to the Mapah and his

mysticism, as will be shewn by a fragment from one of his lyrical

enthusiasms.

“Transgression was inevitable for man: it was decreed by his destiny,

that he might be the instrument of his own reconstruction, that the

greatness and majesty of God might be manifested in the majesty and

greatness of human toil, passing through its successive phases of

light and darkness. But primitive unity was destroyed by the Fall;

suffering entered the world in the guise of the serpent, and the Tree

of Life became the Tree of Death. Things being at this pass, God said

to the woman: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,’ yet added

afterwards: ‘Thou shalt crush the serpent’s head.’ And the first slave

was a woman; she accepted her divine mission, and the pains of travail

began. From the first hour of the Fall, the task of humanity has been,

for this reason, a great and terrible task of initiation. For this also

the terms of that initiation are all equally sacred in the eyes of God.

Their _Alpha_ is our common mother Eve, while the _Omega_ is Liberty,

who is our common mother also.

“I beheld a vast ship, having a gigantic mast with its crow’s nest

at the top; one of the ship’s extremities looked to the West, the

other to the East. On the western side it was poised upon the cloudy

summits of three mountains, their bases lost in a raging sea. On the

flank of each mountain was inscribed its ominous name. The first was

Golgotha, the second Mont St. Jean, but the third was St. Helena. In

the middle way of the mast, on the western side, there was erected a

five-armed cross,[366] on which a woman was expiring. The inscription

above her head was: FRANCE: JUNE 18, 1815: GOOD FRIDAY. The five arms

of the cross represented the five divisions of the globe; the woman’s

head rested on Europe and was encircled by a cloud. But at the end

of the ship to the East there was no darkness; and the keel paused

at the threshold of the city of God, by the summit of a triumphal

arch in the full rays of the sun. Here the woman reappeared, but this

time transfigured and glorious. She rolled away the stone from the

sepulchre, and on that stone was written: RESTORATION, days of the

tomb: July 29, 1830: EASTER.”

It will be seen that the Mapah was a successor of Catherine Théot and

Dom Gerle; and yet—such is the strange sympathy between follies—he

told us one day confidentially that he was Louis XVII returned to

earth for a work of regeneration, while the woman who shared his

life was Marie Antoinette of France. He explained further that his

revolutionary theories were the last word of the violent pretensions

of Cain, destined as such to insure, by a fatal reaction, the victory

of the just Abel. Now Esquiros and I visited the Mapah to enjoy his

extravagances, but our imaginations were overcome by his eloquence. We

were two college friends, like Louis Lambert and Balzac, and we had

nourished dreams in common concerning impossible renunciations and

unheard of heroisms. After visiting Ganneau, for this was the name of

the Mapah, we took it into our heads that it would be a great thing

to communicate the last word of revolution to the world and to seal

the abyss of anarchy, like Curtius, by casting ourselves therein. Our

students’ extravagance gave birth to the _Gospel of the People_ and the

_Bible of Liberty_, follies for which Esquiros and his ill-starred

friend paid but too dearly. Hereof is the danger of enthusiastic

manias; they are catching; one does not approach with impunity the edge

of the precipice of madness.

The incident which now follows is a different and more terrible

fatality. A nervous and delicate young man named Sobrier was numbered

among the Mapah’s disciples; he lost his head completely and believed

himself predestined to save the world by provoking the supreme

crisis of an universal revolution. The days of 1848 drew towards the

threshold. A commotion had led to some change in the ministry, but

the episode seemed closed. Paris had an air of contentment and the

boulevards were illuminated. Suddenly a young man appeared in the

populous streets of the Quartier Saint-Martin. He was preceded by two

street Arabs, one bearing a torch and the other beating to arms. A

large crowd gathered; the young man got upon a post and harangued the

people. His words were incoherent and incendiary, but the gist was to

proceed to the Boulevard des Capucines and acquaint the ministry with

the will of the people. The demoniac repeated the same harangue at

every corner of the streets and presently he was marching at the head

of a great concourse, a pistol in each hand, still heralded by torch

and tambour. The frequenters of the boulevards joined out of mere

curiosity, and subsequently it was a crowd no longer but the massed

populace surging through the Boulevard des Italiens. In the midst of

this the young man and his street Arabs disappeared, but before the

Hotel des Capucines a pistol-shot was fired upon the people. This shot

was the revolution, and it was fired by a fool.

Throughout that night two carts loaded with corpses perambulated the

streets by torchlight; on the morrow all Paris was barricaded, and

Sobrier was reported at home in a state of unconsciousness. It was he

who, without knowing what he did, had for a moment shaken the world.

Ganneau and Sobrier are dead and no harm is done them by reciting this

terrible instance of the magnetism of enthusiasts and the fatalities

which may be entailed by the nervous diseases of certain persons. The

story is drawn from a reliable source and its revelations may sooth

the conscience of that Belisarius of poetry who is the author of the

_History of the Girondins_.

The magnetic phenomena produced by Ganneau continued even after his

death. His widow, a woman of no education and little intelligence,

the daughter of an honest peasant of Auvergne, remained in the static

somnambulism in which she had been placed by her husband.[367] Like

the child which assumes the form of its mother’s imagination, she has

become a living image of Marie Antoinette, when a prisoner at the

Conciergerie. Her manners are those of a queen who is widowed and

desolate for ever; a complaint sometimes escapes her, as though she

were weary of her dream, but she is sovereignly indignant with any

who seek to awake her. For the rest, she has no symptom of mental

alienation; her outward conduct is reasonable, her life perfectly

honourable and regular. Nothing is more pathetic, to our thinking, than

this persistent obsession of a being fondly loved who lives again in

a conjugal hallucination. Had Artemis existed literally it would be

permissible to believe that Mausol was also a powerful mesmerist, and

that he had gained and fixed for ever the affections of an extremely

sensitive woman, outside all limits of free will and reason.

