translated from the original French
DOGMA AND RITUAL
HIGH MAGIC.
By M. ÉLIPHAS LÉVI.
1856, 2 vol. in-8, with 23 figures. – 28 francs.
[Drawing:]
This work is divided into two parts. In one, the author establishes
the cabalistic and magical dogma in its entirety; the other is dedicated
to worship, that is to say to ceremonial magic. One is what
ancient sages called the clavicle; the other, what the people of the
campaign still call the grimoire. The number and subject of
chapters that correspond in both parts have nothing
arbitrary and are found in the greater clavicle
universal, of which the author gives for the first time an explanation
complete and satisfactory.
This book is catholic, and if the revelations it contains are of
nature to alarm the conscience of the simple, it is consoling to think
that they won’t read it. It is written for men without prejudice, and
the author did not want to flatter irreligion more than fanaticism.
HISTORY OF SOMNAMBULISM
KNOWN
IN ALL PEOPLES,
UNDER THE VARIOUS NAMES OF EXTASES, DREAMS, ORACLES, VISIONS,
EXAMINATION OF THE DOCTRINES OF ANTIQUITY
AND MODERN TIMES
ON CAUSES, ITS EFFECTS, ITS ABUSE, ITS ADVANTAGES
AND THE USEFULNESS OF ITS COMPETITION WITH MEDICINE.
By AUBIN GAUTHIER.
1842 .– 2 vol. in-8 .– 10 francs.
GAUTHIER (Aubin). Practical treatise on magnetism and somnambulism.
1844, 1 vol. in-8 (Out of stock.) 10 fr.
GAUTHIER (Aubin). Magnetic journal, journal of cures and facts
magnetic and sleepwalking. December 1844 to October 1846. 2 vols.
in-8. 6 fr.
The issues for May, June, July, August and September 1846 were never
been published, and form, in volume 2e, a gap on pages 211 to
432.
THE ART OF MAGNETIZING
OR ANIMAL MAGNETISM
CONSIDERED FROM THEORETICAL, PRACTICAL POINTS OF VIEW
AND THERAPEUTIC,
By CH. FOUNTAIN.
1852, 2nd enlarged edition. Flight. in-8 with fig., 5 fr.
LAFONTAINE, Clarification on magnetism. Magnetic cures at
Geneva. 1855, in-18, br. 1 fr. 50
PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION
ON THE
ANIMAL MAGNETISM,
PRECEDED BY A LIFE NOTE
AND THE AUTHOR’S WORKS, AND FOLLOWED BY A LETTER
FROM A FOREIGN DOCTOR,
By J.-P.-F. DELEUZE.
- 1 vol. in-12 of 440 pages – Price: 3 fr. 50 c.
DELEUZE. Critical history of animal magnetism. 2nd edition, 1819, 2
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DELEUZE. Thesis on the forecasting faculty, with notes and
supporting documents, and with a number of examples of
predictions collected from ancient and modern. 1836, in-8, br.
2 fr. 50
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MAGNETISM AND SOMNAMBULISM
IN FRONT OF
LEARNED BODIES, THE COURT OF ROME
AND THE THEOLOGIANS,
By Father J.-B. LOUBERT,
Priest, former medical student. - 1 vol. of 706 pages – Price: 7 fr.
TREATY
ANIMAL MAGNETISM
FOLLOWED
WORDS OF A SLEEPING SLEEP
AND A
COLLECTION OF MAGNETIC TREATMENTS,
By JOSEPH OLIVIER.
1854, 1 vol. in-8 of 524 pages – 6 fr.
RICARD. Letters from a magnetizer, 1843.1 vol. in-18. 2 fr.
RICARD. Physiology and hygiene of the magnetizer, dietetic regime of the
magnetized. Memoirs and aphorisms of Mesmer. 1844, in-18. 3 fr. 50
RICARD. Magnetism translated into the Assize Court. Acquittal. 1845. 1
flight. in-8. 2 fr. 50
GINGER. A look at magnetism and sleepwalking. 1846, in-8. 2
Fr. 50
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Fr.
PHYSIOLOGY
MEDICINE AND METAPHYSICS
MAGNETISM,
BY DOCTOR CHARPIGNON. - 1 vol. in-8 of 480 pages – Price: 6 fr.
CHARPIGNON. An appreciative look at medical doctrines
(classical systems), vitalism, spiritualism, homeopathy,
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CHARPIGNON. Physical studies on animal magnetism, submitted to
the Academy of Sciences. 1843, in-8, br. 1 fr.
ETHER, ELECTRICITY AND MATTER,
SECOND EDITION OF QUÆRE ET INVENIES
(PHYSICS, THEOLOGY, TALKING TABLES AND REFORMS),
Increased the VIEWER OF PREVORST. - 1 vol. in-8 .– 5 francs.
Published in 1854 on the occasion of the talking tables, and in the print
of the hopes for social renewal that they all gave in
America, this book is a curious assemblage of cosmological systems
in opposition to Newtonian hypotheses, and reforming ideas
in terms of education and signs of exchange. The Voyance de Prevorst,
an extract of which ends the volume, is almost unknown in France
although it produced, several years ago, a rather great effect
in Germany. Justin Kerner, its author, was both a pleasant poet
and skilful doctor. Everything is true in this account of what it felt
for seven years so poor sick. Philosophers can therefore
surely reason from these facts.
Paris – Printing L. MARTINET, rue Mignon, 2.
HISTORY
MAGIC
WITH A
CLEAR AND PRECISE EXPOSURE OF ITS PROCESSES,
OF ITS RITES AND MYSTERIES
BY ÉLIPHAS LÉVI
Author of Dogma and Ritual of High Magic.
Opus hierarchicum et catholicum. (It is a hierarchical work and
Catholic.)
Definition of the great work, H. KHUNBATH
With 18 plates representing 90 figures.
PARIS
GERMER BAILLIÈRE, LIBRARY-PUBLISHER,
17, RUE DE L’ÉCOLE-DE-MÉDECINE.
LONDON AND NEW YORK,
H. BAILLIÈRE.
MADRID.
CH. BAILLY-BAILLIÈRE.
1860
PREFACE
The work of Éliphas Lévi on the science of the ancient magi will form a
full course divided into three parts:
The first part contains the Dogme and the Ritual of high magic;
the second, the_History of Magic_; the third, the Clef des grands mysteries, which will be published later.
Each of these parts, studied separately, teaches
complete and seems to contain all the science. But to have one
full intelligence, it will be essential to study with
care the other two.
This ternary division of our work was given to us by science
herself; because our discovery of the great mysteries of this science
rests entirely on the meaning that the ancient hierophants
attached to numbers. Three was for them the generating number, and
in the teaching of all doctrine they first considered its
theory, then realization, then adaptation to all uses
possible. Thus were formed dogmas, either philosophical or
religious. Thus the dogmatic synthesis of Christianity, heir to the
Magi imposes on our faith three persons in God and three mysteries in
universal religion.
We have followed, in the division of our two already published works, and
we will follow in the division of the third the plane traced by the
kabbalah; that is to say by the purest tradition of occultism.
Our Dogma and our Ritual are each divided into twenty-two
chapters marked by the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We
have put at the head of each chapter the letter that relates to it with the
Latin words which, according to the best authors, indicate its
hieroglyphic meaning. Thus, at the beginning of chapter one, by
example, we read:
[Hebrew]
THE RECIPIENT,
Discipline,
Ensoph,
Keter.
This means that the letter aleph, whose equivalent in Latin and in
French is A, the numeral 1 means the recipient, the man
called to initiation, the skilful individual (the tarot juggler), whom he
also means dogmatic syllepsis (disciplina), being in its
general and first conception (Ensoph); finally the first idea and
obscure of the divinity expressed by keter (the crown) in the
Kabbalistic theology.
The chapter is the development of the title and the title contains
hieroglyphically the whole chapter. The entire book is composed as follows
this combination.
The_History of Magic_ which comes next and which, after the theory
general of the science given by the Dogme and the Rituel, relates and
explains the achievements of this science through the ages, is
combined according to the septenary number, as we explain in
our Introduction. The septenary number is that of the week
creative and divine realization.
The Key of the great mysteries will be established on the number four which
is that of the enigmatic forms of the sphinx and the manifestations
elementary. It is also the number of the square and the force, and in this
book we will establish certainty on an unshakeable foundation. We
fully explain the enigma of the sphinx and give our
Read this key to things hidden since the beginning of the world,
that the learned Postel had not dared to appear in one of his most
obscure only in a quite enigmatic way and without giving one
satisfactory explanation.
The_History of Magic_ explains the assertions contained in the
Dogme and the Ritual; the Key to the great mysteries will complete and
will explain the history of magic. So that for the reader
attentive, nothing will be missing, we hope, in our revelation,
secrets of the Kabbalah of the Hebrews and of high magic, either of
Zoroaster, or Hermes.
The author of these books willingly gives lessons to people
serious and educated who ask for it, but it must once
warn his readers that he does not tell fortune telling, does not teach
divination, does not make predictions, does not fabricate
philtres, does not lend itself to any spell or to any evocation. It is
a man of science and not a man of prestige. He condemns
vigorously all that religion disapproves of, and therefore it does not
should not be confused with men who can be bothered without
fear by offering them to make dangerous use of their science or
illicit.
He seeks sincere criticism, but he does not understand some
hostilities.
Serious study and conscientious work are above all else
the attacks; and the first goods they provide to those who know
to appreciate them, are a deep peace and a universal benevolence.
ÉLIPHAS LÉVI.
September 1, 1859.
ANALYTICAL TABLE
OF MATERIALS CONTAINED IN THIS WORK.
Preface v
INTRODUCTION 1
False definition of magic. It should not be defined at random.
True definition, 1
Blazing star, what it is. Existence of the Absolute, 2
Absolute science magic, 3
Dupuis errors, 4
Desecration of science. Prediction of Count de Maistre, 5
Measure and scope of magical science. Justice of God, 7
Adept’s Might, 8
The devil and science, 10
Existence of demons, 11
Devil’s misconception, 12
Design of the Manichaeans. 16
Witchcraft crimes, 18
Astral light. It is called imagination of nature.
What it is, 19
Its effects, 20
Magnetism defined, 22
Accord of reason with faith, 23
Jakin and Bobas, 24
Principle of hierarchy, 25
Religion of the Kabbalists, 26
Images of God, 28
Theory of light, 28
Mysteries of sexual love, 29
Antagonism of powers, 31
The so-called Pope Joan, 32
The Kabbalah explains and reconciles everything, 32
Why the Church condemned magic, 33
Dogmatic magic explains the philosophy of history, 34
Bad curiosities about magic, 35
Plan of this book, 37
Submission of the author to the established order. 39
BOOK ONE – The magical origins.
CHAPTER ONE .– Fabulous origins 41
The book of Enoch and the fall of the angels, 41
Sense of legend, 42
Adam’s Book of Penance, 43
What the character of Enoch is. 46
Apocalypse of St. Methodius. 46
The children of Seth and those of Cain. 47
Reason for occultism. 48
Rousseau’s error. 49
Judaic traditions. 50
Glory of Christianity. 51
The Sepher Jezirah, the Sohar and the Apocalypse, 51
Beginning of Sohar. 52
CHAPTER II – Magic of the Magi 55
The true and the false Zoroaster, 55
Dogmas of the true Zoroaster. 56
Transcendental pyrotechnics. 57
Electric Secrets of Numa. 57
A page from Zoroaster on demons and sacrifices. 58
Important revelations on magnetism. 60
Initiation in Assyria, 61
Prodigies of the Assyrians. 62
Du Potet agrees with Zoroaster. 62
Danger run by the unwary. 63
Power of man over animals. 63
Fall of the priesthood in Assyria. 64
Magic death of Sardanapalus. 65
CHAPTER III – Magic in India 67
The Indians descendants of Cain. India, mother of idolatry. Doctrine
gymnosophists, 67
Indian origin of Gnosticism, 68
Learned Fables of India, 69
Black magic of the Up nek ‘hat. M. Ragon, cited author, 74
Great Indian Arcana, 75
The Indians in revolt and the English. 76
CHAPTER IV – Hermetic Magic 77
The Emerald Table, 77
Other writings of Hermes, 78
Magical sense of the ancient geography of Egypt, 79
Ministry of Joseph, 80
Sacred Alphabet, 81
Isiac table by Bembo, 81
The tarot explained by the Sepher Jezirah, 82
The tarot of Charles VII, 82
Magic Science of Moses. 83
CHAPTER V – Magic in Greece 85
Fables of the Golden Fleece, 86
Medea and Jason, 88
The five magical epics, 89
Aeschylus profaner of the mysteries, 89
Orpheus of the legend, 90
Orphic mysteries, 92
La Goétie, 93
The witches of Thessaly, 94
Medea and Circe, 95
CHAPTER VI .– Mathematical Magic of Pythagoras 96
Pythagoras heir to the traditions of Numa, 96
What Pythagoras was. His doctrine on God, 97
A fine sentence against anarchy. Golden worms, 98
Pythagorean symbols. Her chastity, 100
His divination, 101
How he explains his miracles, 102
Secret of the Interpretation of Dreams, 103
Belief of Pythagoras. 104
CHAPTER VII – The holy Kabbalah 105
Origin of Kabbalah 105
Horror of Kabbalists for Idolatry 105
Their definition of God 105
Principles of Kabbalah 106
Divine Names and the Sacred Alphabet 109
Salomon’s collarbones 110
If Spirits Can Return 113
Fluidic larvae 114
Light, the great magic agent 115
Obscene origin of larvae 117
BOOK II .– Formation and realization of dogma.
CHAPTER ONE .– Primitive Symbolism of History 118
Allegory of Heaven on Earth 119
Foolishness of a great mind 119
Mysteries of Genesis 120
Belphegor 121
His cult 122
The Sabbath, an imitation of the same rites 122
Decadence of the hierarchy 123
Philosophy of Chance 124
Doctrine of Plato 124
Response of Apollo to those of Delos 125
Cubic stone 126
Summary of Neoplatonism 127
CHAPTER II .– Mysticism 128
Inviolability of magic science 128
Secular and Mystical Schools 129
The Bacchantes 129
Materialist reformers. Mystic Anarchists 130
Mad visionaries. Their horror for the wise 131
Tolerance of the True Church 132
Immoral tendency of false miracles 132
The false theraphims 133
Rites of black magic 134
Cause of visions 135
M. Brierre de Boismont and his Treatise on Hallucinations 136
CHAPTER III – Initiations and tests 137
What the great work is 137
The four forms of the sphinx reproduced allegorically on the
Achilles shield 137
Allegories of Hercules and Oedipus. Events 138
Tradition invoked by Plato 140
Kabbalist Plato 141
Difference between Plato and St. John 142
Disastrous experiences 142
Homeopathy practiced by the Greeks 143
The lair of Trophonius and the cave of the dog. Science of priests
Egyptians 144
Lactance laughs at the antipodes 145
Hell of the Greeks 145
Usefulness of Pain 147
Cebes’ painting and Dante’s poem 147
Doctrines of the Phaedo 148
CHAPTER IV – Magic of public worship 149
Superstition Explained by the Necessity of Worship 150
Orthodox traditions 151
Slanders of laymen against initiates 152
An Allegory on Bacchus 153
Tyrésias and Calchas 153
The priesthood following Homer 155
Sybil Oracles 156
CHAPTER V – Mysteries of virginity 157
Institution of the vestals 158
Traditional virtue of virginal blood 158
Symbolism of the sacred fire 159
Honor among Roman Women 160
Hierophantism of Numa 161
Ingenious ideas of Voltaire on divination 161
Prophetic instinct of the masses 162
False appreciations of oracles by Kircher and Fontenelle 162
Religious calendar of Numa 163
CHAPTER VI – Superstitions 164
Beautiful thought of Saint Gregory, Pope 164
Observance of numbers and days 165
Mages’ abstinence 166
Opinions of Porphyry 166
Mythological data on animal instinct 167
Passage of Euripides 168
Reason for Pythagorean abstinence 168
Singular passage of Homer 169
Roman superstitions 169
Enchantments 171
Magic whirlpools 172
CHAPTER VII – Magic monuments 173
The seven wonders of the world representing the seven planets
magic 173
Philosophical Summary of the Ancients 175
BOOK III – Synthesis and divine realization of magism
by Christian revelation.
CHAPTER ONE – Christ Accused of Magic 177
Deep meaning of the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John
Kabbalist Ezekiel 177
Special character of Christianity 178
Accusations of the Jews against the Savior 179
A beautiful legend of the apocryphal gospels 180
The Joannites 181
Magic books burned at Ephesus 181
Big Pan is dead! 181
CHAPTER II – Truth of Christianity by Magic 182
Absolute Existence of Religion 182
Essential distinction between science and faith 183
Absurd objections 184
Reality of Christianity Demonstrated by Charity 185
Simon the Magician 187
Its story 188
His doctrine 190
His conference with Saint Peter and Saint Paul 192
His fall 193
His sect continued by Ménandre 194
CHAPTER III – Of the devil 194
Satan and Lucifer 194
Church Wisdom 196
What the devil is following the initiates of science
occult 196
Reviews of Torreblanca 198
Astral perversities 199
Demons, vices personified 200
CHAPTER IV – The last pagans 201
The Eternal Miracle of God 201
Civilizing action of Christianity 201
Apollonius and Julian. Allegorical legend of Apollonius 202
Continuation of this legend 205
Judgment on Julian and on Apollonius 206
CHAPTER V – Legends 207
Justine and Cyprien 208
Magical Prayer of Saint Cyprian 211
The Golden Legend 212
Why Christians Were Accused of Worshiping a Head
donkey 213
The golden donkey of Apuleius 215
Finesse of Saint Augustine 215
CHAPTER VI .– Kabbalistic paintings 216
Emblems of the Catacombs 216
True and False Gnostics 217
The heresiarch Marcos 218
Intrusion of women into the priesthood 218
Evil Miracles 220
The Manichaeans 220
Danger of evocations 221
Loss of Kabbalistic Keys 222
CHAPTER VII – School of Alexandria 223
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Hypathia 223
Careless confessions of Synesius 224
Writings of this Insider 225
His treatise on dreams is commented on by Jérôme Cardan 225
Books of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite attributed to Synesius 227
BOOK IV .– Magic and civilization.
CHAPTER ONE Magic Among the Barbarians 228
History of Philinnium and Machatès 232
Mythology of the Germans and the Druids 234
Eubage Magic 236
CHAPTER II – Influence of women 238
Velléda calumniated by Chateaubriand 239
What long-footed Berthe is 239
Melusine 240
Saint Clotilde 241
Fredegonde 241
Legend or story of Klodswinthe 242
Frédégonde saves a woman out of wickedness 244
CHAPTER III – Salic law against sorcerers 244
Salic Laws 245
Singular passage of the Talmud explained to the White queen by the
rabbi Jéchiel 246
Devil Lovers Condemned by the Church 248
Charles Martel 249
The Kabbalist Zedechias and the Elemental Spirits 250
CHAPTER IV .– Legends of Charlemagne 254
Charlemagne and Roland 254
The Euchiridion of Leo III 257
The Freemasons 261
The Illuminated 262
The Wandering Chivalry 263
CHAPTER IV – Magicians 264
The Pope and the Emperor 264
Excommunications 265
Evil legends 265
Rabbi Jéchiel and Saint Louis 266
Albert the Great and his android 267
Saint Thomas Aquinas 270
What the Flush is 271
CHAPTER VI – Famous trials 272
Power of religious orders 273
The Templars 275
Secular legend of the Junnites on the life of
N.-S. Jesus Christ 275
Secret Doctrine of the Templars 278
Their trial 279
Their apparent destruction 280
The holy and valiant Joan of Arc 280
Gille de Laval, Lord of Raiz, type of the Barbe-Bleue 290
CHAPTER VII – Superstitions relating to the devil 290
How the devil appears 291
Terrible hallucinations 293
The why of the apparitions 295
What the turntables say 297
BOOK V. Adepts and the priesthood.
CHAPTER ONE Priests and Popes Accused of Magic 298
Inviolable holiness of the priesthood 298
Accusations of False Followers 299
Sylvester II falsely accused 300
Lightweight Platinum 300
Absurd story of Pope Joan 301
Naudé’s opinion on Sylvestre II 304
The Grimoire of Honorius, 305
–Its alleged perpetrator 306
Curious and entirely new analysis of this grimoire 314
CHAPTER II – Appearance of nomadic Bohemians 314
Extract from an old chronicle 317
Quote from The True Story of True Bohemians, by
Mr. Vaillant 327
Author’s Opinion on Bohemians 328
CHAPTER III – legend and history of Raymond Lulle 341
CHAPTER IV – Alchemists 342
Flamel and the book of the Jew Abraham, 342
–Mysterious figures from this book, 343
–Tradition on Flamel 345
Bernard le Trévisan. Basil Valentin and Trithéme. Cornelius
Agrippa, 345
–The pantacle of Trithéme 346
Guillaume Postel. His doctrine, 348
–Mother Jeanne, 349
–Postel the Risen One, 350
- Father Desbillons justifies Postel 351
Paracelsus, 353
–Occult medicine, 354
–History told by Tavernier, 355
–The Secrets of Paracelsus 357
CHAPTER V – Famous sorcerers and magicians 358
Kabbalistic Analysis of Dante’s Poem 358
Le roman de la Rose 359
Disputes of the Devil and Luther 360
Luther’s regrets for getting married 362
Wizards under Henry III 363
The visions of Jacques Clément 363
Origin of the rose-crosses, 364
–Henri Khunrath, 366
–Oswald Crollius 369
Famous alchemists of the beginning of the 17th century 371
Manifesto of the Roses-Croix 371
CHAPTER VI – Trial of magic 373
Real crimes of wizards 376
Deplorable sentences 377
Louis Ganfridi trial 380
Trial of Urbain Grandier 381
Judgment of the author on this trial 384
Trial for the nuns of Louviers, 387
–Trial of Father Girard, 388
–Reasons for certain wonders, 389
–A story of apparition 391
CHAPTER VII – Magical origins of masonry 399
What Freemasonry is 399
Legend of Hiram, 402
–His explanation 407
BOOK VI – Magic and revolution.
CHAPTER ONE – Remarkable authors of the 18th century 408
Discoveries in China 409
Fo-hi’s y-kim and trigrams 409
Leibnitz’s opinion on the y-kim 411
Swedenborg 412
Mesmer 414
Discovery of magnetism 416
CHAPTER II – Wonderful figures of the 18th century 418
The Count of Saint-Germain 419
Secret Society of St. Jakin 425
The alchemist Lascaris 426
The Count of Cagliostro 427
Explanation of His Seal and Kabbalistic Name 430
Secret of physical regeneration following Cagliostro 431
CHAPTER III – Prophecies of Cazotte 435
Martinist school 435
Cazotte’s supper 436
Mysteries of the devil in love 437
Lilith and Nabema 438
Death of Cazotte 440
CHAPTER IV – French Revolution 441
Misfortunes caused by Rousseau’s hallucinations 441
The lodge on rue Plâtrière 441
Louis XVI delivered to the vengeance of the Templars 443
The Joannites and the James 444
Strange Predictions 445
CHAPTER V – Phenomena of mediamanie 446
Birth of a sect 446
Dom Gerle and Catherine Théot 448
Night visit of Robespierre 449
The Saviors of Louis XVII 451
Naundorf, Vintras and M. Madrolle 452
CHAPTER VI – The illuminated of Germany 454
The Magic of Eckartshansen 455
Evocations of Lavater 456
Revelations of the spirit Gablidone, 457
–He predicts the coming of a mage named Osphal, Alphos, Maffon
or Éliphisma 458
Stabs and Napoleon 459
Mopses and their mysteries 460
The dramatic epic of Faust 460
CHAPTER VII – Empire and restoration 463
Predictions Relating to Napoleon 463
Miss Lenormand 465
Madame Bouche and Madame de Krudener near the Emperor
Alexander 467
The peasant Martin sees an angel dressed as a lackey and makes himself
present to King Louis XVIII 468
BOOK VII .– Magic in the 19th century.
CHAPTER ONE .– The mystical magnetizers and the materialists 470
Contagious follies of Charles Fonrier 471
The Dogma of Hell Explained 472
An evocation by Mr. Oegger Vicar of Notre-Dame 476
Grotesque false gods – Gouneau, Cheneau, Tourreil, Auguste
Count and Wronski 477
CHAPTER II – Hallucinations 479
History of the hallucinated Eugène Vintras 479
CHAPTER III – Magnetizers and somnambulists 491
Righteous mistrust of the Church against the abuses of sleepwalking 491
Remarkable work by Baron Du Potet 492
The fatal turning tables to Victor Hennequin 495
Russian lady, finding her pedestal table heretical, wears it
Rome and obtains permission from the Holy Father to burn it 496
Serious thoughts about an evil melodrama and
burlesque 496
CHAPTER IV .– The fantasists in magic 497
Alphonse Esquiros invents a romantic and fantastic magic 498
Henri Delaage becomes the successor of Alphonse Esquiros 498
His scientific and literary naivety 499
M. le Comte d’Ourches and his prodigies 500
Mr. Baron de Guldenstubbe and his miraculous writings 505
Man buried alive 507
A Vampire Story 517
Fortune Teller Edmond 519
CHAPTER V – Intimate memories of the author 519
The author is introduced by the magician Esquiros to the dieu
Gauneau 520
The eccentric doctrines of Mapah 522
Unfortunate consequences 523
Unknown cause of the revolution of 1848 524
The posthumous magician 525
CHAPTER VI – Of the occult sciences 525
Summary of Principles 528
CHAPTER VII – Summary and conclusion 532
The enigma of the sphinx and its solution 533
The Eight Paradoxical Questions with 549 Answers
Conclusion 549
Why those who know must believe 551
Result of discoveries in magic 552
Curious passage of Vincent de Lérins 553
Quote from Count Joseph de Maistre 555
Remarkable text of Saint Thomas 557
Probable future of science 558
Purpose of the book 559
END OF ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
[1]
HISTORY
MAGIC.
INTRODUCTION.
For too long we have confused magic with the prestige of
charlatans, with the hallucinations of the sick, and with the
crimes of certain exceptional criminals. Many people,
moreover, would readily define magic: the art of producing
effects without causes. And by this definition, the crowd
will say, with the common sense that characterizes it, even in its most
great injustices, that magic is nonsense.
Magic cannot be what those who do not do it.
not know. Besides, it does not belong to anyone from the
do this or that; she is what she is, she is by
itself, like mathematics, because it is the exact science
and absolute of nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the ancient magi; and religion
Christian, who imposed silence on lying oracles, and made
cease all the prestige of false gods, herself reveres these
Magi who came from the East, guided by a star, to worship
the Savior of the world in his cradle.
Tradition still gives these magi the title of three, because
[2] that initiation into magic constitutes true royalty, and
because the great art of the Magi is called by all the followers:
the_ royal art_, or the holy kingdom, sanctum regnum.
The star that leads them is that same blazing star whose
we find the image in all initiations. It’s for
the alchemists the sign of the quintessence, for the magists the
great arcanum, for the kabbalists the sacred pentagram. Now we
prove that the study of this pentagram was to lead the magi
to the knowledge of the new name which was to rise above
all names and bend the knees of all beings
able to worship.
Magic therefore unites, in a single science, what
philosophy can have more certain and what religion has
infallible and eternal. It reconciles perfectly and
undoubtedly these two terms, which at first seem so
opposites: faith and reason, science and belief, authority and freedom.
It gives the human mind an instrument of certainty
philosophical and religious exact like mathematics, and
giving reason for the infallibility of mathematics itself.
So therefore there is an absolute in the things of intelligence
and faith. The supreme reason did not let waver at random
the glimmers of human understanding; There is a truth
undoubtedly, there is a sure-fire method of knowing
this truth; and by knowing this truth, men
who take it as a rule can give their will a
sovereign power that will make them masters of all things
[3] inferior and of all wandering spirits, that is to say arbitrators
and kings of the world!
If so, why is this high science still
unknown? How to suppose in a sky that we see dark
the existence of such a splendid sun? High science has
always been known, but only by intelligences
elite, who understood the need to be silent and wait.
If a skilful surgeon could, in the middle of the night, open
the eyes of a born blind man, how would he make her understand before
in the morning the existence and nature of the sun?
Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives
intellectual world a life which has its regulated movements and its
progressive phases. There are truths like rays
luminous; nothing that is hidden is lost, but also nothing
of what we find is absolutely new. God wanted to give
to science, which is the reflection of its glory, the seal of its
eternity.
Yes, high science, absolute science, is magic, and
this assertion must seem paradoxical to those who have not
still doubted the infallibility of Voltaire, this marvelous
ignorant, who thought he knew so much, because he found
always a way to laugh instead of learning.
Magic was the science of Abraham and Orpheus, Confucius and
of Zoroaster. It is the dogmas of magic that were sculpted
on stone tables by Enoch and Trismegistus. Moses them
pura and the revoila is the meaning of the word reveal. It their
gave a new veil when he made holy Kabbalah
the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel and the inviolable secrecy of
[4] his priests, the mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes preserved
among the nations some symbols already altered, and of which the key
mysterious lost itself among the instruments of a superstition
always growing. Jerusalem, murderer of her prophets, and
prostitute so many times to the false gods of the Syrians and
Babylonians, in turn had finally lost the holy word, when
a savior, announced to the Magi by the sacred star of
initiation, came to tear the worn veil of the old temple to
give the Church a new fabric of legends and symbols that
always hides from the laymen, and always keeps the chosen ones
same truth.
This is what our learned and unfortunate Dupuis should have read
in the Indian planispheres and on the tables of Denderah, and
in front of the unanimous affirmation of all nature and monuments
of science of all ages, he would not have concluded
negation of truly Catholic worship, that is to say universal and
eternal!
It was the memory of this scientific and religious absolute, of
this doctrine which is summed up in a word, of this word,
finally, alternately lost and found, which was transmitted
to the elect of all ancient initiations; it was this same
memory, preserved or desecrated perhaps in the famous order of
Templars, who became for all the secret associations of
Rosicrucians, Illuminati and Freemasons, the reason for
their bizarre rites, their plus or minus signs
conventional, and above all for their mutual dedication and
power. The doctrines and mysteries of magic have been
desecrated, we do not want to deny it, and this
profanation itself, renewed from age to age, has been for
[5] reckless revealing a great and terrible lesson. The
Gnostics had Gnosis proscribed by Christians and the
official shrine closed to high initiation. So the
hierarchy of knowledge has been compromised by the
usurping ignorance, and the disorders of the sanctuary
reproduced in the State, because always, willy-nilly, the king
falls under the priest, and it is from the eternal sanctuary of
divine teaching that the powers of the earth to surrender
lasting will always await their consecration and their strength.
The key to science has been left to children, and, as we
was to be expected, this key is currently lost and
as lost. However a man of high intuition and a
great moral courage, Count Joseph de Maistre, the Catholic
determined, confessing that the world was devoid of religion and
could last like this for a long time, involuntarily turned his eyes
towards the last sanctuaries of occultism and called of all
his wishes on the day when the natural affinity that exists between
science and faith would finally unite them in the head of a man of
genius. “That one will be great!” he cried, and he will stop the
18th century, which still lasts … We will then speak of our
current stupidity as we speak of the barbarism of the means
age!”
The count of Maistre’s prediction comes true; the alliance of the
science and faith, consummated for a long time, has finally
shown, not to a man of genius, it is not necessary to see
light, and besides genius has never proved anything, if this
is not its exceptional grandeur and its lights inaccessible to
the crowd. The great truth only requires that we find it, then
[6] the simplest of the people will be able to understand it and
need to demonstrate it.
Yet she will never become vulgar, because she is
hierarchical and because anarchy alone flatters the prejudices of
the crowd; the masses do not need absolute truths,
otherwise progress would stop and life would cease in
humanity, the comings and goings of opposing ideas, the clash of
opinions, fashion passions always determined by
dreams of the moment are necessary for intellectual growth
Peoples. The crowds feel it, and that’s why
that they so willingly abandon the chair of doctors to
run to the charlatan’s trestles. The very men who pass
to deal specifically with philosophy, almost resemble
always to these children who play to offer each other
puzzles, and who hasten to put out of the game those who know
the word in advance, lest this one prevent them from playing in
removing all his interest from the embarrassment of their questions.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” said
eternal wisdom. The purity of the heart therefore purifies
intelligence and rectitude of the will make the accuracy of
understanding. He who prefers truth and justice to everything
will have justice and truth as a reward, because Providence
supreme gave us freedom so that we could conquer
life; and the very truth, however rigorous it may be, does not
imposes itself gently and never does violence to slowness
or to the wanderings of our will seduced by the attractions of
lie.
However, says Bossuet, “before there was something that
[7] pleases or displeases our senses, there is a truth; and it’s
by it alone that our actions must be regulated, it is not
for our pleasure. ” The kingdom of God is not the empire of
arbitrariness, neither for men nor for God himself. “A thing,
says St. Thomas, is not just because God wants it, but
God wants her because she is righteous. ” The divine scale governs and
requires eternal mathematics. “God did everything with the
number, weight and measure. ” This is the Bible speaking.
Measure a corner of the creation, and do a multiplication
proportionally progressive, and the whole infinity
will multiply its circles filled with universes which will pass into
proportional segments between ideal and growing branches
your compass; and now suppose that from any point
from infinity above you one hand holds another compass or
a set square, the lines of the celestial triangle will meet
necessarily those of the compass of science, to form
the mysterious star of Solomon.
“You will be measured,” says the Gospel, “with the measure with which you
you serve yourselves. ” God does not enter into a struggle with man
to crush him with his greatness, and he never places weights
unequal in its balance. When he wants to exercise the forces of
Jacob, he takes the figure of a man, whose patriarch bears
the assault for a whole night, and the end of this fight is
a blessing for the vanquished, and with the glory of having sustained
such antagonism the national title of_Israel_,
that is, a name which means: “strong against God.”
We have heard from Christians, more zealous than educated,
[8] explain in a strange way the dogma of the eternity of
penalties. “God,” they said, “can take infinite revenge on a
offense finished, because if the nature of the offender has
bounds, the greatness of the offended has none. ” As such and under
this pretext, an emperor of the earth should punish with death
the child for no reason who inadvertently soiled the edge of his
purple. No, these are not the prerogatives of greatness,
and Saint Augustine understood them better when he wrote: “God
is patient because he is eternal! ”
In God all is justice, because all is goodness; he … not
never forgive in the manner of men, because he could not
get irritated like them; but evil being of its incompatible nature
with good, like night with day, like dissonance
with harmony, man besides being inviolable in his
freedom, all error is expiated, all evil is punished by a
proportional suffering: we can call Jupiter to
our help when our chariot is stuck, if we do not take
the shovel and the pickax like the truck driver in the fable, Heaven does not
will not pull us out of the rut. “Help yourself and heaven will help you!” So
is explained, in a completely rational and purely
philosophical, the possible and necessary eternity of the punishment
with a narrow way open to man to escape it,
that of repentance and work!
By conforming to the rules of eternal strength, man can
assimilate to the creative power and become a creator and
conservative like her. God did not limit to a number
restricts Jacob’s luminous ascent. All that the
nature made inferior to man, she submits him to man,
it is up to him to expand his domain by always going up! So the
[9] length and even the perpetuity of life, the atmosphere and its
thunderstorms, the earth and its metallic veins, the light and its
prodigious mirages, the night and its dreams, death and its
ghosts, all this obeys the royal scepter of the mage, the staff
pastoral of Jacob, at the lightning rod of Moses. The follower is
made king of the elements, transformer of metals, arbiter of
visions, director of oracles, master of life, finally, in
the mathematical order of nature, and in accordance with the will
of supreme intelligence. Here is the magic in all its glory!
But who in our century will dare to believe in our words? those
who will loyally want to study and frankly to know, because we
no longer hide the truth under the veil of parables or
hieroglyphic signs, the time has come when everything must be said,
and we propose to say everything.
We will not only discover this science always
occult who, as we said, hid under the shadows
ancient mysteries; which has been badly revealed, or rather
indignantly disfigured by the Gnostics; that we can guess under the
obscurities that cover the alleged crimes of the Templars, and
that we find enveloped in enigmas now impenetrable in
the rites of high masonry. But we will bring to
great day the fantastic king of the Sabbath, and show at the bottom of the
black magic itself, long abandoned to the laughing stock of
grandchildren of Voltaire, appalling realities.
For many readers, magic is the science of
Devil. Without a doubt. As the science of light is that of
The shadow.
We first boldly admit that the devil doesn’t make us
[10] fear. “I am only afraid of those who fear the devil,” said
Saint Thérèse. ” But also we declare that it does not make us
to laugh; and that we find the taunts with which he
is so often the object.
Whatever it is, we want to bring it in front of science.
The devil and science! — It seems that by bringing two
names so strangely disparate, the author of this book left
see first all his thoughts. Bring before the light the
mystical personification of darkness, is it not to annihilate
in front of the truth the phantom of the lie? is it not to dispel at
day the shapeless nightmares of the night? This is what will think
we have no doubts, superficial readers, and they
will condemn without hearing us. Ill-educated Christians
will believe that we have come to undermine the fundamental dogma of their
moral by denying hell, and others will ask what
combat errors which no longer fool anyone; it is
at least what they imagine. It is therefore important to show
clearly our purpose and firmly establish our principles. We
let us first say to Christians:
The author of this book is a Christian like you. His faith is that
of a strongly and deeply convinced Catholic: he does not come
therefore not to deny dogmas, he comes to fight impiety under his
most dangerous forms, those of false belief and
the superstition; he comes to bring the black successor out of the shadows
of Arimanes, in order to display its gigantic
impotence and its dreadful misery; he comes to submit to
solutions of science to the ancient problem of evil; he wants
[11] Uncrown the king of the underworld and lower his forehead to the point of
under the foot of the cross! Science Virgo and mother, science
of which Mary is the sweet and luminous image, isn’t she
predestined to also crush the head of the ancient serpent?
