Magic and Devil Worship.
Elephas Levi claimed that the attraction and repulsion of the atoms is
caused by the astral light. “There exists an agent which is material and
spiritual, a universal plastic medium, a common receptacle of the
vibrations of motions and the images of forms, a fluid and a force. By
means of this force all nervous apparatuses secretly communicate with
each other, thence come sympathy and antipathy, thence dreams and second
sight. The existence and use of this force is the great secret of
practical magic. The astral light attracts, repels, vivifies and
destroys all things under the influence of powerful wills. It can be
directed by the leaders of souls. By means of this agent we can
correspond instantaneously from one end of the earth to the other,
discern what is taking place at the antipodes, heal or hurt at a
distance. The Gnostics called it the burning body of the Holy Ghost.
Life is produced by the action of the astral light on the ether or
matter. In man it forms the astral body, it is the first envelope of the
soul, and it is by combining with the most subtil fluids that it forms
this etherized body or phantom. The astral body is nourished by the
astral light, as the physical body is nourished by the earth. The astral
light is saturated with souls, which it releases in the incessant
generation of existences, and whose imperfect wills can be dominated and
employed by stronger ones. The elementary spirits are like children,
they torment those who concern themselves about them. It is these that
produce the raps on the walls and furniture.”—Mysteries of Magic, 65.
“An individual can leave the physical body and actually travel on either
the material or astral plane in the astral body. Many persons are able
to travel thus in their ordinary sleep.”—Astral World, 25.
All magic is religious, having been invented by the priests or Magi. It
is said that the religious bodies copied their demonology from the
Kabala of the Jews, and that the latter borrowed their system of theurgy
and theology from the Egyptian and Babylonian priests. If any one
outside of the religious bodies started any opposition devil-worship,
they were promptly burnt. All the magic rituals are derived from the Key
of King Solomon, claimed to have been found in his sepulchre at
Jerusalem.
In the Magic Grimore, ascribed to Pope Honorius, he says: “We have seen
with what power Jesus commanded demons, which power was transmitted to
St. Peter, and, as the lawful successors of St. Peter, having the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven, and desiring to share the power of invoking
and commanding spirits, which has been reserved unto us alone, with our
brethren, we have included in this Bull the manner of their invocation.
And because it is meet that the ministers of the altar should have
authority over rebellious spirits, we hereby depute unto them all the
powers which we possess in virtue of the Holy Apostolic Chair.”—Book of
Black Magic, 100.
In invoking the Devil or other choice spirits, it is necessary to murder
some being. If the conjurer cannot or dare not murder a human being, he
takes an innocent virgin lamb and cuts its throat and tears off its skin
to use for a magic apron or parchment. Instead of the skin of a lamb,
the caul of a new-born child may be used.—Idem.
The sign manual of the demon Valefor, the patron of thieves, contains
two Maltese crosses rampant and three links. As Solomon and his
entourage worshipped the demon Astaroth, they probably stole from him
the two pillars at the door of the Temple and the double triangle above
them, for they appeared in the seal of that spirit. There are two or
more crosses in each of the seals or signatures of Solomon’s seventy two
black fiends. Their motto is, “In this sign we conquer.”
Solomon imprisoned the seventy two devils, with all their legions, in a
brazen vessel and sank it in a deep lake in Babylon. The Babylonians,
thinking that there must be a great treasure in the vessel, took it out
of the lake and broke it open, when out flew the chief devils
immediately, with all their legions following them.—See Waite’s Book of
Black Magic.
We still worship pagan gods. The Hexagram, or double triangle of
Solomon, is still used by different sects and societies. On it is the
name of Agla, a pagan sun-god, and also the name of Tau, the Egyptian
bull christ Taurus, with the pagan symbol, the Tau cross. The god A. and
O., Alpha and Omega, with which the Hexagram is adorned, is a foul
Babylonian idol, the same as IO. It has been represented that the Devil
falls prostrate before the cross. But, to tell the truth, Lucifer uses
the sign himself, also the double triangle and the single triangle in
his signature. And Belial has four crosses by which he lies.
When a sorcerer conjures up one of the seventy two demons, he must draw
the double seal of Solomon (double triangle) and the Pentagram,
(five-pointed star) on a parchment of calfskin. These must be worn on
his white vestment, together with the seal of the spirit invoked. And
the secret seal of Solomon (the pillar standing in a circle) must be
drawn with the blood of a black, virgin cock on virgin parchment. This
is part of the conjuration: “I invoke and conjure you, O Spirit, by God
the Father, by God the son, by God the Holy Ghost, by the Most Glorious
and Holy Mother of God, by her Sacred Heart, by her Blessed Milk, by the
Power and Victory of Hell, by the Ministers of the Tartarean Seat. I
exorcise thee in the names of El, Elohim, Zabaoth &c. do thou forthwith
appear. I conjure thee by the Living and True God Heliorem (Helios, the
sun god) and Tetragrammaton Jehovah (the God of four letters). Come! I
Adonai Saday, King of Kings, commands thee.” See Lesser Key of King
Solomon, 55.
There is no use in trying to invoke spirits or perform any tricks in
black magic unless you have confessed and received the Holy Communion,
and you must pray for assistance to the pagan gods Adonai, Eloim, Ariel,
Yahveh and Gibor, and fast, and abstain from the society of females for
nine days, and take a bath, and wear the garb of a priest or a Levite,
and you must have the sacred Masons’ implements, the sword, the staff,
the rod, the sickle and the poniard. See Waite’s Book of Black Magic.