CHAPTER VI

THE OCCULT SCIENCES

The secret of the occult sciences is that of Nature herself; it is the

secret of the generation of angels and worlds; it is that of God’s

own omnipotence. “Ye shall be as the Elohim, knowing good and evil.”

So testified the serpent of Genesis, and so did the Tree of Knowledge

become the Tree of Death. For six thousand years the martyrs of science

have toiled and perished at the foot of this Tree, so that it may

become once more the Tree of Life.

That Absolute which is sought by the foolish and found only by

the wise is the truth, the reality and the reason of universal

equilibrium. Such equilibrium is the harmony which proceeds from the

analogy of opposites. Humanity has sought so far to balance itself as

if on one leg—now on one and now again on the other. Civilisations

have sprung up and have fallen, through the anarchic alienation of

despotism, or alternatively through the despotic anarchy of revolt.

Here superstitious enthusiasms and there the pitiful schemes of

materialistic instinct have misguided the nations; but at last it

is God Himself Who impels the world towards believing reason and

reasonable beliefs. We have had enough and to spare of the prophets

apart from philosophy and the philosophers destitute of religion. Blind

believers and sceptics are on a par with one another, and both are

equally remote from eternal salvation.

In the chaos of universal doubt, and amidst the conflict of science

and faith, the great men and the seers figure as sickly artists,

seeking the ideal beauty at the risk of their reason and their life.

Look at them now even—these sublime children. They are whimsical and

nervous, like women; a shadow maims them; reason injures; they are

unjust even to each other; and though assuredly on the quest of crowns,

in their fantastic excesses they are the first to be guilty of that

which Pythagoras forbids in one of his admirable symbols; they are the

first to revile crowns and to trample them under their feet. They are

fanatics of glory; but the good God has bound them by the chains of

opinion, so that they may not be openly dangerous.

Genius is judged by the tribunal of mediocrity, and this judgment

is without appeal, because, being the light of the world, genius is

accounted as a thing that is null and dead whenever it ceases to

enlighten. The ecstasy of the poet is controlled by the indifference of

the prosaic multitude, and every enthusiast who is rejected by general

good sense is a fool and not a genius. Do not count the great artists

as bondsmen of the ignorant crowd, for it is the crowd which imparts to

their talent the balance of reason.

Light is the equilibrium between shadow and brightness. Motion is the

equilibrium between inertia and activity. Authority is the equilibrium

between liberty and power. Wisdom is equilibrium in thought; virtue is

equilibrium in the affections; beauty is equilibrium in form. Outlines

that are lovely are true outlines, and the magnificence of Nature is an

algebra of graces and splendours. Whatsoever is true is beautiful; all

that is beautiful should be true. Heaven and hell are the equilibrium

of moral life; good and evil are the equilibrium of liberty.

The Great Work is the attainment of that middle point in which

equilibrating force abides. Furthermore, the reactions of equilibrated

force do everywhere conserve universal life by the perpetual motion

of birth and death. It is for this reason that the philosophers have

compared their gold to the sun. For the same reason that same gold

cures all diseases of the soul and communicates immortality. Those

who have found this middle point are true and wonder-working adepts

of science and reason. They are masters of the wealth of worlds,

confidants and friends of the princes of heaven itself, and Nature

obeys them because they will what is willed by the law which is the

motive power of Nature. It is this which the Saviour of the world spoke

of as the Kingdom of Heaven; this also is the _Sanctum Regnum_ of the

Holy Kabalah. It is the Crown and Ring of Solomon; it is the Sceptre of

Joseph which the stars obeyed in heaven and the harvests on earth.

We have discovered this secret of omnipotence; it is not for sale

in the market; but if God had commanded us to set a price thereon,

we question whether the whole fortune of the buyers would seem its

equivalent. Not for ourselves but for them, we should demand in

addition their undivided soul and their entire life.

[Illustration: APOCALYPTIC KEY]

CHAPTER VII

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

It remains for us to summarise and conclude. To summarise the history

of a science is to summarise the science itself, and we are therefore

to recapitulate the great principles of initiation, as preserved and

transmitted through all the ages. Magical science is the absolute

science of equilibrium. It is essentially religious; it presided at the

formation of dogmas in the antique world and has been thus the nursing

mother of all civilisations. O chaste and mysterious mother who, in

giving milk of poetry and inspiration to the dawning generations,

didst cover thy face and breast. Before all things she directs us

to believe in God and to adore without seeking to define Him, since

a God in definition is to some extent a finite God. And after Deity

she points to eternal mathematics and equilibrated forces as to the

sovereign principles of things. It is said in the Bible that God has

ordered all things according to weight, number and measure. _Omnia in

pondere et numero et mensura disposuit Deus._ Weight is equilibrium,

number is quantity, measure is proportion—these three, and these

are the eternal or divine basis of the science of Nature. Here now

is the formula of equilibrium: Harmony results from the analogy of

contraries. Number is the scale of analogies, the proportion of which

is measure. The entire occult philosophy of the _Zohar_ might be termed

the science of equilibrium.[368] The key of numbers is found in the

_Sepher Yetzirah_; their generation is analogous to the affiliation

of ideas and the production of forms. On this account the illuminated

hierophants of the Kabalah combined the hieroglyphic signs of numbers,

ideas and forms in their sacred alphabet. The combinations of this

alphabet give equations of ideas, and comprise by way of indication

all possible combinations in natural forms. According to Genesis, God

made man in His image, but as man is the living synthesis of creation,

it follows that creation itself is made in the likeness of God. There

are three things in the universe—the Spirit, the plastic mediator and

matter. The ancients assigned to spirit, as its immediate instrument,

that igneous fluid to which they gave the generic name of Sulphur; to

the plastic mediator, they assigned the name of Mercury, because of

the symbolism represented by the Caduceus; to matter, they gave the

name of Salt, because of the fixed salt which remains after combustion,

resisting the further action of fire. Sulphur was compared with the

Father on account of the generative action of fire; Mercury with the

Mother, because of its power of attraction and reproduction; and

Salt, in fine, was the Child, or that substance which is subjected to

education by Nature. For them also the creative substance was one, and

the name which they gave it was Light. Positive or igneous light was

volatile Sulphur; light in the negative state, or made visible by the

vibrations of fire, was the fluidic or ethereal Mercury; and light

neutralised, or shadow, the coagulated or fixed composite under the

form of earth, was termed Salt.