To the so-called philosophers the author will say: Why deny this
that you cannot understand? The unbelief that asserts itself in
face of the unknown is it not more reckless and less
consoling than faith? What, the dreadful figure of evil
personified makes you smile? So you do not hear the
eternal sob of humanity struggling and crying crushed
by the monster’s embraces? Have you never seen the laughter
atrocious of the wicked oppressing the righteous? Have you never
felt opening up within yourselves these infernal depths that
every moment digs into all souls the genius of
perversity? Moral evil exists, it is a lamentable truth; he
reigns in certain minds, it is embodied in certain men;
he is therefore personified, so there are demons, and the most
wicked of these demons is Satan. That’s all I got to you
asks to admit, and what it will be difficult for you not to
grant me.
Let it be understood, moreover, that science and faith
mutually support each other as far as their domains are
inviolable and separate. What do we believe? what we can’t
absolutely know that we aspire to it with all our strength.
The object of faith is for science only a hypothesis
necessary, and you should never judge things of science
with the procedures of faith, nor, reciprocally, with the things of
faith with the processes of science. The word of faith is not
scientifically debatable. “I think so, because it’s absurd,”
[12] said Tertullian, and this word, so apparently
paradoxical, is of the highest reason. Indeed, beyond
all that we can reasonably assume, there is a
infinite to which we aspire with a desperate thirst, and which escapes
even to our dreams. But for a finite appreciation, the infinite
isn’t that absurd? We feel however that it is.
Infinity invades us; it overflows us; it makes us dizzy
with its abysses; he crushes us with all his height. All the
scientifically probable hypotheses are the last
twilights or the last shadows of science; the faith
begins where reason falls exhausted … Beyond reason
human, there is divine reason, the great absurdity for my
weakness, the infinite absurdity that confuses me and that I believe!
But the good alone is infinite; evil is not, and it is
why if God is the eternal object of faith, the devil
belongs to science. In what Catholic symbol, indeed,
is it about the devil? Wouldn’t it be blaspheming to
say: We believe in him? It is named, but not defined in
Holy Scripture; Genesis nowhere speaks of an alleged
fall of the angels; she attributes the sin of the first man to
serpent, the most cunning and the most dangerous of all living beings. We
know what the Christian tradition is on this subject; but if
this tradition is explained by one of the largest and most
universal allegories of science, what will this
solution to the faith which aspires to God alone, and despises the pumps
and the works of Lucifer?
Lucifer! The light holder! what a strange name given to the spirit of
darkness. What it is he who carries the light and blinds them
[13] weak souls? Yes, do not doubt it, because traditions are
full of divine revelations and inspirations.
“The devil brings the light, and often even, says Saint Paul, he
is transfigured into an angel of splendor. “-” I saw, “said the
Savior of the world, I saw Satan fall from the sky like the
lightning. ”-“ How did you fall from the sky, ”cried the prophet.
Isaiah, bright star, you who got up in the morning? ” Lucifer is
therefore a fallen star; it’s a meteor that is still burning and
which burns when it no longer lights.
But is this Lucifer a person or a force? Is it an angel
or lost thunder? Tradition assumes it is an angel;
but does not the Psalmist say in Psalm 103: “You are doing your
storm angels and your rapid fire ministers? ” word
ange is given in the Bible to all those sent by God:
messengers or new creations, revealers or plagues, spirits
radiant or glowing things. The arrows of fire that the Most
High in the clouds are the angels of his wrath, and this
figurative language is familiar to all readers of poems
oriental.
After having been the terror of the world during the Middle Ages, the
devil has become the laughing stock. Heir to monstrous forms
of all the false gods successively overthrown, the grotesque
scarecrow has been made ridiculous by dint of deformity and
ugliness.
However, let us observe one thing: it is that only these dare to laugh
of the devil who do not fear God. The devil, for many
ill imaginations, would he have been the shadow of God himself, or
rather would he not often be the idol of low souls, who do not
[14] understand supernatural power as the unpunished exercise of
cruelty?
It is important to finally know whether the idea of this power
bad can be reconciled with that of God. If in a nutshell the
devil exists, and if there is, what it is.
This is not a superstition or a character
ridiculous: it is about the whole religion, and by
consequent of all the future and all the interests of
humanity.
We really are weird reasoners! We believe ourselves
very strong when we are indifferent to everything, except
material results, to money, for example; and we leave
go at random to the mother ideas of opinion which, by its
turnarounds, upsets or can upset all fortunes.
A conquest of science is much more important than
discovery of a gold mine. With science, we use gold in
service of life; with ignorance, wealth only provides
instruments to death.
Let it be understood, moreover, that our revelations
scientists stop at faith, and that, as a Christian and
as a Catholic, we submit our entire work to the
supreme judgment of the Church.
And now to those who doubt the existence of the devil, we
let’s answer:
Everything that has a name exists; the word can be uttered in
vain, but in itself it cannot be vain and it has
still make sense.
The Word is never empty, and if it is written that it is in God,
and that he is God is that he is the expression and the proof of
being and truth.
[15] The devil is named and personified in the gospel, which is the
Verb of truth, therefore it exists, and it can be considered as
a person. But here it is the Christian who bows; let’s leave
talking about science or reason is the same thing.
Evil exists, it is impossible to doubt it. We can do
good or bad.
There are beings who knowingly and willfully do evil.
The spirit which animates these beings and which excites them to do badly is
led astray, diverted from the right road, thrown across the good like
a barrier; and this is precisely what the Greek word means
diabolos, which we translate by the word diable.
Spirits who love and do evil are accidentally
bad.
So there is a devil who is the spirit of error, of ignorance
voluntary, dizziness; and there are beings who obey him,
who are his envoys, his emissaries, his angels, and it is for
that it is spoken in the Gospel of an eternal fire which is
prepared, predestined in a way to the devil and his angels.
These words are quite a revelation and we will have to
to deepen.
Let us first clearly define evil; evil is fault
rectitude in being.
Moral evil is the lie in deeds like the lie is the
crime in words.
Injustice is the essence of lying; every lie is one
injustice.
[16] When what one says is right, there is no lie. When we
act fairly and in a true way, there is no sin.
Injustice is the death of the moral being, as a lie is the
poison of intelligence.
The spirit of lies is therefore a spirit of death.
Those who listen to him are poisoned by him and are his dupes.
But if we had to take his absolute personification seriously,
he himself would be absolutely dead and absolutely deceived,
that is, the affirmation of its existence would imply a
obvious contradiction.
Jesus said, “The devil is a liar as is his father.”
What is the devil’s father?
It is the one who gives it a personal existence by living
according to his inspirations; the man who makes himself devil is the father
evil spirit incarnate.
But it is a reckless, impious, monstrous conception.
A traditional conception like the pride of the Pharisees.
A hybrid creation which gave an apparent reason against the
magnificences of Christianity to the petty philosophy of
Eighteenth century.
It is the false Lucifer of the heterodox legend; it’s that angel
proud enough to believe God, brave enough to buy
independence at the cost of an eternity of torture, quite beautiful
to have been able to adore himself in full divine light; strong enough for
to reign again in darkness and pain, and to be
a throne of his inextinguishable pyre, he is the Satan of
Republican and the heretic Millon, it is this supposed hero of
[17] dark eternities slandered with ugliness, decked out in horns and
claws that would rather suit his tormentor
implacable.
It is this devil king of evil, as if evil were a kingdom!
This devil smarter than the men of genius who
feared his disappointments.
This black light, this darkness that sees. This power that God
did not want, and that a fallen creature could not create.
This prince of anarchy served by a hierarchy of pure minds.
This outcast of God who would be everywhere like God is on earth,
more visible, more present to the greatest number, better served than
God himself!
This vanquished to whom the victor would give his children to devour!
This artisan of the sins of the flesh to whom the flesh is nothing, and
which consequently could not be anything to the flesh, if one does not
suppose creator and master like God!
A huge lie realized, personified, eternal!
A death that cannot die!
A blasphemy that the word of God will never silence!
A poisoner of souls that God would tolerate by a
contradiction of his power, or that he would keep as the
Roman emperors had kept Locusta, among the instruments
of his reign!
A tortured still alive to curse his judge and to have
right against him since he will never repent!
[18] A monster accepted as an executioner by the sovereign power and
who, following the energetic expression of a former writer
Catholic can call God the God of the devil by giving
himself as a devil of God!
There is the irreligious ghost that slanders religion, take us away
this idol that hides our savior from us. Down with the tyrant of
lie! Down with the Black God of the Manichaeans! Down with the Arimane of
old idolaters! Long live God alone and his Incarnate Word,
Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, who saw Satan fall from heaven!
and long live Mary, the divine mother who crushed the head of the infernal
snake!
This is what says, unanimously, the tradition of the saints and
the hearts of all the true faithful: ascribing a greatness
any to the fallen spirit is to slander the divinity; to lend
any kind of rebellious royalty is to encourage
revolt is to commit, in thought at least, the crime of those
who in the Middle Ages were called with horror “sorcerers”.
Because all the crimes punishable in the past by death on the old
wizards, are real and are the greatest of all crimes.
They have taken the fire from heaven, like Prometheus.
They rode, like Medea, the winged dragons and the serpent
flying.
They poisoned the breathable air, like the shadow of the
mancenillier.
They desecrated holy things and made the body itself serve
of the Lord to works of destruction and calamity.
How is all this possible? It is that there is an agent
mixed, a natural and divine agent, bodily and spiritual, a
[19] universal plastic mediator, a common receptacle of
vibrations of movement and images of form, a fluid and
a force that we could call in some way
the_imagination of nature_. By this force all devices
nervous communicate secretly together; from there are born
sympathy and antipathy; from there come dreams; by there
produce the phenomena of second sight and vision
extranatural. This universal agent of the works of nature,
it is the_od_ of the Hebrews and the knight of Richembach, it is the
astral light of the Martinists, and we prefer, like more
explicit, this last name.
The existence and possible use of this force is the great
arcane of practical magic. It is the wand of the miracle workers
and the clavicle of black magic.
It is the Edenic serpent who transmitted the seductions to Eve
of a fallen angel.
Loving astral light, warms, illuminates, magnetizes, attracts,
grows back, invigorates, destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers
all things under the impulse of powerful wills.
God created it on the first day when he said FIAT LUX!
It is a blind force in itself, but which is led by
the égrégores, that is to say by the heads of souls. The Chiefs
souls are the spirits of energy and action.
This already explains the whole theory of wonders and miracles.
How, indeed, the good and the bad could they force
nature to show the exceptional forces? how y
[20] Would he have divine miracles and diabolical miracles? How? ‘Or’ What
the reprobate spirit, the lost spirit, the misguided spirit, would he have
more strength in certain cases and in a certain way than the just,
so powerful in its simplicity and wisdom, if one does not suppose
not an instrument that everyone can use, according to some
conditions, some for the greater good, others for the
greater evil?
Pharaoh’s magicians first performed the same wonders as
Moses. The instrument they used was therefore the same,
inspiration alone was different, and when they declared themselves
defeated, they proclaimed that according to them human forces
were at the end of the line, and that Moses must have had something
superhuman. But this was happening in this Egypt, mother of
magical initiations, in this land where everything was science
occult and hierarchical and sacred teaching. Was he more
difficult, however, to make flies appear that
frogs? No, certainly; but the magicians knew that
the fluidic projection by which we fascinate the eyes does not
would know how to extend beyond certain limits, and for them already
these limits were exceeded by Moses.
When the brain becomes congested or overloaded with light
astral, a peculiar phenomenon occurs. The eyes, at
instead of seeing outside, see inside; the night is done at
the outdoors in the real world and the fantastic clarity radiates
alone in the world of dreams. The eye then seems to be turned and
often, in fact, it convulses slightly and seems to
turning under the eyelid. The soul then perceives by images the
reflection of his impressions and thoughts, that is to say that
[21] the analogy that exists between such and such an idea and such a form, attracts
in the astral light the representative reflection of this form,
because the essence of living light is to be configurative,
it is the universal imagination which each of us appropriates
a greater or lesser part, depending on its degree of sensitivity
and memory. Therein is the source of all appearances, of
all the extraordinary visions and all the phenomena
intuitive which are peculiar to madness or ecstasy.
The phenomenon of appropriation and assimilation of light by
the sensitivity that sees, is one of the greatest that it is given
for science to study. Maybe one day we’ll find what to see
is already speaking, and that the consciousness of light is the
twilight of eternal life in being, the word of God,
which creates light, seems to be uttered by all intelligence,
who can see the shapes and who wants to look.
there be light! Light, in fact, does not exist in the state of
splendor only for the eyes that look at her, and the loving soul
of the spectacle of universal beauties, and applying its
pay attention to this luminous writing of the infinite book that we
calls out things visible, seems to cry out, like God at dawn
from the first day, this sublime and creative verb: FIAT LUX!
All eyes do not see the same, and creation is not
for all who look at it the same shape and the same
color. Our brain is a book printed within and
outside, and as long as the attention is exalted, the writings
confuse. This is what constantly happens in drunkenness and
in madness. The dream then triumphs over real life and plunges
[22] reason in an incurable sleep. This state of hallucination has
its degrees, all passions are intoxication, all
enthusiasms are relative and graduated follies. The lover
alone sees infinite perfections around an object that
fascinates and intoxicates him. Poor drunkard of pleasures! tomorrow this
the scent of the wine that attracts him will be a reminiscence for him
disgusting and a cause of a thousand nausea and a thousand disgusts!
Know how to use this force, and never let yourself be invaded and
to overcome by it, to walk on the head of the serpent, this is what
that the magic of light teaches us: in this arcane are
contained all the mysteries of magnetism, which can already give
its name to all the practical part of the high magic of the ancients.
Magnetism is the wand of miracles, but for
insiders only; because for the unwary who would like to
to make a toy or an instrument in the service of their passions,
it becomes formidable like this lightning glory which,
according to the allegories of the fable, consumed the too ambitious
Semele in the embraces of Jupiter.
One of the great benefits of magnetism is to make it obvious,
by indisputable facts, spirituality, unity and
the immortality of the soul. Spirituality, unity and immortality
once demonstrated, God appears to all intelligences and
to all hearts. Then from belief in God and in the harmonies of
creation, we are brought to this great religious harmony, which
cannot exist outside the miraculous hierarchy and
legitimacy of the Catholic Church, the only one that has retained all
the traditions of science and faith.
[23] The early tradition of the unique revelation has been preserved under
the name of kabbalah by the priesthood of Israel. Doctrine
Kabbalistic, which is the dogma of high magic, is contained
in the Sepher Jezirah, the Sohar and the Talmud. Following this
doctrine, the absolute is the being in which the Word is found,
which is the expression of the reason for being and for life.
Being is being, היהא רסא היהא .This is the principle.
In principle was, that is to say is, has been, and will be the
Verb, that is to say the reason that speaks.
Εν αρχη λογος!
The Word is the reason for belief, and in him too is
the expression of faith which gives life to science. The verb,
λογος, is the source of logic. Jesus is the Word
embodied. The agreement of reason with faith, of science with
belief, authority with freedom, has become in
modern times the real enigma of the sphinx; and at the same time as
this great problem has been raised that of the respective rights of
man and woman; it had to be, because among all these
terms of a great and supreme question, the analogy is constant
and difficulties, like relationships, are invariably the
same.
Which makes the solution of this node seemingly paradoxical
Gordian of modern philosophy and politics is that
to match the terms of the equation to be done, we
always affects to mix or confuse them.
If there is one supreme absurdity, indeed, it is to seek
[24] how faith could be a reason, reason a belief,
freedom an authority; and reciprocally, the woman a man and
man a woman. Here the very definitions are opposed to the
confusion, and it is by perfectly distinguishing the terms that we
manages to tune them. Now, the perfect and eternal distinction
of the two primitive terms of the creative syllogism, to arrive at
the demonstration of their harmony by analogy of opposites,
this distinction, we say, is the second great principle of
this occult philosophy, veiled under the name of kabbale and
indicated by all the sacred hieroglyphs of the ancient shrines
and rites still so little known in ancient masonry and
modern.
We read in Scripture that Solomon had placed in front of the door of the
temple two bronze columns, one of which was called Jachin and
the other Boaz, which means the strong and the weak . These two
columns represented man and woman, reason and faith,
power and freedom, Cain and Abel, right and duty;
they were the pillars of the intellectual and moral world, it was
the monumental hieroglyph of the antinomy necessary for the great
law of creation. In fact, resistance is needed at all costs
for support, in all light a shadow to repel, in all
protrudes a hollow, to any effusion a receptacle, to any reign
a kingdom, to every sovereign a people, to every worker a
raw material, to any conqueror a subject of conquest.
Affirmation arises through negation, the strong only triumphs
comparison with the weak, the aristocracy manifests itself only
rising above the people. May the weak become strong,
that the people can conquer an aristocratic position, it is
[25] a question of transformation and progress, but what can be
to say will only come to the confirmation of the first truths, the
weak will always be weak, it doesn’t matter if it’s no longer
the same character. Likewise the people will always be the people,
that is to say the governable mass and unable to govern. In
the great army of inferiors, all personal emancipation
is a forced desertion, fortunately rendered insensitive by a
eternal replacement; a people-king or a people of kings
would suppose the slavery of the world and anarchy in one and
undisciplined city, as it was in Rome at the time of its
greater glory. A nation of rulers would be
necessarily as anarchic as a class of scholars or
of schoolchildren who would think themselves masters; nobody would want it
listen, and all would dogmatize and command at the same time.
The same can be said of the radical emancipation of women. Yes
the woman passes from the passive condition to the active condition,
completely and radically, she abdicates her sex and becomes
man, or rather, as such a transformation is physically
impossible, it arrives at the affirmation by a double negation,
and arises outside of both sexes, like a sterile androgyne
and monstrous. These are the forced consequences of the great
Kabbalistic dogma of the distinction of opposites to arrive
to harmony by the analogy of their relations.
This dogma once recognized, and the application of its consequences
being made universally by the law of analogies, we arrive at
the discovery of the greatest secrets of sympathy and
[26] the natural antipathy of government science, either in
politics, whether in marriage, occult medicine in all
its branches, either magnetism, or homeopathy, or influence
moral; and besides, as we will explain, the law
of equilibrium in analogy leads to the discovery of an agent
universal, which was the great arcanum of alchemists and
magicians of the middle ages. We said this agent is a
light of life whose living beings are magnetized, and whose
electricity is just an accident and a disturbance
transient. To the knowledge and use of this agent
report everything related to the practice of the Kabbalah
wonderful that we will soon have to deal with, for
satisfy the curiosity of those who seek in the sciences
rather secret emotions than wise teachings.
The religion of the Kabbalists is at the same time all hypotheses and
quite certain, because it proceeds by analogy from the known to
the unknown. They recognize religion as a need for
humanity, as an obvious and necessary fact, and there only
is for them divine, permanent and universal revelation. They
do not dispute anything of what is, but they give reason for
all thing. Also their doctrine, clearly marking the line
separation which must eternally exist between science and
faith, does it give faith the highest reason for its basis, this
which guarantees it an eternal and incontestable duration; are coming
then the popular formulas of dogma which, alone, can
vary and destroy each other; the kabbalist is not moved by
so little and first of all find a reason for the most astonishing
formulas of the mysteries. So his prayer can be united with that
[27] of all men to direct it, illustrating it with science and
of reason, and bring him to orthodoxy. Tell him about Mary,
he will bow to this realization of all that is
divine in dreams of innocence and all that there is
adorable in the holy folly of the hearts of all mothers. This
he is not the one who will refuse flowers to the altars of the mother of
God, white ribbons to his chapels, tears even to his
naive legends! It is not he who will laugh at the God wailing at
the manger and the bloody victim of Calvary; he repeats
yet in the depths of his heart, with the wise men of Israel and the
true believers of Islam: “There is only one God, and that is God;”
which means for an initiate in the true sciences: “There is no
that a Being, and it is the Being! ” But all there is to politics
and touching in beliefs, but the splendor of cults,
but the pomp of divine creations, but the grace of prayers,
but the magic of heaven’s hopes; isn’t all this one
radiance of the moral being in all his youth and in all
her beauty? Yes, if anything can take away the real one
initiate public prayers and temples, which can raise
with him disgust or indignation against a religious form
whatever, it is the visible unbelief of ministers or
people, it is the lack of dignity in the ceremonies of worship,
it is the profanation, in a word, of holy things. God is
truly present when collected souls and hearts
affected adore it; he is noticeably and terribly absent
when we speak of him without fire and without light, that is to say
without intelligence and without love.
[28] The idea that we must have of God, according to the wise Kabbalah, is
Saint Paul himself who will reveal it to us: “To reach God,
said this apostle, we must believe that he is and that he rewards those
who are looking for him. “
Thus, nothing apart from the idea of being, joined to the notion of
goodness and justice, for this idea alone is the absolute. Say that
God is not, or define what he is, it is also
blaspheme. Any definition of God, risked by intelligence
human, is a recipe for religious empiricism, by means of
which superstition, later, can convolute a devil.
In Kabbalistic symbols, God is always represented
by a double image, one straight, the other reversed, one
white and the other black. The sages wanted to express the
clever design and vulgar design of the same
idea, the god of light and the god of shadow; it’s this symbol
misunderstood that it is necessary to postpone the origin of Arimane
Persians, this black and divine ancestor of all demons; the dream of
infernal king, in fact, is only a false idea of God.
Light alone, without shadow, would be invisible to our eyes, and
would produce a glare equivalent to the deepest
darkness. In the analogies of this physical truth, well
understood and well thought out, we will find the most
terrible problems; the origin of the evil. But the knowledge
of this solution and all its consequences is
not made for the multitude, who should not enter so easily
in the secrets of universal harmony. Also, when
the initiate in the Eleusinian mysteries had triumphantly traveled
all the trials, when he had seen and touched things
holy, if he was judged strong enough to endure the last and
[29] most terrible of all secrets, a veiled priest
came running up to him, and threw in his ear
this enigmatic word: Osiris is a black god. So this
Osiris, of whom Typhon is the oracle, this divine religious sun of
Egypt, suddenly disappeared and was no longer himself but
the shadow of that great and indefinable Isis, who is all
who has been and all that will be, but of which no one yet has
lifted the eternal veil.
Light for Kabbalists represents the active principle, and
darkness is analogous to the passive principle; that’s why
that they made the sun and the moon the emblem of both sexes
divine and of the two creative forces; that’s why they
attributed temptation and sin to the woman first, then the
first work, the maternal work of redemption since
it is from the bosom of darkness itself that we see light reborn.
Emptiness draws full, and so does the abyss of poverty
and misery, the so-called evil, the so-called nothingness, the passenger
rebellion of creatures eternally attracts an ocean of being, of
wealth, mercy and love. This explains the symbol
of Christ descending into hell after exhausting on the cross
all the immensities of the most admirable forgiveness.
By this law of harmony in the analogy of opposites, the
Kabbalists also explained all the mysteries of love
sexual; why this passion is more lasting between two
unequal natures and two opposing characters? Why in love he
there is always a priest and a victim, why
the most stubborn passions are those whose satisfaction
seems impossible. By this law also they would have settled forever
[30] the question of precedence between the sexes, a question that the
Saint-Simonism alone has been able to raise seriously in our days. They
would have found that the natural force of the woman being the force
of inertia or resistance, the most imprescriptible of its
rights, it is the right to decency; and that thus she owes nothing
do nothing to aspire to anything that requires some sort
masculine effrontery. Nature has moreover provided plenty of
giving him a soft voice that could not be heard in
large assemblies without arriving at ridiculously tones
screaming. The woman who aspires to the functions of the opposite sex,
would thereby lose the prerogatives of his. We do not know
how far she would manage to govern men, but
certainly men, and what would be more cruel for her, the
even children would no longer love him.
The marital law of the Kabbalists gives by analogy the solution
of the most interesting and difficult problem of
modern philosophy. The final and lasting agreement of reason
and faith, authority and freedom of examination,
science and belief. If science is the sun, the
belief is the moon: it is a reflection of day in night. The
faith is the supplement of reason, in the darkness left
science, either before it or behind it; it emanates from
reason, but it can never be confused with it, nor
confuse her. The encroachments of reason on faith or of
faith in reason, are eclipses of the sun or the moon;
when they arrive, they make both the home unnecessary
and the light reflector.
Science perishes by systems which are nothing but
[31] beliefs, and faith succumbs to reasoning. So that both
columns of the temple support the building, they must be
separated and placed in parallel. As soon as we violently want them
bring closer like Sanson, we overturn them and the whole edifice
collapses on the head of the reckless blind man or the revolutionary,
that personal or national resentments have in advance dedicated to
the death.
The struggles of spiritual power and temporal power have been of
every time in humanity great household quarrels. The
jealous papacy of temporal power was only a mother of
family jealous of supplanting her husband: so she lost her
confidence of his children. Temporal power in turn,
when he usurps the priesthood, is as ridiculous as the
would be a man claiming to get along better than a mother with
care of the interior and the cradle. Thus the English, by
example, from a moral and religious point of view, are children
swaddled by men; we can see it from them
sadness and boredom.
If religious dogma is a nurse’s tale, provided it is
ingenious and of a beneficent morality, it is perfectly true
for the child, and the father of the family would be very stupid to
contradict. To mothers, therefore, the monopoly of marvelous tales,
pampering and songs. Motherhood is the type of
priesthood, and this is because the Church must be exclusively
mother, may the Catholic priest renounce being a man and abjure
before her in advance her rights to paternity.
We should never have forgotten: the papacy is a mother
universal or it is nothing. Pope Joan, whose
[32] Protestants have made a scandalous history, perhaps not
than an ingenious allegory, and when the sovereign pontiffs have
mistreated emperors and kings, it was Pope Joan who
wanted to beat her husband to the scandal of the Christian world.
So schisms and heresies were not at the bottom, we
let us repeat, that of conjugal disputes; the Church and the
Protestantism speak badly of each other and regret each other,
affect to avoid each other and get bored of being one without the other,
like separated spouses.
Thus by the Kabalah, and by it alone, everything is explained and
reconcile. It is a doctrine which vivifies and fecundates all
others, it does not destroy anything and on the contrary gives reason
to be of all that is. Also all the forces of the world are
they at the service of this unique and superior science, and the
can a true Kabbalist dispose as he pleases without hypocrisy and
without lies, the science of the wise and the enthusiasm of
believers. He is more Catholic than M. de Maistre, more
protesting that Luther, more Israelite than the chief rabbi, more
prophet than Muhammad; is he not above systems and
passions that obscure the truth, and can’t it at will
bring together all the scattered rays and variously reflected by all
the fragments of that broken mirror which is the universal faith, and
that men take for so many opposing beliefs and
different? There is only one being, there is only one truth, there is
has only one him and one faith, as there is only one humanity in this
world.
Having reached such intellectual and moral heights, we
understands that the human mind and heart enjoy peace
deep; also these words: Deep peace, my brothers!
[33] Were they the master’s word in high masonry,
that is to say in the association of initiates with the Kabbalah.
The war the Church had to declare on magic was called for
by the profanations of false Gnostics, but true science
of the Magi is essentially Catholic, because it is based
all its realization on the principle of hierarchy. However, in
the Catholic Church alone there is a serious hierarchy and
absolute. This is why true followers always have
professed for this Church the deepest respect and
the most absolute obedience. Henri Khunrath alone was a
determined protestant; but in this he was German in his
epoch rather than mystical citizen of the eternal kingdom.
The essence of antichristianism is exclusion and heresy,
it is the tearing of the body of Christ, following the beautiful
expression of Saint John: Omnis spiritus qui solvit Christum hic Antechristus is. It is because religion is charity. But he
there is no charity in anarchy.
Magic too has had its heresiarchs and sectarians, its men
of prestige and its wizards. We will have to avenge the legitimacy
of science, of the usurpations of ignorance, of madness and of
fraud, and it is above all in this that our work can be
useful and will be entirely new.
Until now, the history of magic has only been treated as
the annals of a prejudice, or the more or less exact chronicles
of a series of phenomena; nobody, in fact, no longer believed
that magic was a science. A serious history of this
rediscovered science must indicate the developments and
progress; we therefore walk in the middle of the sanctuary instead of following
[34] ruins, and we will find this buried shrine so
long under the ashes of four civilizations, more
wonderfully preserved that these mummy towns
lately from the ashes of Vesuvius, in all their dead beauty
and their sorry majesty.
In his most magnificent work, Bossuet showed religion
linked everywhere with history: what would he have said if he had known
that a science, born so to speak with the world, gives reason to
both of the primitive dogmas of the unique and universal religion
by uniting them with the most incontestable theorems of
mathematics and reason?
Dogmatic magic is the key to all secrets not yet
deepened by the philosophy of history; and magic
practice opens only to the power, always limited but
always progressive of the human will, the occult temple of
nature.
We do not have the ungodly claim to magically explain
mysteries of religion; but we will teach how the
science must accept and revere these mysteries. We won’t say
more than reason should humble itself before faith; she owes to
on the contrary, to be honored to be a believer; because it is faith that saves the
because of the horrors of nothingness on the edge of the abyss for the
relate to infinity.
Orthodoxy in religion is respect for the hierarchy, only
guardian of the unit. However, let us not be afraid to repeat it, the
magic is basically the science of hierarchy. It
outlawed above all, let it be remembered, these are the
anarchic doctrines; and it demonstrates, by the very laws of
[35] nature, that harmony is inseparable from power and
authority.
What makes, for the greatest number of the curious, the attraction
main magic is that they see it as a way
extraordinary to satisfy their passions. No, say the
stingy, Hermes’ secret for the transmutation of metals
does not exist, otherwise we would buy it and we would be
rich! … Poor fools, who believe that such a secret could
sell! and what need of your money would he who
know how to make gold?
yourself, Éliphas Lévi, if you had this secret wouldn’t you be
not richer than us? ”“ Hey! who tells you that I am poor?
Did I ask you something? Who is the ruler of the world
who can boast of having paid me a secret of science? What
is the millionaire that I have ever given any reason to
believe that I would like to trade my fortune for his?
When we see the riches of the earth from below, we long for it
always as to sovereign felicity; but as we
despise when one hovers above them, and that one has little desire
to take them back when they have been dropped like irons!
Oh! cried a young man, if the secrets of magic were
true, I would like to own them to be loved by all
women – Of all of them, just that. Poor child, a day will come
where it will be too much to have one. Sensual love is an orgy at
two, where drunkenness quickly leads to disgust, and then we leave each other
throwing glasses at his head.
Me, said an old idiot one day, I would like to be a magician
[36] to turn the world upside down! – Good man, if you were a magician
you wouldn’t be a fool; and then nothing would provide you,
even in the court of your conscience, the benefit of
extenuating circumstances, if you become a scoundrel.
Well! will say an epicurean, give me the recipes of the
magic, to enjoy always and never to suffer ….
Here it is science itself which will answer:
Religion has already told you: Happy are those who suffer; But
it is for this very reason that religion has lost your confidence.
She said: Happy are those who cry, and that is why
you laughed at his teachings.
Now listen to what experience and reason say:
Suffering experiences and creates generous feelings; the
pleasures develop and strengthen loose instincts.
The sufferings make strong against the pleasure, the pleasures
make them weak against pain.
The pleasure dissipates;
Pain collects.
He who suffers amass;
Who enjoys spending.
Pleasure is the collection of man.
Maternal pain is the triumph of woman.
It is the pleasure that fecundates, but it is the pain that conceives
and who gives birth.
Woe to the man who does not know and who does not want to suffer!
for he will be crushed with sorrows.
[37] Those who do not want to walk, nature drags them
mercilessly.
We are thrown in life as in the open sea: we must swim
or perish.
These are the laws of nature taught by high magic.
See now if you can become a magician to enjoy
always and never suffer!
But then, the people of the world will say with an air of disappointment, what
can be used for magic? – What do you think the prophet Balaam had
could answer his donkey if she had asked him what can
to serve intelligence?
What would Hercules say to a pygmy who asked him what
can serve the force?
We certainly do not compare the people of the world to pygmies, and
still less to Balaam’s donkey; it would be lacking in politeness
and tasteful. We will therefore respond most graciously
possible to those people so brilliant and so kind, that the
magic cannot be of any use to them at all, since they do not
will never deal with it seriously.
Our work is addressed to souls who work and who think.
They will find there the explanation of what has remained obscure in
the dogma and in the ritual of high magic [1]. We have,
following the example of the great masters, followed in the plan and the division
of our books the rational order of sacred numbers. We divide
our history of magic in seven books, and each book
contains seven chapters.
[Note 1: Éliphas Lévi, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, 1856,
2 vol. in-8, with 23 fig. – 25 fr.]
[38] The first book is devoted to magical origins, it is the
Genesis of science, and we gave it the key to the letter
aleph א ,which kabbalistically expresses unity
principal and original.
The second book will contain the historical and social formulas
of the magic verb_ in antiquity. Its brand is the letter
beth ב ,binary symbol, verb expression
director, special character of gnosis and occultism.
The third book will be the account of the achievements of science
ancient in Christian society_. We will see how, for
science itself, the word was embodied. The number three is
that of generation, of realization, and the book has for
key the letter ghimel ג ,hieroglyph of birth.
In the fourth book we will see the civilizing force of
magic_ among the barbarians, and the natural productions of
this science among peoples still children, the mysteries of
druids, the miracles of the eubages, the legends of the bards, and
how all this contributes to the formation of modern societies
by preparing for Christianity a resounding and lasting victory.
The number four expresses nature and strength, and the letter
daleth ד ,which represents it in the Hebrew alphabet, is
represented in the hieroglyphic alphabet of the Kabbalists by a
emperor on his throne.
The fifth book will be devoted to the priestly era of the middle
age_. We will see there the dissent and the struggles of science,
the formation of secret societies, their unknown works, the
secret rites of grimoires, the mysteries of the divine comedy,
divisions of the sanctuary, which should later lead to a
glorious unity. The number five is that of the quintessence, of
[39] religion, of the priesthood; his character is the letter hé
ה ,represented in the magic alphabet by the figure of
high priest.
Our sixth book will show the magic mixed with the work of the revolution. The number six is that of antagonism and
struggle which prepares the universal synthesis. His letter is vaf
ו ,figure of the creative lingam, of curved iron which
reap.
The seventh book will be that of synthesis, and will contain
the presentation of modern works and recent discoveries,
new theories of light and magnetism, the revelation
of the great secret of the Rosicrucians, the explanation of the alphabets
mysterious, the science, finally, of the verb and of the magic works,
synthesis of science and appreciation of the work of all
contemporary mystics. This book will be the complement and the
crown of the work as the septenary is the crown of
numbers, since it combines the triangle of the idea with the square of the
form. Its corresponding letter is the dzaïn ז ,and its
Kabbalistic hieroglyph is a triumphant mounted on a chariot
harnessed by two sphinxes. We gave this figure in our
previous work.
Far from us the ridiculous vanity of posing as a triumphant
Kabbalistic, it is science alone that must triumph, and
the one we want to show the intelligent world, mounted on the
cubic chariot and dragged by the sphinxes, it is the verb of light,
it is the divine realizer of the Kabbalah of Moses, it is the
human sun of the Gospel, it is the man-God who has already come
as Savior, and who will soon manifest himself as Messiah,
[40] that is to say as the definitive and absolute king of the institutions
temporal. It is this thought that animates our courage and
maintains our hope. And now we have to
submit all our ideas, all our discoveries and all our
work with the infallible judgment of the hierarchy. All that
is due to science, to men accepted by science, everything
which is linked to religion, to the Church alone, and to the Church alone
hierarchical and conservative of unity, apostolic catholic
and Roman, from Jesus Christ until now.
To the scientists our discoveries, to the bishops our aspirations and our
beliefs! Woe, indeed, to the child who thinks himself wiser
that his fathers, to the man who recognizes no masters, to the
dreamer who thinks and prays for himself alone! Life is one
universal communion, and it is in this communion that we find
immortality. He who isolates himself is dedicated to death, and eternity
isolation would be eternal death!
Éliphas LÉVI.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC HEAD of the Sohar.]
[41]
BOOK ONE
MAGICAL ORIGINS
.Aleph א
FIRST CHAPTER
FABULOUS ORIGINS
CONTENTS .– Fabulous origins .– Adam’s book of penance.
–The Book of Enoch – The Legend of the Fallen Angels – Revelation of
Methodius – Genesis Following the Indians – The Magical Legacy
of Abraham, according to the Talmud .– The Sepher Jezirah and the Sohar.
“There were angels, says the apocryphal book of Enoch,
dropped from heaven to love the daughters of the earth.
For in those days, when the sons of men were
multiplied, daughters of great beauty were born to them.
And when the angels, the children of heaven, saw them they were
taken from love for them; and they said to each other: “Come on,
do we choose wives of the race of men, and beget
children. “
Then their chief Samyasa said to them: “Perhaps you will not have the
courage to accomplish this resolution, and I will be left alone
responsible for your fall. “
But they answered him: “We swear not to repent and
to accomplish all of our purpose. “
[42] And there were two hundred who went down to the mountain
d’Armon.