That part of nature called the astral light or universal spirit was
virtually the supreme god of all religions. It was the Heaven or Nirvana
of the Buddhist, (where the soul is blown out like a lamp some
believed.) When he attained to perfection and was reabsorbed in this
godhead, he had stormed the heights of Heaven and attained eternal
bliss. He considered that his spirit would no longer be subjected to
endless incarnations in material forms. But there is no knowing when it
would again by choice or compulsion enter the ether and form another
atom and again commence the unavoidable cycle.
All the vile religions have scared the human race into ca’niption fits
by their assertion that our souls will be lost unless we bow down to
their priests and worship their idols. According to the original parent
religion, the Hindu, if we obey the priests faithfully, we will go to
Nirvana and become a creator or electron, or elementary spirit. And all
the authorities, both pagan and Christian, agree that the elementary
spirits are mischievous, wicked entities. It would be better to lose our
souls, for in that case they are banished into the ether or chaos and
become the nucleus of a material atom. If we go to Nirvana, we are one
step farther removed from the ultimate goal of all the ambitions of all
the heavenly electrons and material atoms, the supreme pinnacle of
attainment, man’s high estate, which is greater than that of the gods.
The Theosophists revel in the mystic and occult. If they can construct a
sentence that no one can understand, and that they do not know the
meaning of themselves, they are in the seventh heaven of delight, their
wisdom borders on the Divine. Stating their doctrine of transmigration
in plain language: God sits at his desk in Heaven, with a great lot of
pigeonholes before him, in each one of which is a soul in a state of
coma. When he receives a wireless from the earth that Pat and Biddie
McGee have formed in their marital relationship a psychic vortex, or
soul vortex, he makes a grab at the pigeonholes and lights perhaps on
the soul of Pythagoras and sticks it into the new-born embryo, which
already has a soul, and there is no room for any other. See
“Spermatozoa,” Stand. Dic., and note those very energetic individuals in
a frantic race to enter the ovum and blossom out as human beings. You
will then realize that the child already has a very lively soul,
provided by nature, and there is no occasion for any doped soul,
supplied by any idiotic human plan.
“The astral light keeps an unmutilated record of all that was, that is,
or ever will be. The minutest acts of our lives are imprinted on it, and
even our thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. It is the
Book of Life, it is the memory of God. If the medium or subject’s sight
is ably directed by the mesmerizer, magician or spirit, the light must
yield up its most secret records to our scrutiny.”—Astral World. It is
claimed that each person’s atmosphere in the astral light is peopled
with the images of his or her immediate family, thus accounting for the
assertions of the mediums that they see the spirits of our lost ones.
Swedenborgians claimed that the human body is sometimes abandoned by the
soul in consequence of overpowering fright, grief, despair or sickness,
and that we encounter every day such living corpses. Into these bodies
may enter the soul of an adept sorcerer or some earth-bound, disembodied
soul. In insanity the astral soul is partly paralyzed, bewildered, and
subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has
departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampire or
human soul near its own dissolution, and clinging desperately to earth,
whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this
expedient.
The ancients claimed that the soul was located in the solar plexus, and
it was asserted that they could read, hear, see and smell through the
navel. In our vermiform stage of development before evolution had
supplied us with heads, the soul was perhaps in the stomach, but it may
have moved since. Plato says that the divine part of the soul is located
in the head. Haeckel says that the human soul is a combination of the
souls of all the cells of the body. It is impossible to destroy any
simple substance, and if it affords you any comfort, you can assume that
the soul or ego is an indestructible electron. The Stoics claimed that
the soul is in the heart, and that although it outlives the body, it is
yet perishable and can only endure at the longest till the termination
of the world period, 4,320,000,000 years. Epicurus claimed that “nothing
that exists will ever cease to exist. Atoms exist from all eternity, and
worlds were formed by their vortical motion. The soul is material and
composed of exceedingly fine atoms, and is dispersed through the whole
body. The rational soul is in the breast.” Stephanus, of Alexandria,
says that “copper is like a man, it has a soul and body.” Yoga
Ramacharaka says that “iron is alive and may be killed by poison.”
“Transmigration of the soul takes place in all flesh, in beasts,
reptiles and fowls. For one form of uncleanness the soul will pass into
a Gentile, for another into a mule, for others into an ass, a woman, a
bat, a she-mule or a camel.”—Kabala Nishmath Chaim, Ch. 13, No. 1. It
sometimes happens that one sacrifices an animal with a human soul in it.
Therefore the slaughtering knife must be without defect, and the
slaughter must needs be delicately done to avoid cutting the gizzard out
of the human soul. “The soul of a murderer is transmigrated into water.
Let no man drink from a running stream, lest the soul of a wicked sinner
pass into him.”—Kabala Emeh Hamelech, fol. 153, col. 1.
“By a combination of the letters of the ineffable name Rava once created
a man and sent him to Rav. Zera. The man being unable to reply when
spoken to, the Rabbi said to him: ‘Thou art a creation of the company
(of necromancers) return to thy dust.’ By the same means a Rabbi created
pumpkins, melons, deers and roes.”—Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrim, ch. 7.
The soul, called Psyche, when she is at home, lives in that part of the
brain called the Medulla Oblongata, and the spirit, called Budhi, lives
in the next house up the street, the Pineal Gland. When Budhi, or the
Word, wins the affections of Psyche, and they are married, the Word
saves the soul, and the man who harbors these entities is illuminated
and becomes a master.
If you read Genesis in the original Hebrew, you will find that Al or El,
the sun, not the Christian God, says: “To every beast of the earth I
gave a living soul.” The souls of human beings are composed of material
as refined and spiritual as that of the souls of cockroaches and
bedbugs, and men, if they behave themselves, are equally as good as
those animals and of just as much importance in the universe.