After such manner did Hermes Trismegistus formulate his symbol, which

is called the Emerald Tablet: “That which is above is like that which

is below, and that which is below is like that which is above, for the

operations of the wonders of the one thing.”[369] This means that the

universal movement is produced by the analogies of fixed and volatile,

the volatile tending to be fixed and the fixed to become volatile, thus

producing a continual exchange between the modes of the one substance

and, from the fact of the exchange, the combinations of universal form

in everlasting renewal.

The fire is Osiris, or the sun; the light is Isis, or the moon;

they are the father and mother of that grand Telesma which is the

universal substance—not that they are its creators but rather its

generating powers, the combined effort of which produces the fixed

or earth, whence Hermes says that this force has reached its plenary

manifestation when earth has been formed therefrom. Osiris is not

therefore God, even for the great hierophants of the Egyptian

sanctuary; he is the igneous or luminous shadow of the intellectual

principle of life, and hence in the supreme moment of initiation a

flying voice whispered in the ear of the adept that dubious revelation:

“Osiris is a black god.” Woe to the recipient whose understanding had

not been raised by faith above the purely physical symbols of Egyptian

revelation. Such words would become for him a formula of atheism, and

his mind would be struck with blindness. But for the believer, more

exalted in intelligence, those same words sounded like an earnest of

the most sublime hopes. It was as if the initiator said to him: “My

child, you mistake a lamp for the sun, but that lamp is only a star of

night. Still, the true sun exists; leave therefore the night and seek

the day.”

That which the ancients understood by the four elements in no wise

signified simple bodies, but rather the four elementary manifestations

of the one substance. These modes were represented by the sphinx,

its wings corresponding to air, the woman’s breasts to water, the

body of the bull to earth, and the lion’s claws to fire. The one

substance, thrice threefold in essential mode and tetradic in the form

of manifestation—such is the secret of the three pyramids, triangular

in respect of their elevation, square at the base and guarded by

the sphinx. In raising these monuments Egypt attempted to erect the

Herculean pillars of universal science. Sands have accumulated,

centuries have passed, but the pyramids in their eternal greatness

still propound to the nations that enigma of which the solution is

lost. As to the sphinx, it seems to have sunk in the dust of ages. The

great empires of Daniel have reigned by turn upon the earth and have

gone down into the tomb, overwhelmed by their own weight. Conquests on

the field of battle, monuments of labour, results of human passions—all

are engulphed with the symbolic body of the sphinx; now only the human

head rises over the desert sands as if looking for the universal empire

of thought.

Divine or die—such was the terrible dilemma proposed by the sphinx

to the Candidates for Theban royalty. The reason is that the secrets

of science are actually those of life; the alternatives are to reign

or to serve, to be or not to be. The natural forces will break us if

we do not put them to use for the conquest of the world. There is no

mean between the height of kinghood and the abyss of the victim state,

unless we are content to be counted among those who are nothing because

they ask not why or what they are.

The composite form of the sphinx also represents by hieroglyphical

analogy the four properties of the universal agent, that is to say,

the Astral Light—dissolving, coagulating, heating and cooling. These

four properties, directed by the will of man, can modify all phases of

Nature, producing life or death, health or disease, love or hatred,

wealth even or poverty, in accordance with the given impulsion.

They can place all the reflections of the light at the service of

imagination; they are the paradoxical solution of the wildest

questions which can be set for Transcendental Magic. Specimens of these

paradoxical questions shall here follow, together with the answers

thereto: (1) Is it possible to escape death? (2) Is there such a thing

as the Philosophical Stone, and what must be done to find it? (3) Is

it possible to be served by spirits? (4) What is meant by the Key,

Ring and Seal of Solomon? (5) Is it possible to predict the future by

reliable calculations? (6) Can good or evil be worked at will by means

of magical power? (7) What must be done to become a true magician? (8)

What are the precise forces put in operation by Black Magic?

We term these questions paradoxical because they are outside all that

is understood as science, while at the same time they seem negatived

by faith. If propounded by an uninitiated person, they are merely

foolhardy, while their complete solution, if given by an adept, would

seem like a sacrilege. God and Nature alike have closed the Sanctuary

of Transcendent Science and this in such a manner that, beyond a

certain limit, he who knows would speak to no purpose, because he

would not be understood. The revelation of the Great Magical Secret is

therefore happily impossible. The replies which we are about to give

will be the last possible expression of the word in Magic, and they

will be put in all clearness, but we do not guarantee to make them

comprehensible to our readers.