And it is since that time that this mountain is named Armon,
which means the mountain of the Oath.
These are the names of the heads of these angels who came down: Samyasa
who was the first of all, Uraka-baraméel, Azibéel, Tamiel,
Ramuel, Danel, Azkéel, Sarakuyal, Asael, Armers, Batraai, Anane,
Zavèbe, Samsavéel, Ertrael, Turel, Jomiael, Arazial.
They took wives with whom they mingled, their
teaching magic, enchantments and root division
and trees.
Amazarac taught all the secrets of the enchanters, Barkaial was
the master of those who observe the stars, Akibéel revealed the
signs and Azaradel the movement of the moon. “
This account of the Kabbalistic book of Enoch, is the account of this
same desecration of the mysteries of science that we see
represent under another image in the story of Adam’s sin.
The angels, the sons of God, of whom Enoch speaks, were the
initiated into magic, since after their fall they taught it
to vulgar men through indiscreet women. The
voluptuousness was their stumbling block, they loved women and let themselves be
surprise the secrets of royalty and the priesthood.
Then the primitive civilization collapsed, the giants,
that is, the representatives of brute force and
unbridled lusts, disputed the world which could not
[43] to escape that by sinking under the waters of the deluge where
all traces of the past.
This flood represented the universal confusion in which falls
necessarily humanity when it has violated and disregarded the
harmonies of nature.
Samyasa’s sin and Adam’s sin are alike
are carried away by the weakness of the heart, both desecrate
the tree of knowledge and are driven away from the tree of life.
Do not discuss the opinions or rather the naivety of those who
want to take everything literally, and who think that science
and life may once have grown as trees, but
let us admit the deep meaning of sacred symbols.
The tree of science, in fact, gives death when it is
absorb the fruits, these fruits are the adornment of the world, these
golden apples are the stars of the earth.
There is a strong manuscript in the Arsenal library
curious which has for title: The book of the penitence of Adam. The
Kabbalistic tradition is presented there in the form of a legend, and
here is what it says:
“Adam had two sons, Cain who represents brute force, Abel
which represents intelligent gentleness. They couldn’t agree,
and they perished one by another, therefore their inheritance was
given to a third son named Seth. “
This is the conflict between the two opposing forces turning to
benefit of synthetic and combined power.
“Now Seth, who was righteous, was able to reach the entrance of the
earthly paradise without the cherub spreading it with his sword
flamboyant. ” That is, Seth represents the initiation
primitive.
[44] “Seth then saw the tree of knowledge and the tree of life
had come together and were one. ”
Agreement of science and religion in the high Kabbalah.
“And the angel gave him three grains which contained all the strength
vital of this tree. “
It is the kabbalistic ternary.
“When Adam died, Seth, following the instructions of the angel,
placed the three grains in the mouth of his expired father as a
pledge of eternal life.
The branches that came out of these three grains formed the
burning bush in the midst of which God revealed his name to Moses
eternal:
[Hebrew, illegible.]
The being who is, who has been, and who will be the being.
»Moses plucked a triple branch of the sacred bush, it was for
him the rod of miracles.
This rod although separated from its root did not cease to live.
and flourish, and so it was kept in the ark.
King David replanted this living branch on the mountain of
Zion, and Solomon later took the wood of this tree three times
trunk to make the two columns Jachin and Bohas, which were
at the entrance to the temple, he clad them with bronze, and placed the
third piece of mystical wood on the pediment of the door
main.
It was a talisman that kept all that was impure from
enter the temple.
[45] “But the corrupt Levites tore up during the night this
barrier of their iniquities and threw her to the bottom of the pool
probatic by loading it with stones.
From that moment on, the angel of God has stirred the waters of
swimming pool and communicated to them a miraculous virtue to invite
men to seek Solomon’s tree there.
»In the time of Jesus Christ, the pool was cleaned, and the Jews
finding this beam, useless according to them, carried it out of
the city and threw it across the torrent Kidron.
»It is on this bridge that Jesus passed after his nocturnal arrest
in the Garden of Olives, it is from the top of this plank that his
executioners rushed him to drag him into the torrent and
in their haste to prepare in advance the instrument of
torture, they took with them the bridge which was a beam
of three pieces, composed of three different woods and they
made a cross. “
This allegory contains all the high traditions of the
Kabbalah and the secrets so completely ignored these days of
Christianity of Saint John.
Thus Seth, Moses, David, Solomon and Christ would have borrowed
to the same kabbalistic tree their scepters of kings and their
sticks of great pontiffs.
We must now understand why the Savior in the cradle
was worshiped by the Magi.
Let us return to the book of Enoch, because this one must have an authority
dogmatic larger than an ignored manuscript. The Book of Enoch
is, in fact, cited in the New Testament by the holy apostle
Jude.
Tradition attributes to Enoch the invention of letters. It is
[46] therefore to him that the traditions recorded in the Sepher go back
Jezirah, this elementary book of the Kabbalah, whose writing
according to the rabbis, would be from the patriarch Abraham, the heir of
secrets of Enoch and the father of the initiation into Israel.
Enoch therefore appears to be the same character as Hermes
Trismegistus of the Egyptians, and the famous book of Thoth, writes all
in hieroglyphics and numbers, would be this occult bible and
full of mysteries, prior to the books of Moses, to which
the insider Guillaume Postel often alludes in his works
by designating it under the name of Genesis of Enoch.
The Bible says that Enoch did not die, but that God he transporta from one life to another. He must come back to oppose
the Antichrist, at the end of time, and he will be one of the last
martyrs or witnesses of the truth, mentioned in
the apocalypse of Saint John.
What we say about Enoch, we have said it about all the great initiators
of the Kabbalah.
Saint John himself was not to die, said the first
Christians, and for a long time we thought we saw him breathing in his
tomb, because the absolute science of life is a preservative
against death and the instinct of peoples always does it to them
to guess.
Anyway, we would have two books left of Enoch, one
hieroglyphic, the other allegorical. One containing the keys
hieratic of the initiation, the other the story of a great
desecration that brought destruction of the world and chaos
after the reign of the giants.
Saint Methodius, a bishop of the early centuries of Christianity,
whose works are in the library of the Fathers of
[47] the Church, left us a prophetic apocalypse where history
of the world unfolds in a series of visions. This book is not
not found in the collection of works of Saint Methodius,
but it was preserved by the Gnostics, and we find it
printed in the liber mirabilis, under the altered name of
Bermechobus, which ignorant printers made instead
the abbreviation Bea-Méthodius for beatus Méthodius.
This book agrees in several points with the allegorical treatise
of Adam’s penance. It is found that Seth withdrew with his
family in the East towards a mountain close to the terrestrial paradise.
It was the homeland of the initiates, while the seed of Cain
invented false magic in India, the land of fratricide, and
put evil spells at the service of impunity.
Saint Methodius then predicts the conflicts and the successive reign
of the Ishmaelites, conquerors of the Romans; of the French, winners
of the Ishmaelites, then of a great people of the North, whose invasion
will precede the personal reign of the Antichrist. Then a
universal kingdom, which will be reconquered by a French prince, and
righteousness will reign for many years to come.
We don’t have to deal with prophecy here. What he
important to us to notice, it is the distinction of the good and the
evil magic, from the sanctuary of the sons of Seth and
desecration of the sciences by the descendants of Cain.
High science, in fact, is reserved for men who are
masters of their passions, and chaste nature does not give
keys of his bridal chamber to adulterers. There are two classes
[48] of men, free men and slaves; man is born a slave
of its needs, but it can be freed by intelligence.
Between those who are already freed and those who are not
still equality is not possible. It’s the reason to rule
and instincts to obey. Otherwise if you give to a blind man
the blind to lead, they will all fall into the abyss. The
freedom, let’s not forget, this is not the license of passions
freed from the law. This license would be the most monstrous
tyrannies. Freedom is voluntary obedience to
law; it is the right to do one’s duty and only men
reasonable and just are free. Now, free men must
rule the slaves, and the slaves are called to
to free oneself; not of the government of free men, but of
this bondage of brutal passions, which condemns them not to
exist without masters.
Now admit with us the truth of the higher sciences,
suppose for a moment that there is indeed a force which we
can seize and who submits to the will of man the miracles
of nature? Tell us now if we can trust the
greedy brutalities the secrets of sympathy and wealth;
to intriguers the art of fascination, to those who do not know
to lead themselves the empire over wills? … We are
frightened when one thinks of the disorders that can lead to
such profanation. It will take a cataclysm to wash away the crimes
of the earth when everything is shattered in the mud and
blood. Well! this is what the allegorical story of
the fall of the angels in the book of Enoch, this is the sin of Adam
and its fatal consequences. Here is the flood and its storms; then,
[49] later, the high curse of Chanaan. The revelation of
occultism is represented by the impudence of this son who shows the
paternal nudity. Noah’s drunkenness is a lesson for the
priesthood of all times. Woe to those who expose the
secrets of the divine generation to the unclean eyes of the crowd!
keep the sanctuary closed, you who don’t want to deliver your
father asleep at the laughing stock of the imitators of Cham!
Such is, on the laws of the human hierarchy, the tradition
of the children of Seth; but such were not the doctrines of
Cain’s family. The Cainists of India invented a
Genesis to consecrate the oppression of the strongest and perpetuate
ignorance of the weak; initiation became the privilege
exclusive of the supreme castes and races of men were
condemned to eternal servitude under the pretext of
lower birth; they had gone out, it was said, from the feet or
from Brahma’s knees!
Nature gives birth to neither slaves nor kings, all men
are born for work.
Whoever claims that man is perfect when he is born, and that
society degrades and perverts it, would be the wildest of
anarchists, if he wasn’t the most poetic of fools. But
Jean-Jacques may have been sentimental and dreamy, but his
misanthropy, developed by the logic of his minions, bore
fruits of hatred and destruction. The conscientious directors
utopias of the tender philosopher of Geneva, were Robespierre and
Marat.
Society is not an abstract being that we can make
[50] separately responsible for the perversity of men; the society
it is the association of men. She is defective in their
vices and sublime of their virtues; but in itself it is
holy, like the religion which is inseparably united to it. The
religion, in fact, is it not the society of the highest
aspirations and the most generous efforts?
Thus, to the lie of castes privileged by nature,
replied the blasphemy of anti-social equality and enemy law
of all duty; Christianity alone had solved the question by
giving supremacy to dedication, and proclaiming the most
great one who sacrifices his pride to society and its
appetites for law.
The Jews, custodians of the tradition of Seth, do not
preserved in all its purity, and let themselves be won
by the unjust ambitions of Cain’s posterity. They
believed to be an elite race, and thought that God had rather
given the truth as a heritage that entrusted as a deposit
belonging to all of humanity. We find, in fact, in
the Talmudists, alongside the sublime traditions of the Sepher Jezirah
and Sonar, quite strange revelations. This is how they
are not afraid to attribute to the patriarch Abraham himself
idolatry of the nations, when they say that Abraham gave
Israelites his heritage, that is to say the science of real names
divine; the kabbalah, in a word, would have been the legitimate property
and hereditary of Isaac; but the patriarch gave, they say,
present to the children of his concubines; and by these presents they
hear veiled dogmas and obscure names, which are
soon materialized and turned into idols. The
false religions and their absurd mysteries, superstitions
[51] Oriental women and their horrible sacrifices, what a gift from a father
to his little-known family! Wasn’t it enough to drive Hagar away with
his son in the desert, was it necessary, with their unique bread and
their water jug, give them a burden of lies to
to despair and poison their exile?
The glory of Christianity is to have called all men to
the truth, without distinction of peoples and castes, but no
however without distinction of intelligences and virtues.
“Do not throw your words in front of the pigs, said the divine
founder of Christianity, lest they trample them
feet and that, turning against you, they do not devour you. “
The Apocalypse, or revelation of Saint John, which contains all
Kabbalistic secrets of the dogma of Jesus Christ, is not a
book less obscure than the Sohar.
It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and pictures;
and the apostle often appeals to the intelligence of the initiates. “That
he who has knowledge understands, let him who understands
calculate, ”he said several times after an allegory or the utterance
of a number. Saint John, the apostle of choice and the
custodian of all the Savior’s secrets, did not write
to be understood by the multitude.
The Sepher Jezirah, the Sohar and the Apocalypse are the
masterpieces of occultism; they contain more meaning than
words, the expression is represented as poetry and exact
like numbers. The Apocalypse sums up, completes and surpasses
[52] all the knowledge of Abraham and Solomon, as we
will prove by explaining the keys of the high Kabbalah.
The beginning of Sohar amazes by the depth of its insights
and the grandiose simplicity of his images. Here is what we there
read:
“The intelligence of occultism is the science of balance.
“The forces which are produced without being balanced perish in
the void.
Thus perished the kings of the old world, the princes of
giants. They fell like trees without roots, and we
no longer found their place.
It is through the conflict of unbalanced forces that the earth
devastated was naked and shapeless when the breath of God was made
up in the sky and lowered the mass of the waters.
All the aspirations of nature were then towards the unity of
form, towards the living synthesis of balanced powers, and
the forehead of God, crowned with light, rose over the vast sea
and was reflected in the lower waters.
Her two eyes seemed beaming with clarity, casting two lines
of flame which crossed with the rays of the reflection.
The forehead of God and his two eyes formed a triangle in the
sky, and the reflection formed a triangle in the waters.
»Thus was revealed the number six, which was that of creation.
universal. “
We translate here, by explaining it, the text that we cannot
make intelligible by translating it literally.
[Illustration: THE GREAT KABBALISTIC SYMBOL of Sohar.]
[53] The author of the book is careful, moreover, to tell us that this
human form that he gives to God is only an image of his verb,
and that God cannot be expressed by any thought or by
no shape. Pascal said that God is a circle whose center
is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. But how
to design a circle without a circumference? Sohar takes the opposite
of this paradoxical figure, and would willingly say of the circle of
Pascal that the circumference is everywhere and the center zero
go; but it is not on a circle, it is on a scale that he
compare the universal balance of things. “The balance is
everywhere, he says, so we find everywhere also the central point where
the scale is suspended. ” Here we find the stronger Sohar
and deeper than Pascal.
The author of Sohar continues his sublime dream. The synthesis of the verb
formulated by the human figure slowly rises and comes out of the waters
like the rising sun. When the eyes appeared, the light
was made; when the mouth shows up, spirits are created and
the word is heard. The whole head is out, and voil
the first day of creation. Come the shoulders, arms and
chest, and labor begins. The divine image repels
with one hand the sea and with the other lift the continents and
mountains. She is growing, she is still growing. His power
generator appears, and all beings will multiply; he
is standing, finally, he puts one foot on the ground and the other on the
sea, and mirroring himself entirely in the Ocean of creation, he
breath on its reflection, it calls its image to life. Let’s create
man, he said, and man is created! We do not know
nothing so beautiful in any poet as this vision of the
creation accomplished by the ideal type of mankind. Man as well
[54] is the shadow of a shadow! but it is the representation of the
divine power. He too can extend the hands of the East to
the West; the land is given to him for his domain. This is the Adam
Kadmon, the primitive Adam of the Kabbalists; this is what thought
they make a giant of it; this is why Swedenborg, continued in
his dreams by the memories of the Kabbalah, says that the creation
whole is but a gigantic man, and that we are made to
the image of the universe.
The Sohar is a genesis of light, the Sepher Jezirah is a
scale of truths. There are explained the thirty-two signs
absolutes of speech, numbers and letters; each letter
reproduces a number, an idea and a shape, so that the
mathematics applies to ideas and forms, no less
strictly that to numbers by an exact proportion and a
perfect match. By the science of Sepher Jezirah,
the human mind is fixed in truth and in reason, and
can realize the possible progress of intelligence by
changes in numbers. Sohar therefore represents the truth
absolute, and the Sepher Jezirah gives the means to seize it, to
appropriate it and make use of it.
[55]
CHAPTER II.
MAGIC OF THE MAGIC.
SUMMARY .– Mysteries of Zoroaster or magic of the Magi .– Science
fire – Symbols and enchantments of the Persians and
Assyrians – Mysteries of Nineveh and Babylon – Domain of
lightning – Art of charming animals – The pyre of Sardanapalus.
Zoroaster is most likely a symbolic name, like that of
Thoth or Hermes. Eudoxus and Aristotle make him live six thousand years
before the birth of Plato; others, on the contrary, do
born five hundred years before the Trojan War. Some do
a king of Bactria, the others claim the existence of two
or three different Zoroasters. Eudoxus and Aristotle alone we
seem to have understood the magical character of Zoroaster by
putting the kabbalistic age of a world between the blossoming of its
dogma and the theurgic reign of Plato’s philosophy. There is,
indeed, two Zoroastres, that is to say, two revealers, one
son of Oromase and father of a bright intelligence, the other son
Arimane and author of a secular disclosure; Zoroaster is the
Word embodied by the Chaldeans, Medes and Persians. His legend
seems a prediction of that of Christ, and he must also have had
his antichrist, following the magical law of universal equilibrium.
The cult of fire must be attributed to the false Zoroaster
material and the unholy dogma of divine dualism which produced more
the monstrous gnosis of Manes, and the erroneous principles of
[56] false masonry. The false Zoroaster is the father of this
materialistic magic that caused the massacre of the Magi, and made
to fall true magism under proscription and into oblivion.
The Church, always inspired by the spirit of truth, had to
proscribe under the names of magie, of manicheism,
of_illuminism_ and masonry, all that was connected with
near or far to this primitive desecration of the mysteries.
The story so far misunderstood by the Templars is one
shining example.
The dogmas of the true Zoroaster are the same as those of the pure
Kabbalah, and his ideas on divinity are the same as those
of the Fathers of the Church. The names alone differ: thus he names
triade what we call trinity, and in each number of
the triad, he rediscovers the entire ternary. This is what our
theologians call the circum-insession of people
divine. Zoroaster contains in this multiplication of the
triad by itself the absolute reason for the number nine and the key
universal of all numbers and all shapes. What
we call the three divine persons, Zoroaster calls him the
three depths. The first or paternal depth is the
source of faith; the second or that of the Word is the source of
the truth; the third where the creative action is the source
of love. We can consult, to be convinced of what we
let’s move on here, the exposition of Psellus on the dogmas of the ancients
Assyrians, in the Magie philosophique by François Patricius,
page 2, Hamburg edition, 1593.
On this scale of nine degrees, Zoroaster establishes the hierarchy
heavenly and all the harmonies of nature. It counts by three
[57] all the things that emanate from the idea, by four all that
is attached to the form, which gives it the number seven for type
of creation. Here ends the first initiation, and begin
the school’s assumptions; the numbers are personified, the
ideas take emblems that later become idols.
Here come the Synochées, the Teletarchs and the Fathers,
servants of the triple Hecate, then the three Amilictes, and the
three faces of Hypézocos; then the angels, then the demons, then
human souls. The stars are the images and reflections of
intellectual splendours, and our sun is the emblem of a
sun of truth, itself the shadow of this primary source from which
all the splendors spring up. This is why the
disciples of Zoroaster greeted the rising of the day, and passed
among the barbarians for worshipers of the sun.
Such were the dogmas of the Magi, but they possessed, in
besides, of the secrets which made them masters of the powers
occult of nature. These secrets, all of which could
to be called a transcendental pyrotechnics, all related
to deep science and the government of fire. It is certain
that the magi knew electricity, and had the means
to produce and direct it, which are still unknown to us.
Numa, who studied their rites and was initiated into their mysteries,
possessed, according to Lucius Pison, the art of training and
lightning. This priestly secret that the Roman initiator wanted
become the prerogative of the sovereigns of Rome, was lost by Tullus
Hostilius who misdirected the electric shock and was struck down.
Pliny relates these facts as an ancient tradition
[58] Etruscan [2], and relates that Numa successfully used his
lightning battery against a monster named Volta, which
mourned the campaigns of Rome. Wouldn’t we believe, reading
this revelation, that our physicist Volta is a myth, and that
the name of the voltaic piles goes back to the century of Numa?
[Note 2: Plin., Liv. II, ch. 53.]
All Assyrian symbols relate to this science of fire
who was the great arcane of the Magi; everywhere we find
the magician who pierces the lion and wields snakes. Lion
it is the celestial fire, the snakes are the electric currents
and magnetic of the earth. It’s up to this great secret of the Magi
that we must bring back all the wonders of magic
hermetic, whose traditions still say that the secret of
great work consists in the government of fire.
The scholar François Patricius published, in his Magie philosophical, the oracles of Zoroaster collected in the
books of the Platonists, in the theurgy of Proclus, in the
comments on Parmenides, in Hermias comments on
Phèdre, in the notes of Olympiodorus on the Philèbe and the
Phédon. These oracles are first of all the clear and precise formula of the
dogma that we have just exposed, then come the prescriptions
of the magic ritual, and here is how they are expressed:
DEMONS AND SACRIFICES.
“Nature teaches us by induction that there are demons
intangibles, and that the germs of evil that exist in the
matter, turn to the good and the common utility.
[59] “But these are mysteries that must be buried in
the most impenetrable folds of thought.
The fire always stirred and leaping in the atmosphere can
take a configuration similar to that of bodies.
»Let us say better, let us affirm the existence of a fire full of images and
of echoes.
“Let us call, if you like, this fire an overabundant light which
radiates, which speaks, which rolls up.
»It is the dazzling steed of light, or rather it is
the broad-shouldered child who tames and subdues the steed
celestial.
»Whether we dress him in flame and gold or represent him naked
like Love by also giving him arrows.
»But if your meditation is prolonged, you will gather all these emblems
under the figure of the lion;
»While we can no longer see anything either of the vault of the heavens or of the
mass of the universe.
The stars have ceased to shine, and the moon lamp is
veiled.
The earth trembles and everything is surrounded by lightning.
So do not call for the visible simulacrum of the soul of nature.
»Because you must not see it until your body is purified
through holy trials.
»Softening souls and always dragging them away from work
sacred, terrestrial dogs then come out of this limbo or
finishes the matter, and show to mortal eyes appearances
always deceptive bodies.
»Work around the circles described by Hecate’s rhombus.
[60] “Does not change anything in the barbarous names of the evocation: because they are the
pantheistic names of God; they are magnetized with adorations
of a multitude and their power is ineffable.
»And when after all the ghosts you will see this fire shine
incorporeal, this sacred fire whose arrows cross both
all the depths of the world;
“Listen to what he tells you!”
This amazing page that we translate in full from the Latin of
Patricius, contains all the secrets of magnetism with
depths that the Du Potets and the
Mesmer.
We see: 1 ° first the astral light perfectly described
with its configurative strength and power to reflect the
verb and echo voice;
2 ° The will of the follower represented by the child at large
shoulders_ mounted on the white horse; hieroglyph we have
found on an old tarot from the Imperial Library;
3 ° The danger of hallucinations in evil magical operations
directed;
4 ° The magnetic instrument which is the rhombus, a kind of toy
of hollow wooden child spinning around with a snoring
always increasing;
5 ° The reason for enchantments by words and names
barbarians;
6 ° The end of the magical work, which is the appeasement of
imagination and senses, the state of complete sleepwalking and the
perfect lucidity.
It follows from this revelation of the old world, that ecstasy
[61] lucid is a voluntary and immediate application of the soul to the
universal fire, or rather to this light full of images which
speak, who parle and who wraps around all the
objects and all the globes of the universe.
Application that operates through the persistence of a clear will
of the senses and strengthened by a series of trials.
This was the beginning of the magical initiation.
The follower, having reached immediate reading in the light,
became a seer or a prophet; then, having put his will in
communication with this light, he learned to direct it as
one directs the point of an arrow; he sent the
trouble or peace in souls, communicated at a distance with
the other adepts, finally seized this force represented
by the celestial lion.
This is what these great Assyrian figures signify
hold tamed lions under their arms.
It is the astral light which is represented by these gigantic
sphinx, having the bodies of lions and the heads of magi.
Astral light, which has become the instrument of powerful magic,
is the golden sword of Mithras who immolates the sacred bull.
It is the arrow of Phoebus that pierces the snake Python.
Now let’s rebuild in spirit these great metropolises of
Assyria, Babylon and Nineveh, let us put these
granite colossi, let’s rebuild these massive temples,
elephants or by sphinxes, let’s raise these obelisks
above which soar dragons with sparkling eyes and
with extended wings.
[62] The temple and the palace dominate these heaps of wonders;
there are kept hidden by unceasingly revealing themselves by miracles
the two visible divinities of the earth, the priesthood and the
royalty.
The temple, at the discretion of the priests, surrounds itself with clouds or shines with
superhuman clarity; darkness is sometimes during the
day, sometimes also the night is illuminated; temple lamps
light up by themselves, the gods shine, we hear the rumble
lightning, and woe to the ungodly who would have drawn the
curse of the initiates! The temple protects the palace, and the
servants of the king fight for the religion of the Magi; the king
is sacred, he is the god of the earth, we bow down when he
passes, and the fool who dares without order to cross the threshold of
his palace, would immediately be struck with death!
Death struck without a club and without a sword, struck by a hand
invisible, killed by lightning, struck down by fire from heaven! What
religion and what power! what great shadows those
of Nimrod, Belus and Semiramis! What could be
before the almost fabulous cities, where these immense royalty
Once enthroned, the capitals of these giants, of these
magicians, whom traditions confuse with angels and
still name the sons of God and the princes of heaven! Which
mysteries sleep in the tombs of the nations; and aren’t we
not children when, without bothering to mention these
frightening memories, we applaud each other with our lights and
of our progress!
In his book on magic, M. Du Potet advances, with a
certain fear, that one can, by a powerful emission of
[63] magnetic fluid, strike down a living being [3].
[Note 3: Du Potet, la Magie unveiled, or Principles of science
occult, 1852, 1 vol. in-4.]
The magical power extends further, but it is not
only so-called magnetic fluid. This is the astral light
whole, it is the element of electricity and lightning,
which can be put at the service of the human will; and
do we have to do to acquire this formidable power? Zoroaster
just told us: you have to know these mysterious laws
of the balance which enslave to the empire of good the powers
even from evil; you must have been able to erase your body by the saints
hardships, fought against the ghosts of hallucination and seized
body to body the light, like Jacob in his struggle with the angel;
you must have tamed these fantastic dogs that bark in the
dreams; in a word, to use the expression if
energetic of the oracle, having heard the light speak. So we
is master, so we can direct it, like Numa, against the
enemies of the holy mysteries; but if we are not perfectly
pure, if the domination of some animal passion subjects you
still in the fatalities of life’s storms, we burn ourselves in fires
that we light, we are the prey of the snake that we unleash, and we
will perish struck down like Tullus Hostilius.
It is not in accordance with the laws of nature that man can
to be devoured by wild beasts. God has armed him with power
to resist them; he can fascinate them with his gaze,
greedy with the voice, stop them with a sign, … and we
let us see, in fact, that the most ferocious animals dread the
[64] fixity of the man’s gaze, and seem to quiver at his voice.
The projections of astral light paralyze them and
strike with fear. When Daniel was accused of false magic and
deception, the king of Babylon subdued him and his
accusers, lion-proof. Animals do not attack
never that those who fear them or those of whom they themselves have
fear. A fearless and helpless man would certainly set back
a tiger by the magnetism of his gaze.
The Magi used this empire, and the rulers of
Assyria had in their gardens submissive tigers,
docile leopards and tame lions. We fed on it
others in the underground passages of the temples to serve
initiation trials. The symbolic bas-reliefs make it
faith; it is only human and animal struggles, and we always
sees the adept covered with the priestly garment dominating them with
look and stop them with a wave of the hand. Several of these
representations are undoubtedly symbolic, when the animals
reproduce some of the shapes of the sphinx; but it is
others where the animal is represented naturally and where the fight
seems to be the theory of a real enchantment.
Magic is a science that cannot be abused without losing it and
without losing yourself. The rulers and priests of the world
Assyrians were too tall not to be exposed to breaking
if they ever fell; they became proud and they
fell. The great magical epoch of Chaldea is earlier
to the reigns of Semiramis and Ninus. At this time already the
religion materializes and idolatry begins to triumph. The
[65] worship of Astarte succeeds that of the celestial Venus, royalty
is worshiped under the names of Baal and Bel or Belus.
Semiramis lowers religion below politics and
conquests, and replace the old mysterious temples with
sumptuous and indiscreet monuments; the magical idea however dominates
still the sciences and the arts, and prints to the marvelous
constructions of this period an inimitable character of strength and
of greatness. The palace of Semiramis was a synthesis built and
sculpted with all the dogma of Zoroaster. We will talk about it again
when we explain the symbolism of these seven
masterpieces of antiquity, which were called the wonders of
world.
The priesthood had become smaller than the empire, by wanting
materialize its own power; the empire in falling had to
crush it, and that was what happened under the effeminate Sardanapalus.
This prince, in love with luxury and softness, had made
science of the Magi one of his prostitutes. What good is power
to work wonders if it does not give pleasure?
Enchanters, force winter to give roses; increase the
flavor of wine; use your empire on the light to make
shine the beauty of women like that of divinities! We
obeyed and the king got drunk. However war breaks out,
the enemy is advancing …. What does the enemy matter to the coward who enjoys and
who is sleeping? But it is ruin, it is infamy, it is death! …
the death! Sardanapalus does not fear her, he believes that she is a
endless sleep; but he will know how to escape the work and
to the affronts of servitude … The supreme night has arrived; the
the victor is at the gates, the city can no longer resist; tomorrow
it is over with the kingdom of Assyria …. The palace of Sardanapalus
[66] lights up, and he radiates such marvelous splendor that he
enlightens the entire city in dismay. On heaps of fabrics
precious stones, precious stones and gold vases, the king made his
last orgy. His women, his favorites, his accomplices, his
debased priests surround him; the clamors of drunkenness mingle
at the sound of a thousand instruments, the tame lions roar,
and a smoke of perfumes issuing from the underground passages of the palace
already envelops all constructions in a thick cloud. Of
tongues of flame are already piercing the cedar paneling; … the
songs of drunkenness will give way to cries of terror and
groans of agony …. But the magic that could not, between the hands
of its degraded followers, to keep the empire of Ninus, at least
mingle its wonders with the terrible memories of this gigantic
suicide. An immense and sinister clarity such as none had
never seen on Babylonian nights, seems to suddenly grow back and
widen the vault of the sky …. A noise similar to that of all
thunders bursting together shake the earth and shake the
city, whose walls are falling …. The deep night descends;
the palace of Sardanapalus no longer exists, and tomorrow its conquerors
will no longer find anything of his riches, his corpse and
his pleasures.
Thus ended the first empire of Assyria and civilization made
by the real Zoroaster. Here ends the magic itself, and
begins the reign of the Kabbalah. Abraham, coming out of the
Chaldea, took away its mysteries. God’s people are growing in
silence, and soon we will find Daniel grappling with the
wretched enchanters of Nebuchadnezzar and Balthazar [4].
[Note 4: According to Suldas, Cedrénus and the chronicle
of Alexandria, it was Zoroaster himself who, besieged in his
palace, suddenly disappeared with all its secrets and
all its riches in an immense burst of thunder. In this
At that time, any king who exercised divine power was considered
an incarnation of Zoroaster, and Sardanapalus made himself an apotheosis
from his pyre.]
[Illustration: MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSAL BALANCE According to
Indian and Japanese mythologies]
[67]
CHAPTER III.
MAGIC IN INDIA.
SOMARY Dogma of the gymnosophists The trimourti and the
Avatars – Singular manifestation of the spirit
prophetic – Influence of the false Zoroaster on mysticism
Indian – Religious Antiquities of the Vedas – Magic of the Brahmins and
faquirs – Their books and their works.
India, which the Kabbalistic tradition tells us to have been populated
by the descendants of Cain, and where the
children of Abraham and Cethurah, India is par excellence the
land of goétie and prestige. Black magic is there
perpetuated with the original traditions of rejected fratricide
by the powerful over the weak, continued by the castes
oppressive and atoned for by the outcasts.
India can be said to be the learned mother of all
idolatry. The dogmas of his gymnosophists would be the keys
of the highest wisdom, if they did not open up the
doors of stultification and death. The astonishing wealth of
Indian symbolism would almost suggest that it predates
all the others, so much there is primitive originality in his
poetic designs; but it is a tree whose snake
hellish seems to have bitten the root. The deification of the devil
[68] against which we have already vigorously protested, is spread out there
in all his shamelessness. The terrible trimourti of the Brahmins
consists of a creator, a destroyer and a repairer. Their
Addha-Nari, who represents the mother deity or the celestial nature,
also names Bowhanie, and the tuggs or stranglers offer him
assassinations. Vishnu the repairman hardly incarnates that
to kill a subordinate devil who is always reborn, since he is
favored by Rutrem or Shiva, the god of death. We feel that
Shiva is the apotheosis of Cain, but nothing in all this
mythology recalls the gentleness of Abel. Its mysteries, however
are of a grandiose poetry, his allegories of a singular
depth. It is the profaned Kabbalah; also, far from strengthening
soul by bringing it closer to supreme wisdom, Brahmanism lays it
push and knock it down with scholarly theories in the
chasms of madness.
It is in the false Kabbalah of India that the Gnostics
borrowed their dreams by turns horrible and obscene. It is
Indian magic which, first presenting itself with its thousand
deformities on the threshold of the occult sciences, terrifies
reasonable minds and provokes the anathemas of all
Sense churches. It is this false and dangerous science, which,
too often confused by the ignorant and half-learned with
real science, made them wrap everything that bears the name
occultism in anathema to which he who writes these
pages strongly subscribed when he had not found
again the key to the magical sanctuary. For the theologians of
Vedas, God only manifests in strength. Any progress and
[69] All revelation is determined by victory. Vishnu
is embodied in the monstrous leviathans of the sea and in the
huge boars that shape the primitive land with
boutoirs.
It is a marvelous genesis of pantheism, and yet in the
authors of these fables, what lucid somnambulism! The number ten
of the Avatars corresponds to that of the Sephirots of the Kabbalah.
Vishnu successively takes on three animal forms, the three
elementary forms of life, then he becomes a sphinx, and
finally appears under the human figure; he is brahmin then and
under the appearances of a feigned humility it invades the whole
Earth; soon he becomes a child to be the comforting angel of
patriarchs, he becomes a warrior to fight the oppressors
world, then he embodies politics to oppose it to
violence, and seems to leave the human form to give
the agility of the monkey. Politics and violence are worn out
conversely, the world awaits an intellectual redeemer and
moral. Vishnou is embodied in Chrisna; he appears proscribed in
his cradle near which a symbolic donkey watches; we take it
to save him from his assassins, he grows up and preaches a
doctrine of mercy and good works. Then it goes down to
hell, chains the infernal serpent and ascends gloriously to heaven;
its annual feast is in August under the sign of the Virgin.
What astonishing intuition of the mysteries of Christianity! and
how extraordinary it must not seem, if we think
that the sacred books of India were written many centuries
before the Christian era. Chrisna’s revelation is followed by
of Buddha, who brings together the purest religion and the
[70] more perfect philosophy. So the world’s happiness is consumed
and men only have to wait for the tenth and last
incarnation, when Vishnu returns in his own
leading the horse of the last judgment, that terrible horse whose
the front foot is always up and that will break the world
when that foot goes down.
We must recognize here the sacred numbers and calculations
prophetic of the Magi. Gymnosophists and initiates of
Zoroaster drew on the same sources, … but that’s wrong
Zoroaster, the black Zoroaster who has remained the master of
Indian theology: the last secrets of this doctrine
degenerate, are pantheism, and consequently materialism
absolute, under the appearances of an absolute negation of matter.
But it doesn’t matter if we materialize the spirit or spiritualize
matter, as soon as we affirm the equality and even the identity of these
two terms? The consequence of this pantheism is the destruction
of any morality: there are no more crimes or virtues in a world
where all is God.
We must understand from these dogmas the progressive brutalization
brahmins in a fanatical quietism, but it is not yet
enough; and their great magic ritual, the book of occultism
Indian, the_Oupnek’hat_, teaches them the physical means and
moral to consume the work of their stupefaction and to arrive by
degrees to the furious madness that their wizards call the_state
divine_. This book of the Upnek’hat is the ancestor of all
grimoires, and it is the most curious monument of antiquities of
goetia.
This book is divided into fifty sections: it’s a shadow
melee of lightning. There are sublime sentences and
[71] oracles of lying. Sometimes you would think you were reading the Gospel of Saint
John, when we find, for example, in sections eleventh and
forty-eighth:
“The creative fire angel is the word of God.
The word of God produced the earth and the plants that
come out and the heat that ripens them.
The word of the Creator is itself the Creator, and it is
only son.”
Sometimes they are reveries worthy of the most
extravagant:
“The matter being only a deceptive appearance, the sun, the
stars, the elements themselves are geniuses, animals are
demons and man a pure spirit deceived by the appearances of
body.”
But we’re built enough on dogma, let’s come to the
magical ritual of Indian enchanters.
“To become God you have to hold your breath.
»That is to say, attract him as long as we can and
fully inflate.
Second, keep it as long as possible and
to pronounce forty times in this state the divine name AUM.
Third, breathe out as long as possible by sending
mentally his breath through the heavens connect with
the universal ether.
»In this exercise, we must make ourselves blind and deaf, and
motionless like a piece of wood.
»You have to land on your elbows and knees, your face
facing north.
»With one finger we close one wing of the nose, with the other we attract
air, then we close it with a finger, thinking that God is the
creator, that he is in all animals, in the ant as
in the elephant: we must stay deep in these thoughts.