In respect of the first and second, it is possible to escape death

after two manners—in time and in eternity. We escape it in time by the

cure of diseases and by avoiding the infirmities of old age; we escape

it in respect of eternity by perpetuating in memory personal identity

amidst the transformations of existence. Let it be certified (1) that

the life resulting from motion can only be maintained by the succession

and the perfecting of forms; (2) that the science of perpetual motion

is the science of life; (3) that the purpose of this science is the

correct apprehension of equilibrated influences; (4) that all renewal

operates by destruction, each generation therefore involving a death

and each death a generation. Let us now further certify, with the

ancient sages, that the universal principle of life is a substantial

movement or a substance which is eternally and essentially moved and

mover, invisible and impalpable, in a volatile state and manifesting

materially when it becomes fixed by the phenomena of polarisation. This

substance is indefectible, incorruptible and consequently immortal;

but its manifestations in the world of form are subject to eternal

mutation by the perpetuity of movement. Thus all dies because all

lives, and if it were possible to make any form eternal, then motion

would be arrested and the only real death would be thus created. To

imprison a soul for ever in a mummified human body, such would be

the terrible solution of that magical paradox concerning pretended

immortality in the same body and on the same earth. All is regenerated

by the universal dissolvant of the first substance. The force of this

dissolvant is concentrated in the quintessence—that is to say, at the

equilibrating centre of a dual polarity. The four elements of the

ancients are the four forces of the universal magnet, represented by

the figure of a cross, which cross revolves indefinitely about its

own centre and so propounds the enigma respecting the quadrature of

the circle. The Creative Word speaks from the middle of the cross

and cries: “It is finished.” It is in the exact proportion of the

four elementary forms that we must seek the Universal Medicine of

bodies, even as the Medicine of the Soul is offered by religion in

Him Who gives Himself eternally on the cross for the salvation of the

world. The magnetic state and polarisation of the heavenly bodies

results from their equilibrated gravitation about suns, which are the

common reservoirs of their electro-magnetism. The vibration of the

quintessence about common reservoirs manifests by light, and the

polarisation of light is revealed by colours. White is the colour of

the quintessence; this colour condenses towards its negative pole

as blue and becomes fixed as black; while it condenses towards its

positive pole as yellow and becomes fixed as red. Thus centrifugal life

proceeds always from black to red, passing by white, and centripetal

life returns from red to black, following the same path. The four

intermediates or mixed hues produce with the three primary colours what

are called the seven colours of the prism and the solar spectrum. These

seven colours form seven atmospheres or seven luminous zones round each

sun, and the planet which is dominant in each zone is magnetised in a

manner analogous to the colour of its atmosphere. In the depths of the

earth, metals are formed like planets in the sky, by the particular

influences of a latent light which decomposes when traversing certain

regions. To take possession of a subject in which the metallic light

is latent, before it becomes specialised, and drive it to the extreme

positive pole, that is to say, to the live red, by the help of a fire

derived from the light itself—such is the secret in full of the Great

Work. It will be understood that this positive light at its extreme

degree of condensation is life itself in a fixed state, serving as a

universal dissolvant and as a medicine for all Kingdoms of Nature.

But to extract from marcassite, stibium and philosophical arsenic the

living and bisexual metallic sperm, we must have a prime dissolvant

which is a mineral saline menstruum, and there must be, moreover, the

concurrence of magnetism and electricity. The rest proceeds of itself

in a single vessel, being the athanor, and by the graduated fire of one

lamp. The adepts say that it is a work of women and children.

The heat, light, electricity and magnetism of modern chemists and

physicists were for the ancients elementary phenomenal manifestations

of one substance, called _Aour_, _Od_ and _Ob_—that is to say, אוכ

אוד אוד _Od_ is the active, _Ob_ the passive, and _Aour_ is the name

of the bisexual and equilibrated composite which is signified when

the Hermetic philosophers speak of gold. Vulgar gold is metalised

_Aour_ and philosophical gold is the same _Aour_ in the state of a

soluble gem. Theoretically, according to the transcendental science

of antiquity, the Philosophical Stone which heals all diseases

and accomplishes the transmutation of metals exists therefore

incontestably. Does it, however, or can it, exist in fact? If we answer

this in the affirmative, no one will believe, and the simple statement

shall stand as a paradoxical solution of the paradoxes expressed by

the two first questions, without dealing with the problem as to what

must be done in order to find the Philosophical Stone. M. de la Palisse

would reply in our place that in order to find one must of necessity

seek, unless indeed discovery is a matter of chance. Enough has been

said to direct and facilitate research.

The third and fourth questions concern the ministry of spirits and the

Key, Seal and Ring of Solomon. When the Saviour of the world, at His

temptation in the desert, overcame the three lusts which keep the soul

in bondage—that is to say, the lust of the appetites, lust of ambition

and lust of greed—it is written that the angels came down to serve Him.

The explanation is that spirits are subject to the sovereign spirit,

and he is the sovereign spirit who binds the rebellious turbulence and

unlawful propensities of the flesh. It should be noted at the same time

that to reverse the natural order of communication subsisting between

things which are, is opposed to the law of Providence. We do not find

that the Saviour of the world and his Apostles evoked the souls of the

dead. The immortality of the soul, being one of the most consoling

dogmas of religion, is reserved for the aspirations of faith and will

never be proved by facts accessible to the criticism of science. Loss

of reason, or its distraction at the very least, is hence and will

be always the penalty of those who dare to pry into the other life

with the eyes of this world only. Hence also magical traditions always

represent the spirits of the dead as responding to evocations with sad

and angry countenances. They complain of being troubled in their repose

and they proffer only reproaches and menaces. The Keys of Solomon are

religious and rational forces expressed by signs, and their use is not

so much in the evocation of spirits as to shield us from aberration in

experiences relative to the occult sciences. The Seal is the synthesis

of the Keys and the Ring indicates its use. The Ring of Solomon is at

once round and square, and it represents the mystery of the quadrature

of the circle. It is composed of seven squares so arranged that they

form a circle. Their bezels are round and square, one being of gold and

the other of silver. The Ring should be a filagree of the seven metals.

In the silver setting a white stone is placed and in the gold one

there is a red stone. The white stone bears the sign of the Macrocosm,

while the Microcosm is on the red stone. When the Ring is worn upon

the finger, one of the stones should be turned inward and the other

outward, accordingly as it is desired to command spirits of light or

darkness. The plenary powers of this Ring can be accounted for in a

few words. The will is omnipotent when armed with the living forces of

Nature. Thought is idle and dead until it manifests by word or sign;

it can therefore neither spur nor direct will. The sign, being the

indispensable form of thought, is the necessary instrument of will. The

more perfect the sign the more powerfully is the thought formulated,

and the will is consequently directed with more force. Blind faith

moves mountains, and what therefore would be possible to faith if

enlightened by complete and indubitable science? If the soul could

concentrate its plenary understanding and energy in the utterance of a

single word, would not that word be all-powerful? The Ring of Solomon,

with its double seal, typifies all science and faith of the Magi

expressed by one sign. It symbolises the powers of heaven and earth and

the sacred laws which rule them, whether in the celestial Macrocosm

or in the Microcosm of man. It is the talisman of talismans and the

pantacle which is above pantacles. As a sign of life it is omnipotent,

but it is without efficacy as a dead sign: intelligence and faith, the

intelligence of Nature and faith in its eternally Active Cause—of such

is the life of signs.

The profound study of natural mysteries may alienate the casual

observer from God because mental fatigue paralyses the aspirations

of the heart. It is in this sense that the occult sciences may be

dangerous and even fatal for certain personalities. Mathematical

exactitude, the absolute rigour of natural laws, their harmony and

simplicity, suggest to many an inevitable, eternal, inexorable

mechanism, and for such as these Providence recedes behind the iron

wheels of a clock in perpetual motion. They fail to reflect on the

indubitable fact of freedom and autocracy in thinking beings. A man

disposes at his will of creatures organised like himself; he can

snare birds in the air, fish in the water and wild beasts in the

forest; he can cut down or burn entire forests; he can mine and blast

rocks, or even mountains; he can modify all forms about him; and yet,

notwithstanding the supreme analogies of Nature, he refuses to believe

that other intelligent beings might at their will disintegrate and

consume worlds, extinguish suns by a breath or reduce them to starry

dust—beings so great that they are too much for our faculty of sight,

even as we, in our turn, are probably inappreciable to the eye of the

mite or worm. And if such beings exist without the universe being

destroyed a thousand times over, must we not admit that they are

under obedience to a supreme will, a wise and omnipotent force, which

forbids them to annihilate worlds, even as it forbids us to destroy the

swallow’s nest and the chrysalis of the butterfly? For the Magus who

is conscious of this power in the deep places of his nature and who

discerns in universal law the instruments of eternal justice, the Seal

of Solomon, his Keys and his Ring are tokens of supreme royalty.

The next questions concern the prediction of things to come by means

of reliable calculations and the working of good or evil by magical

influence. The answers are in this wise. Two chess players of equal

skill being seated at a table and having opened the game, which of

them will win? Assuredly the more watchful of the two. If I knew the

preoccupations of both, I could foresee certainly the result of their

match. To foresee is to win at chess, and it is the same in the game

of life. In life nothing comes by chance; chance is the unforeseen,

but that which the ignorant fail to perceive in advance has been

accounted for already by the sage. All events, like all forms, result

either from a conflict or from a balancing of forces, which forces

can be represented by numbers. The future may thus be determined in

advance by calculation. Every extreme action is counterpoised by an

equivalent reaction. So laughter presages tears, and for this reason

our Saviour said: “Blessed are those who mourn.” He said also, and

again for the same reason: “He that exalteth himself shall be abased,

and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” To-day Nebuchadnezzar

is a god, to-morrow he will be changed into a beast. To-day Alexander

makes his triumphal entry into Babylon and has incense offered to him

on all the altars; but to-morrow he will die in a state of degraded

drunkenness. The future is in the past, and the past is also in the

future. When genius foresees, it remembers. Effects are linked together

so inevitably and so exactly to their causes, and become on their own

part the causes for further effects in such conformity with the first

as regards their manner of production, that a single fact may reveal

to a seer an entire succession of mysteries. The coming of Christ

makes that of Anti-Christ a certainty; but the advent of Anti-Christ

will precede the triumph of the Holy Spirit. The money-seeking epoch

in which we now live is the precursor of more lavish charities and of

greater good works than the world has yet known.

But it must be understood that the will of man modifies blind causes

and that a single impetus started by him may change the equilibrium

of an entire world. If such is man’s power in the world under his

dominion, what must be that of the intelligences which rule the suns?

The least of the _Egregores_, with a breath, and by dilating suddenly

the latent caloric of our earth, might shatter and reduce it into a

cloud of dust. Man also can dissipate by a breath all the happiness of

one of his kind. Human beings are magnetised like worlds; like suns,

they irradiate their particular light; some are more absorbent, some

give forth more freely. No one is isolated in this world; each is a

fatality or a providence. Augustus and Cinna encounter; both are proud

and implacable; and hereof is fatality. That fatality makes Cinna

seek to slay Augustus, who is impelled as fatally to punish him; but

he elects to forgive. Here fatality is changed into providence, and

the epoch of Augustus, inaugurated by this sublime beneficence, was

worthy to witness the birth of Him Who said: “Forgive your enemies.” By

extending his mercy to Cinna, Augustus atoned for all the revenge of

Octavius. So long as man is subject to the dictates of fatality, he is

profane—that is to say, a man who must be excluded from the sanctuary

of knowledge, because in his hands knowledge would become a terrible

instrument of destruction. On the contrary, the man who is free, who

governs by understanding the blind instincts of life, is essentially a

preserver and repairer, for Nature is the domain of his power and the

temple of his immortality. When the uninitiated seeks to do good the

result is evil. On the other hand, the true initiate can never will to

do evil; if he strikes it is to chastise and to cure. The breath of the

uninitiated is deadly, that of the initiate is life-giving. He who is

profane suffers that others may suffer also, but the initiate endures

in order that others may be spared. He who is profane steeps his arrows

in his own blood and poisons them; he who is initiated cures the most

cruel wounds by a single drop of his blood.