[72] ”First we say Aum twelve times; and during each aspiration he
must say Aum eighty times, then as many times as it is
possible…
Do all this for three months, without fear, without laziness,
eating and sleeping little; in the fourth month the devas are seen
to you; in the fifth you will have acquired all the qualities of
devatas; in the sixth you will be saved, you will have become God. ”
It is evident that in the sixth month, the rather foolish fanatic
to persevere in such a practice will be dead or mad.
If he resists this mystical bellows exercise, the Upnek’hat,
who does not want to leave it in such a beautiful way, will make it pass
to other exercises.
“With the heel block the anus, then pull the air from the bottom to the top of
right side, rotate it three times around the second
body region; from there send it to the navel, which is the
third; then to the fourth, which is the middle of the heart; then
in the fifth, which is the throat; then to the sixth, which is
the inside of the nose, between the two eyebrows; hold back the wind there:
it has become the breath of the universal soul. ”
This seems to us to be quite simply a method of
magnetize oneself and at the same time give oneself some
stroke.
“So,” continues the author of the Upnek’hat, “think of the great Aum,
which is the name of the Creator, which is the universal voice, the voice
[73] pure and indivisible which fills everything; this voice is the Creator
even; it makes itself heard by the beholder in ten ways. The
first sound is like the voice of a little sparrow; the second is
double the first; the third is like the sound of a
cymbal; the fourth like the murmur of a large seashell; the
fifth is like the song of the vînâ (a kind of lyre
Indian); the sixth as the sound of the instrument called
tal; the seventh sounds like the sound of a bacabou flute set
near the ear; the eighth to the sound of the pakaoudj instrument,
hit with the hand; the ninth to the sound of a small trumpet,
and the tenth to the sound of the roaring cloud which makes dda, dda, dda ! …
»At each of these sounds the beholder goes through different
states, until the tenth when he becomes God.
At first, the hairs all over her body stand on end.
In the second, his limbs are numb.
“In the third, he feels in all his limbs the fatigue which
follows the pleasures of love.
In the fourth, his head is spinning, he is like drunk.
In the fifth, the_water of life_ flows back into his brain.
In the sixth, this water descends in him and he feeds on it.
»In the seventh, he becomes master of the vision, he sees within
of hearts he hears the most distant voices.
“In the ninth grade, he feels subtle enough to transport himself to where he is.
wants, and, like angels, to see everything without being seen.
»In the tenth, it becomes the universal and indivisible voice, it
[74] is the great creator, the eternal being, exempt from everything, and, become
perfect rest, he distributes rest to the world. “
It should be noted, in this curious page, the description
complete phenomena of lucid somnambulism mixed with a
complete theory of solitary magnetism. It is the art of being
put into ecstasy by the tension of the will and the fatigue of
the nervous system.
We recommend that magnetists study in depth the
mysteries of the Upnek’hat.
The graduated use of narcotics and the use of a range of discs
colored produces effects similar to those described in
Indian sorcerer, and Mr. Ragon gave the recipe in his Book of occult masonry, following on from orthodoxy Masonic, page 499. The Upnek’hat gives an easier way to lose consciousness and to reach ecstasy: it is to look with both eyes at the end of his nose and stay in this posture, or rather in this grimace, until the optic nerve convulses. All these practices are painful and dangerous as much as ridiculous, and we do not recommend them to anyone; but we don’t let us not doubt that they do indeed produce, in a space of longer or shorter time, depending on the sensitivity of the subjects, ecstasy, catalepsy, and even lethargic fainting. To obtain visions, to arrive at the phenomena of second sight, you have to put yourself in a sleepy state, of death and madness. It is above all in this that the Indians are clever, and it is perhaps their secrets that should be to report the strange faculties of certain American _médiums.
[75] We could define black magic as the art of procuring and
to procure artificial madness for others. It is also by
excellence the science of poisonings. But what all the
world does not know, and what M. Dupotet, among us, has the first
discovered is that one can kill by congestion or by
sudden subtraction of astral light, when, by a series
almost impossible exercises, similar to those described in
Indian sorcerer, we made our own flexible nervous system
to all the tensions and all the fatigue, a kind of pile
living galvanic, capable of condensing and projecting with
force this light which intoxicates and strikes.
But there the magic secrets of Upnek’hat do not end;
there is a last one that the dark hierophant confides to his
initiates, like the great and supreme arcanum, and it is, in effect,
the shadow and the reverse of this great secret of high magic.
The great arcane of the true magi is the absolute in morality, and by
therefore in the direction of works and in freedom.
The great arcanum of the Upnek’hat is the absolute in immorality, in
fatality and deadly quietism.
Here is how the author of the Indian book expresses himself:
“It is permissible to lie to facilitate marriages and to
to extol the virtues of a bramine or the qualities of a cow.
»God is called truth, and in him shadow and light do not
one. Whoever knows this never lies, because if he wants to lie
he makes his lie a truth.
[76] “Whatever sin he commits, whatever bad work he
do, he is never guilty. Even if it would be twice
parricide, even if he would kill a Brahmin initiated into the mysteries
of the Vedas, something he finally commits, his light does not
will not be diminished, for, says God, I am the universal soul, in
me are the good and the evil which are corrected one by the other.
Whoever knows this is never a sinner; it is universal as
I.” (Oupnek’hat, instruction 108, pages 35 and 92 of volume I
from the translation of Anquetil.)
Such doctrines are far from civilizing, and
moreover India, by immobilizing its social hierarchy,
parked anarchy in the castes; society only lives
of exchanges. But exchange is impossible when everything belongs to
some and nothing to others. What are the social levels in
a so-called civilization where no one can descend or
ascend? Here is finally shown the belated punishment of fratricide,
punishment which envelops his whole race and condemns him to death.
Come another proud and selfish nation, it will sacrifice
India, as Eastern legends say that Lamech killed
Cain. Woe, however, to the very murderer of Cain! say them
sacred oracles of the Bible.
[Illustration: YINX PANTOMORPHE. Twenty-first Key to Tuol
Early Egyptian.]
[77]
CHAPTER IV.
HERMETIC MAGIC.
CONTENTS – The dogma of Hermes Trismegistus – Magic
Hermetic – Egypt and its wonders – Patriarch Joseph and
its policy – The Book of Thoth – The magic table of Bembo – The
key of the oracles .– The education of Moses .– The magicians of
Pharaoh .– The Philosopher’s Stone and the Great Work.
It is in Egypt that magic is completed as science
universal and is formulated in perfect dogma. Nothing outperforms and
nothing equals a summary of all old world doctrines
the few sentences engraved on a precious stone by
Hermès and known under the name of table d’Émeraude; the unit of
the being and unity of harmonies, either ascending or
descending, the progressive and proportional scale of the Word;
the immutable law of equilibrium and the proportional progress of
universal analogies, the relation of the idea to the Word giving the
measure of the relationship between the creator and the created; Mathematics
necessary from infinity, proved by the measurements of a single corner
of the finished; all this is expressed by this single proposition of the
great Egyptian hierophant:
“What is superior is like what is inferior, and what
is at the bottom is like what is at the top to form the
wonders of the unique thing. “
Then comes the revelation and the scholarly description of the agent
creator, of the pantomorphic fire, of the great means of power
occult, astral light in a nutshell.
[78] “The sun is his father, the moon is his mother, the wind carried him
in her womb.”
So this light is emanated from the sun, it receives its form and
its regular movement from the influences of the moon, it has
the atmosphere for receptacle and prison.
“The earth is her nurse.”
That is to say, it is balanced and set in motion by the
central heat of the earth.
“It is the universal principle, the TELESMA of the world.”
Hermes then teaches how of this light, which is also
a force, we can make a lever and a universal solvent,
then also a formative and coagulator agent.
How it is necessary to draw from the bodies where it is latent, this
light in the state of fire, movement, splendor, gas
luminous, fiery water, and finally igneous earth, to imitate, to
with the help of these various substances, all the creations of the
nature.
The emerald table is all the magic in one page.
The other works attributed to Hermès, such as the Pymandre,
the_Asclepius_, the Minerve of the world, etc., are watched
usually by critics as school productions
of Alexandria. They nonetheless contain the traditions
hermetic kept in the shrines of the theurgy. The
doctrines of Hermes cannot be lost on those who know the
keys of symbolism. The ruins of Egypt are like pages
scattered with which we can still, by gathering them,
rebuild the entire book, a prodigious book whose great
[79] letters were temples, whose sentences were Cities
all punctuated with obelisks and sphinxes!
The very division of Egypt was a magical synthesis; the names
of its provinces corresponded to the figures of the sacred numbers:
the kingdom of Sesostris was divided into three parts: the upper
Egypt or the Thebaid, figure of the celestial world and homeland of
ecstasies; Lower Egypt, symbol of the land; and Egypt
middle or central, country of science and high
initiations. Each of these three parts was divided into ten
provinces called nomes, and placed under special protection
of a god. These gods, thirty in number, grouped three by
three, symbolically expressed all the conceptions of
ternary in the decade, that is to say the triple significance
natural, philosophical and religious absolute ideas
originally attached to numbers. Thus, the triple unity or the
original ternary, the triple binary or the mirage of the triangle,
which forms the star of Solomon; the triple ternary or the whole idea
whole under each of its three terms; the triple quaternary,
i.e. the cyclical number of astral revolutions, etc. The
geography of Egypt, under Sesostris, is therefore a pantacle,
that is to say a symbolic summary of all the magic dogma of
Zoroaster, found and formulated in a more precise way by
Hermes.
Thus, the Egyptian land was a ledger and the
teachings of this book were repeated, translated into paintings,
in sculpture, in architecture, in all cities and in
all the temples. The desert itself had its teachings
eternal, and his stone Word sat squarely on the base
[80] pyramids, these limits of human intelligence, in front of
which for so many centuries meditated a colossal sphinx in
slowly sinking into the sand. Now his head, mutilated
through the ages, still stands above his tomb, as if
She was waiting to disappear for a human voice to come
explain to the new world the problem of the pyramids.
Egypt is for us the cradle of science and wisdom;
because it took on images, if not richer, at least more
exact and purer than those of India, the ancient dogma of
first Zoroaster. Priestly art and royal art formed there
adepts by initiation, and initiation did not end
within the selfish boundaries of the castes. We saw a Hebrew slave
initiate himself and achieve the rank of prime minister, and
perhaps a great hierophant, for he married the daughter of a
Egyptian priest, and we know that the priesthood was not
never. Joseph realized in Egypt the dream of communism; he returned
the priesthood and the state as sole owners, arbitrators,
therefore, work and wealth. It thus abolishes the
misery, and made the whole of Egypt a patriarchal family. We
knows that Joseph owed his elevation to his knowledge to
the interpretation of dreams, a science to which Christians of
nowadays, I say even faithful Christians, refuse to believe,
while admitting that the Bible, where the
wonderful divinations of Joseph, is the word of
Holy Spirit.
The science of Joseph was nothing other than the intelligence of
natural relationships that exist between ideas and images,
between the Word and its figures. He knew that during sleep
[81] the soul immersed in the astral light sees the reflections of its
most secret thoughts and even his forebodings; he
knew that the art of translating the hieroglyphs of sleep is the
key to universal lucidity; because all intelligent beings
have revelations in dreams.
Absolute hieroglyphic science was based on an alphabet where
all gods were letters, all letters were ideas,
all ideas of numbers, all numbers of signs
perfect.
This hieroglyphic alphabet of which Moses made the great secret of his
Kabbalah, and which he took from the Egyptians; because, according to the Sepher
Jezirah, he came from Abraham: this alphabet, we say, is the
famous book by Thauth, suspected by Court de Gébelin of having
preserved until today in the form of this card game
weird ones called the tarot; misguided then by
Eteilla, for whom a perseverance of thirty years could not replace
the good sense and the early education which he lacked;
still existing, in fact, among the remains of the monuments
Egyptians, and whose most curious and complete key
is found in Father Kircher’s great work on Egypt.
It is the copy of an isiac table that belonged to the famous
Cardinal Bembo. This table was of copper with figures
enamel; it was unfortunately lost; but Kircher gives some
an exact copy, and this learned Jesuit guessed, without being able to
however to push her explanation further, that it contained the
hieroglyphic key of the sacred alphabets.
This table is divided into three equal compartments; up
[82] the twelve heavenly houses, below the twelve laborious stations
of the year, in the center the twenty-one sacred signs correspond
to letters.
In the middle of the central region sits the image of IYNX,
pantomorph, emblem of the universal being corresponding to the jod
Hebrew, the unique letter from which all the others are formed.
Around IYNX we see the ophionian triad corresponding to
three mother letters of the Egyptian and Hebrew alphabets; to the right
the two ibimorph and sérapéenne triads, on the left the triad
nephtéenne and that of_Hecate_, figures of the active and the
passive, volatile and fixed, fertilizing fire and water
generator. Each pair of triads, combined with the center,
gives a septenary; the center itself contains one. So the
three septenaries give the absolute numeral of the three worlds, and
the full number of primitive letters, to which we add a
complementary sign, as with the nine characters of numbers, we
adds zero.
The ten numbers and the twenty-two letters are what we call
in Kabbalah the thirty-two ways of science, and their
philosophical description is the subject of the original book and
revered that we name the Sepher Jezirah, and that we can find
in the collection of Pistorius and elsewhere. Thauth’s alphabet
is the original of our tarot only in a roundabout way. The
tarot that we have is of Jewish origin and the types of figures
do not date back to earlier than the reign of Charles VII. The game of
cards by Jacquemin Gringonneur is the first tarot that we
we knew, but the symbols he reproduces are of the most
high antiquity. This game was an essay by some astrologer of this
time to bring the king to his senses using this key,
[83] oracles whose answers, resulting from the varied combination
signs, are always exact like mathematics and
measured as the harmonies of nature. But you have to be already
very reasonable to know how to use a scientific instrument
and of reason; the poor king, fallen in childhood, lives only
children’s toys in Gringer’s paintings, and made a play
of cards of the mysterious alphabets of the Kabbalah.
[Illustration: Explanatory table of the astronomical table and
alphabetic called Bembo. (See Kircher’s edipus.)]
Moses tells us that when they left Egypt, the Israelites
took away the sacred vessels of the Egyptians. This story is
allegorical, and the great prophet would not have encouraged his people
theft. These sacred vessels are the secrets of science
Egyptian that Moses had learned at Pharaoh’s court. Far from
us the idea of attributing to magic the miracles of this man
inspired by God; but the Bible itself tells us that Jannès
and Mambrès, the magicians of Pharaoh, that is to say the great
hierophants of Egypt, first accomplished, through their art,
wonders similar to his. So they changed
chopsticks into snakes and snakes into chopsticks, which can
to be explained by prestige or fascination. They changed the water to
blood, they instantly made a large amount of
frogs, but they could not bring flies or other
parasitic insects, we have already said why, and how it
must explain their confession when they declared themselves defeated.
Moses triumphed and led the Israelites out of the land of
servitude. At that time, the real science was lost in Egypt,
because the priests, abusing the great confidence of the people,
[84] let him languish in stupefying idolatry; there was
the great pitfall of esotericism. It was necessary to veil from the people
truth without hiding it from him; it was necessary to prevent the symbolism of
to degrade himself by falling into the absurd; it was necessary to maintain in
all its dignity and in all its primary beauty the sacred veil
of Isis. This is what the Egyptian priesthood did not know how to do. The
vulgar imbecile took for living realities the forms
hieroglyphics of Osiris and Hermanubis. Osiris became an ox,
and the learned Hermes a dog. Osiris, turned ox, walked around
soon under the tinsel of the Apis beef, and the priests
did not prevent the people from worshiping meat predestined to
their kitchen.
It was time to save the holy traditions. Moses created a
new people, and severely forbade the cult of images.
Unfortunately this people had already lived with the idolaters, and
memories of the Apis ox followed him through the desert. We
knows the story of the golden calf, which the children of Israel have
always loved it a bit. Moses, however, was unwilling to deliver
forgetting the sacred hieroglyphics, and he sanctified them by
dedicating to the uncluttered worship of the true God. We will see how all
the objects used in Jehovah’s worship were symbolic, and
recalled the revered signs of the primitive revelation.
But we must end first with kindness and follow, to
through pagan civilizations, the history of hieroglyphics
materialized and old debased rites.
[85]
CHAPTER V.
MAGIC IN GREECE.
Contents .– The fable of the golden fleece .– Orpheus, Amphion and
Cadmus – Magic Key to Homer’s Poems – Aeschylus Revealing
mysteries .– Dogma of Orpheus explained by legend .– The
oracles and pythoness .– Dark magic of Medea and Circe.
We are reaching the time when the exact sciences of magic go
put on their natural form: beauty. We saw in
the Sohar the prototype of man rising into the sky by
mirant in the ocean of Being. This ideal man, this shadow of God
pantomorph, this manly phantom of the perfect form will not remain
isolated. A companion will be born to him under the soft sky of
Helen. The celestial Venus, chaste and fruitful Venus, the triple
mother of the three Graces, comes out in her turn, no longer from the waters
dormant chaos, but living and restless waves of this
archipelago whispering poetry where the islands decorated with trees
greens and flowers seem to be the vessels of the gods.
The magical septenary of the Chaldeans turns into music on the
seven strings of the lyre of Orpheus. It is harmony that clears up
the forests and deserts of Greece. With poetic songs
of Orpheus, the rocks soften, the oaks are uprooted, and
wild beasts submit to man. It is by a
similar magic that Amphion builds the walls of Thebes. The scholar
Thebes of Cadmus, the city which is a pantacle like the seven
wonders of the world, the city of initiation. It is Orpheus who has
[86] gave life to numbers, it was Cadmus who attached the thought
to characters. One made a people in love with all
beauties, the other gave to this people a homeland worthy of his
genius and his loves.
In the traditions of ancient Greece we see appearing
Orpheus among the heroes of the golden fleece, these conquerors
primitives of the great work. The golden fleece is the remains of the
sun, it is the light appropriate to the uses of the man; it is
the great secret of magical works is initiation at last,
what will the allegorical heroes of the fleece look for in Asia
Golden. On the other hand, Cadmus is a voluntary exile from the
great Thebes of Egypt. He brings letters to Greece
primitives and the harmony that brings them together. At the movement of this
harmony, the typical city, the learned city, the new Thebes
builds itself, for science is entirely in the
harmonies of hieroglyphic, phonetic and numeral characters
which move by themselves according to the laws of mathematics
eternal, Thebes is circular and its citadel is square,
she has seven doors like the magical sky and her legend will become
soon the epic of occultism and prophetic history, of
human genius.
All these mysterious allegories, all these traditions
scholars are the soul of civilization in Greece, but we must not
not look for the real story of the heroes of these poems elsewhere
that in the transformations of oriental symbolism brought into
Greece by unknown hierophants. The great men of this
at that time only wrote the history of ideas, and
cared little to initiate us into the human miseries of
the birth of empires. Homer also walked in this way;
[87] he implements the gods, that is to say the immortal types of
thought, and if the world is agitated it is a forced consequence of
Jupiter’s frown. If Greece wears iron and
fire in Asia is to avenge the outrages of science and
of virtue sacrificed to pleasure. It’s to make the empire
of the world to Minerva and Juno, in spite of this weak Venus who
lost all those who loved her too much.
Such is the sublime mission of poetry: it substitutes
gods to men, that is to say, causes to effects and
eternal conceptions to puny incarnations of greatness
on the ground. These are the ideas that uplift or bring down
empires. At the bottom of all greatness there is a belief, and
for a belief to be poetic, that is to say, creative, it
it must be part of a truth. The true worthy story
to interest the wise, it is always the light
victorious over darkness. A great day of this sun is
name a civilization.
The fable of the golden fleece links hermetic magic to
initiations from Greece. The solar ram to be conquered
the golden fleece to be ruler of the world is the figure of
great work. The Argonauts ship built with the
planks of the prophetic oaks of Dodona, the speaking vessel,
it is the boat of the mysteries of Isis, the ark of seeds and
the renovation, the chest of Osiris, the egg of regeneration
Divine. Jason the adventurer is the initiate; it is not a hero that
by his daring, he has all the inconstancies of humanity and
all the weaknesses, but he takes with him the
personifications of all forces. Hercules who symbolizes the
[88] brute force must not contribute to the work, it gets lost in
path in pursuit of his unworthy loves; the others are coming
in the land of initiation, in Colchis, where
some more of Zoroaster’s secrets; but how to
give the key to these mysteries? Science is still a
once betrayed by a woman. Medea delivers to Jason the mysteries of
great work, she delivers the kingdom and the days of her father; because
it is a fatal law of the occult sanctuary that the revelation of
secrets lead to the death of the one who could not keep them.
Medea teaches Jason what monsters he owes
fight and in what way he can overcome it. It is
first the winged and terrestrial serpent, the astral fluid that is needed
surprise and fix; we have to pull out his teeth and sow them
in a plain that we have first plowed by harnessing to the
plow the bulls of Mars. Dragon’s teeth are acids
which must dissolve the metallic earth prepared by a double
fire and by the magnetic forces of the earth. So it is done
fermentation and like a great fight, the impure is devoured by
unclean, and the shining fleece becomes the reward of
the follower.
There ends Jason’s magical novel; then comes that of
Medea, because in this story Greek antiquity wanted
contain the epic of the occult sciences. After the magic
hermetic comes goetia, parricide, fratricide, infanticide,
sacrificing everything to his passions and never enjoying the fruit of
his crimes. Medea betrays her father, like Cham; murder her
brother, like Cain. She stabs her children, she poisons her
[89] rival and only collects the hatred of the one by whom she wanted
to be loved. We may be surprised to see that Jason master of
golden fleece do not get wiser, but let us remember
that he owes the discovery of his secrets only to treason. This
is not a follower like Orpheus, he is a kidnapper like
Prometheus. What he is looking for is not science, it is
power and wealth. So unfortunately he will die, and
the inspiring and sovereign properties of the golden fleece
will they ever be understood except by the disciples of Orpheus?
Prometheus, the Golden Fleece, the Thebaid, the Iliad and the Odyssey,
five great epics all full of the great mysteries of
nature and human destinies make up the ancient Bible
Greece, immense monument, piling up of mountains on
mountains, masterpieces on masterpieces, shapes
beautiful as the light on eternal and great thoughts
like the truth!
Moreover, it was only at their own risk and peril that the
hierophants of poetry initiated the populations of Greece
to those wonderful truth-conservative fictions. Aeschylus
who dared to stage the gigantic struggles, the complaints
superhumans and the divine hopes of Prometheus, the
terrible of the family of Oedipus, was accused of having betrayed and
profaned the mysteries, and only with difficulty escaped a severe
conviction. We cannot now understand all
the extent of the poet’s outrage. His drama was a trilogy,
and we saw in it the whole symbolic history of Prometheus.
Aeschylus had therefore dared to show the assembled people Prometheus
delivered by Alcide and overthrowing Jupiter from his throne. The
[90] omnipotence of the genius who suffered and the final victory
patience over strength: it was undoubtedly beautiful. But the
multitudes could they not see in it the future triumphs of
impiety and anarchy! Prometheus conqueror of Jupiter does
could he not be taken for the people freed one day from his
priests and his kings; and guilty hopes
were they not a big part of the applause
lavished on the imprudent revealer?
We owe masterpieces to these weaknesses in dogma for the
poetry, and we are not those austere initiates who
like Plato would like to exile the poets, after having
crowned; true poets are messengers of God on the
earth, and those who reject them are not to be blessed with
Sky.
The great initiator of Greece and its first civilizer in
was also the first poet; because even admitting that Orpheus does
were a mystical or fabulous character, one would have to believe in
the existence of the Museum and attribute to it the verses that bear the name
of his master. It doesn’t matter to us that one of the Argonauts
whether or not he was called Orpheus, the poetic character did more
than to live; he still lives, he is immortal! The fable of Orpheus
is a whole dogma, it is a revelation of destinies
priestly, it is a new ideal resulting from the cult of beauty.
It is already the regeneration and redemption of love. Orpheus
go down to hell to look for Eurydice, and he must bring her back
without looking at her. So the pure man must create a companion for himself,
he must raise her to him by devoting himself to her, and not
not coveting. It is by renouncing the object of passion that we
[91] deserves to possess that of true love. Here already we have a feeling
the chaste dreams of Christian chivalry. To tear off
her Eurydice in hell, you must not look at her! … But
the hierophant is still a man, he weakens, he doubts, he
looked.
Ah miseram Eurydicen! …
She is lost! the fault is made, the atonement begins; Orpheus
is a widower, he remains chaste. He is a widower without having had time to
to know Eurydice, widower of a virgin, he will remain a virgin, for the
poet does not have two hearts, and the children of the race of the gods
love forever. Eternal aspirations, sighs for a
ideal that we will find beyond the tomb, widowhood consecrated to the
sacred muse. What an advanced revelation of the inspirations to come!
Orpheus carrying to the heart a wound that only death can
to heal, becomes a doctor of souls and bodies; he dies, finally,
victim of his chastity; he dies from the death of the initiators and
prophets; he dies after proclaiming the unity of God and
the unity of love, and this was later the basis of the mysteries
in the Orphic initiation.
After showing himself so strong above his time, Orpheus
was to leave the reputation of a sorcerer and an enchanter. We
attributes to him, as to Solomon, the knowledge of the simple and
minerals, the science of celestial medicine and stone
philosopher. He knew all this, no doubt, since
personifies in its legend the primitive initiation, the fall and
the repair; that is to say the three parts of the great work of
[92] humanity: here is the terms in which, according to Ballanche, we can
summarize the Orphic initiation:
“Man, after having been influenced by the elements, must do
undergo its own influence on the elements.
Creation is the act of a continuous and eternal divine magism.
For man to be really is to know himself.
Responsibility is a conquest of man, the very pain of
sin is a new means of conquest.
All life is based on death.
Palingenesis is the law of reparation.
Marriage is the reproduction in humanity of the great mystery
cosmogonic. He must be one like God and nature is one.
Marriage is the unity of the tree of life; debauchery is there
division and death.
The tree of life being unique, and the branches that blossom
in the sky and bloom in stars corresponding to the roots
hidden in the earth.
Astrology is a synthesis.
Knowledge of the virtues, either medical or magical, of
plants, metals, bodies, in which resides more or less the
life, is a synthesis.
The powers of the organization, in its varying degrees, are
revealed by a synthesis.
The aggregations and affinities of metals, like the soul
vegetative of plants, like all assimilating forces,
are also revealed by a synthesis [5]. “
[Note 5: Ballanche, Orphée, liv. VIII, p. 169, ed. 1833]
[93] It has been said that the beautiful is the splendor of the true. So it is at this
great light of Orpheus to be attributed the beauty of
form first revealed in Greece. It is in Orpheus that
goes back to the school of the divine Plato, this profane father of high
Christian philosophy. It was to him that Pythagoras and the
illuminated Alexandria borrowed their mysteries. Initiation
do not change; we always find it the same through the
ages. The last disciples of Pascalis Martinez are still the
children of Orpheus, but they adore the director of the
ancient philosophy, the embodiment of Christians.
We said that the first part of the fable of the fleece
gold contains the secrets of Orphic magic, and that the second
part is devoted to wise warnings against the abuse of
goetia or dark magic.
Goetia or false magic, known nowadays under the name of
witchcraft cannot be a science; it is the empiricism of
fatality. Any excessive passion produces a factitious force of which
the will cannot be master, but who obeys the
despotism of passion. This is why Albert the Great
said, “Don’t curse anyone when you’re angry.”
This is the story of the curse of Hippolytus by Theseus. The
excessive passion is sheer madness. Now madness is a
drunkenness or congestion of astral light. This is why the
madness is contagious, and which passions in general
with them a real curse. Women, more easily
caused by passionate drunkenness, are generally better
[94] witches that men cannot be wizards. Word
sorcerer sufficiently designates the victims of the spell and so to speak
the poisonous mushrooms of fate.
Witches among the Greeks, and especially in Thessaly,
practiced horrible teachings and surrendered to
abominable rites. They were usually lost women from
desires they could no longer satisfy, courtesans
become old, monsters of immorality and ugliness.
Jealous of love and of life, these miserable women had
of lovers than in the graves, or rather they violated the
burials to devour with frightful caresses the frozen flesh of
young men. They stole the children they suffocated from
cries by pressing them against their hanging breasts. Is the
called lamies, stryges, empuses; children,
these objects of their envy and consequently of their hatred, were
sacrificed by them; some, like the Canidia of which speaks
Horace, bury them up to their heads, and let them die
starving, surrounding them with food they could not
to reach; the others cut off their heads, their feet and
hands, and reduced their fat and flesh in
copper basins, until the consistency of an ointment they
mixed with the juices of henbane, belladonna and poppies
black. They constantly filled the organ with this ointment
irritated by their detestable desires; they rubbed them
temples and armpits, then they would fall into a lethargy
full of frantic and lustful dreams. We must dare to say it:
these are the origins and traditions of black magic; here are the
secrets which continued into our Middle Ages; here,
[95] finally, what allegedly innocent victims the execration
public, much more than the sentence of the inquisitors, condemned
to die in the flames. It’s in Spain, and in Italy
especially, that still swarmed the race of strygus, lamiae and
empuses; and those who doubt it can consult the most
learned criminalists from these countries, summarized by François
Torreblanca, royal lawyer at the Chancellery of Granada, in his
Epitome delictorum.
Medea and Circe are the two types of evil magic in
the Greeks. Circe is the vicious woman who fascinates and degrades her
lovers; Medea is the bold poisoner who dares everything, and who
makes nature serve itself for its crimes. It is, in fact,
beings who charm like Circe, and near whom one degrades; he
are women whose love degrades souls; they don’t know
inspire only brutal passions; they annoy you, then
they despise you. These women, like Ulysses, must be made
obey and subjugate them by fear, then know how to leave them
without regret. They are beauty monsters; they are without
heart; vanity alone makes them live. Antiquity
still represented under the figure of sirens.
As for Medea, it is the perverse creature, who wants evil and who
operates it. This one is able to love and does not obey the
fear, but his love is even more formidable than hatred.
She is a bad mother and killer of small children. She loves the
night and go gather evil herbs in the moonlight
to compose poisons. She magnetizes the air, she carries
woe to the earth, it infects water, it poisons fire.
[96] The reptiles lend her their slime: she murmurs frightful
lyrics; traces of blood follow her, limbs severed
fall from his hands. Her advice drives you crazy, her caresses make you
horror.
Here is the woman who wanted to put herself above the duties of her
sex, by initiating herself into forbidden sciences. The
men turn away and children hide when she passes.
She is without reason and without love, and the disappointments of the
nature revolted against it are the ever-reborn torture
of his pride.
CHAPTER VI.
MATHEMATICIAN MAGIC OF PYTHAGORAS.
SUMMARY .– The Golden Worms and the Symbols of this Master .– The
mysteries hidden in the life and instincts of animals – Law
assimilation – Secret of metamorphosis, or how we can
change into a wolf – Eternity of life in the continuity of
memory .– The river of oblivion.
Numa, whose magical knowledge we have indicated, had
had for initiator a certain Tarchon, disciple of a Chaldean
named Tagès. Science then had its apostles, who roamed
the world to sow priests and kings therein. Often even the
persecution aided in the accomplishment of the purposes of
Providence, and so it was around the sixty-second
Olympiad, four generations after the reign of Numa, Pythagoras,
of Samos, came to Italy to escape the tyranny of
Polycrates.
[97] The great popularizer of the philosophy of numbers had then
visited all the sanctuaries of the world; he had come to Judea,
where he had been circumcised to be admitted to the secrets of
Kabbalah, communicated to him, not without a certain reserve,
the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel. Then he got admitted,
not without difficulty, at the Egyptian initiation, on the recommendation
of King Amasis. The power of his genius supplied the
imperfect communications of the hierophants, and it became
himself a master and a revealer.
Pythagoras defined God: a living and absolute truth clothed
from light.
He said the verb was the number manifested by the form.
He made everything descend from the tétractys, that is to say from the
quaternary.
God, he said again, is the supreme music of which nature is
harmony.
According to him, the highest expression of justice is
worship; the most perfect use of science is medicine; the
beautiful is harmony, strength is reason, happiness is
perfection, the practical truth is that we must be wary of
the weakness and perversity of men.
When he came to settle in Crotona, the magistrates of this
city, seeing what empire it exercised over the minds and
hearts, feared him first, then consulted him.
Pythagoras advised them to sacrifice to the muses and to keep
between them the most perfect harmony, because, he said to them, they are
[98] conflicts between masters who revolt servants; then
he gave them the great religious, political and social precept:
“There is no evil that is not preferable to anarchy.”
Sentence of universal application and depth
almost infinite, but that our very century is not yet
enlightened enough to fully understand.
We still have of Pythagoras, in addition to the traditions of his life, his
golden worms and its symbols; its golden worms have become places
commons of vulgar morality, so much success have they been through
ages. Here is a translation:
Εκητα χρυσα.
To the gods, according to the laws, pay just homage;
Respect the oath, the heroes and the wise men;
Honor your parents, your kings, your benefactors;
Choose the best men for your friends.
Be obliging and gentle, be easy on business.
Don’t hate your friend for small mistakes;
Use all your power in the cause of good law:
Who does all he can always does what he has to.
But know how to repress like a severe master,
Appetite, sleep, Venus and anger.
Do not forfeit the honor neither near nor far,
And alone, be for yourself a rigorous witness.
Be righteous in actions and not in words;
Don’t give evil any frivolous pretexts.
Fate enriches us, it can impoverish us;
But, weak or powerful, we must all die.
Be not refractory to your share of sorrows;
Accept the useful and beneficial remedy,
And know that always virtuous men,
Grieving mortals are the least unhappy.
To the unjust words that your heart is resigned;
Let the world speak and always follow your line.
[99] But above all do not do anything by example,
Which is without rectitude and without utility.
Let the advice that enlightens you walk in front of you,
So that the absurdity does not come behind.
Foolishness is always the greatest misfortune,
And the man without advice is answerable for his mistakes.
Do not act without knowing, be zealous to learn:
Ready for study a time which happiness must return.
Do not be negligent in the care of your health;
But take what is necessary with sobriety.
Anything that cannot harm is allowed in life;
Be elegant and pure without arousing the envy.
Flee from neglect and insolent pomp:
The simplest luxury is the most excellent.
Do not act without thinking about what you are going to do,
And reflect, in the evening, on your whole day.
What did I do? what did I hear? what should i regret?
Towards divine virtue so you can ascend.
So far the golden worms seem to be only the lessons of a
pedagogue. However, they have a whole other scope. Those are the
preliminary laws of magical initiation, this is the first
part of the great work, i.e. the creation of the follower
perfect. The following shows it and proves it:
I take you as a witness, ineffable Tétractys,
Inexhaustible fountain shapes and time;
And you who know how to pray, when the gods are for you,
Complete their work and work in faith.
You will soon and easily get to know
Where does your being come from, where it stops, where your being returns;
Without fear and without desires you will know the secrets
Let nature veil from indiscreet mortals.
You will trample on this human weakness
Let fate lead to chance and aimlessly.
You will know who leads the uncertain future,
And what hidden demon holds the threads of fate.
[100] Then you will get on the chariot of light,
Victorious spirit and king of matter.
You will understand the paternal reign of God,
And you can sit in eternal calm.
Pythagoras said: “Just as there are three divine notions and
three intelligible regions, there is also a triple verb, because
the hierarchical order is always manifested by three. There’s the
simple word, the hieroglyphic word and the symbolic word;
in other words, there is the verb which expresses, the verb which
hide, and the verb which means; all the hieratic intelligence
is in the perfect science of these three degrees. “
He therefore enveloped the doctrine in symbols, but he avoided with
take care of the personifications and images that he believes give birth to
sooner or later idolatry. He has even been accused of hating
poets, but it was only to bad poets that Pythagoras
forbade the art of verses.
Don’t sing verse, if you don’t have a lyre,
he said in his symbols. This great man could not ignore the
the exact relationship that exists between sublime thoughts and
beautiful figurative expressions, its very symbols are full of
poetry.
Do not tear off the flowers which form wreaths.
Thus he recommends to his disciples not to diminish
never fame and not wither what the world seems
need to honor.
Pythagoras was chaste, but far from advising celibacy to his
[101] disciples he himself married and had children. We cite a
beautiful words of the wife of Pythagoras; we asked him if the
woman who just had sex with a man did not have
need some atonements, and how long after it
could believe himself pure enough to approach things
saints. “” Right away, “she said,” if it is with her husband; if
it is with another, never!
It is by this severity of principles, it is with this purity of
customs that one initiated in the school of Pythagoras to the mysteries of
nature, and that one took enough control over oneself to
command the elementary forces. Pythagoras possessed this
faculty that we call second sight with us and which was then called
divination. One day he was with his disciples on the edge of the
sea. A vessel appears on the horizon: “Master said to him one of the
disciples, do you think I would be rich if I were given the
cargo of this vessel? – It would be very useless to you, said
Pythagoras Well! I would keep it for my heirs.
would you like to leave them two corpses? “
The vessel entered the port a moment later; he reported the
body of a man who had wanted to be buried in his homeland.
It is said that the animals obeyed Pythagoras. One day at
in the middle of the Olympics, he called an eagle that crossed the
sky; the eagle circled down and continued its pulling flight
wing when the master beckoned him to go. A bear
monstrous ravaged Apulia, Pythagoras made her come to his
feet and ordered him to leave the country; since then she has not reappeared
[102] more; and as he was asked to which science he owed a
also wonderful power:
“To the science of light,” he replied.