The last questions are what must be done to become a true magician and

in what precisely do the powers of Black Magic consist? Now, he who

disposes of the secret forces of Nature and yet does not risk being

crushed by them—he is a true magician. He is known by his works and

by his end, which is always a great sacrifice. Zoroaster created the

primitive doctrines and civilisations of the East, after which he

vanished in a tempest like Œdipus. Orpheus gave poetry to Greece and

with that poetry the beauty of all high things; he then perished in an

orgie in which he refused to join. All his virtues notwithstanding,

Julian was only an initiate of Black Magic; his death was that of a

victim and not of a martyr; it was an annihilation and a defeat: he

failed to understand his epoch. Though acquainted with the Doctrine of

Transcendental Magic, he misapplied the Ritual. Apollonius of Tyana and

Synesius were simply wonderful philosophers; they cultivated the true

science but did nothing for posterity. At their period the Magi of the

Gospel reigned in the three parts of the known world, and the oracles

were silenced by the cries of the babe of Bethlehem. The King of Kings,

the Magus of all Magi, had come into the world and the ritual-worships,

the laws, the empires, all were changed. There is a void in the world

of marvels between Jesus Christ and Napoleon. That incarnate word

of battle, that armed Messiah who was the bearer of the last name,

came blindly and unconsciously to complete the Christian message.

This revelation had so far taught us how to die, but the Napoleonic

civilisation has shewn us how to conquer. The two messages—sacrifice

and victory, how to suffer, to die, to strive and to overcome—contrary

as they are in appearance—comprise in their union the great secret of

honour. Cross of the Saviour and cross of valour, you are incomplete

when apart from one another, for he only knows how to conquer who has

learned self-devotion, even to death, and how can this be attained

except by belief in eternal life? Though he died in appearance,

Napoleon is destined to return in the person of one who will realise

his spirit. Solomon and Charlemagne will return also in the person of

a single monarch; and then St. John the Evangelist, who according to

tradition shall be reborn at the end of time, will appear as sovereign

pontiff, the apostle of understanding and of love. The combination of

these two rulers, announced by all the prophets, will bring about the

wonder of the world’s regeneration. The science of the true magician

will be then at its zenith, for so far our workers of miracles have

been for the most part sorcerers and bondsmen—that is to say, the blind

instruments of chance. Now, the masters whom fatality casts upon the

world are soon overthrown thereby, and those who conquer in the name of

their passions shall fall the prey of those passions. When Prometheus

in his jealousy of Jupiter stole the thunderbolts of the god, he sought

to create an immortal eagle, but what he made and immortalised was

a vulture. We hear in another fable of that impious king Ixion, who

would have ravished the queen of heaven, but that which he received

in his arms was a faithless cloud, and he was bound by fiery serpents

to the inexorable wheel of destiny. These profound allegories are a

warning to false adepts, profaners of Magic Science and partisans of

Black Magic. The power of Black Magic is a contagion of vertigo and an

epidemic of unreason. The fatality of passion is like a fiery serpent

which twists and writhes about the world devouring the souls therein.

But intelligence—peaceable, smiling and full of love—represented by the

Mother of God, sets her foot upon its head. Fatality consumes itself

and is that old serpent of Kronos eternally devouring its tail. Rather

there are two hostile serpents striving one with another, until such

time as harmony intervenes to enchant them and make them interlace

peaceably around the caduceus of Hermes.

CONCLUSION

The most intemperate and absurd of all faiths is to believe that there

is no universal and absolute intelligent principle. It is a faith,

since it involves the negation of the indefinite and indefinable; it is

intemperate, for it is isolating and desolating; it is absurd, because

it supposes complete nothing in place of most complete perfection.

In Nature all is preserved by equilibrium and renewed by activity.

Equilibrium in order and activity signifies progress. The science of

equilibrium and movement is the absolute science of Nature. Man by its

aid can produce and direct natural phenomena as he rises ever towards

intelligence that is higher and more perfect than his own. Moral

equilibrium is the concurrence of science and faith, distinct in their

forces but joined in their action to endow the spirit and heart of man

with that rule which is reason. The science which denies faith is not

less unreasonable than the faith which denies science.

The object of faith cannot be defined and still less denied by science;

science, on the contrary, is itself called to substantiate the

rational basis of the hypotheses of faith. An isolated belief does not

constitute faith, because it lacks authority and hence moral guarantee;

it tends to fanaticism and superstition. Faith is the confidence which

is imparted by religion—that is to say, by the communion of belief.

True religion is constituted by universal suffrage. It is therefore

ever and essentially catholic—that is to say, universal. It is an

ideal dictatorship proclaimed generally in the revolutionary domain of

the unknown. When the law of equilibrium is understood more adequately

it will put an end to all the wars and revolutions of the old world.

There has been conflict between powers as between moral forces. The

papacy is blamed because it clings to temporal power, but what is

forgotten is the protestant tendency towards usurpation of spiritual

power. So long as the royalties put forward a pretension to be popes,

so long will the popes be driven, by the same law of equilibrium, to

the pretension of being kings. The whole world continues to dream of

unity in political power, but it does not understand the power resident

in equilibrated dualism. Confronted by the royal usurpers of spiritual

power, if the Pope were king no longer, he would be no longer anything.