Animated beings, in fact, are embodiments of light; the
shapes emerge from the shadows of ugliness to arrive
gradually to the splendours of beauty, instincts are
proportional to forms, and man, who is the synthesis of
this light, which animals are analyzing, is created for their
order; but because instead of being their master, he
made their persecutor and their executioner, they fear him and
revolt against him. They must however feel the power
of an exceptional will which shows itself to them benevolent
and director, they are then invincibly magnetized, and a
large number of modern phenomena can and should make us
understand the possibility of Pythagorean miracles.
Physiognomists have noticed that most men
recall by a few features of their physiognomy the
likeness of some animal. This resemblance may well
to be only imaginary and to be produced by the impression made on
us the various physiognomies, by revealing to us the features
highlights of the character of people. So we will find that a
gruff man looks like a bear, a hypocritical man looks like a cat and
as well as others. These kinds of judgments are exaggerated in
imagination and complement each other in dreams, where often
people who painfully impressed us during the
watch, turn into animals and make us all experience
the anguish of the nightmare. But animals are like us and
[103] more than us under the empire of the imagination, because they do not have
the judgment to rectify the deviations. So they are assigned to
our respect according to their sympathies or their antipathies
overexcited by our magnetism. They have no
awareness of what constitutes the human form and do not see
us than other animals that dominate them. So the dog takes
his master for a dog more perfect than him. It is in the
direction of this instinct which consists in the secret of the empire on
animals. We saw a famous ferocious beast tamer
fascinate his lions by showing them a terrible face and
make up himself as a furious lion; here applies to the letter the
popular proverb: “You must howl with wolves, and bleat with
lambs. ” Moreover, each animal form represents a
particular instinct, aptitude or vice. If we do
predominate in us the character of the beast, we take
more and more the external form, to the point of printing the image
perfect in the astral light and to see ourselves, in
the state of dream or ecstasy, as we would be seen by
somnambulists or ecstatics, and as we appear without
doubt the animals. That the reason dies then, that the dream
persevering turns into madness and here we are turned into beasts
as was Nebuchadnezzar. This explains the stories of
werewolves, some of which have been legally established.
The facts were constant, proven, but what we did not know is
that the witnesses were no less hallucinated than the
werewolves themselves.
The facts of coincidence and correspondence of dreams are not
neither rare nor extraordinary. Ecstatic people see each other and
[104] speak from one end of the world to the other in a state of ecstasy. We
let’s see a person for the first time; and it seems to us that
we have known her for a long time, is that we have her
often already encountered in dreams. Life is full of these
singularities, and with regard to the transformation of human beings
humans into animals, we find examples of this every time
not. How many former gallant and greedy women, reduced
to the state of idiocy after running all the gutters of
existence, are just old pussies only
in love with their cat!
Pythagoras believed above all in the immortality of the soul and in
the eternity of life. The continual succession of summers and
winters, days and nights, sleep and awakening, he
sufficiently explained the phenomenon of death. Immortality
of the human soul consisted, according to him, in the
prolongation of memory. He claimed to remember, it is said, his
previous existences, and if it is true that he claimed so,
is that he found, in fact, something similar in his
reminiscences, for such a man could not have been either a charlatan or a
crazy. But it is probable that he believed to find these old ones
memories in his dreams, and we will have taken for an affirmation
positive, which on his part was only a search and
hypothesis; anyway, his thought was great and life
our real individuality consists only in memory. The
river of oblivion of the ancients was the true philosophical image of
the death. The Bible seems to give this idea a divine sanction
when she says to the book of Psalms: “The life of the righteous will be in
the eternity of memory [6]. “
Imp. Caron-Delamarre, Quai de Gds. Augustins, 17, Paris.
[Note 6: In memoria æterna erit justus.]
[Illustration: THE SEPHER JEZIRAH Pantacle of letters
Kabbalistic Key to Tarot, Sepher Jezirah and Sohar.]
[105]
CHAPTER VII.
HOLY KABBALA.
SUMMARY – The divine names – The tetragrammaton and its four forms. - The unique word that operates all transmutations – The
Lost and found Solomon’s collarbones – The chain of
spirits .– The tabernacle and the temple .– The ancient serpent .– The
spirit world following the Sohar .– What are the spirits that
appear .– How we can be served by the spirits
elementary.
Now let’s go back to the sources of real science and come back
to the holy kabbalah, or tradition of the children of Seth, carried
of Chaldea by Abraham, taught to the Egyptian priesthood by
Joseph, collected and purified by Moses, hidden under symbols
in the Bible, revealed by the Savior to Saint John, and contained
still entirely under hieratic figures analogous to
those of all antiquity in the Apocalypse of this apostle.
Kabbalists hate anything that looks like
idolatry; yet they give the human figure to God, but
it is a purely hieroglyphic figure.
They regard God as the intelligent, loving and infinite
living. It is for them neither the collection of beings, nor
the abstraction of Being nor a being philosophically
definable. He is in everything, distinct from everything and greater
that all. Its very name is ineffable: and again this name
Does he only express the human ideal of his divinity? What god is
by itself it is not given to man to understand it.
God is the absolute of faith; but the absolute of reason is
being.
[106] Being is by itself and because it is. The purpose of
Being is Being itself. One can ask: “Why is there
something, that is, why such and such a thing
does it exist? ” But one cannot without being absurd ask:
“Why is the Being?” It would be to suppose Being before Being.
Reason and science show us that the modes of existence
of Being are balanced according to harmonious laws and
hierarchical. However, the hierarchy is synthesized by rising and
always becomes more and more monarchical. The reason though
cannot stop at a single chief without being afraid of the abysses
that she seems to leave above this supreme monarch, she
was therefore and gives way to the adoring faith.
What is certain, even for science and for reason, is
that the idea of God is the greatest, the holiest and the most
useful of all human aspirations; that on this
belief rests morality with its eternal sanction. This
belief is therefore in humanity the most real of the phenomena of
Being, and if it were false, nature would affirm the absurd,
nothingness would formulate life, God would be at the same time and
would not.
It is to this philosophical and incontestable reality that we call
the idea of God, which the Kabbalists give a name; in this name
are contained all others. The numbers of this name produce
all the numbers, the hieroglyphics of the letters of this name
express all the laws and things of nature.
We will not come back here to what we said in our
[107] dogma of high magic on the divine tetragrammaton, we will add
only that the Kabbalists write it of four main
ways:
הוהי
JHVH,
that they do not pronounce, but that they spell: Jod, he vau hey,
and that we pronounce Jehovah, which is contrary to all
analogy, because the tetragrammaton thus disfigured would be composed
of six letters.
י דא
ADNI,
that we pronounce Adonai, this name means Lord.
היהא
AHIH,
which we pronounce Eieie, this name means Being.
אלכא
AGLA,
which is pronounced as it is written, and which contains
hieroglyphically all the mysteries of the Kabbalah.
Indeed the letter Aleph א is the first of the alphabet
Hebrew; it expresses unity, it hieroglyphically represents
the dogma of Hermes: “What is superior is analogous to what
is lower. ” This letter, in fact, has like two arms whose
one shows the earth and the other the sky with a movement
similar.
The letter Ghimel ג is the third in the alphabet; she
expresses the ternary numerically and hieroglyphically
childbirth, fertility.
The letter Lamed ל is the twelfth; she is the expression
[108] of the perfect cycle. As a hieroglyphic sign, it represents the
circulation of perpetual motion, and the relation of the ray to the
circumference.
The repeated letter Aleph is the expression of synthesis.
The name of AGLA therefore means:
The unit which through the ternary completes the cycle of numbers for
return to unity;
The fruitful principle of nature which is one with it;
The primary truth which fecundates science and brings it back to unity;
Syllepsis, analysis, science and synthesis;
The three divine persons who are one God. The secret of
great work, that is to say, the fixation of the astral light by
a sovereign issue of will, which the followers figured
by a serpent pierced with an arrow forming with it the letter
.א Aleph
Then the three operations, dissolve, sublimate, fix,
corresponding to the three necessary substances, salt, sulfur and
mercury, all expressed by the letter Ghimel ג.
Then the twelve keys of Basil (Valentine) expressed by Lamed
.ל
Finally the work accomplished in accordance with its principle and
reproducing the very principle.
Such is the origin of this kabbalistic tradition which puts
all the magic in one word. Know how to read this word and pronounce it,
that is to say to understand its mysteries and translate into actions
this absolute knowledge is to have the key to wonders.
To pronounce the name of AGLA, it is necessary to turn on the side of
the east, that is to say to unite intention and science to the
[109] oriental tradition. Let us not forget that according to the Kabbalah, the
Perfect word is the word realized by deeds. From there comes
this expression which is found several times in the Bible:
“Make a word” (facere verbum), in the sense of accomplishing
an action.
To pronounce the name of AGLA kabbalistically, is therefore to undergo
all the trials of initiation and complete all
works.
We said in our dogma of high magic how the name
of Jehovah is broken down into seventy-two explanatory names,
called Schemhamphoras. The art of employing these sixty and
twelve names and to find there the keys of universal science,
is what the Kabbalists called the clavicles of Solomon.
Indeed, following the collections of evocations and prayers that
bear this title, we usually find seventy-two
magic circles forming thirty-six talismans. It’s four times
nine, that is to say the absolute number multiplied by the quaternary.
These talismans each bear two of the seventy-two names with
the emblematic sign of their number and that of the four
letters of Jehovah’s name to which they correspond. It’s that
which gave rise to the four emblematic tarot decades: the
staff representing the Jod; the cut, the hey; the sword, the vaf; and the
denier, the final hey. In the tarot we added the complement of
the ten, which synthetically repeats the character of unity.
Popular traditions of magic said that the owner
of Solomon’s collarbones can converse with the spirits of all
orders and be obeyed by all powers
[110] natural. Now these collarbones have been lost several times, then
found, are nothing else than the talismans of the sixty and
twelve names and the mysteries of the thirty-two ways
hieroglyphically reproduced by the tarot. Using these
signs and by means of their infinite combinations, like those
numbers and letters, we can, in fact, arrive at the
natural and mathematical revelation of all the secrets of
nature, and therefore enter into communication with the
entire hierarchy of intelligences and geniuses.
The wise Kabbalists stand guard against the dreams of
the imagination and hallucinations of the day before. Too
do they avoid all these unhealthy evocations that shake the
nervous system and intoxicate reason. Experimenters
curious about the phenomena of extranatural vision are hardly
smarter than the opium and hashish eaters. Those are
children who hurt themselves for pleasure. We can let ourselves
surprise by drunkenness; we can even forget ourselves on purpose
to the point of wanting to feel dizzy; but to the man who
one self-respecting experience is enough; and honest people don’t
do not get drunk twice.
Count Joseph de Maistre says that one day we will make fun of our
current stupidity as we laugh at the barbarism of
Middle Ages. What would he have thought if he had seen our table turners?
and if he had heard our theorists about the occult world
spirits? Poor people that we are! We do not escape
the absurd than by the opposite absurd. The eighteenth century believed
protest against superstition by denying religion, and we
protest against the impiety of the eighteenth century by returning to
[111] old tales of grandmothers; couldn’t we be more Christian
than Voltaire and to dispense with still believing in ghosts?
The dead can’t get back to the land anymore than they have
left, that a child could not fit into the womb of his
mother.
What we call death, is a birth in a lifetime
new. Nature doesn’t undo what she did in order
of the necessary progressions of existence, and it cannot
to deny its fundamental laws.
The human soul, served and limited by organs, can only
means of these very organs to get in touch with things
of the visible world. The body is an envelope proportional to the
material environment in which the soul here below must live. Limiting
the action of the soul concentrates it and makes it possible. Indeed,
the soul without a body would be everywhere, but everywhere so few, that it
could act nowhere; she would be lost in infinity, she
would be absorbed and as it were annihilated in God.
Suppose a drop of fresh water locked in a globule and thrown away
in the sea: as long as the blood cell is not broken, the drop
of water will remain in its own nature, but if the globule becomes
breeze, look for the drop of water in the sea.
God in creating spirits could not give them a personality
conscientious of themselves by giving them an envelope that
centralizes their action and prevents it from getting lost by limiting it.
When the soul separates from the body, it therefore necessarily changes
middle since it changes envelope. She leaves covered
[112] only of its astral form, its envelope of light and
it rises on its own above the atmosphere like air
rises above the water, escaping from a broken vessel.
We say that the soul rises because its envelope rises, and that
his action and his conscience are as we said attached
to its envelope.
Atmospheric air becomes solid for these light bodies
infinitely lighter than him and who could not come down
than by loading a heavier garment, but where
Would they take this garment above our atmosphere? They don’t
could therefore return to earth only by incarnating there
again, their return would be a fall, they would drown like
free spirits and would recommence their novitiate. But the
Catholic religion does not allow such a return to be
possible.
The Kabbalists formulate by a single axiom the whole doctrine
that we expose here:
“The spirit, they say, clothes itself to descend and is stripped
In order to climb.”
The life of intelligences is completely ascending; the child in
the mother’s womb lives a vegetative life and receives the
food by a tie which attaches itself as the tree is attached to
the earth and nourished at the same time by its root.
When the child passes from vegetative life to instinctive life
and animal, its cord breaks, it can walk.
When the child becomes a man, he escapes the chains of
instinct and can act in be reasonable.
When man dies, he escapes these laws of gravity which
always made him fall back to earth.
[113] When the soul has atoned for its sins, it becomes strong enough to
leave the outer darkness of the earth’s atmosphere and
to climb towards the sun.
Then begins the eternal ascent of the holy ladder, for
the eternity of the elect cannot be idle; they go from virtue to
virtues, from felicity to felicity, from triumph to triumph, from
splendor in splendor.
The chain, however, cannot be interrupted and those of the most
high degrees can still exert an influence on the most
low, but in hierarchical order, and in the same way
that a king by ruling wisely does good to the last of his
topics.
From rung to rung, prayers rise and graces
descend without ever taking the wrong path.
But the spirits once mounted do not come down again, because at
as they go up the degrees solidify under their feet.
The great chaos is established, says Abraham, in the parable of the
bad rich; and those who are here can no longer descend
over there.
Ecstasy can exalt the forces of the sidereal body to the point of it
cause the material body to be dragged along in its tracks, which proves
that the destiny of the soul is to ascend.
The facts of air suspension are possible: but it is without
example that a man could have lived underground or in water.
It would also be impossible for a soul separated from its body
could live, even for a single moment, in the thickness of our
atmosphere. The souls of the dead are therefore not around us
[114] as assumed by the table turners. The ones we love
can still see us and appear to us, but only by
mirage and by reflection in the common mirror which is light.
They can no longer be interested in mortal things,
and no longer hold to us except those of our feelings which
are high enough to still have something compliant or
analogous to their life in eternity.
These are the revelations of the high Kabbalah contained and
hidden in the mysterious book of Sohar. Revelations
hypothetical, no doubt for science, but based on a
series of rigorous inductions starting from the same facts as the
science disputes the least; but we must address here one of the secrets
the most dangerous of magic. It is the hypothesis more than
probable existence of the known fluidic larvae in
the ancient theurgy under the name of elementary spirits. We
said a few words in our Dogma and ritual of the high magic [7], and the unfortunate Abbot of Villars, who had played
these terrible revelations paid with his life for his imprudence. This
secret is dangerous in that it closely affects the great arcane
magical. Indeed, to evoke elementary spirits is to have
the power to coagulate fluids by a projection of
astral light. But this power thus directed cannot
produce only disorders and misfortunes as we do
will prove later. Now here is the theory of the hypothesis
with the proofs of the probability:
The spirit is everywhere, it is he who animates matter; he is
[115] frees from gravity by perfecting its envelope which is its
form. We see, in fact, the form progressing with the
instincts to intelligence and beauty; Those are the
efforts of the light attracted by the attraction of the mind, it is the
mystery of progressive and universal generation.
[Note 7: Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, 1856, 2 vol. in-8
with 23 fig.]
Light is the efficient agent of forms and of life, because
that it is at the same time movement and heat. When she
manages to fix and polarize around a center, it
produces a living being, then it attracts to perfect it and
keep all the plastic stuff needed. This
plastic substance formed in the last analysis of soil and water,
has been rightly called the silt of the earth in the Bible.
But the light is not the spirit, as the
Indian hierophants, and all the schools of goetia; she is
only the instrument of the mind. It is not the body of the
protoplastes, as the theurgists of
the school of Alexandria; she is the first physical manifestation
divine breath. God created her eternally, and man
the image of God, modifies it and seems to multiply it.
Prometheus, says the fable, having stolen fire from heaven, animated
images made of earth and water, and it is for this crime that he was
chained and struck down by Jupiter.
Elemental spirits, say the Kabbalists in their
most secret books, are the children of the solitude of Adam;
they were born from his dreams, when he longed for the woman that God
hadn’t given it to her yet.
Paracelsus says that the blood lost, either regularly or in
dream, by bachelors of both sexes, people the air of
ghosts.
[116] We believe we indicate quite clearly here, according to the masters,
the supposed origin of these larvae without us needing
explain further.
These larvae therefore have an aerial body formed from the vapor of blood.
This is why they look for the spilled blood and
once fed the smoke of sacrifice.
It is the monstrous children of these impure nightmares that we
once called incubi and succubi.
When they are condensed enough to be seen, it is only a
vapor colored by the reflection of an image; they have no life
clean, but they imitate the life of the one who evokes them as
the shadow imitates the body.
They mostly occur around idiots and people without
morality that their isolation gives up to disordered habits.
The cohesion of the parts of their fantastic body being very
weak, they fear the open air, the great fire and especially the
point of swords.
They become like wispy appendages of the body
real life of their parents, since they only live the life of those
who created them or who appropriate them by evoking them. In
so that if one hurts their body appearances, the father can
to be really hurt, as the unborn child is
really hurt or disfigured by the imaginations of his mother.
The whole world is full of phenomena that justify these
unique revelations and can only be explained by them.
[117] These larvae attract to themselves the vital heat of people who are well
load-bearing, and quickly exhaust those that are weak.
From there came the vampire stories, stories
frightfully real and periodically observed like everyone
knows.
This is why, when approaching médiums, that is to say
people obsessed with larvae, we feel a cooling
in the air.
These larvae only before existence lies in
the imagination exalted and the disturbance of the senses,
ever produce in the presence of a person who knows and can
unveil the mystery of their monstrous birth.
[118]
BOOK II
TRAINING AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE DOGMA.
.Beth, ב
FIRST CHAPTER.
PRIMITIVE SYMBOLISM OF HISTORY.
SUMMARY – The Edenic Pantacle – The Cherub – The Children of
Cain – Magic Secrets of the Tower of Babel – Curse of the
descendants of Chanaan .– Anathema brought against the
sorcerers – The rise and fall of dogma in Egypt, Greece
and Rome .– Birth of skeptical philosophy .– War of
empiricism versus magic .– Tempered skepticism of
Socrates – Plato’s Synthesis – Rationalism
of Aristotle The priesthood and science.
It is not for us to explain Holy Scripture to the point
from a religious and dogmatic point of view. Subject above all else to
hierarchical order, we leave theology to the doctors of
Church and we return to human science all that is
domain of experience and reason. So when we
seem to risk a new application of a passage from the
Bible or the Gospel, it is always except the respect of
ecclesiastical decisions. We do not dogmatize, we
submit to the legitimate authorities our observations and our
studies.
What strikes us first of all when reading in the sacred book of
Moses the original story of mankind is the description
[119] of the earthly paradise which is summed up in the figure of a pantacle
perfect. It is circular or square, since it is watered
also by four rivers arranged in a cross, and in the center are
find the two trees which represent science and life,
stable intelligence and progressive movement, wisdom and
creation. Around the tree of science rolls the serpent
of Asclepius and Hermes: at the foot of the tree are the man and the
woman, active and passive, intelligence and love. The
serpent, symbol of the original attraction and the central fire of
earth, tempt the woman who is weaker, and she makes
succumb to man; but she only gives in to the serpent for the
tame later, and one day she’ll crush his head in
giving a savior to the world.
The whole of science is represented in this admirable picture.
Man abdicates the domain of intelligence by yielding to
solicitations of the sensitive part; he profane the fruit of
science which must nourish the soul by making it serve for uses
of unjust and material satisfaction, he then loses the feeling
of harmony and truth. He is clothed in the skin of an animal,
because the physical form always conforms sooner or later to the
moral dispositions; he is driven out of the circle watered by the
four rivers of life, and a cherub, armed with a flaming sword
still agitated, prevents her from entering the domain of unity.
As we pointed out in our dogma, Voltaire,
having discovered that in Hebrew a cherub means an ox,
very amused by this story. He would have laughed less if he had seen
in the bull-headed angel the image of obscure symbolism, and
in the flaming and moving sword these flashes of evil truth
[120] conceived and deceptive, which gave so much credit after the fall
original to the idolatry of the nations.
The flaming sword also represented this light that man
no longer knew how to lead and whose fatal attacks he suffered
instead of governing its power.
The great magical work considered in an absolute way is the
conquest and leadership of the flaming sword of the cherub.
The cherub is the angel or the soul of the earth always represented
in the ancient mysteries under the figure of a bull.
This is why in the Mitthriac symbols, we see the
master of light taming the earthly bull and him
plunging into the side the sword which brings out life
represented by drops of blood.
The first consequence of Eve’s sin is the death of Abel. In
separating love from intelligence, Eve separated it from strength;
strength, become blind and enslaved to earthly lusts,
becomes jealous of love and kills it. Then the children of Cain
perpetuate their father’s crime. They give birth to girls
fatally beautiful, loveless girls, born for damnation
angels and for the scandal of the descendants of Seth.
After the flood and following this prevarication of Cham,
whose mystery we have already indicated, the children of men
want to realize a crazy project: they want to build a
pantacle and a universal palate. It is a gigantic attempt to
egalitarian socialism, and Fourier’s phalanstery is a
very puny design near the Tower of Babel. It was a
protest attempt against the hierarchy of science, a
[121] citadel built against floods and lightning, a
promontory from the top of which the head of the deified people would hover
on the atmosphere and on storms. But we do not go up to the
science on stone stairs; the hierarchical degrees of
spirit are not built with mortar like floors
of a tower. Anarchy protested against this hierarchy
materialized. The men did not get along anymore, fatal lesson, if
misunderstood by those who today have dreamed of another Babel.
With brutally and materially hierarchical doctrines,
respond to egalitarian negations: whenever the gender
human, will build a tower, we will fight for the top, and the
the tendency of the multitudes will be to desert the base. For
satisfy all ambitions, making the summit wider
that the base, it would be necessary to make a rickety tower in the wind which
would fall at the slightest shock.
The dispersion of men was the first effect of the curse
brought against the profaners children of Cham. But the race of
Chanaan carried the weight of this
curse that would later doom their posterity to
the anathema.
The conservative chastity of the family is the character
distinctive of hierarchical initiations; profanation and
revolt are always obscene and tend to be promiscuous
infanticide. The stain of the mysteries of birth,
the attack on children, were the basis of the cults of
ancient Palestine abandoned to the horrible rites of magic
black. The black god of India, the monstrous Rutrem with forms
priapes, reigned there under the name of Belphégor.
The Talmudists and the Platonic Jew Philo recount
[122] things so shameful of the worship of this idol that they seemed
incredible to the learned jurisconsult Seldenus. It was,
they say, a bearded idol with a gaping mouth, having for
tongue a gigantic phallus; we discovered each other shamelessly
in front of this face and he was presented with stercorary offerings.
The idols of Moloch and Chamos were machines
loopholes that sometimes crushed against their bronze breasts,
sometimes consumed in their arms reddened by the fire of the unfortunate
small children. We danced to the sound of trumpets and
tambourines so as not to hear the cries of the victims and the
mothers led the dance. Incest, sodomy and
bestiality were the customs received among these infamous peoples and
were even part of the sacred rites.
Fatal consequence of universal harmonies! we do not forfeit
with impunity to the truth. Man revolted against God is pushed
in spite of himself to the outrage of nature. Also the same causes
always producing the same effects, the witches’ sabbath in
Middle Ages was only a rehearsal of the festivals of Chamos and
Belphegor. It is against these crimes that an eternal death sentence
is carried by nature itself. Worshipers of the gods
blacks, the apostles of promiscuity, the theorists of shamelessness
public, the enemies of the family and the hierarchy, the
anarchists in religion and politics are enemies of God
and humanity; not to separate them from the world is to consent to
poisoning the world: thus reasoned the inquisitors.
We are far from regretting the cruel executions of the means
age and desire its return. As society becomes
[123] more Christian, she will understand better and better that it is necessary
treat the sick and not kill them. Instincts
aren’t criminals the most awful of all
mental illness?
Let us not forget that the high magic is called the_ sacerdotal art_ and
the_ royal art_; she had to share in Egypt, Greece and Rome,
the heights and the decadences of the priesthood and of kingship.
Any philosophy opposed to worship and its mysteries is
fatally hostile to the great political powers, which lose
their greatness if they cease, in the eyes of the multitudes, to be the
images of divine power. Every crown breaks
when it hits the tiara.
Steal fire from the sky and dethrone the gods, that’s the dream
Eternal of Prometheus; and the popular Prometheus detached from
Caucasus by Hercules, which symbolizes work, will always prevail
with him his nails and his chains; he will always drag his
immortal vulture hanging from his gaping wound, until he
will not come to learn obedience and resignation at the feet of
the one who, being born king of kings and God of gods, wanted to have
in turn with his hands nailed and his chest open for the
conversion of all rebellious minds.
Republican institutions, by opening up the intrigue to the
career of power, strongly undermined the principles of
hierarchy. The care of forming kings was no longer entrusted to the
priesthood, and it is supplemented either by the heredity which delivers the
throne with unequal chances of birth, either by election
popular, which leaves out the religious influence, for
constitute the monarchy according to republican principles. So
Governments were formed which in turn presided over the
[124] triumphs and debasements of the states of Greece and Rome.
The science enclosed in the sanctuaries was then neglected, and
men of daring or genius, that the initiators
did not welcome, invented a science that they opposed to
that of the priests, or opposed to the secrets of the temple the
and denial. These philosophers, following their imaginations
adventurous, quickly reached the absurd and attacked the
nature of the faults of their own systems. Heraclitus took to
cry; Democritus decided to laugh, and they were also
crazy one than the other. Pyrrho will end up believing in nothing, this
which will not be likely to compensate him for not knowing anything. In
this philosophical chaos, Socrates brought a little light and
common sense in asserting the pure and simple existence of morality.
But what is morality without religion? The abstract deism of
Socrates was expressed for the people by atheism; Socrates
absolutely lacked dogma, Plato his disciple tried to
to give one that Socrates confessed never to have thought of.
Plato’s doctrine is an epoch in the history of genius
human, but this philosopher had not invented it, and,
understanding that there is no truth outside of religion, he
went to consult the priests of Memphis and was initiated into their
mysteries. It is even believed that he had knowledge of the sacred books
of the Hebrews. However, he could only receive in Egypt one
imperfect initiation, for the priests themselves had forgotten
then the meaning of the primitive hieroglyphics. We have the proof
in the story of the priest who spent three days deciphering a
hieratic inscription found in the tomb of Alcmene, and
[125] sent by Agesilaus, King of Sparta. Cornuphis, who was without
most learned of the hierophants, consulted all the elders
collections of signs and characters, and finally discovered that this
inscription was made in characters of prothée; or the prosthesis
was the name given in Greece to the book of Thoth, whose
mobile hieroglyphics could take as many forms as there are
possible combinations using characters, numbers,
and elementary figures. But the book of Thoth being the key
of oracles and the elementary book of science, how
Cornuphis, if he was really educated in the priestly art,
had he had to search for so long before recognizing the
signs? Another proof of the obscuring of truths
first of science at that time was that the oracles
complained in a style that was no longer understood.
[Illustration: The Seal of Cagliostro, The Seal of Juno
Samian, the Apocalyptic Seal and the twelve Seals of the stone
cubic, around the Key of the Tarot.]
When Plato, on his return from Egypt, was traveling with Simmias
near the borders of Caria, he met men from Delos
who begged him to explain to them an oracle of Apollo. This oracle
said that to put an end to the evils of Greece it was necessary
double the cubic stone. So the Delians had tried to
doubling a cubic stone that was in the temple
of Apollo. But by overtaking her on all sides they were not
managed to make a polyhedron with twenty-five faces, and for
return to the cubic form they must have increased twenty-six
times, and always doubling it, the original volume of the
Pierre. Plato sent the Delien emissaries back to the mathematician
Eudoxus, and told them that the oracle advised them to study the
geometry. Did he not himself understand the deep meaning of this
figure, or did he not deign to explain it to these ignorant
[126] which we cannot say. But what is certain is that
the cubic stone and its multiplication explain all the
secrets of sacred numbers, and especially that of movement
perpetual hidden by adepts and sought by fools under the
name of squaring the circle. By this cubic agglomeration of
twenty-six cubes around a central cube, the oracle had made
find in Déliens not only the elements of geometry
but still the key to the harmonies of creation explained by
the sequence of shapes and numbers. The plan of all
great allegorical temples of antiquity can be found in this
multiplication, of the cube by the first cross around which
we can describe a circle, then the cubic cross which can be
move in a globe. All these notions that a figure will do
better understand, have been preserved until today in the
Masonic initiations, and perfectly justify the name given
to modern associations, because they are also the principles
fundamentals of architecture and building science.
The Delians thought they had solved the geometrical question by
halving their multiplication, but they still had
found eight times the volume of their cubic stone. We can
remainder, increase the number of their attempts at pleasure: because this
history is perhaps nothing more than a problem proposed by
Plato himself to his disciples. If we have to admit it as a fact
the answer of the oracle, we will find there a more extended meaning
again, because to double the cubic stone is to bring out the
binary of the unit, the form of the idea, the action of the thought.
It is to realize in the world the correctness of mathematics
[127] eternal, it is to establish the policy on the basis of the sciences
exact, it is to conform religious dogma to the philosophy of
numbers.
Plato has less depth but more eloquence than Pythagoras.
He tries to reconcile the philosophy of the reasoners with the
immutable dogmas of seers; he doesn’t want to popularize, he wants
reconstruct science. So his philosophy was to provide
later to nascent Christianity ready-made theories and
dogmas to be revived.
However, although he based his theorems on mathematics,
Plato, abundant in harmonious forms and lavish
marvelous hypotheses, was more a poet than a geometer. A genius
exclusively calculating, Aristotle, had to put everything in
question in schools, and submit everything to the tests of
numerical evolutions and the logic of calculations. Aristotle,
excluding Platonic faith, wants to prove everything and everything
to include in its categories; it translates the ternary into
syllogism and the binary in enthymeme. The chain of beings for
him becomes a sorite. He wants to abstract everything, to reason everything;
Being itself becomes for him an abstraction lost in the
assumptions of ontology. Plato will inspire the Fathers to
the Church, Aristotle will be the master of the scholastics of the Middle Ages,
and God knows how much darkness will gather around this
logic which believes in nothing and which claims to explain everything. A
second Babel is being prepared, and the confusion of tongues is not
far.
Being is Being, the reason for Being is in Being. In the
principle is the Verb and the Verb (λογος) is logic
formulated in speech, the spoken reason; the Word is in God and the
Word is God himself manifested to the intelligence. This is what is
[128] above all philosophies. This is what to believe
on pain of never knowing anything and falling back into doubt
absurdity of Pyrrho. The priesthood guardian of the faith rests all
whole on this basis of science, and it is in its
teaching to salute the divine principle of the Word
eternal.
CHAPTER II
MYSTICISM.
SUMMARY – Origin and effects of mysticism – It materializes the
signs under the pretext of spiritualizing matter.
with all the vices; he persecutes the wise; he is
contagious – Apparitions, infernal wonders – Fanaticism of
sectarians – Dark magic using words and signs
unknown – Phenomena of hysterical diseases – Theory of
hallucinations.
The legitimacy of divine right belongs so much to the priesthood
that without it the true priesthood does not exist. Initiation and
consecration have a real heredity.
Thus the sanctuary is inviolable for the layman and cannot
be invaded by sectarians.
Thus the lights of divine revelation are distributed with
a supreme reason, because they descend in order and
harmony. God does not light up the world with meteors and
lightning, but it makes the universes gravitate peacefully
around its sun.
[Illustration: TYPHONIAN SYMBOLS Egyptian types of Coëtie
and Necromancy.]
This harmony torments certain impatient souls of duty, and
[129] come from men who cannot force the revelation to
agree with their vices, pose as reformers of the
moral. “If God has spoken, they say, like Rousseau, why
Haven’t I heard anything? “- Soon they add:” He spoke,
but it’s mine; ” they dreamed it, and they end up the
believe. Thus begin the sectarians, these instigators of anarchy
nun that we would not like to see delivered to the flames,
but that it would be necessary to lock up like contagious madmen.
Thus were formed the mystical schools profaning the
science. We have seen how the fakirs of India
arrived by nervous erethisms and congestions
cerebral to what they called uncreated light. Egypt
also had its sorcerers and enchanters, and Thessaly in
Greece was full of conjurations and spells. Get down
directly related to demons and gods, it is
to suppress the priesthood is to overthrow the base of the throne;
the anarchic instinct of the so-called illuminated knew this well.
Also it is by the attraction of the license that they hoped
recruit disciples, and they gave absolution in advance to
all the scandals of morals, being satisfied with the rigidity in
revolt and energy in the protest against the
priestly legitimacy.
The Bacchantes who tore Orpheus apart believed they were inspired by a
god, and sacrificed the great hierophant to their intoxication
deified. Bacchus’ orgies were excitement
mystics, and always the sectarians of madness proceeded by
disordered movements, frantic and disgusting excitations
convulsions; from the effeminate priests of Bacchus to the
gnostics; from whirling dervishes to epileptics
[130] from the tomb of deacon Pâris, the character of exaltation
superstitious and fanatic is still the same.
It is always under the pretext of purifying dogma, it is in the name of a
exaggerated spiritualism that the mystics of all times have
materialized the signs of worship. It is the same for
profaners of the science of the Magi, because high magic,
let us not forget that it is the primitive priestly art. She disapproves
everything that is done outside the legitimate hierarchy and
applauds not the torture, but the condemnation of
sectarians and wizards.
We are deliberately bringing these two qualifications together, all
sectarians have been evocators of spirits and ghosts that they
gave to the world for gods; they all flattered
to work miracles in support of their lies. In these titles
so they were all goetians, that is to say real
black magic operators.
Anarchy being the starting point and the distinctive character of
dissident mysticism, religious concord is impossible between
sectarians, but they get along wonderfully on one point: it is
hatred of hierarchical and legitimate authority. In this then
really consists of their religion, since it is the only link that
relates them to each other. It is still Cham’s crime;
it is contempt for the principle of the family, and the outrage inflicted
to the father, whose drunkenness all dissidents loudly proclaim,
of which they discover with sacrilegious laughter the nudity and the
sleep.
Anarchist mystics all confuse the light,
intellectual with astral light; they worship the snake at
[131] instead of reverencing the obedient and pure wisdom that sets foot on him
on the head. So they get drunk with dizziness and do not delay
not to fall into the abyss of madness.
Mad people are all visionaries and often they can
to believe miracles, because hallucination is contagious,
it often happens or seems to be happening around crazy people
inexplicable things. Besides the phenomena of Lights e
astral attracted or projected with excess, are themselves of a
to disconcert half-scholars. By accumulating in the body,
it gives them, by the violent distension of molecules, a
such elasticity, that the bones can twist, the muscles
lie down excessively. It forms vortices and like
downpours of this light, which lift up the most
heavy and can hold them up in the air for a while
proportional to the force of projection. The sick feel
then as ready to burst, and seek help by
compression and percussion. The most violent blows and the
strongest compression being then balanced by the tension
fluid, do not bruise or injure, and relieve the
patient instead of suffocating him.
Madmen hate doctors and mystics
hallucinated hate the wise, they run away from them first, they
then persecute fatally and in spite of themselves; if they are soft and
indulgent, it is for vices; reason submitted to authority
finds them relentless: the seemingly mildest sectarians
are seized with fury and hatred when we talk to them about
submission and hierarchy. Always heresies have occasioned
troubles. If a false prophet does not pervert, he must
kill. They cry out for tolerance for them, but they
are careful not to use it for others. The
[132] Protestants declaimed against the pyres of Rome at the time
even where Jean Calvin, of his private authority, burned
Michel Servet.
These are the crimes of the Donatists, of the circumcellions and of so many
others who forced the Catholic princes to crack down, and
the Church even to abandon the culprits to them. Wouldn’t we say to
hear the moans of irreligion that the Vaudois, the
albigensians and the Hussites were lambs? Were they
innocent than those dark Puritans of Scotland and England who
held the dagger in one hand and the Bible in the other
preaching the extermination of Catholics? A single church in
in the midst of so many reprisals and horrors always posed and
maintained in principle his horror of blood: it is the church
hierarchical and legitimate.
The Church, admitting the possibility and existence of miracles
evil, recognizes the existence of a natural force which
can be used, either for good or for evil. Too
has she wisely decided that if the holiness of doctrine can
legitimize the miracle, the miracle alone can never authorize
the novelties of the doctrine.
To say that God, whose laws are perfect and cannot be contradicted
ever, uses a natural way to operate the things that
seem supernatural to us, it is to affirm the supreme reason and
the unchanging power of God is to enlarge the idea that we have
of his providence; this is not to deny its intervention in
wonders that work in favor of the truth, that the
sincere Catholics understand this well.