In the temporal order he is subject, like others, to the prejudgments

of his time; he dare not therefore abdicate his temporal power, if

such abdication would be a scandal for a considerable part of the

world. When the sovereign opinion of the universe shall have proclaimed

publicly that a temporal prince cannot be Pope; when the Czar of all

the Russias and the King of Great Britain shall have renounced their

derisive priesthood; the Pope will know that which remains to be done

on his own part. Till then he must struggle, and if needs be must die,

to maintain the integrity of St. Peter’s patrimony.

The science of moral equilibrium will put an end to religious disputes

and philosophical blasphemies. Men of understanding will be also men of

religion when it comes to be recognised that religion does not impeach

the freedom of conscience, and when those who are truly religious shall

respect that science which recognises on its own part the existence

and necessity of an universal religion. Such science will flood the

philosophy of history with new light, and will furnish a synthetic

plan of all the natural sciences. The law of equilibrated forces

and of organic compensations will reveal a new chemistry and a new

physics. So from discovery to discovery we shall work back to Hermetic

philosophy, and shall be astonished at those prodigies of simplicity

and brilliance which have been for so long and long forgotten.

Philosophy in that day will be exact like mathematics, for true

ideas—being those which are identical with the living order and so

constituting the science of reality—shall combine with reason and

justice to furnish exact proportions and equations as rigorous as

numbers. Error thenceforth will be possible to ignorance alone, and

true knowledge will be free from self-deception. Aestheticism will be

subordinated no longer to caprices of taste which change as fashions

change. If the beautiful is the splendour of the true, we shall be

able to calculate without error the radiation of a light of which the

source shall be certainly known and determined with exact precision.

Poetry will abound no longer with foolish and subversive tendencies,

nor will poets be those dangerous enchanters whom Plato crowned with

flowers and banished from his republic; they will be rather magicians

of reason and gracious mathematicians of harmony. Does this mean that

the earth will become an Eldorado? No, for so long as humanity exists,

there will be children, meaning those who are weak, small, ignorant

and poor. But society will be governed by its true masters, and there

will be no irremediable evil in human life. It will be understood that

the divine miracles are those of eternal order, and the phantoms of

imagination will be worshipped no longer on the faith of unexplained

wonders. The abnormal character of certain phenomena is only a proof of

our ignorance in the presence of the laws of Nature. When God designs

to communicate the knowledge of Himself He enlightens our reason and

does not seek to confound or surprise it. In that day we shall know the

utmost limit of the power of man who is created in the image of God;

we shall realise that he also is a creator in his own sphere and that

his goodness, directed by Eternal Reason, is a lower providence for

beings which are placed by Nature under his influence and domination.

Religion will then and for evermore have nothing to fear from progress,

and will follow in the course thereof. The Blessed Vincent de Lerins, a

doctor justly venerated in the golden chain of catholicism, expresses

admirably this accord between progress and conservative authority.

According to him, true faith is worthy of our confidence only on

account of that invariable authority which safeguards its dogmas from

the caprices of human ignorance. “This notwithstanding,” adds Vincent

de Lerins, “such immobility is not death; on the contrary, it preserves

a germ of life for the future. That which we believe to-day without

understanding will be understood by the future, which will rejoice

in the knowledge thereof. _Posteritas intellectum gratuletur, quod

ante vetustas non intellectum venerabatur._ If therefore we are asked

whether all progress is excluded from the religion of Christ Jesus,

the answer is no, assuredly, for great is the progress expected. Who

indeed would be so jealous of humanity and at such enmity with God as

to wish to hinder progress? But the condition is that it should be

progress in reality, and not change of belief. Progress is the growth

and development of each thing according to its class and its nature.

Disorder is confusion and the medley of things and their nature. There

must be undoubtedly a difference in the degrees of intelligence,

science and wisdom, as much for men in general as for each man in

particular, according to the natural succession of epochs in the

Church, but so only that all be conserved and that dogma shall ever

cherish the same spirit and maintain the same definition. Religion

should develop souls successively, as life develops bodies which remain

the same through all the stages of their growth. How great is the

difference between the infantile flower of early years and the maturity

of age. The old notwithstanding are the same in respect of personality

as they were in boyhood; it is the exterior and the appearances which

have changed. The limbs of an infant in the cradle are exceedingly

frail, yet are they the same organs, having the same root principles,

as those of the man; and this must be so, for otherwise there is

deformity or death.

“The analogy obtains in the religion of Jesus Christ, for progress

therein is fulfilled according to the same conditions and following

similar laws. It grows with the years, with the years it increases

in strength, but nothing is added to the sum total of its being.

It was born complete and perfect in respect of proportions, and it

grows and extends without changing. Our fathers sowed the wheat, and

our nephews ought not to reap tares. The intermediate crops change

nothing in the nature of the grain; we leave it perforce as we take it.

Catholicism planted roses, and is it for us to substitute brambles? No,

unquestionably; otherwise, woe to us. The balm and cinnamon of this

spiritual paradise must not change in our hands to aconite and poison.

All whatsoever which in the Church, that lovely land of God, has been

sown by the fathers must be cultivated and nourished by the sons. This

only must grow, and this alone blossom; but it may increase, and it

should develop. As a fact, God permits that the dogmas of his heavenly

philosophy shall be studied, developed, polished in a certain sense;

but that which is forbidden is to change them, and that which is a

crime is to prune them or to mutilate. May new light come down on them

and the wise distinctions multiply, but let them ever preserve their

fulness, their integrity and their native quality.”