False miracles caused by astral congestion have
[133] always an anarchic and immoral tendency, because the
disorder calls disorder. Also the gods and geniuses of
sectarians greedy for blood and do they ordinarily promise
their protection at the cost of murder. The idolaters of Syria and
of Judea were making oracles with children’s heads
that they violently tore from the body of these poor little girls
creatures. They were drying these heads, and after having them
put under the tongue a golden blade with unknown characters,
they placed them in hollows made in the wall, their
made a body of magical plants surrounded by
bandages, lit a lamp in front of these dreadful idols,
offered them incense and religiously came
to consult; they thought they heard talking about this head whose
last cries of anguish had undoubtedly shaken their
imagination. Besides, we said that blood attracts
larvae. In hellish sacrifices, the ancients dug a
pit and filled it with warm, steaming blood; they saw
then crawl, climb, descend, run from the hollow of the earth,
from all the depths of the night, stupid shadows and
pale. They traced the circle with the point of the bloody sword
evocations, lit fires of laurel, alder and
cypress on altars crowned with asphodel and verbena, the
night then seemed to get colder and darker, the moon
hid under the clouds, and we could hear the faint rustling
ghosts crowding around the circle while the
dogs howled miserably throughout the countryside.
For any power, we must dare everything, such was the principle of
[134] enchantments and their horrors. The false magicians bonded
by crime, and they believed themselves capable of frightening
others when they had managed to frighten themselves. The
rites of black magic remained horrible as the cults
impious that she had produced, either in the associations of
evildoers conspiring against ancient civilizations, either
among the barbarian peoples. It’s still the same love of
darkness, it’s always the same profanations, the same
bloody prescriptions. Anarchic magic is the cult of
dead. The sorcerer abandons himself to fate, he abjures his reason,
he renounces the hope of immortality and he immolates
children. He renounces honest marriage and takes a vow of debauchery
sterile. Under these conditions he enjoys the fullness of his madness,
he gets drunk on his wickedness to the point of believing it
almighty, and turning his hallucinations into reality,
he believes himself master of evoking the whole tomb and everything
hell.
Barbarian words and unknown signs or even absolutely
insignificant are the best in black magic. We hallucinate
better with ridiculous practices and foolish evocations
only by rites or formulas capable of holding
intelligence on the alert. M. Du Potet claims to have experienced the
power of certain signs on crisiacs, and signs
that he traces with his hand in his occult book, with precaution and
mystery, are analogous, if not absolutely similar, to
so-called evil signatures that are found in the
old editions of the large grimoire. The same causes must
always produce the same effects, and there is nothing new
under the moon of wizards, no more than under the sun of the wise.
[135] The permanent state of hallucination is death or abdication
of consciousness; we are then delivered to all the chances of
fatality of dreams. Each memory brings its reflection, each
bad desire creates an image, each remorse gives birth to a
nightmare. Life becomes that of an animal, but of an animal
shady and tormented. We are no longer aware of morality or
time. Realities no longer exist, everything dances in the
whirlwind of the most insane shapes. An hour seems
sometimes last for centuries; years can pass with the
speed of one hour.
Our brain, all phosphorescent with astral light, is full
of reflections and figures without number. When we close the
eyes, it often seems to us that a sometimes brilliant panorama,
sometimes dark and terrible, takes place under our eyelids. A
patient with fever barely closes his eyes during the
night, that he is often dazzled by an unbearable light.
Our nervous system, which is a complete electrical device,
concentrates light in the brain, which is the negative pole of
device, or throws it by the ends which are the
points intended to put our vital fluid back into circulation.
When the brain violently attracts a series of images similar to
a passion that upset the balance of the machine, the exchange of
light is no longer made, the astral breathing stops and the
stray light somehow coagulates in the brain.
So the hallucinated have the most false sensations and
the most perverse. There are those who find pleasure in
cutting the skin into strips and peeling slowly, others
[136] eat and savor the substances less suited to serve
of food. Dr. Brierre de Boismont, in his scholar
Treaty of hallucinations [8], brought together several series
excessively curious observations; all the excesses of life,
either in badly understood, or in bad not combated, can
to exalt the brain and produce stagnations of light in it.
Excessive ambition, proud pretensions to
holiness, a continence full of scruples and desires,
shameful passions satisfied despite repeated warnings
remorse: all this leads to the fainting of reason, to
morbid ecstasy, hysteria, visions, madness. A man
is not mad, remarks the learned doctor, because he has
visions, but because he believes more in his visions than in the
common. It is therefore obedience and authority alone that can
save the mystics; if they have confidence in themselves
obstinate, there is no more remedy, they are already the excommunicated
of reason and faith: these are the alienated from charity
universal. They think they are wiser than society; they
believe they form a religion, and they are alone; they think they have
stolen for their personal use the secret keys of life, and
their intelligence has already collapsed.
[Note 8: Brierre de Boismont, Des hallucinations, or history reasoned of appearances, visions, dreams, ecstasy, du magnetisme et du somnambulisme, 2nd edition, 1852, l vol.
in-8.]
[137]
CHAPTER III.
INITIATIONS AND TESTS.
CONTENTS – The Secret Doctrine of Plato – Theosophy and
theurgy – The lair of Trophonius – Origins of the fables of
the Acheron and the Tenare – The symbolic painting of Cebes – The
ultra-worldly doctrines of the Phédon .– The burial of the
dead .– Sacrifices to appease the spirits.
What the followers call the grand oeuvre is not only
the transmutation of metals is also and above all medicine
universal, that is to say the remedy for all ills, including
dead.
The work that creates universal medicine is regeneration
human morality. It is this second birth that the
Savior to the doctor of the law, Nikodemos, who did not understand him
not, and Jesus would say to him: “What, you are master in Israel and
you ignore this mystery! ” as if he wanted to make her hear
that it was about the fundamental principles of science
religious, and that a master was not allowed to
ignore.
The great mystery of life and its trials is represented in
the celestial sphere and in the cycle of the year. The four forms
of the sphinx correspond to the four elements and the four
seasons. The symbolic figures of the shield of Achilles, in
Homer, have a meaning similar to that of the twelve labors
of Hercules. Achilles must die like Hercules, after having conquered
the elements and fought against the gods. Hercules, victorious over
[138] all the vices represented by the monsters he must fight,
succumbs for a moment to the most dangerous of all, to love; but he
finally tears from his chest, with shreds of his flesh, the
burning tunic of Deianira; he leaves her guilty and conquered;
he dies freed and immortal.
Every man who thinks is an Oedipus called to guess the enigma of the
sphinx or to die. Every initiate must be a Hercules
completing the cycle of a great year of work and deserving,
by the sacrifices of heart and of life, the triumphs of
the apotheosis.
Orpheus is king of the lyre and of the sacrifices only after having turned
in turn conquered and knew how to lose Eurydice. Omphale and Deianira are
jealous of Hercules: one wants to debase him, the other gives in to
advice from a cowardly rival who pushes her to poison the
liberator of the world; but she will cure him of poisoning
much more fatal, that of his unworthy love. The flame of
pyre will purify this too weak heart; Hercules expires in
all his strength and can sit victorious near the throne of
Jupiter!
Jacob, before being the great patriarch of Israel, had fought
through a whole long night against an angel.
THE TEST, this is the great word of life: life is a snake
which gives birth and devours itself incessantly; you have to escape your
hugs and put the foot on the head. Hermès, in the
multiplying, opposes it to itself, and in an eternal equilibrium it
in fact the talisman of his power and the glory of his caduceus.
The great trials of Memphis and Eleusis were intended to
to train kings and priests, entrusting science to
[139] courageous and strong men. To be admitted to these
trials, surrender body and soul to the priesthood and surrender
of his life. We then went down into dark undergrounds where he
had to cross in turn burning pyres, currents
of deep and rapid water, movable bridges thrown over abysses,
and this without letting a lamp go out and escape
held in hand. The one who staggered or who was afraid does not
was never to see the light again; the one who crossed with
fearlessness all obstacles were received among the mysts,
that is to say, he was initiated into the little mysteries. But he
remained to be tested his fidelity and his silence, and it was not
that after several years he became épopte, a title which
corresponds to that of adept.
Philosophy, rival of the priesthood, imitated these practices and
subjected his disciples to trials. Pythagoras demanded the
silence and abstinence for five years: Plato did not admit in
his school that surveyors and musicians, he reserved
moreover part of his teaching for initiates and his
philosophy had its mysteries. This is how he created the
world by demons, and that he brings out all the animals
the man. Plato’s demons are none other than the Eloïm of
Moses, that is to say the forces by competition and harmony
which the supreme principle created. By saying that animals
come out of man, he means that animals are the analysis
of the living form of which man is the synthesis. It’s Plato
who was the first to proclaim the divinity of the verb, that is to say of
speech, and this creative verb, he seems to sense
the imminent incarnation on earth; he announces the sufferings
and the torment of the perfect righteous, condemned by the iniquity of
world.
[140] This sublime philosophy of the verb belongs to the pure Kabbalah,
and Plato did not invent it. He does not hide it elsewhere and
declares loudly that in any science one should never
receive only that which accords with eternal truths and with
the oracles of God_. Ironside, from whom we borrow this
quotation, adds that, “by these eternal truths, Plato means
an ancient tradition, which he claims that the first men
had received from God and which they had transmitted to their
descendants. ” Certainly, unless we positively name the Kabbalah,
We could not be clearer. This is the definition instead of the
name: it is something more precise in some way than the
same name.
“It is not the books,” Plato says again, “which give these
high knowledge; you have to draw them from yourself by a
deep meditation and seek the sacred fire in its own
source …. This is why I never wrote any of these
revelations and I will never talk about it.
Any man who will undertake to make them vulgar does not
will never undertake it except in vain, and all the fruit that
will derive from his work, is that except for a small number of men
to whom God has given enough intelligence to see in themselves
these heavenly truths, he will give some contempt for them, and
will fill others with vain and reckless confidence, as
if they knew wonderful things that they don’t know yet
not [9]. “
[Note 9: Ironside, the Doctrine of Plato (Library of ancient philosophers), t. III, p. 81.]
[141] He wrote to Dionysius the Younger:
“I must declare to Archedemus what is much more
precious and more divine and what you long for
know, since you sent it to me on purpose; because, according to what he
told me, you don’t think I explained to you enough
what I think about the nature of the first principle; you need
write it in riddles, so that if my letter is intercepted on
land or sea, whoever reads it cannot understand anything.
All things are around their king, they are because of
he, and he alone is the cause of good things; second for
seconds and third for the third [10]. “
[Note 10: Ironside, loco citato.t. III, p. 194.]
There is in these few words a complete summary of the theology
sephirots. The king is Ensoph, the supreme and absolute being.
Everything radiates from this center which is everywhere, but which we
let’s design above all in three ways and in three spheres
different. In the divine world, which is that of the first
cause, it is unique and first. In the world of science that
is that of the second causes, the influence of the first principle is
is felt, but it is no longer conceived of as the first of
secondary causes; it manifests by the binary, it is the
passive creative principle. Finally, in the third world, which is
that of forms, it is revealed as the perfect form, the verb
embodied, supreme beauty and goodness, created perfection; he
is therefore both the first, the second and the third,
[142] since he is everything in everything, the center and the cause of everything.
Let us not admire the genius of Plato here, let us only recognize
the exact science of the initiate.
Let no one tell us that our great apostle Saint John has
borrowed from the philosophy of Plato the beginning of his gospel.
It was Plato, on the contrary, who drew from the same sources as
Saint Jean; but he had not received the quickening spirit. The
philosophy of the greatest of human revealers could aspire
in the verb made man: the Gospel alone could give it to the world.
The Kabbalah taught to the Greeks by Plato later took the name
of theosophy and subsequently embraced the magical dogma all
whole. It was to this body of occult doctrine that
successively linked all the discoveries of
researchers. We wanted to move from theory to practice and
to realize the word by the works; dangerous experiences
divination taught science how to do without
of the priesthood, the sanctuary was betrayed and men without
mission dared to make the gods speak. This is why the
theurgy shared the anathemas of black magic and was
suspected of imitating its crimes, because it could not
forbidding to share its impiety. We do not lift the
veil of Isis, and curiosity is a blasphemy against faith,
when it comes to divine things. “Happy are those who will believe
without having seen, the great revealer told us. “
The experiences of theurgy and necromancy are always
disastrous to those who abandon themselves to it. When we once put the
foot on the threshold of the next world, you have to die and almost
[143] always in a strange and terrible way. The dizziness begins,
catalepsy and madness come to an end. It is certain that in the presence
of some people and after a series of intoxicating acts, a
disturbance takes place in the atmosphere, the woodwork creaks,
the doors shake and moan. Weird signs and
sometimes bloody seem to imprint themselves on
blank parchment or on linen. These signs are always the
same and magists classify them under the name of_writings
devilish_. The mere sight of these characters makes the
crisiacs in convulsion or ecstasy; they think they see the
spirits, and Satan, that is to say the genius of error,
transforms for them into an angel of light. These so-called spirits
ask to show sympathetic excitations produced
by bringing the sexes closer together, we must put our hands in
hands, feet on feet, you have to breathe in your face, and
often obscene ecstasies follow. Insiders get excited
for this kind of drunkenness, they believe themselves to be the elect of God and
interpreters of heaven, they treat obedience to the
hierarchy. They are the successors of the Cainic race of
India. They are hatchichims and faquirs. The
warnings will not enlighten them and they will perish because
that they wanted to perish.
The priests of Greece, to heal such sick people,
employed a kind of homeopathy; they terrified them in
exaggerating the evil even in a single crisis and made them
sleep in the cave of Trophonius. We were preparing for this
sleep through fasts, lustrations and vigils, then we
went down to the underground and we were left there and locked up
[144] without light. Intoxicating gases, quite similar to those of
grotto of the Dog that can be seen near Naples, exhaled in
this cave and were not long in overthrowing the visionary; he
then had terrible dreams caused by a beginning
asphyxiation; we came in time to help him and we took everything away
throbbing, all pale and with spiky hair on a tripod where he
prophesied before fully awakening. These kinds
hardships caused such a shock in the nervous system,
that the cries could not remember without shivering and
never dared to speak of evocations and ghosts again. It
is who since have never been able to cheer up nor smile; and
the general impression was so sad that it passed into a proverb
and that one said of a person whose forehead did not straighten:
“She slept in the cave of Trophonius.”
It is not in the books of the philosophers, it is in the
religious symbolism of the ancients that we must look for traces
of science and rediscover its mysteries. The priests of Egypt
knew better than us the laws of movement and of life.
They knew how to temper or strengthen action by reaction, and
easily predicted the achievement of the effects they had
posed the cause. The pillars of Seth, Hermes, Solomon,
of Hercules symbolized in magical traditions this law
universal balance; and the science of balance had
leads the initiates to that of universal gravitation around
centers of life, heat and light. Also in
sacred calendars of the Egyptians of which each month was, as one
knows, placed under the protection of three decans or geniuses of ten
[145] days, is the first decan of the sign of the lion represented by
a seven-spoke human head with a large scorpion tail
and the sign of Sagittarius under the chin. Below this
head is the name of IAO; we called this figure khnoubis, word
Egyptian which means gold and light. Thales and Pythagoras
learned in the shrines of Egypt that the earth is turning
around the sun, but they did not seek to spread this
knowledge, because it would have been necessary to reveal one of the
great secrets of the temple, the double law of attraction and
radiation of fixity and movement which is the principle of
creation and the perpetual cause of life. Also the writer
Christian, Lactantius, who had heard of this tradition
magic and the effect without the cause, he laughs at these
dreamy theurgists who turn the earth and give us
antipodes, which, according to him, must have, while
we would walk with our heads held high, our feet up and our heads up
low. Besides, naively adds Lactance with all the logic
ignorant people and children, such men would not hold
not to the ground and would fall head first into the sky
inferior. Thus reasoned the philosophers while the
priests, without answering them and without even smiling at their
errors, wrote in hieroglyphics, creators of all dogmas
and of all poetry, the secrets of truth.
In their allegorical description of the underworld, the hierophants
Greeks had hidden the great secrets of magic. We find there
four rivers, as in the earthly paradise, plus one
fifth which winds seven times between the others. A river of
sorrows and moans, the Cocytus, and a river of oblivion, the
[146] Lethe, then a rapid, irresistible river of water, which carries
everything and which rolls in the opposite direction with a river of fire. These
two mysterious rivers, the Acheron and the Phlegeton, whose water
represents the negative fluid and the other the positive fluid,
eternally revolve into each other. The phlegeton heats up
and smoke the cold black waters of Acheron and
the Acheron covers the liquid flames of the
Phlegeton. Thousands of these vapors issue larvae and
lemurs, vain images of the bodies that have lived and of those
not yet live; but whether or not they drank from the river of
pains, all long for the river of oblivion, whose water
slumbering will restore youth and peace to them. The wise alone
do not want to forget, because their memories are already theirs
reward. So they are the only ones truly immortal, since they
alone are aware of their immortality.
The tortures of the Tenare are truly divine paintings of
vices and their eternal punishment. The greed of Tantalus,
Sysiphus’ ambition will never be atoned for, for they will never
can never be satisfied. Tantalum is thirsty in the water,
Sysiphe rolls on top of a mountain a pedestal on which he
wants to sit down and which always falls on him by dragging him to the
bottom of the abyss. Ixion, the unbridled lover, who wanted to rape
the queen of heaven, is whipped by infernal furies. He has not
yet not enjoyed his crime and could only embrace a ghost.
This ghost perhaps seemed to condescend to his fury and
to love him, but when he disregards his duty, when he is satisfied
by sacrilege, love is hatred in bloom!
[147] It is not beyond the grave, it is in life itself that he
must seek the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation
begin here below and the earthly world also has its sky and its
hell. Always even here virtue is rewarded, always
even here vice is punished; and what sometimes makes us believe
the impunity of the wicked is that the riches, these
instruments of good and evil, sometimes seem to be given to them
randomly. But woe to unjust men, when they have
the golden key, it only opens for them the door of the tomb and
hell.
All true initiates have recognized the immense usefulness of work
and pain. Pain, said a German poet, is the
dog of that unknown shepherd who leads the flock of men.
To learn to suffer, to learn to die, it is the gymnastics of
Eternity is the immortal novitiate.
Such is the moral sense of the divine comedy of Dante sketched
already in Plato’s time in the allegorical table of Cebes. This
table, the description of which has been preserved and that
several painters of the Middle Ages have remade according to this
description, is both a philosophical and a magical monument.
It is a very complete moral synthesis, and it is at the same time
the most daring demonstration of the great
arcane, of this secret whose revelation would upset the earth
and the sky. Our readers probably do not expect us to
gave the explanation. Whoever finds this mystery understands
that it is inexplicable by its nature, and that it brings death to
those who surprise it as well as the one who revealed it.
This secret is the royalty of the wise, it is the crown of the initiate
[148] that we see coming down victorious from the top of the trials in
the beautiful allegory of Cebes. The great arcanum makes him master of
gold and light which are basically the same thing, he solved
the problem of squaring the circle, it directs the movement
perpetual, and he owns the Philosopher’s Stone. Here the followers
will understand me. There is no interruption in the work of the
nature or gap in his work. The harmonies of the sky
correspond to those of the earth, and eternal life fulfills
its evolutions following the same laws as the life of a day. God
laid it out with weight and number and measure, says the Bible, and
this luminous doctrine was also that of Plato. In the
Phédon, he makes Socrates talk about the destinies of the soul
in a way that is very much in keeping with Kabbalistic traditions.
Minds purified by the ordeal free themselves from the laws of
heaviness, and especially of the atmosphere of tears; the others there
crawl in the darkness, and these are the ones that appear
to weak or criminal men. Those who freed themselves from
miseries of material life no longer come back to contemplate the
crimes and share their mistakes: that’s really enough of a
times.
The care taken by the ancients to bury the dead
protested loudly against necromancy, and always those
have been regarded as ungodly people who disturb the rest of the
falls. To recall the dead to earth would be to condemn them to
die twice; and what made men fear especially
pious of the ancient cults to remain without burial after their
dead, it was apprehension that their corpse was not profaned by
the Stryges and not used for enchantments. After death, the soul
[149] belongs to God, and the body to the common mother who is the
Earth. Woe to those who dare to attack these refuges! When we
had disturbed the shrine of the tomb, the elders offered
sacrifices to angry spirits; and there was a holy thought
basically this usage. Indeed, if a man were allowed
to attract to him by a chain of conjurations the souls who
swim in the darkness aspiring towards the light, this one
would give backslid and posthumous children that he should
nourish with his blood and his soul. Necromancers are
children of vampires, so don’t pity them if they die
eaten away by the dead!
CHAPTER IV.
MAGIC OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.
SUMMARY – What Superstition – Magical Orthodoxy.
–Dissidence of the layman – Appearances and incarnations of
gods – Tyrésias and Calchas – The magicians of Homer – The
sibyls and their verses written on leaves thrown in the
wind .– Origin of geomancy and cartomancy.
Ideas produce shapes and in turn shapes
reflect and reproduce ideas. In terms of
feelings, the association multiplies them in the reunion of those
who share them, so that all are electrified by
everyone’s enthusiasm. This is why if such and such a man
of the people in particular is easily mistaken about the just and about
[150] the beautiful, the people en masse will always applaud what is
sublime with an impetus no less sublime.
These two great laws of nature observed by the ancients
Magi, had made them understand the need for a cult
public, unique, obligatory, hierarchical and symbolic like the
whole religion, splendid as truth, rich and varied
like nature, starry like the sky, full of perfumes like
earth, of this cult that was later to constitute Moses,
which Solomon was to realize in all his splendor, and which,
transfigured once again, today resides in the great
metropolis of St. Peter in Rome.
Humanity has never really had one religion and one
worship. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its
deceptive reflections and shadows, but always after the nights of
error, we see it reappearing unique and pure like the
Sun.
The magnificences of worship are the life of religion, and if the
Christ wants poor ministers, his sovereign divinity does not want
no poor altars. Protestants did not understand that the
worship is a teaching, and that in the imagination of the
multitude it is not necessary to create a petty or miserable god.
See these oratories that look like town halls and these honest
ministers turned like ushers or commissioners, do not
do they not necessarily take religion for a
formality, and God for a justice of the peace? The English who
lavish so much gold in their private homes, and who
affect to love the Bible so much, shouldn’t they remember
unheard-of pomp from the temple of Solomon and find their churches
[151] very cold and very naked? But what dries up their worship is
the dryness of their heart, and how do you think that with this
worship without magic, without glare and without tears, these hearts
ever be called back to life?
Orthodoxy is the absolute character of high magic. When the
truth comes into the world, the star of science warns
magi and they come to adore the creator child of the future. It is
by the intelligence of the hierarchy and the practice of
obedience that one obtains initiation, and a true initiate
will never be a sectarian.
Orthodox traditions were swept away from Chaldea by
Abraham, they reigned in Egypt in Joseph’s time with the
knowledge of the true God. Koung-Tseu wanted to establish them in
China, but the idiotic mysticism of India was, under the
idolatrous form of the cult of Fô, prevail in this great empire.
Moses carried away the orthodoxy of Egypt like Abraham of Chaldea,
and in the secret traditions of the Kabbalah we find a
whole, perfect, unique theology, similar to ours
has more grandiose and better explained by fathers and
doctors, all with a set and lights that it is not
not yet given to the world to understand. The Sohar, which is the
key of the holy books, also opens all the depths and
sheds light on all the obscurities of ancient mythologies and
sciences originally hidden in the sanctuary. It is true
that it is necessary to know the secret of this key to be able to
to serve, and that for even the most penetrating intelligences,
but not initiated into this secret, the Sohar is absolutely
incomprehensible and even illegible.
[152] We hope that careful readers of our writings on
magic will find this secret on their own, and will come to their
first to decipher, then to read this book which contains
the explanation of so many mysteries.
Initiation being the necessary consequence of the hierarchy,
fundamental principle of magical realizations, laymen,
after trying unnecessarily to force open the doors of the
sanctuary, decided to raise altar against altar, and
to contrast ignorant disclosures of the schism with reluctance
of orthodoxy. Horrible stories ran about the Magi:
the sorcerers and the stryges blamed them
of their crimes; they were drinkers of human blood,
eaters of small children. This revenge of ignorance
presumptuous against discrete science has obtained from all
time a success which has perpetuated its use. Does a wretch have
not printed in I do not know which pamphlet, which he himself had
and from his ears heard in a club the author of this book
to ask that the blood of the rich be put in sausages to nourish
the hungry people? The bigger the slander, the more it does
printing on fools.
The accusers of the Magi themselves committed the crimes
of which they accused them, and abandoned themselves to all
frenzies of wanton sorcery. It was only noise
apparitions and wonders. The gods themselves descended in
visible shapes to allow orgies. The furious circles of
so-called illuminated go back to the Bacchantes who have
assassinated Orpheus. A mystical and luxuriant pantheism multiplied
[153] always from those fanatic and clandestine circles where the
promiscuity and murder mingled with ecstasies and prayers.
But the fatal destinies of this absorbing and destructive dogma
are written in one of the most beautiful fables of mythology
Greek. Tyrrhenian pirates surprised Hiacchos asleep and
carry it in their ship. They believe that the god of
inspiration is their slave, but suddenly in the open sea
their vessel is transfigured, the masts become stocks, the
ropes of the vines, everywhere appear dancing satyrs
with lynxes and panthers, dizziness seizes
crew, they all see themselves turned into goats, and
rush into the sea. Hiacchos then lands in Boeotia and
goes to Thebes, the city of initiation, where he finds that Pantheus
had usurped power. Panthée in turn wants to imprison the
God; but the prison opens by itself, the captive shines,
victor in the midst of Thebes. Panthée becomes furious and the
daughters of Cadmus who have become bacchantes tear him to pieces
believing to sacrifice a young bull.
Pantheism, in fact, cannot constitute a synthesis and
must perish divided by sciences, daughters of Cadmus.
After Orpheus, Cadmus, Oedipus and Amphiaraüs, the major types
fabulous of the magical priesthood in Greece are Tyrésias and Calchas,
but Tyrésias is an unintelligent or unfaithful hierophant. A
day he finds two serpents intertwined, he thinks they are
beat them and separate them by hitting them with his stick: he did not
including the symbol of the caduceus, he wants to divide the forces of the
nature, he wants to separate science from faith, intelligence from
[154] love, man from woman; he sees them united as
wrestlers, and he believes they are fighting, he hurts them by
separating, and here he himself has lost his balance; he will be
alternately man and woman, never completely, because
the completion of marriage is forbidden to him. Here are revealed
all the mysteries of universal equilibrium and the law
creative. In fact, it is the human androgyne who gives birth; the man
and the woman as long as they are separated remain sterile, like the
religion without science and vice versa, like intelligence
without love, like meekness without strength and strength without meekness,
like justice without mercy and mercy without justice.
Harmony results from the analogy of opposites, they must be
distinguish to unite them and not separate them to choose between
them. Man, they say, constantly goes from white to black in his
opinions and is always wrong. It must be, because the form
visible, the real shape is white and black, it occurs in
combining shadow and light without confusing them. So
unite all opposites in nature, and whoever wants them
to separate exposes himself to the punishment of Tyrésias. Others say he
became blind for having surprised Minerva quite naked, that is to say
for having profaned the mysteries: this is another allegory, but
it’s always the same symbol.
It is undoubtedly because of his profanation of the mysteries that Homer
causes the shadow of Tyrésias to wander in the Cimmerian darkness, and
shows him coming back with the larvae and the shadows
unhappy women who are trying to drink blood, when Ulysses
consults the spirits with a much more magical ceremonial and
[155] wonderful that the grimaces of our mediums and the little ones
innocent papers of modern necromancers.
The priesthood is almost silent in Homer, the soothsayer Calchas is
neither a sovereign pontiff nor a great hierophant. He seems to be
in the service of kings whose anger he fears, and dares not tell
Agamemnon of unpleasant truths that after imploring the
protection of Achilles. He thus throws the division between these chiefs
and becomes the cause of the disasters of the army. Homer, all of whom
stories are important and deep lessons, also wants,
for example, show Greece how important it is that the
divine ministry is independent of temporal influences. The
priestly tribe must only come under the supreme pontificate, and
the high priest is struck with helplessness; if a single one is missing
crown to his tiara he must be a temporal king to be
the equal of the rulers of the earth, king by intelligence and by
science, king finally by its divine mission. As long as the same
priesthood will not exist, seems to say the wise Homer, it will
something to the balance of empires.
The diviner Theoclymènes in the Odyssey plays roughly the role of a
parasite, he pays Penelope’s pursuers their hospitality
unkind by an unnecessary warning, then he withdraws
cautiously before the scandal he foresees.
The role of these good or bad tellers is a long way
adventure, to that of those sibyls who lived in
sanctuaries where they made themselves invisible and that no one approached
than trembling. New Circles, yet they did not give way
than daring: it was necessary to penetrate by skill or by force into
[156] their retirement, take them by the hair, threaten them with
sword and drag them to the fatal tripod. So they
blushed and turned pale in turn, and trembling, the
spiky hair, they uttered words without follow-up, then
they escaped furiously, wrote on sheets
of trees words that gathered together were to form worms
prophetic and threw these leaves in the wind, then they
shut up in their retreat and would no longer respond if we
was trying to call them back.
The oracle had as many different meanings as possible
find it by combining the leaves in any way. Yes
instead of words the leaves would have carried signs
hieroglyphics, the number of interpretations would still have
increased, and one could have consulted the lot by assembling them in
hazard; this is what the geomancers who guessed
by numbers and geometry figures thrown at random.
This is what the followers of the
fortune telling, using large magic tarot alphabets
whose value they generally ignore. In these
operations, the spell chooses only the signs that must
inspire the performer, and without a special faculty
intuition and second sight, the sentences indicated by
the assembly of the sacred letters and the revelations indicated by
the assembly of figures will prophesy at random. It’s not
everything to assemble the letters, it is necessary to know how to read. Fortune telling
well understood is a true consultation of the minds without
necromancy and without sacrifices, so she wants the assistance of a
good médium, the practice is also dangerous and we do not
advise it to anyone. Isn’t it enough to remember
[157] our miseries to aggravate our sufferings in the present,
should we still overload them with all the anxiety of the future, and
suffer every day in advance the catastrophes that it is to us
impossible to avoid?
CHAPTER V.
MYSTERIES OF VIRGINITY.
CONTENTS – Hellenism in Rome – Institutions of Numa – The
Vestals – Allegories of the sacred fire – Religious significance of
the story of Lucretia .– Mysteries of the good goddess .– Worship of the
home and motherland – Colleges of flamines and
augurs .– The oracles .– Erroneous opinions of Fontenelle and
Kircher .– A glimpse of the magical calendar among the Romans.
The Roman Empire was only a transfiguration of that of the Greeks.
Italy was greater Greece, and when Hellenism
perfected its dogmas and its mysteries, it was necessary
start the education of the children of the she-wolf: Rome was already at
world.
A special fact characterizes the initiation given to the Romans by
Numa is the typical importance given to women, following the example
Egyptians who worshiped the supreme deity under the name
of Isis.
Among the Greeks, the God of initiation is Iacchos, the
conqueror of India, the resplendent Androgyne with horns
of Ammon, the Pantheus who holds the cup of sacrifices and makes
flow the wine of universal life, Iacchos, the son of
lightning and the tamer of tigers and lions, but it is in
profaning the mysteries of Iacchos that the bacchantes tore
[158] Orpheus; Iacchos, under the Roman name of Bacchus, will be no more than
the god of drunkenness, and Numa will ask for his inspirations
wise and discreet Egeria, the goddess of mystery and solitude.
We must give a mother to these wild foundlings who
could only become husbands by kidnapping women by surprise and
by treason. What must ensure the future of Rome is the
worship of the fatherland and the family. Numa understood it, and he
learns from Egeria how to honor the mother of the gods. He him
raises a spherical temple under the dome of which burns a fire which
should never go out. This fire is maintained by four
virgins who will be called vestales and who will be surrounded
extraordinary honors if they are faithful, punished with a
exceptional rigor if they lack their dignity.
The honor of the virgin is that of the mother, and the family does not
may be holy as long as virginal purity is recognized
possible and glorious. Here already the woman comes out of bondage
ancient, it is no longer the oriental slave, it is the divinity
servant, it is the guardian of the hearth, it is the honor of the father
and the husband. Rome has become the sanctuary of manners, and at this
price she will be the sovereign of nations and the metropolis of
world.
The magical tradition of all ages grants virginity
something supernatural and divine. Inspirations
prophetic seek virgins, and it is in hatred of
innocence and virginity that Goëtie sacrifices children
in whose blood she nevertheless recognizes a sacred virtue and
expiatory. Fighting against the attraction of the generation
to practice overcoming death, and supreme chastity was the most
glorious crown offered to hierophants. Spread his life
[159] in human embraces it is to throw roots in the
falls. Chastity is a flower that no longer has a stem on the
earth and who, to the caresses of the sun which invites him to ascend towards
he can detach himself effortlessly and fly away like a bird.
The sacred fire of the vestals was the symbol of faith and chaste
love. It was also the emblem of this universal agent whose Numa
knew how to produce and direct the electric and lightning form. In
indeed, to rekindle the fire of the vestals, if by negligence
very punishable they had let it go out, it had to be
sun or lightning. We renewed it and dedicated it to
beginning of all years, practice preserved among us
and observed on the eve of Easter.
Christianity has been wrongly accused of having borrowed this
that there was something more beautiful in the ancient cults. The
Christianity, this last form of universal orthodoxy,
kept everything that belonged to him and only rejected
dangerous practices and vain superstitions.
The sacred fire also represented the love of the fatherland and the
home religion. It’s up to this religion, it’s up to
the inviolability of the conjugal sanctuary that Lucretia sacrificed to himself.
Lucretia personifies all the majesty of ancient Rome; she
could undoubtedly escape the outrage by abandoning his
memory to slander, but high reputation is a nobility
which obliges. In matters of honor a scandal is more deplorable
than a fault. Lucretia raised her dignity as an honest woman to the
height of the priesthood by undergoing an attack to atone
then and punish him.
[160] It is in memory of this illustrious Roman woman that the high
initiation into the cult of the fatherland and the home was entrusted to
women, excluding men. There they were to learn that
true love is the one that inspires the most heroic
dedication. We told them that the real beauty of man is
heroism and greatness; that the woman capable of betraying or
to abandon her husband, withers both her future and her past
and puts on his forehead the indelible stain of prostitution
retrospective further aggravated by perjury. Stop loving
the one to whom we gave the flower of his youth, it is the most
great misfortune that can afflict the heart of an honest woman;
but to declare it loudly is to deny one’s past innocence,
it is to renounce the integrity of the heart and the integrity of
honor is the last and most irreparable of all
shame.
Such was the religion of Rome: it is the magic of such
morality that she owed all her greatness, and when for her the
marriage ceased to be sacred, decadence was not far away.
While it is true that, in Juvenal’s time, the mysteries of the good
goddess were mysteries of impurity, which is permitted
perhaps to doubt a little, because only women admitted to these
alleged orgies would therefore have denounced themselves? in
admitting, we say, that this is true, since everything was
possible after the reigns of Nero and Domitian, that
can we conclude from this if not that the moral reign of the mother of
gods had passed and that it had to make way for popular worship,
more universal and purer of Mary, the mother of God?
[161] Numa, initiated into the laws of magic and knowing the influences
magnetism of common life, instituted colleges of priests
and omens, and made them subject to rules; that was the first idea
convents, one of the great powers of religion. Already
for a long time in Judea, the prophets gathered in
sympathetic circles, and pooled inspiration and
pray. It seems that Numa knew the traditions of Judea,
its flamines and its saliens were exalted by evolutions and
dances reminiscent of David’s in front of the ark. Numa
did not institute new oracles capable of competing with
that of Delphi, but he instructed his priests in the art of
omens, that is to say, he revealed to them a certain theory of
forebodings and second sight determined by laws
secrets of nature. We now despise the art of
haruspices and omens, because we have lost science
deep in the light and universal analogies of his
reflections. Voltaire, in his charming tale of Zadig, sketches in
playing a very natural science of divination, but which does not
is no less wonderful, because it supposes a finesse
exceptional observation and a series of deductions which
usually escapes the narrow logic of the vulgar. We
tells that Parmenides, master of Pythagoras, having tasted water
from a source, predicts an upcoming earthquake: there is no
nothing there that must seem strange, because the bituminous flavors
and sulphurous strewn in the water may have warned the philosopher
interior work on neighboring land. Perhaps even
the water was only disturbed in an unusual way.
Anyway, we still anticipate the harshness of winters
[162] by the flight of birds, and we could foresee some
atmospheric influences by inspection of the digestive organs
and respiratory systems of animals. However, the physical disturbances of
the atmosphere often have moral causes. The revolutions are
translate into the air by great storms, the breath of the peoples
shakes the sky. Success works with electric currents, and
the colors of living light reflect the movements of the
lightning, “There is something in the air,” said the people with their
prophetic instinct. Haruspices and auguries taught to
read the characters that light traces everywhere, and
recognize the marks of currents and astral revolutions.
They knew why birds fly isolated or
gather, what influences make them go north or
south, east or west, and that’s what we
do not know any more, we who make fun of omens. He is so
easy to laugh at and so hard to learn well.