Let us therefore take it for granted that all conquests of science in

the past have been achieved for the profit of the universal Church,

and, with Vincent de Lerins, let us allocate thereto the undivided

heritage of all progress to come. Unto her be the great aspirations

of Zoroaster and all discoveries of Hermes; hers be the Key of the

Holy Arch and the Ring of Solomon, for she represents the holy and

immutable hierarchy. She is stronger by reason of her struggles and

is grounded by her apparent falls in still greater stability. She

suffers in order that she may reign; she is cast down that she may be

exalted in her rising; and she dies that she may rise again. “We must

be prepared,” says Comte Joseph de Maistre, “for a great event in the

divine order; we are moving towards it at an accelerated pace, which

must be manifest to all observers, while striking oracles announce

that the hour is at hand. Many prophecies in the _Apocalypse_ have

reference to these modern times. One writer has gone so far as to

say that the event is already inaugurated and that the French nation

is destined to become the great instrument of the most mighty of all

revolutions. There is perhaps no truly religious man in all Europe—I

speak of the educated classes—who is not in expectation of something

extraordinary at this present moment. Does a general presentiment of

the kind count for nothing? Go back through past ages, even to the

birth of our Saviour. At that period a high and mysterious voice,

beginning in the eastern realms, proclaimed that the East was about

to triumph, that a conqueror would come out of Judea, that a divine

infant was given us, that he would descend from highest heaven and

restore the golden age upon the earth. Such ideas were spread abroad

everywhere, and as they lent themselves to poetry above all things,

they were taken over by the greatest of Latin poets and emblazoned

with brilliant hues in his _Pollio_. To-day, as in the time of Virgil,

the universe is in expectation, and how on our part shall we despise

such strong persuasion, or by what right condemn those who are devoted

to sacred researches on the indications of divine signs? If you seek

proof of what is in store, look at the sciences themselves; consider

the progress of chemistry, of astronomy also, and you will see where

they are leading. Would you think, for example, that Newton takes

us back to Pythagoras and that it will be proved presently that the

heavenly bodies are set in motion, like human bodies, by intelligences

joined thereto? We know not how, but this is what is on the point of

being verified beyond all dispute. Such doctrine may seem paradoxical

and even ridiculous, because current opinion imposes this view; but

let us wait till the natural affinity of religion and science marry

both in the mind of a single man of genius. His advent cannot be far

off, and then the opinions which now seem bizarre or irrational will

become axioms which no one will question, while people will talk of our

present stupidity as they now speak of mediæval superstition.”[370]

According to St. Thomas, and it is a beautiful utterance: “All that

God wills is just, but that which is just should not be so designated

only because God wills it”—_Non ex hoc dicitur justum quod Deus illud

vult_. The moral doctrine of the future is contained herein, and from

its fruitful principle one deduction follows immediately: not only is

it good from the standpoint of faith to do what is ordained by God, but

even from the standpoint of reason it is excellent and rational to obey

Him. Man can therefore say: I do good not only because God wills it but

because I also will. The will of humanity may be thus at once free and

in conformity, for reason—demonstrating in an irrecusable fashion the

wisdom of the prescriptions of faith—will act on its proper impulse by

following the divine law, of which reason thus becomes, as it were, the

human sanction. From that time forward superstition and impiety will be

no longer possible, while from these considerations it follows that in

religion and in practical—that is to say, in moral—philosophy, there

will be an absolute authority, and moral dogmas will alone be revealed

and established. Till then we shall have the pain and consternation

of seeing daily the most simple and universal questions of right and

duty challenged, while if blasphemies are reduced to silence, it is one

thing to impose such silence but another to persuade and convert.

So long as Transcendent Magic was profaned by the wickedness of men,

the Church of necessity proscribed it. False Gnostics have discredited

that name of Gnosticism which was once so pure; sorcerers have outraged

the children of the Magi; but religion, that friend of tradition and

guardian of the treasures of antiquity, can no longer reject a doctrine

anterior to the Bible and in perfect accord with traditional respect

for the past, as well as with our most vital hopes for progress in the

future. The common people are initiated by toil and by faith into the

right of property and knowledge. There will be always such a people,

as there will be children always; but when the aristocracy, endowed

with wisdom, shall become a mother to the people, the path of personal,

successive, gradual emancipation will be open to all, and he that is

called will thereby be enabled through his own efforts to attain the

rank of the elect. This is that mystery of the future which antique

initiation concealed in its dark recesses. The miracles of Nature made

subject to the will of man are reserved for the elect to come. The

crook of the priesthood shall become the rod of miracles; it was so in

the time of Moses and of Hermes; it will be so again. The sceptre of

the Magus will be that of the world’s king or emperor; and that person

will by right be first among men who shall have shewn himself greatest

of all in knowledge and in virtue. Magic, at that time, will be no

longer an occult science except for the ignorant; it will be one that

is incontestable for all. Then shall universal revelation resolder one

to another all links of its golden chain; the human epic will close

and even the efforts of Titans will have served only to restore the

altar of the true God. All forms which have clothed the divine thought

successively will be reborn immortal and perfect. All those features

sketched by the successive art of nations will be united to form the

perfect image of God. Having been purified and brought out of chaos,

dogma will give birth naturally to an infallible ethic, and the social

order will be constituted on this basis. Systems which are now in

warfare are dreams of the twilight; let them pass. The sun shines and

the earth follows its course; distracted is he who doubts that the day

is coming. Distracted also are those who say that catholicism is only a

dead trunk and that we must put the axe thereto. They do not see that

beneath its dry bark the living tree is renewed unceasingly. Truth has

no past and no future; it is eternal; it is not that which ends; it is

our dream only. Hammer and hatchet, which destroy in the sight of man,

are in God’s hand as the knife of a pruner, and the dead branches—being

superstitions and heresies in religion, science and politics—can alone

be lopped from the tree of everlasting convictions and beliefs.

It has been the purpose of this History of Magic to demonstrate, that,

at the beginning, the symbols of religion were those also of science,

which was then in concealment. May religion and science, reunited in

the future, give help and shew love to one another, like two sisters,

for theirs has been one cradle.

Here ends the History of Magic

APPENDIX

AUTHOR’S PREFACE PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION[371]