It is as a result of this bias to denigrate and deny everything
that we do not understand, that men of spirit, like
Fontenelle, and scientists, like Kircher, wrote things
so reckless about the ancient oracles. Everything is maneuvering and
deceptions in the eyes of these strong minds. They invent
engineered statues, hidden megaphones, echoes spared in
the underground passages of the temples. Why then always slander the
sanctuary? Had there never been anything but rascals among
the priests? Could he not be among the hierophants of
Ceres or Apollo honest and convinced men? We were cheating
so those like the others? But who was deceiving them
[163] constantly without betraying themselves for a series of centuries, because the
deceitful are not immortal. Recent experiences prove
that thoughts can be transmitted, translated into writing
and imprint itself solely by the forces of the astral light. Of
mysterious hands still write on our walls as at the feast
of Balthazar. Remember this wise word of a scholar
that we will certainly neither accuse fanaticism nor credulity:
Arago said that apart from pure mathematics, the one who
pronounces the word impossible, lack of caution.
Numa’s religious calendar is modeled on that of the Magi,
it is a series of festivals and mysteries reminiscent of the whole
secret doctrine of the initiates and perfectly adapting the acts
public worship to the universal laws of nature. The
arrangement of months and days remained the same under
the conservative influence of Christian regeneration. As
the Romans of Numa, we still sanctify by abstinence the
days dedicated to remembering generation and death; But
for us the day of Venus is sanctified by the expiations of the
Calvary. The dark day of Saturn is when our god
incarnate sleeps in his grave, but he will resurrect, and the life he
promises us, will blunt Chronos’ scythe. The month that the
Romans consecrated to Maia, the nymph of youth and
flowers, the young mother who smiles at the beginnings of the year, is
dedicated by us to Mary, the mystical rose, the lily of purity, the
heavenly mother of the Savior. So our religious customs are ancient
like the world, our feasts resemble those of our fathers, and
the Savior of Christians came to take nothing away from beauties
[164] symbolic and religious of the ancient initiation; it came,
as he himself said about the figurative law of
Israelites, achieve everything and accomplish everything.
CHAPTER VI.
SUPERSTITIONS.
SUMMARY .– Their origin; duration .– Witchcraft is the
superstition of magic – Greek superstitions and
Roman – Omens , dreams, enchantments,
fascinations – The evil eye – Spells – Spells.
Superstitions are religious forms that survive the
lost ideas. All had for reason to be a truth which one
no longer knows or who has been transfigured. Their name, from Latin
superstes, means what survives: these are the material remains
science or ancient opinions.
The multitude, always more instinctive than thinking, attaches
ideas by forms, and change habits with difficulty.
When you want to fight superstitions, it always seems to
people who are attacked against religion itself; also Saint Gregory,
one of the greatest popes of Christendom, didn’t he want
that the uses were suppressed. Purify the temples, he wrote to
its missionaries, but do not destroy them, “for as long as the
nation will see its old places of prayer subsist, it
will return out of habit and you will gain it more easily for worship
of the true God. “
[165] “The Bretons,” said this holy Pope again, “on certain days
sacrifices and feasts, leave them the feasts, do not suppress
than sacrifices; leave them the joy of their feasts, but
pagan that she was, make her slowly and gradually
Christian. ”
Religion almost kept the very names of pious customs
which it replaced by the holy mysteries. So the elders
celebrated every year a banquet called the charisties; they there
invited the souls of their ancestors and thus acted
faith in universal and immortal life. The Eucharist,
that is to say, the charistie par excellence, replaced the
charisties, and we have communion at Easter with all our friends of the
earth and sky. Far from favoring by such progress the
ancient superstitions, Christianity gave up the soul and the life
to the surviving signs of universal beliefs.
Magic, this science of nature which is so closely related to
religion, since it initiates men into the secrets of
divinity, magic, this forgotten science, still lives everything
whole in the hieroglyphic signs, and partly in the
living traditions or superstitions that it has left behind.
So, for example, keeping numbers and days is a
blind reminiscence of the primitive magical dogma. Friday, day
consecrated to Venus, was regarded by the ancients as a day
disastrous, because it recalls the mysteries of birth and
the death. Nothing was started that day among the Jews, but we
was completing all the work of the week because it precedes the
Sabbath day or compulsory rest. The number thirteen, which
comes after the perfect cycle of twelve, also represents death
[166] after the works of life. Section of the Israelite symbol
relating to death is the thirteenth. As a result of the dismemberment of
Joseph’s family in two tribes, there were thirteen
guests at Israel’s first passover, in the promised land,
that is to say thirteen tribes sharing the harvest of Chanaan.
One of these tribes was exterminated, and it was that of Benjamin, the
youngest of Jacob’s children. From there came this tradition
that when we are thirteen at the table, the youngest must soon
die.
The Magi abstained from the flesh of certain animals and did not
ate no blood. Moses put their practice as a precept, and
says, in relation to blood, that the soul of animals is united therein,
and that we must not feed on animal souls. These souls
animals that remain in the blood are like a phosphorus of
coagulated and corrupted astral light which can become the germ
a large number of diseases; the blood of suffocated animals
digests poorly and predisposes to apoplexies and nightmares. The
flesh of carnivores is also unhealthy because of instincts
fierce with which she was animated, and with what she has already absorbed
of corruption and death.
“When the soul of an animal is separated from its body with
violence, says Porphyry, it does not move away from it, and like the
human souls destroyed by violent death, she stays close
of his body. So when animals are killed, their souls are
like bodies that have been forced to leave. Nothing
can keep them away: they are held there out of sympathy. We
saw several moaning near their bodies. So the
souls of men whose bodies are not buried, remain
[167] near their corpses; it is of these that the magicians
abuse for their operations, forcing them to obey them,
when they are masters of the dead body, either in its entirety or in
part. The theosophists who are instructed in these mysteries, and who
know what is the sympathy of the soul of the beasts for the bodies
from which they are separated and with what pleasure
are approaching, have rightly forbidden the use of certain meats,
so that we are not infested with foreign souls. “
Porphyry adds that one can become a prophet by feeding on
hearts of crows, moles and hawks. Here the theurgist
of Alexandria falls under the recipes of little Albert; but if he
soon comes to superstition, it is that he promptly made
wrong path, because its starting point was science.
The ancients, to designate the secret properties of animals,
said that the gods at the time of the war of the giants had
took various forms to hide, and that they liked
sometimes to take them back. Thus Diane changes into a wolf; the
the sun as a bull, as a lion, as a dragon and as a hawk; Hecate in
horse, lioness, bitch. The name of Perebates has been given,
according to several theosophists, to Proserpina because she
feeds on turtledoves. The turtledoves are the offering
ordinary that the priestesses of Maia do to this goddess who is
the Proserpina of the earth, the daughter of the blonde Ceres,
nurturer of the human race. Eleusinian initiates must
refrain from domestic birds, fish, beans,
peaches and apples; they never touch a woman in childbirth
or who has his months. Porphyry, from whom we all still borrow
these details, add the following sentence:
[168] “Anyone who has studied the science of visions knows that one must
refrain from all kinds of birds if one wants to be delivered
from the yoke of earthly things and find a place among the
gods of the sky. ” But he does not say the reason.
Following Euripides, the initiates of the secret cult of Jupiter in Crete
abstained from the flesh of animals. This is how he does it
talk about these priests; it is the choir that addresses King Minos:
“Son of a Tyrian from Phenicia, descendant of Europe and the great
Jupiter, king of the island of Crete, famous for a hundred cities; we
come to you, leaving the temples of the gods built
wood of oaks and cypresses shaped by iron, we lead
pure life .– Since the time I was made a priest of
Jupiter ideals, I no longer take part in the nocturnal meals of
bacchanalia, and I no longer eat rare meats, but
I offer torches to the mother of the gods: I am a priest among
curetes dressed in white; I move away from the cradle of men,
I also avoid their graves, and I do not eat anything that has been
animated by the breath of life. “
The flesh of fish is phosphorescent, and therefore
aphrodisiac. The beans are warm and make you dream hollow.
We would undoubtedly find a deep reason for all the
abstinences, even the most singular, apart from all
superstitions. There are certain combinations of foods that are
contrary to the harmonies of nature. “Do not cook the
kid in its mother’s milk, ”said Moses; prescription
touching as an allegory and wise in the matter of hygiene.
[169] The Greeks like the Romans, but less than the Romans,
believed in omens; they looked at the snakes like real
auspicious when they tasted the sacred offerings. If it thundered at
right or left, the augury was favorable or unhappy. The
sneezes were omens, and they likewise observed
some other natural accidents as noisy, but less
honest than sneezing. In the hymn of Mercury, Homer
tells that Apollo, to whom the god of thieves, being still
cradle, had just stolen his oxen, takes the child and
shakes to make him confess the theft:
Mercury realizing a strange miracle,
From his wrathful flanks uttered the oracle;
Up to the great Apollo the steam rose,
And greedy for the child he rejected on the ground,
Although he longed to complete his journey,
The god turned away, then spoke this language to him:
Courage, from Maïa, the excellent in beauty,
And of the great Jupiter, beautiful swaddled son,
No doubt I could find by adventure
The trail of my oxen, guided by this omen,
But you will always lead me while waiting.
(Hymns of Homer, translation of Salomon Certon, page 59.)
With the Romans everything was an omen. A pebble to which the foot is
banged, the cry of an owl, the bark of a dog, a vase
broken, an old woman who looked at you first, a
animal we met. These vain terrors had for
principle this great magical science of divination which
neglects no clue and which, of an effect unnoticed by the vulgar,
[170] goes back to a series of causes which it links together. She
knows, for example, that the atmospheric influences which make
howling the dog, are fatal for some patients; that the
presence and whirling of crows announce corpses
abandoned: which is always ominous. The Crows
are more likely to frequent the areas of murder and
torture. The passage of certain birds announces the winters
rigorous, others by plaintive cries on the sea give the
storm signal. What science discerns, ignorance
remark and generalize it. The first finds useful everywhere
warnings; the other is worried about everything and is afraid of
herself.
The Romans were also great observers of dreams; the art of
explaining them is due to the science of vital light and to
the intelligence of its direction and its reflections. Men
versed in transcendental mathematics know very well that
there is no image without light, either direct, reflected, or
refracted, and by the direction of the ray from which they will know
recognize the return under the shattering, they will always succeed
by an exact calculation with the luminous focus of which they will appreciate the
universal or relative force. They will also take into account
the healthy or sick state of the visual apparatus, either external or
interior, to which they will attribute the deformity or
apparent images. Dreams, for these, will be a whole
revelation. The dream is a semblance of immortality in this
death from all the nights we call sleep. In the
dreams we live universal life without awareness of good
or evil, time or space. We hover on the trees,
[171] we dance on the water, we blow on the prisons and they
collapse, or we are heavy, sad, pursued,
chained, depending on the state of our health, and often also that
of our consciousness. All this is undoubtedly useful to observe,
but what can those who do not know and who do not
want to learn nothing?
The all-powerful action of harmony to exalt the soul and
to make mistress of the senses, was well known to ancient sages,
but what they used to calm, the enchanters made
use to exalt and to intoxicate. The witches of Thessaly and
those of Rome were convinced of this: that the moon was
torn from the sky by the barbaric verses they recited and
came to fall to the earth, all pale and bloody. The
monotony of their recitation, the passing of their chopsticks
magic, their twirling around the most
magnetized, exalted them, gradually brought them
to fury, to ecstasy, to catalepsy. They
then dreamed wide awake and saw the tombs open,
the air was charged with clouds of demons and the moon fell from the sky.
Astral light is the living soul of the earth, material soul
and fatal, necessary in its productions and in its movements
by the eternal laws of balance. This light that surrounds
and penetrates all bodies can cancel gravity and
rotate around a powerfully absorbing center. Of
phenomena that have not been sufficiently examined and which recur from
our days have proven the truth of this theory. It is at this
natural law that must be attributed to the magical vortices
center of which were placed the enchanters. This is the secret of
[172] the fascination exerted on birds by certain reptiles and
on sensitive natures by negative natures and
absorbent; the mediums are in general sick beings in
which empties itself, and which then attract the light like the
abysses attract water from whirlpools. The heaviest bodies
can then be lifted up like straws, and carried away by
the stream. These negative and unbalanced natures, in whom the
fluidic body is shapeless, project their force at a distance
attraction and sketch in the air additional limbs
and fantastic. When the famous medium Home brings up
around him hands without a body, he himself has
dead and frozen. We could say that mediums are
phenomenal creatures in whom death visibly fights against
life. We must also judge the fascinators, the spellcasters,
evil-eyed people and bewitchers. Those are
vampires, either voluntary or involuntary; they attract the
life that they lack and thus disturb the balance of light.
If they do it voluntarily, they must be criminals
to punish; if they do it involuntarily, they are very sick
dangerous including delicate and nervous people especially
should carefully avoid contact.
Here is what Porphyry says in the life of Plotinus:
“Among those who professed to be philosophers, there are
had one named Olympius, he was from Alexandria; he had been
for some time a disciple of Ammonius, he treated Plotinus with
contempt because he wanted to have more reputation than himself. He
employed magical ceremonies to harm him; but being
when he saw that his business was falling back on himself, he agreed
[173] in front of his friends that the soul of Plotinus had to be good
powerful, since she retorted on her enemies their evil
designs. Plotinus felt the hostile action of Olympius, and sometimes
he happened to say: “Here is Olympius who now has
convulsions. ” The latter having experienced several times that he
himself suffered the ailments he wanted to cause
Plotinus, finally stopped persecuting him. “
[Illustration: THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD]
Balance is the great law of vital light: if we
project with violence, and that it is repelled by a nature
better balanced than ours, it comes back to us with a
equal violence. So woe to those who want to use the
natural forces at the service of injustice, because nature is
fair and his reactions are terrible.
CHAPTER VII.
MAGICAL MONUMENTS.
CONTENTS .– The pyramids – The seven wonders – Thebes and its
Seven Gates – The Shield of Achilles – The Pillars of Hercules.
We said that ancient Egypt was a pantacle, and we
the same could be said of the whole ancient world. More the
great hierophants took care to hide their science
absolute, the more they sought to enlarge and multiply
the symbols. The triangular and square pyramids at the base,
represented their metaphysics based on the science of
nature. This science of nature had as a symbolic key the
[174] gigantic form of this great sphinx which carved out a bed
deep in the sand, watching at the foot of the pyramids. The seven
great monuments called the wonders of the world were the
magnificent commentaries on the seven lines of which the
pyramids, and the seven mysterious gates of Thebes. In Rhodes,
was the pantacle of the sun. The god of light and
truth appeared there in human form clad in gold, it
raised in his right hand the beacon of intelligence; in his
with his left hand he held the arrow of movement and action. His
feet rested right to left on moles which
represented the eternally balanced forces of nature,
necessity and freedom, the passive and the active, the fixed and the
volatile, the Pillars of Hercules.
In Ephesus, was the pantacle of the moon: it was the temple of the
Diane panthee. This temple was made in the image of the universe:
it was a dome on a cross with a square gallery and a
circular enclosure like the shield of Achilles.
The tomb of Mausole was the pantacle of the modest Venus or
conjugal: it had a lingamic form. Her pregnant was
circular, its square elevation. In the center of the square rose
a truncated pyramid on which was a chariot drawn by four
horses arranged in a cross.
The pyramids were the pantacle of Hermes or Mercury.
The Olympian Jupiter was that of Jupiter; the walls of babylon
and the fortress of Semiramis were the pantacle of Mars.
[175] Finally the temple of Solomon, this universal and absolute pantacle which
had to devour all the others, was for gentility the
terrible pantacle of Saturn.
The septenary philosophy of initiation among the ancients
could be summed up as follows:
Three absolute principles which are only one; four shapes
elementaries which are only one, forming a single whole compound
of idea and form.
The three principles were these:
1 ° BEING IS BEING.
In philosophy, identity of idea and Being or truth; in
religion, the first principle, the Father.
2 ° THE BEING IS REAL.
In philosophy, identity of knowledge and Being or reality; in
religion the LOGOS of Plato, the Demiourgos, the Word.
3 ° BEING IS LOGICAL.
In philosophy, the identity of reason and reality; in
religion, Providence, divine action which achieves good;
reciprocal love of truth and good, which in the
Christianity we call the Holy Spirit.
The four elementary forms were the expression of two laws
fundamental: resistance and movement; the inertia that
resists or fixes it, the life that acts or the volatile; in others
more general terms, matter and spirit: matter was the
nothing formulated in passive affirmation; the spirit was the principle
of absolute necessity in the truth. The negative action of nothingness
material on the mind was called bad principle; the action
[176] positive spirit over nothingness to fill it with creation and
of light was called a good principle. To these two conceptions
corresponded humanity on the one hand, and on the other life
reasonable redemptor of mankind conceived in sin,
that is to say in nothingness, because of its material generation.
This was the doctrine of secret initiation. Such is
the admirable synthesis that Christianity has come to
its breath, illuminate with its splendors, divinely establish by
his dogma, to realize through his sacraments.
Synthesis that has disappeared under the veil that preserves it, but that
humanity will find, when the moment is right, in all its
primitive beauty and in all its maternal fertility!
[177]
BOOK III.
SYNTHESIS AND DIVINE REALIZATION OF MAGISM
BY CHRISTIAN REVELATION.
.Ghimel. ג
FIRST CHAPTER.
CHRIST ACCUSED OF MAGIC BY THE JEWS.
CONTENTS .– The Unknown Side of Christianity .– Parables of the Talmud
and Sepher Toldos-Jeschut .– The Gospel and the Apocalypse of Saint
John – The Joannites – The Books of Magic Burned by Saint
Paul – Cessation of oracles – Transfiguration of the natural wonder
in miracles and divination in prophecy.
In the first lines of the Gospel according to Saint John, there is
a word that the Catholic Church never speaks without
bend the knees. This word, here it is: THE WORD IS DONE
FLESH.
In this word is contained the Christian revelation all
whole. Also Saint John gives as a criterion of orthodoxy
the confession of Jesus Christ in the flesh, that is to say in reality
visible and human.
Ezekiel, the most profound Kabbalist of the ancient prophets, after
having vividly colored in his visions the pantacles and
hieroglyphics of science; after spinning the wheels
in the wheels, lit living eyes around the spheres, made
[178] walk the four mysterious animals with their wings,
Ezekiel sees only a plain covered with bones
desiccated; he speaks, and the forms return, the flesh covers
bones. A sad beauty spreads over the remains of death,
but she is a cold, lifeless beauty. These were the
old world doctrines and mythologies, when a breath of
charity descended from heaven. Then the dead forms arose,
philosophical dreams gave way to real men
wise; the word was embodied and came to life; there was no more
of abstractions, everything was real. The faith that is proven by
works replaced the hypotheses which only led to
fables. Magic turned into holiness, wonders
became miracles, and the multitudes condemned by
ancient initiation were called to royalty and to the priesthood
of virtue.
Realization is therefore the essence of the Christian religion.
His dogma therefore gives substance to even the most
obvious. The house of the wicked is still shown in Jerusalem
rich, and perhaps one would even find, by searching well,
some lamp that belonged to the foolish virgins. These credulities
naive have nothing really dangerous, and prove
only the realizing potentiality of the Christian faith.
The Jews accuse him of having materialized the beliefs and
idealized earthly things. We reported in our
Dogma and ritual of high magic the rather ingenious parable
of Sépher Toldos-Jeschut who proves this accusation. In the
Talmud, they say that Jesus Ben-Sabta, or the son of the Separated, having studied profane mysteries in Egypt, raised in
Israel a false cornerstone and dragged the people into
[179] idolatry. They recognize, however, that the priesthood
Israelite was wrong to curse him with both hands, and it was
this occasion that we find in the Talmud this beautiful precept which
will one day bring Israel closer to Christianity: “Never curse
with both hands, so that you always have one left for
to forgive and to bless. “
The Jewish priesthood was indeed unfair to this peaceful master
who ordered his disciples to obey the established hierarchy.
“They are seated in the pulpit of Moses,” said the Savior,
so do what they tell you but don’t do what they
font. ” Another day the Master orders ten lepers to go
show the priests, and while they were there they were
healed. Touching abnegation of the divine miracle worker who refers to
his deadliest enemies honor the very honor of his miracles!
Moreover, to accuse Christ of having laid a false stone
angular, did they themselves know where the
true? The angular stone, the cubic stone, the stone
philosophale, because all these symbolic names mean the same
thing, this fundamental stone of the kabbalistic temple,
by the base and triangular at the top like the pyramids, the
Jews in the days of the Pharisees had they not lost
science? By accusing Jesus of being an innovator, did they not denounce
not their forgetting of antiquity? This light that Abraham saw
with thrills of joy, wasn’t it extinguished for
the unfaithful children of Moses, when Jesus found her and
shone with new splendor? To be sure, he
must be compared with the Gospel and the Apocalypse of Saint John the
mysterious doctrines of Sepher Jezirah and Sohar. We
[180] will then understand that Christianity, far from being a heresy
Jewish tradition, was the true Orthodox tradition of Judaism, and that
scribes and Pharisees were only sectarians.
Besides, Christian orthodoxy is a fact proven by
the adhesion of the world and by the cessation among the Jews of
sovereign priesthood and perpetual sacrifice, the two marks
some of a true religion. Judaism without a temple, without
high priest and without sacrifice, only exists as an opinion
contradictory. A few men remained Jews; the temple and
the altar became Christians.
We find in the apocryphal Gospels a beautiful exhibition
allegorical of this criterion of certainty of Christianity, which
consists in the obviousness of the realization. A few children
had fun kneading clay birds, and the baby Jesus
was playing with them. Each of the little artists exclusively praised
his work. Jesus said nothing, but when he had finished his
birds, he clapped his hands, said to them: Fly! and they
flew away. This is how Christian institutions came to be
shown to be superior to those of the old world. These are
dead, and Christianity lived.
Considered the perfect, realized and living expression of
Kabbalah, that is to say from the primitive tradition, Christianity
is still unknown, and this is why the Kabbalistic book
and prophetic of Revelation is still unexplained.
Without the Kabbalistic keys, in fact, it is perfectly
inexplicable, since it is incomprehensible.
The Joannites, or disciples of Saint John, kept for a long time
[181] the traditional explanation of this prophetic epic, but
the Gnostics came to scramble and lose everything, like us
will explain it later.
We read in the Acts of the Apostles, which Saint Paul brings together
Ephesus all the books that dealt with things curious, and
publicly burned them. There is no doubt that this is a question of
old goetia or nigromancy books. This loss is at
regret, because even monuments of error can
bring out flashes of truth and valuable information for
Science.
Everyone knows that at the coming of Jesus Christ, the oracles
ceased in everyone, and a voice cried over the sea: “The
grand Pan is dead! ” A pagan writer gets angry at these
assertions, and declares that the oracles did not cease, but
that soon no one was found to consult them. The
rectification is valuable, and we find such
justification more conclusive in truth than the alleged
calumny.
The same must be said of the prestige, which was despised
when the real miracles happened; and indeed if the laws
superior in nature obey true moral superiority,
miracles become supernatural like the virtues that
produce. Our theory takes nothing away from the power of God, and
the astral light obeying the upper light of grace
really represents for us the allegorical serpent that comes
to lay his defeated head under the foot of the Queen of Heaven.
[182]
CHAPTER II.
TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY THROUGH MAGIC.
SUMMARY – How magic bears witness to the truth of
Christianity .– The spirit of charity, reason and
Faith – Vanity and ridiculous objections – Why the authority of
Christian priesthood had to condemn magic .– Simon the Magician.
Magic, being the science of universal equilibrium and having for
absolute principle the truth-reality-reason of being, accounts for
of all the antinomies, and reconciles all the realities
opposed to each other by this principle generating all
syntheses: Harmony results from the analogy of opposites.
For the initiate to this science, religion cannot be put
in question, since it exists: we do not dispute what is.
תיתא ךעא תיתא ,BEING IS BEING
Religion’s apparent opposition to reason is strength
of both, by establishing them in their domain
distinct and separate and fertilizing the negative side of each by
the affirmative side of the other: it is, as we have just
say, harmony by analogy of opposites. What caused
all the errors and all the religious confusions, it is
that as a result of ignorance of this great law, we wanted
make religion a philosophy and philosophy a
religion; we wanted to subject the things of faith to the procedures
of science, something as ridiculous as submitting science
[183] to the blind obedience of the faith: it does not belong to one
theologian to assert a mathematical absurdity or to deny the
demonstration of a theorem, that a scientist to quibble, in the name of
science, for or against the mysteries of dogma.
Ask the_Academy of Sciences_ if it is mathematically
true that there are three persons in God, and if he can be
found by means of the sciences that Mary, mother of God, was
conceived without sin? The Academy of Sciences will recuse itself, and it
will be right: scientists have nothing to do with this, that is
domain of faith.
We don’t discuss an article of faith, we believe it or we don’t
don’t believe; but he is of faith precisely because he escapes
examining science.
When the Comte de Maistre assures us that one day we will speak with
astonishment at our present stupidity, he alludes without
doubt these so-called strong spirits who come every day
tell you:
I will believe when the truth of the dogma comes to me scientifically
proven.
That is to say, I will believe when I have nothing more to believe, and
that dogma will be destroyed as dogma, by becoming a theorem
scientist.
It means in other words: I will admit the infinite only
when it will be explained, determined, circumscribed, defined for me;
in a word, finished.
So I will believe in infinity when I am sure that infinity
does not exist.
I will believe in the immensity of the ocean when I see it put in
bottles.
[184] But, good people, what has been clearly proven and done to you
understand, you no longer believe it, you know it.
On the other hand, if you were told that the Pope decided that
two and two do not make four, and the square of the hypotenuse
is not equal to the squares drawn on the other two sides of a
right-angled triangle, you would rightly say: The Pope did not
decided this, because he cannot decide it. It does not
don’t look, and he won’t interfere.
Very beautiful, will exclaim a disciple of Rousseau, the Church
orders to believe things formally contrary to the
mathematics.
Mathematics tells us that the whole is greater than the
part. Now, when Jesus Christ had fellowship with his disciples, he
had to hold his whole body in his hand, and he put his head in his mouth. (This poor joke is found
verbatim in Rousseau.)
It is easy to answer that, that the sophist here confuses the
science with faith, and the natural order with the supernatural order
or divine.
If religion said that, in the communion of the Lord’s Supper, our
Savior had two natural bodies of the same shape and the same
greatness, and that one ate the other, science would have the right to
to cry out.
But religion says that the body of the Master was divinely and
sacramentally contained under the sign or natural appearance
of a piece of bread. Again it’s to believe or not
believe; but whoever will reason about it and want to discuss
scientifically the thing, will deserve to pass for a fool.
[185] The truth in science is proved by exact demonstrations; the
true in religion is proved by the unanimity of faith and
holiness of works.
He has the right to remit sins, says the Gospel, which
may say to the paralytic, Arise, and walk.
Religion is true, if it realizes the most moral
perfect.
The proof of faith is works.
Did Christianity constitute an immense society of men
having hierarchy for principle, obedience for rule and
charity for law? This is what it is permissible to ask the
science.
If science answers from historical documents: Yes, but
they failed in charity.
I take you by your own words, can we respond to
interpreters of science. So you admit that charity
exists, since it can be missing?
The charity_! big word and big thing, word that did not exist
before Christianity, which is the true religion all
whole!
Isn’t the spirit of charity the divine spirit made visible on
Earth?
Has this spirit not made its existence sensitive by
acts, by institutions, by monuments, by works
immortal?
Truly we do not understand how a good unbeliever
faith can see a girl of Saint Vincent de Paul without wanting to
to kneel down and pray!
The spirit of charity is God, it is the immortality of the soul,
[186] it is the hierarchy, it is obedience, it is the forgiveness of
insults is the simplicity and integrity of faith.
Separate sects are suffering from death in principle,
because they failed in charity by separating, and at most
simple common sense in wanting to reason on faith.
It is in these sects that dogma is absurd, because it is
supposedly reasonable. So it must be a theorem
scientific, or it’s nothing. In religion, we know that
letter kills and which the spirit alone vivifies; now, of what spirit
can there be a question here, if not of the spirit of charity?
The faith that transports the mountains and endures the
martyrdom, the generosity that gives, the eloquence that speaks the language
men and angels, all this is nothing without the
charity, says Saint Paul.
Science can fail, adds the same apostle, prophecy
can cease, charity is eternal.
Charity and its works, this is the reality in religion: now,
true reason never refuses reality; because the
reality, it is the demonstration of the being which is the truth.
This is how philosophy gives hand to religion, without
never want to usurp its domain; and it is on this condition
may religion bless, encourage and illuminate the philosophy of
its charitable splendors.
Charity is the mysterious link that the initiates dreamed of
Hellenia to reconcile Eros and Anteros. It is this crowning
of the door of the temple of Solomon which was to unite together the
two columns Jakin and Boaz; it is the mutual guarantee of
[187] rights and duties, authority and freedom, the strong and
of the weak, of the people and the government, of the man and the
women; it is the divine feeling which must vivify science
human; it is the absolute of good, like the principle
BE-REALITY-REASON is the absolute truth. These clarifications
were necessary to make this beautiful symbol clearly understood
Magi adoring the Savior in the cradle. They are three, one
white, a copper and a black, and they offer gold, incense
and myrrh. The reconciliation of opposites is expressed by
this double ternary, and this is precisely what we come from
to explain.
Christianity, awaited by the Magi, was indeed the
consequence of their secret doctrine; but by being born, this
Benjamin of ancient Israel was to kill his mother.
The magic of light, the magic of the real Zoroaster, of Melchizedek
and Abraham, was to cease when the great director came. In
a world of miracles wonders were to be no more than one
scandal, magical orthodoxy was transfigured into orthodoxy
religious; dissidents could no longer be anything but
enlightened and wizards; the very name of magic should no longer
to be taken in bad part, and it is under this curse
that we will henceforth follow the magical manifestations through
ages.
The first heresiarch mentioned in the traditions of
the Church was a miracle worker whose legend tells of a multitude
of wonders: it was Simon the Magician; his story us
belongs by right, and we will try to find it among
popular fables.
[188] Simon was a Jew by birth, it is believed that he was born in the village
of Gitton, in the land of Samaria. He had for master of magic
a sectarian named Dosithée who called himself the envoy of God and the
Messiah announced by the prophets. Simon learned from this master
not only the art of prestige, but also certain secrets
natural which really belong to the secret tradition of
magi: he possessed the science of astral fire, and attracted him
around it with strong currents, which made it seemingly
impassive and incombustible; he also had the power to
rise up and stand in the air, all things that have been
done without any science, but by natural accident, by
enthusiasts intoxicated with astral light, such as
convulsionaries of Saint-Médard, phenomena that recur
nowadays in the ecstasies of the médiums. He magnetized to
distance those who believed in him and appeared to them under
various figures. He produced images and reflections
visible to the point of revealing in the middle of the countryside
fantastic and imaginary trees that everyone believed
see. Naturally inanimate things moved around
him, like the furniture around the American Home, and
often, when he wanted to enter or leave a house,
the doors creaked, waved and eventually opened
of themselves.
Simon performed these wonders before the notables and the people of
Samaria; they were still exaggerated, and the miracle worker passed for a
to be divine. However, as he had only been able to achieve this power
by excitations which had disturbed his reason, he believed himself
himself such an extraordinary character, that he arrogated to himself
[189] unceremoniously divine honors, and modestly thought of usurping
worship from all over the world.
His fits or his ecstasies produced effects on his body
extraordinary. Sometimes we saw him pale, withered, broken,
like an old man who is about to die; sometimes the luminous fluid
revived his blood, made his eyes shine, strained and
softened the skin of his face, so that it looked all
suddenly regenerated and rejuvenated. The Orientals, great amplifiers
wonders, then claimed to have seen him pass from childhood
to decrepitude, and to return, according to his good pleasure, from
decrepitude in childhood. Finally, nothing was heard everywhere but of his
miracles, and he became the idol of the Jews of Samaria and the
surrounding areas.
But worshipers of the marvelous are generally greedy
new emotions, and they quickly tire of what has
at first amazed. The apostle Saint Philip having come to preach
the Gospel in Samaria, there was a new wave of enthusiasm
which made Simon lose all his prestige. Himself felt
abandoned by his illness, which he took for a power; he is
believed surpassed by magicians more learned than himself, and took the
party to become attached to the apostles to study, surprise or
buy their secret.
Simon was certainly not initiated into high magic; because she
would have taught him that in order to dispose of the secret forces of the
nature in such a way as to lead them without being broken by them, it
must be a sage and a saint; that to play with these
terrible weapons without knowing them, you have to be a fool, and
that a swift and terrible death awaits the profaners of
nature sanctuary.
[190] Simon was devoured by the relentless thirst of drunkards: deprived of
his dizziness, he thought he had lost his happiness; sick of his
past drunkenness, he counted on curing himself by getting drunk again. We
does not willingly become a mere mortal again after having posed in
God. Simon therefore submitted, to find what he had lost,
to all the rigors of apostolic austerity; he watched, he
prayed, he fasted, but the miracles did not return.
After all, he said to himself one day, among Jews we must be able to
come to an agreement, and he offered money to Saint Peter. The leader of
apostles drove him out indignantly. Simon no longer understood
nothing, he who so willingly received the offerings of his
disciples; he left the society of these men as quickly as possible if
disinterested, and with the money that St. Peter did not have
wanted, he filled in with a female slave named Helene.
Mystical ramblings are always akin to debauchery.
Simon fell madly in love with his maid; passion, in
weakening and exalting him, restored his catalepsy and
his morbid phenomena which he called his power and his
miracles. A mythology full of mixed magical reminiscences
erotic dreams came out of his brain fully armed; he began
then to travel like the apostles, dragging his Helena after him,
dogmatizing and showing themselves to those who wanted to worship him and
probably also pay it.
According to Simon, the first manifestation of God was a
perfect splendor which immediately produced its reflection. This
sun of souls it was he, and his reflection was Hélène, whom he
affected to call Selene, a name which in Greek means the moon.
[191] Now, Simon’s moon had descended at the beginning of the ages
on the land that Simon had sketched out in his eternal dreams;
she became a mother there, for the thought of her sun had fertilized her,
and she gave birth to the angels she raised for herself and
without telling them about their father.
The angels rebelled against her and chained her in a
mortal body.
Then the splendor of God was forced to descend in turn
to redeem his Helena, and the Jew Simon came to the earth.
There he had to conquer death and take alive through the air
his Hélène, followed by the triumphant choir of his chosen ones. The rest of
men would be abandoned on earth to the eternal tyranny of
angels.
Thus this heresiarch, plagiarist of Christianity, but in the sense
reverse, affirmed the eternal reign of rebellion and evil,
caused the world to be created or at least completed by demons,
destroyed order and hierarchy to stand alone with his
concubine as the way, the truth and the life. It was the
dogma of the Antichrist; and he was not to die with Simon, he
has continued to this day; and prophetic traditions
Christianity even assert that it must have its reign from a
moment and its triumph, forerunner of the most terrible
calamities.
Simon called himself a saint, and, by a strange coincidence,
the leader of a modern Gnostic sect, which recalls all the
sensual mysticism of the first heresiarch, the inventor of
femme libre, was also called Saint-Simon. Cainism, such
[192] is the name we could give to all false revelations
emanated from this impure source. These are curse dogmas
and hatred against universal harmony and against order
social; these are the deranged passions asserting the right to the place
of duty; passionate love, instead of chaste love and
devoted; the prostitute, instead of the mother; Helen, the concubine
of Simon, instead of Mary, mother of the Savior.
Simon became a character and traveled to Rome, where the emperor,
curious about all the extraordinary shows, was willing to
welcome him: this emperor was Nero.
The enlightened Jew astonished the madman crowned by a trick that has become common
on our theaters of concealers. He had his head cut off, then
came to greet the emperor with his head on his shoulders; he did
run around the furniture, open the doors; he finally behaved like
a true médium, and became the ordinary sorcerer of orgies
Neronian and Trimalcyon feasts.
According to the legendaries, it was to preserve the Jews of Rome
of the doctrine of Simon, that St. Peter surrendered in this
capital of the world. Nero soon learned from his stockings spies
floor that a new Israelite miracle worker had arrived to make
war against its enchanter. He resolved to bring them together
and have fun with the conflict. Perhaps Petronius and Tigellin were
Of the party.
“May peace be with you! said the prince of the
apostles.We don't care about your peace, '' replied Simon,it is by
war that the truth is discovered. Peace between adversaries,
it is the triumph of one and the defeat of the other. “
[Illustration: PUBLIC DISPUTE between St Pierre and St Paul of a
leaves and Simon the Magician on the other. Rise and fall of
Simon, after a 15th Century engraving.]
[193] Saint Peter continued:
“Why are you refusing peace? It is the vices of men that
created war; peace always accompanies virtue.
“Virtue is strength and skill,” said Simon. I,
I face the fire, I rise in the air, I resuscitate them
plants, I turn stone into bread; and you what do you do?I pray for you, '' said Saint Peter,so that you do not perish
victim of your prestige. - Keep your prayers: they will not rise as soon as I
the sky.
And here is the magician who rushes out of a window, and who rises
in the air. Did he have any aerostatic apparatus under his
long clothes or did he rise, like the convulsive
deacon Paris, by an exaltation of astral light, this is what
we cannot say. During this time Saint Peter was at
knees and prayed; suddenly Simon utters a loud cry and falls:
they picked him up with broken thighs. And Nero imprisoned
Saint Peter, who seemed to him to be a less
entertaining than Simon; he died of his fall. All this
history, which dates back to popular rumors of that time, is
now perhaps wrongly relegated to the legends
apocrypha. It is nonetheless remarkable and worthy of being
preserved.
Simon’s sect did not end with him, he had for
successor one of his disciples, named Menander. This one does not
said no god, he was content with the role of prophet; when he
baptized his proselytes, a visible fire descended on the water; he
[194] promised them immortality of soul and body by means of this
magic bath, and there were still, in the time of Saint Justin,
Menandrians who firmly believed themselves immortal. The death of some
did not disillusion others, because the deceased was immediately
excommunicated and considered a false brother. Menandrians
regarded death as a true apostasy and completed
their immortal phalanx by enlisting new proselytes. Those
who know how far human madness can go, will not be surprised
not if we teach them that in this very year 1858 there is
still in America and in France fanatic continuators of
the sect of the Menandrians.
The qualification of magician added to Simon’s name caused
in horror of magic by Christians; but we did not continue
less to honor the memory of the three wise men who adored the
Savior in his cradle.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE DEVIL.
SUMMARY – Its origin; what it is according to the faith and according to the
science .– Satan, his pomps and his works .– The possessed of
The Gospel .– The real name of the devil, according to the Kabbalah and after
the confessions of the fanatics – Infernal genealogy – The goat
of the Sabbath .– The ancient serpent and the false Lucifer.
Christianity, by clearly formulating the divine conception,
makes us understand God as the purest and most
absolute, and clearly defines the spirit opposed to God. It is
the spirit of opposition and hatred is Satan. But this spirit
[195] is not a character, and it should not be understood as
a kind of black god; it is a perversity common to all
misguided intelligences. “My name is Légion, he said in
the Gospel, because we are a multitude. ”
The nascent intelligence can be compared to the morning star,
and if she voluntarily falls into darkness after having
shone for a moment, we can apply this apostrophe from Isaiah to him
to the king of Babylon: “How did you fall from heaven, beautiful Lucifer,
shining morning star! ” But does this mean that the
Heavenly Lucifer, as the morning star of divine intelligence
has become a torch from hell? The name of light-holder
is it just given to the angel of misguidance and darkness?
We don’t mean it, unless we hear like us, and
according to magical traditions, by hell personified in Satan
and represented by the old serpent, this central fire which coils
around the earth, devouring everything it produces and biting itself
the tail like the serpent of Chronos, this astral light which
the Lord was speaking when he said to Cain: “If you do evil,
sin will immediately be at your gates, that is to say disorder
will take hold of all your senses; but I submitted to you the lust of
death, and it is up to you to command him. “
The royal and almost divine personification of Satan is a
error which goes back to the false Zoroaster, that is to say to the dogma
altered of the second magi, the materialistic magi of Persia;
they had changed the two poles of the intellectual world into gods,
and of the passive force they had made a divinity opposed to the
active force. We have pointed out in the mythology of India the
same monstrous error.
[196] Arimanes or Schiva, such is the father of the demon, like the
understand the legendary superstitious, and that’s why
the Savior said, “The devil is a liar like his father.”
The Church, on this question, refers to the texts of
the Gospel, and never gave dogmatic decisions whose
definition of the devil was the object. Good Christians even avoid
to name it, and religious moralists recommend to their
faithful not to take care of him, but to resist him by not
thinking only of God.
We can only admire this wise reserve of teaching
priestly. Why, indeed, would we lend the light of dogma
to the one who is intellectual darkness and the darkest night
dark heart? May it remain unknown, this spirit that wants us
snatch from the knowledge of God!
We do not claim here to do what the Church did not do,
we only note on this subject what was the teaching
secret of initiates in the occult sciences.
They said that the great magical agent, aptly called
Lucifer, because he is the vehicle of light and the
receptacle of all forms, is an intermediate force
widespread throughout creation; that it is used to create and
destroy, and that the fall of Adam was an erotic intoxication which
made his generation a slave to this fatal light; that any
amorous passion that invades the senses is a whirlwind of this
light that wants to lead us towards the abyss of death; than
madness, hallucinations, visions, ecstasies, are a
very dangerous exaltation of this interior phosphorus; that this
light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of which
[197] warms and vivifies, the excess of which, on the contrary, burns, dissolves and
annihilates.
Man would be called upon to take a sovereign empire over this
light and thereby conquer his immortality, and threatened in
at the same time to be drunk, absorbed and destroyed eternally by
she.
This light, as devouring, vengeful and fatal,
would be the fire of hell, the serpent of legend; and the error
tormented with which she would then be full, the tears and the
gnashing of teeth from aborted beings that she devours, the ghost
of the life that escapes them, and seems to insult their torment,
it would all be the devil or Satan.
Actions misdirected by the vertigo of the astral light,
the deceptive mirages of pleasure, wealth and glory which
the hallucinations are full, would be the pumps and the
works of hell.
Father Hilarion Tissot believes that all nervous diseases
accompanied by hallucinations and delirium are possessions
devil, and understanding things in the sense of
Kabbalists, he would be absolutely right.
Everything that delivers our soul to the fatality of dizziness is
truly hellish, since heaven is the eternal kingdom of
order, intelligence and freedom.
The possessed of the Gospel fled before Jesus Christ, the
oracles were silent before the apostles, and the sick
hallucinations have always manifested an invincible loathing
for the initiated and the wise.
The cessation of oracles and possessions was evidence of the
triumph of human freedom over fatality. When the
[198] Astral diseases show themselves again, it is a disastrous sign
which announces the weakening of souls. Fatal concussions
always follow these demonstrations. The convulsions lasted
until the French Revolution, and the fanatics of
Saint-Médard had predicted its bloody calamities.
The famous criminal lawyer Torreblanca, who thoroughly studied the
questions of evil magic, describing the operations of the
demon, accurately describes all disturbance phenomena
astral. Here are some numbers of the summary of its chapter XV of
the Operator magic:
- The devil’s continual effort is strained to push us into
the mistake. - The demon deceives the senses by disturbing the imagination, which he
however, cannot change nature. - Appearances which strike the sight of man are formed
immediately an imaginary body in the understanding, and as long as
the phantom lasts, appearances accompany it. - The demon destroys the balance of the imagination by the disorder
vital functions, either illness or irregularity in the
health.
5 and 6. When the balance of imagination and reason is
destroyed by a morbid cause, we dream awake, and we can
see with a real appearance what really does not exist. - Sight ceases to be correct when the balance is disturbed in the
mental perception of images.
8 and 9. Examples of diseases where we see double objects,
etc. - Visions come out of us and are reflections of our
own image.
[199] 11. The ancients knew of two diseases which they named,
one frénésie (φρενιτις), the other corybantism
(κορυβαντιάσμος), one of which shows shapes
imaginary, the other makes voices and sounds heard which
do not exist, etc.
It follows from these assertions, which are moreover very remarkable, that
Torreblanca attributes diseases to the demon, and that by the demon
he hears the disease itself; what we would hear well
willingly with him if dogmatic authority permitted.
The continual efforts of the astral light to dissolve and
to absorb beings belong to its very nature; she gnaws
like water, because of its continual currents; she devours
like fire, because it is the very essence of fire and its strength
solvent.
The spirit of perversity and the love of destruction among
beings whom it dominates is only the instinct of this force. It is
also a result of the suffering of the soul that lives of a life
incomplete and feels torn by tautness in the senses
opposites. She longs to end it, and yet fears dying
alone, she would therefore like to destroy with her all creation
whole.
This astral perversity usually manifests itself in hatred
children. An unknown force brings some sick people to them
kill, imperious voices demand their death. The doctor
Brierre de Boismont cites terrible examples of this mania
which reminds us of the crimes of Papavoine and Henriette
Cornier [11].
[Note 11: Histoire des hallucinations, 2nd edition, 1853.]
The patients of astral perversion are malevolent and
are saddened by the joy of others. They don’t especially want
[200] that we hope; they know how to find the most heartbreaking words
and the most desperate, even when they seek to console,
because life is suffering for them and because they have
the dizziness of death.
It is also the astral perversion and the love of death that make
abuse the works of generation, which lead to pervert
use or denounce them by sacrilegious mockery and
shameful jokes. Obscenity is blasphemy against
life.
Each of these vices has personified itself in a black idol or a
demon who is a negative and disfigured image of the divinity who
gives life; they are the idols of death.
Moloch is the fate that devours children.
Satan and Nisroch are the gods of hatred, fatality and
despair.
Astarte, Lilith, Nahema, Astaroth, are the idols of debauchery
and abortion.
Adramelech is the god of murder.
Belial, that of eternal revolt and anarchy.
Funeral designs of a nearly extinct reason who worships
cowardly his executioner to get him to stop his
torture by finishing devouring it!
The real name of Satan, say the Kabbalists, is the name of
Jehovah overthrown, for Satan is not a black god, it is the
negation of God. The devil is the personification of atheism
or idolatry.
For the initiates, it is not a person, it is a force
created for good, and which can be used for evil; it is the instrument
of freedom. They represented that force which presides over the
[201] physical generation in the mythological and horned form of the god
Pan; from there came the sabbath goat, the brother of the elder
serpent, and the light-holder or phosphorus whose poets have
makes the fake Lucifer of the legend.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE LAST PAGANS.
SUMMARY .– Apollonius of Tyana; his life and his wonders .– Essays
of Julien to galvanize the old cult .– His
evocations – Jamblique and Maximus of Tire – Beginning of
secret societies and forbidden practices of magic.
The eternal miracle of God is the immutable order of his
providence in the harmonies of nature; wonders are
disorders and should only be attributed to the failures of the
creature. The divine miracle is therefore a providential reaction
to restore the disturbed order. When Jesus healed the
possessed, he calmed them down and put an end to their acts
wonderful; when the apostles appeased the exaltation of
pythoness, they put an end to divination. The mind
of error is a spirit of restlessness and subversion; the spirit of
truth carries with it calm and peace everywhere.
Such was the civilizing action of nascent Christianity; But
passions friendly to trouble should not leave him without
fight the palm of his easy victory. Expiring polytheism
demanded strength from the magic of the ancient sanctuaries; to the
mysteries of the Gospel were again opposed those of Eleusis.
[202] Apollonius of Tyana was compared with the Savior of
world; Philostratus undertook to make a legend to this god
new, then came the Emperor Julian, who would have been worshiped if the
javelin which killed him had not at the same time dealt the last blow to
caesarean idolatry; the violent and outdated rebirth of a
dead religion in its forms was a real abortion, and
Julien had to perish with the decrepit child he was trying to
bring back to the world.
They were nonetheless two great and curious characters that
this Apollonius and this Julian, and their history is epoch in
the annals of magic.
At that time, allegorical legends were in vogue; the
masters embodied their doctrine in their person, and the
initiated disciples wrote fables which contained the
secrets of initiation. The story of Apollonius by Philostratus,
absurd if we want to take it literally, is very curious if
one wants, according to the data of science, to examine the
symbols. It’s a kind of pagan gospel opposed to the Gospels
of Christianity; it is a whole secret doctrine that it is to us
given to explain and reconstruct.
Thus, the first chapter of the third book of Philostratus is
devoted to the description of the Hyphasis, a marvelous river which
originates in a plain and is lost in regions
inaccessible. Hyphasis represents magical science, whose
first principles are simple and the consequences very
difficult to deduce. Weddings are infertile says
Philostratus, if they are not consecrated with the balm of the trees
which grow at the edges of the Hyphasis.
The fish of this river are dedicated to Venus; they’re there
[203] blue crest, the scales of various colors and the tail of
gold color; they lift that tail whenever they want. There is
also in this river an animal similar to a white worm; this
molten insect makes a hot oil that can only be kept
in glass. This animal is only taken for the king,
because he is of a force to overthrow the walls; his fat
vent catches fire, and nothing in the world is capable then
to extinguish the fire.
By the fish of the river Hyphasis, Apollonius hears the
universal configuration, blue on one side, multicolored on the
center, golden at the other pole, like magnetic experiments
recently made it known to us. Hyphasis white worm
it is the astral light, which, condensed by a triple fire, is
solves into an oil which is universal medicine. We can not
keep this oil only in glass, because glass is
not a conductor of astral light, having little porosity; this
secret is kept for the king, that is to say for the initiate of the
first order, because it is a force capable of overthrowing
cities. The great secrets are shown here with the greatest
clarity.
In the next chapter, Philostratus talks about unicorns. He says
that we make their horn cups in which we must drink
to keep from all poisons. The single horn of the
unicorn represents the hierarchical unit: also, says Philostratus,
according to Damis, these goblets are reserved for kings. Happy,
said Apollonius, the one who would never get drunk except by drinking
in such a glass!
[204] Damis also says that Apollonius found a white woman until
breast and black from breast to top. His disciples were
frightened by this wonder; but Apollonius, who knew what she
was, held out his hand. It is, he says, the Venus of India, and
its two colors are those of the Apis beef adored by the Egyptians.
This black and white woman is the magic science whose
white limbs, that is, the created shapes, reveal the head
black, that is to say the supreme cause ignored by men.
Philostratus and Damis knew it well, and under these emblems they
wrote with discretion the doctrine of Apollonius. The
chapters V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X of the third book of Vie of Apollonius by Philostratus, contain the secret of the great
artwork. These are the dragons that defend the approach to the palace of
wise. There are three kinds of dragons: those of the swamps, those of
the plain and those of the mountain. The mountain is sulfur;
the swamp is mercury; the plain is the salt of
philosophers. The dragons of the plain have spikes on their backs
saw-shaped, it is the acid power of salt. The Dragons
mountains have scales of golden color, they have a
golden beard, and while crawling they make a noise like the
clinking of copper; they have a stone in their heads that works
all miracles; they like the shores of the Red Sea, and we
takes them by means of a red cloth on which are embroidered
gold letters; they rest their heads on these enchanted letters
and fall asleep, their heads are then cut off with an ax. who
does not recognize here the stone of the philosophers, the magisterium in
red, and the famous regimen ignis, or government of fire,
expressed by the golden letters? Under the name of citadelle of
[205] wise, Philostratus then describes the Athanor. It’s a hill
still surrounded by fog, open on the southern side;
it contains a well four paces wide, from which a steam comes out
azure that rises by the heat of the sun, deploying all the
rainbow colors; the bottom of the well is sandblasted with arsenic
red; near the well is a pool full of fire, from which comes a
leaded flame, odorless and smoke-free, which is never
high nor lower than the edges of the basin; there are also
two black stone vessels, one containing the rain and
the other the wind. When the drought is excessive, we open the
barrel of rain, and clouds come out that wet everything
the country. The secret fire of the
philosophers and what they call their bain-marie. We see by this
passage that the ancient alchemists, in their great work,
employed electricity, magnetism and steam.
Philostrate then speaks of the Philosopher’s Stone, which he names
indifferently pierre or lumière. “No
profane to look for it, because it faints, if one does not know
take it with the procedures of art. The wise alone, by means of
of certain words and of certain rites, can find the
pantarbe, it is the name of this stone, which at night
the appearance of a fire, being ablaze and sparkling; and if we have it
look by day, it dazzles. This light is a matter
subtle of admirable strength, for it attracts all that is
close.” (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, book III,
chapter XLVI.)
This revelation of the secret doctrines of Apollonius proves that
the philosopher’s stone is nothing but a universal magnet
[206] formed of condensed astral light and fixed around a center.
It is an artificial phosphorus of which so many allegories and
traditions cannot leave existence in doubt, and in
which concentrates all the virtues of the generating heat
of the world.
The whole life of Apollonius written by Philostratus, after Damis
Assyrian, is a tissue of apologists and parables; It was there
how then to write the hidden doctrine of the great
initiators. We should therefore not be surprised that this story
contains fables, but under the allegory of these fables it is necessary
find and understand the occult science of hierophants.
Despite his great science and his brilliant virtues, Apollonius
was not the continuator of the hierarchical school of mages.
His initiation came from India, and he gave himself up to be inspired
the irritating practices of the Brahmins; he openly preached the
revolt and regicide: he was a great lost character.
The figure of the Emperor Julian seems to us more poetic and more
beautiful than that of Apollonius. Julien carried to the throne of the world
all the austerity of a sage; he wanted to transfuse the young sap
from Christianity to the body of aged Hellenism. Foolish noble
guilty only of loving too much the memories of the homeland and
the images of the gods of his fathers. Julien, to counterbalance
the realizing power of Christian dogma, also called for the
black magic to his aid, and sank, following Jamblique and
of Maximus of Ephesus, in dark evocations; his gods,
whose beauty and youth he wanted to resuscitate, he
appeared old and decrepit, worried about life and
light and ready to flee before the sign of the cross!
[207] It was made forever of Hellenism, the Galilean had
defeated. Julien died a hero, without blaspheming his conqueror,
as has been falsely claimed. His last moments, that Ammien
Marcellin tells us long enough, were those of a warrior
and a philosopher; the curses of the Christian priesthood
echoed for a long time on his grave, and yet the Savior, who
must love noble souls so much, has he not forgiven
opponents less interesting and less generous than Julien?
After the death of this emperor, idolatry and magic were
wrapped in the same universal disapproval. It is then
that these secret societies of followers were born to which
the Gnostics and the Manichaeans later rallied;
societies with a mixed tradition of truths and
errors, but which were transmitted, under the seal of the oath
the most terrible, the great arcanum of ancient omnipotence
and the always deceived hopes of extinct cults and
fallen priesthoods.
CHAPTER V.
LEGENDS.
CONTENTS .– The legend of Saint Cyprian and Saint
Justine – The prayer of Saint Cyprian – The golden ass of Apuleius – The
fable of Psyche – The procession of Isis – Strange supposition of
Saint Augustine – Philosophy of the Fathers of the Church.
The strange tales contained in the golden legend, some
[208] fabulous as they are, none the less go back to the highest
Christian antiquity. They are parables rather than
stories; the style is simple and oriental like that of
Gospels, and their traditional existence proves that a kind
of mythology had been invented to hide the mysteries
kabbalistics of the Joannite initiation. The golden legend is a
Christian Talmud writes everything in allegories and apologetics. Studied
under this completely new point of view by dint of being old, the
golden legend becomes a book of the greatest importance and
highest interest.
One of the accounts of this legend full of mysteries characterizes the
conflict of magic and Christianity emerging in a way
quite dramatic and gripping. It’s like a draft
anticipated by Chateaubriand’s Martyrs and Goethe’s Faust
melted together.
Justine was a young and beautiful pagan virgin, daughter of a
priest of idols, the type of Cymodocea. His window opened on
a courtyard next to the Christian church; every day she
heard the pure and collected voice of a deacon read aloud
the holy Gospels. This unknown word touched and stirred her
heart, so much so that one evening her mother saw her pensive and
pressing to confide in her the concerns of her soul, Justine
threw at his feet saying: “Mother, bless me or
forgive me, I am a Christian. ”
The mother cried as she kissed her daughter, and went to join her
husband, to whom she confided what she had just learned.
They then fell asleep and both had the same dream. A
divine light descended on them, and a soft voice called them
[209] saying to them: “Come to me, you who are afflicted and I will
console; come, my father’s beloveds, and I will
give the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning
of the world.
In the morning, the father and the mother blessed their daughter. All three
were registered among the Catechumens, and, after the
customary tests, they were admitted to holy baptism.
Justine came back white and radiant from the Church between her mother and
his old father, when two dark men, wrapped in their
mantle, passed like Faust and Mephistopheles near
Marguerite: they were the magician Cyprien and his disciple
Acladius. The two men stopped dazzled by this
apparition, Justine passed without seeing them and went home with
his family.
The scene changes, we are in Cyprien’s laboratory,
circles are drawn, a slaughtered victim throbs near a
smoking stove; standing before the magician appears the genius of
darkness.
- Here I am, for you called me, speak! what are you asking me
–I love a virgin. - Seduce her.
–She is a Christian.
–Denounce her. - I want to own it and not lose it; can you something
for me?
–I seduced Eve, who was innocent and who all talked
days familiarly with God himself. If your virgin is
Christian, know that it was I who crucified
Jesus Christ. - So you will deliver it to me?
[210] – Take this magic ointment, you will grease the threshold of its
remains, the rest is up to me.
Here is now Justine sleeping in her small chaste room
and stern, Cyprien is at the door whispering words
sacrilegious and performing horrible rites; Satan creeps in
girl’s bedside and whispers voluptuous dreams to her
full of the image of Cyprien that she thinks she still meets at
leave the Church; but this time she looks at him, she
listens to her, and he says things to her that confuse her
his heart; suddenly she gets agitated, she wakes up and does the
sign of the cross; the demon disappears and the seducer, who makes
sentry at the door, waiting unnecessarily all night.
The next day he begins his evocations again, and he makes bitters
reproaches to his infernal accomplice; this one confesses his
powerlessness. Cyprien shamelessly chases him away and spawns a
demon of a higher order. The newcomer turns into
turn into a young girl and a handsome boy to tempt Justine by
advice and hugs. The virgin will succumb, but its good
angel assists him; she joins the breath to the sign of the cross and
chase away the evil spirit. Cyprien then invokes the king of
hell. Satan comes in person. He hits Justine with all the
pains of Job and spread a terrible plague in Antioch, in
making the oracles say that the plague will cease when Justine
will appease Venus and outraged love. Justine prays publicly
for the people, and the plague ceases. Satan is defeated in his turn,
Cyprien forced him to confess the omnipotence of the sign of the
cross and the brave by marking himself with this sign. He renounces magic,
he is a Christian, he becomes a bishop and finds Justine in a
[211] monastery of virgins; they then love each other with pure and lasting love
from heavenly charity persecution reaches them; we stop them
together, they are put to death on the same day and will consume at
bosom of God their mystical and eternal marriage.
The legend makes Saint Cyprian bishop of Antioch, while
ecclesiastical history makes him bishop of Carthage. No matter
moreover whether or not it is the same. One is a character
poetic, the other is a father of the Church and a martyr.
We find in the old grimoires a prayer attributed to
Saint Cyprian of the legend and which is perhaps of the holy bishop
from Carthage. The obscure and figurative expressions of which it is
fulfilled, may have led to the assumption that before becoming a bishop and
Christian, Cyprian had indulged in the disastrous practices of
black magic.
Here is the translation:
“I, Cyprian, servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, have
prayed to God the Almighty Father, and I said: You are the strong God,
my almighty God who dwells in the great light! You are
holy and praiseworthy, and since ancient times you have seen the
malice of your servant and the iniquities in which I was
plunged by the devil’s malice. I didn’t know your real one then
name, I passed among the sheep and they were without
pastor. The clouds could not give their dew to the earth,
the trees remained fruitless and the women in labor did not
could be issued; I bound and I did not untie, I
bound the fish of the sea and they were not free, I
linked the paths of the sea and I remembered many
[212] ailments. But now, Lord Jesus Christ, my God, I have
known your holy name and I loved it, and I was converted from
with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my bowels,
turning away from the multitude of my faults to walk in your
love and following your commandments which are my faith and my prayer.
You are the word of truth, the sole word of the father, and I
plead now to break the chain of clouds and to do
to descend on your children your beneficent rain like milk, and
to loosen the rivers and set free the creatures who
swim as well as those who fly; I beg you to break
all the chains and all the shackles by virtue of your
holy name! “
This prayer is obviously very old and it contains
very remarkable memories of the primitive figures of
Christian esotericism in the early centuries.
The qualification of_aurea_ or dorée given to the legend
fabulous allegorical saints sufficiently indicates its character.
Gold in the eyes of initiates is condensed light, they
call golden numbers the sacred numbers of the Kabbalah, verse
gilded by Pythagoras, the moral teachings of this philosopher, and
it is for the same reason that a mysterious book of Apuleius where a
donkey plays a big role has been called the golden donkey.
The pagans accused Christians of worshiping a donkey, and they
had not invented this insult, it came from the Jews of
Samaria which, showing the data of the Kabbalah on the divinity
by Egyptian symbols, also represented intelligence
by the figure of the magical star worshiped under the name of
Rempham, science under the emblem of Anubis which they
changed the name to that of Nibbas, and the vulgar faith or
[213] credulity under the figure of Thartac, god that we represented
with a book, a cloak and a donkey’s head; according to the doctors
Samaritans, Christianity was the reign of Thartac;
it was blind faith and vulgar credulity erected in
universal oracle and preferred to intelligence and science.
This is why in their relations with the good guys, when they
heard them confuse them with Christians, they
cried and prayed that they would not be confused with
exclusive donkey head worshipers.
This alleged revelation made the philosophers laugh a lot, and
Tertullian speaks of a Roman caricature exhibited from his time when
Thartac was seen in all his glory with this inscription
which made Tertullian laugh himself, author, as we know, of
famous credo quia absurdum: donkey’s head, God of Christians.
The golden donkey of Apuleius is the occult legend of Thartac. It’s a
magical epic and a satyr against Christianity, that
the author had undoubtedly been professing for some time. It is
at least what he seems to say under the allegory of his metamorphosis
in donkey.
Here is the subject of the book of Apuleius: He travels to Thessaly, country
enchantments; he receives hospitality from a man whose
woman is a witch; he seduces this woman’s maid and believes
to surprise by this means the secrets of the mistress. The servant
wants to deliver to her lover a composition by means of
which the witch transforms into a bird, but she
box trunk and Apuleius is metamorphosed into a donkey.
The clumsy lover consoles him by telling him that to resume
[214] its first form is enough to eat roses, the rose is the
flower of initiation. But where can you find roses at night?
We have to wait until the next day. The maid leads the donkey to the stable,
thieves appear, the donkey is caught and taken away. More average
since then to approach the roses, the roses are not
made for donkeys, and gardeners chase it away with
stick.
During his long and sad captivity he hears tell
the story of Psyche, this wonderful and symbolic story
which is like the soul and poetry of his own. Psyche wanted
surprise the secrets of love like Apuleius those of magic,
she lost love, and he lost his human form; she is wandering,
exiled, subjected to the wrath of Venus, he is a slave to thieves.
But Psyche must go back to heaven after going through hell,
and Lucius will be taken in pity by the gods. Isis appears to him in
dreams and promises him that his priest warned him by a revelation
will give roses during the solemnities of his upcoming feast.
This feast arrives, and Apuleius describes at length the procession
of Isis, a valuable description for science, because it contains the
key to the Egyptian mysteries; disguised men walk the
first carrying grotesque animals; these are the fables
vulgar: then come women sowing flowers with
mirrors on their shoulders that reflect the image of the great
divinity. So men go ahead and formulate dogmas
that women embellish and reflect without knowing it by their
maternal instinct for higher truths; men and
women then come carrying the light: it is the alliance of
two terms, the active and the passive generators of science and
life.
[215] After the light comes harmony, represented by young people
musicians. Then finally the images of the gods, three in number,
followed by the great hierophant who carries not the image, but
the symbol of the great Isis, a golden ball surmounted by a
caduceus.
Lucius Apuleius sees in the hand of the high priest a crown of
roses; he approaches and we do not push him away; he eats roses
and becomes man again.
All this is expertly written and interspersed with episodes sometimes
heroic, sometimes saucy, as befits the dual nature
of Lucius and the donkey. Apuleius was at the same time the Rabelais and
the old-world Swedenborg ready to end.
The great realizers of Christianity did not understand or
affected not to understand the mysticism of Apuleius. Holy
Augustine, in the City of God, wonders about the air of the world
more serious if we are to believe that Apuleius really was
metamorphosed into a donkey. This father even showed himself quite willing to
admit it, but only as an exceptional phenomenon and which
does not draw consequence. If it’s an irony on the part of
Saint Augustine, it must be admitted that she is cruel; if it’s
naivety … But Saint Augustine, Madaure’s quick rhetorician,
was hardly used to being naive.
Very blind and very unhappy, indeed, were these initiates
to the ancient mysteries which laughed at the donkey of Bethlehem without
to see the child-God who shone on the peaceful animals
of the crib and on whose forehead rested the star
conciliator of the past and the future!
While philosophy convinced of impotence insulted the
Christianity triumphant, the Fathers of the Church seized
[216] all the magnificence of Plato and created a philosophy
news founded on the living reality of the divine Word always
present in his church, reborn in each of its members,
immortal in humanity; dream of pride greater than that of
Prometheus, if it were not at the same time an entirely
of self-denial and devotion, human because it is divine,
divine because she is human!
CHAPTER VI.
KABBALISTIC PAINTINGS AND SACRED EMBLEMS.
CONTENTS .– Esotericism of the Early Church .– Paintings
Kabbalistic and sacred emblems of the first centuries .– The
true and false gnostics – profanation of gnosis – rites
impure and sacrilegious .– Black magic erected as a cult by the
sectarians – Montan and his prophetesses – Marcos and his
magnetism .– The dogmas of the false Zoroaster reproduced in
Arianism .– Loss of true Kabbalistic traditions.
The early Church, obeying the formal precept of the Savior, did not
not surrender its holiest mysteries to the profanations of
crowd. We were received at baptism and communion only by
progressive initiations. We kept hidden the holy books of which
the whole reading and the explanation especially were reserved for the
priesthood. The images were then less numerous and above all
less explicit. We refrained from reproducing the very figure of the
Saviour; the paintings of the catacombs are for the most part
Kabbalistic emblems: it is the Edenic cross with the four
[217] rivers in which deer come to drink; it’s the fish
mysterious of Jonah often replaced by a two-headed serpent;
it is a man emerging from a chest which recalls that of Osiris.
Gnosticism was to proscribe later all these
allegories which he abused to materialize and profane the
holy traditions of the Kabbalah of the prophets.
The name of gnostic was not always in the Church a name
outlawed. Those of the fathers whose doctrine was connected with the
traditions of Saint John often used this denomination
to designate the perfect Christian; it is found in Saint Irenaeus
and in Saint Clement of Alexandria. We are not talking about the
great Synesius who was a perfect Kabbalist, but an Orthodox
doubtful.
The false Gnostics were all rebels to order
hierarchical who wanted to level science by popularizing it,
substitute visions for intelligence, personal fanaticism for
hierarchical religion, and above all the mystical license of
sensual passions to wise Christian sobriety and to
obedience to the laws, mother of chaste marriages and
conservative temperance.
Produce ecstasy by physical means and replace the
holiness through somnambulism, such was always the tendency of
these cainic sects continuators of the black magic of India.
The Church was to condemn them energetically, she did not
lacking in its mission: it is only to be regretted that the good
scientific grain has often suffered when the iron
and fire in the countryside overgrown with weeds.
Enemies of the Generation and of the Family, the False Gnostics
strove to produce sterility by increasing the
[218] debauchery; they wanted, they said, to spiritualize matter,
and they materialized the spirit in the most revolting way.
It was in their theology only couplings of Eones and
lush embraces. They worshiped death like the Brahmins
under the figure of Lingham, their creation was an infinite onanism
and their redemption an eternal abortion!
Hoping to escape the hierarchy by the miracle as if the
miracle outside the hierarchy proved something other than the
disorder or deceit, the Gnostics, since Simon the
magician, were great doers of wonders; substituting for
regular worship of the impure rites of black magic, they were
to appear blood instead of Eucharistic wine, and replaced
the peaceful and pure banquet of the heavenly lamb through communions
of anthropophages. The heresiarch Marcos, disciple of Valentine,
said mass with two chalices; in the smallest, he poured
wine, then he pronounced the magic formula and we saw the
larger to fill with a bloody liquor that rose in
bubbling. Marcos, who was not a priest, wanted to prove
whereby God had clothed him with a miraculous priesthood. He
invited all his disciples to accomplish before his eyes the same
wonder. Women especially obtained such success as
hers, then they would fall into convulsions and ecstasy. Marcos
breathed on them and communicated his insanity to them to the point of
urge them to forget for him, and in the spirit of religion, all
restraint and all modesty.
This intrusion of women into the priesthood has always been the
dream of false Gnostics; because by leveling the sexes in this way, they
introduced anarchy into the family and posed to the
[219] society a stumbling block. The real priesthood of women
it is motherhood, and the worship of this home religion is
modesty. The Gnostics did not understand it or rather they
understood too much, and by misleading the religious instincts of
mother they overturned the sacred barrier that opposed the
license of their desires.
They did not all have the sad frankness of
shamelessness. Some, like the Montanists, exaggerated
contrary to morality in order to make it impracticable. Montan, of which
the harsh doctrines seduced the extreme and paradoxical genius of
Tertullian, with Priscilla and Maximilla abandoned himself to his
prophetesses, today we would say his sleepwalkers, to all
wanton of frenzies and ecstasies. Natural punishment
of these excesses was not lacking to their authors, they ended up
raging insanity and suicide.
The doctrine of the Marcosians was a profaned Kabbalah and materialized; they claimed that God created everything by means of
letters of the alphabet; that these letters were so many
divine emanations having by themselves the power
generator of beings; that the words were all powerful
and virtually and actually worked wonders. All of this
is true in a sense, but that sense was not that of
followers of Marcos. They supplemented realities with
hallucinations and believed to make themselves invisible because in
the state of sleepwalking they mentally transported themselves where they
wanted. For false mystics life must merge
often with the dream until finally the triumphant dream
overflows and submerges reality: it is then the complete reign of
madness.
[220] The imagination, whose natural function is to evoke the
images of forms, can also, in a state of exaltation
extraordinary, to produce the shapes themselves; as the
prove the phenomena of monstrous pregnancies and
multitude of analogous facts that official science would make
better to study than to stubbornly deny them.
It is these disorderly creations that religion withers with
reason for the name of diabolical miracles, and such were the
miracles of Simon, Menandrians and Marcos.
In our time still a false Gnostic named Vintras,
currently a refugee in London, shows blood in
empty chalices and on desecrated hosts.
This unfortunate man then falls into ecstasies like Marcos, and
prophesies the overthrow of the hierarchy and the next
triumph of a so-called priesthood all of visions, expansions
free and love. There is nothing new under the sun.
After the polymorphous pantheism of the Gnostics, came dualism
of Manès. Thus was formulated in religious dogma the false
initiation of the pseudo-mages of Persia. Evil personified
became a rival God of God himself. There was a king of light
and a king of darkness, and it is at this time that it is necessary to make
to raise this fatal idea against which we protest to
all our strength, from the sovereignty and ubiquity of Satan.
We do not claim here to deny or affirm the tradition of the fall
angels, reporting to us as always in matters of faith
to the supreme and infallible decisions of the Holy Church
[221] Catholic, apostolic and Roman. But if the fallen angels
had a leader before their fall, this fall must have them
precipitated into a complete anarchy tempered only by
inflexible righteousness of God; separated from the divinity who is the
principle of force and more guilty than the others, the prince
of the rebel angels can only be the last and the most
helpless of the reprobates.
If therefore there exists in nature a force which attracts
creatures forgetting God towards sin and death, this
force, which we do not refuse to recognize as capable of
to serve as an instrument for fallen spirits, would be the light
astral; we come back to this idea, and we want to
explain it perfectly, so that we understand all the
scope and all orthodoxy.
This revelation of one of the great secrets of occultism will make
understand all the danger of evocations, experiences
curious, abuses of magnetism, turntables and
all that has to do with miracles and hallucinations.
Arius had prepared the success of manichaeism by his creation
hybrid of a son of God different from God himself: it was in
effect supposing dualism in God; it was admitting inequality
in the absolute, inferiority in the supreme power. The
possibility of conflict, its very necessity between father and
son, since the inequality between the terms of the divine syllogism
must necessarily lead to a negative conclusion. The Word of God
should it be good or bad? God himself or the devil? Such
was the immense scope of a diphthong added to the Greek word
ομουσιος to make it ομοιουσιος! By declaring the
son consubstantial to the father, the Council of Nicaea saved the
[222] world, and this is what those who do not know
not that the principles really constitute the balance of
the universe.
Gnoticism, Arianism, Manichaeism, had emerged from
Kabbalah misunderstood. The Church then had to forbid the faithful
the so dangerous study of this science of which the supreme priesthood
had only to reserve the keys. Kabbalistic tradition
appears, in fact, to have been preserved by the sovereign pontiffs
at least until Leo III, to whom an occult ritual is attributed
which would have been given by this pontiff to the emperor Charlemagne, and
which reproduces all the characters even the most secret of
Solomon’s collarbones. This little book that had to stay hidden
having been disclosed later, had to be condemned by the Church and
fell into the realm of black magic. We still know him
under the name of_Enchiridion_ of Leo III, and we have one
very rare and very curious old copy.
The loss of the Kabbalistic keys could not lead to the loss of
the infallibility of the Church always assisted by the Holy Spirit,
but she threw great obscurities into the exegesis and made
completely unintelligible the great figures of prophecy
of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse of Saint John.
May the legitimate successors of Saint Peter accept
the homage of this book and bless the works of the humblest of
their children, who believe they have found one of the keys to science
and who comes to lay it at the feet of the one to whom alone he
belongs to open and close the treasures of intelligence and
faith!
[223]
CHAPTER VII.
ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL PHILOSOPHS.
SUMMARY .– Last struggles and definitive alliances of
ancient initiation and triumphant Christianity – Hypatia and
Synesius – Saint Dionysius the Areopagist.
The school of Plato, on the verge of extinction, threw in Alexandria a
great light; but already Christianity, triumphant after
three centuries of fighting, had assimilated all that there was
true and lasting in the doctrines of antiquity. The
the last opponents of the new religion believed to stop the
march of living men galvanizing mummies. The fight does
could already be more serious and the pagans of the school
of Alexandria were working against their will and without their knowledge
sacred monument erected to dominate all ages by
disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus are big names
for science and for virtue. Their theology was high,
their moral doctrine, their austere customs. But the biggest
and the most touching figure of this time, the most brilliant
star of this pleiad, was Hypathia, daughter of Théon, this
chaste and learned girl whose intelligence and virtues
were to lead to baptism but who died a martyr of the
freedom of conscience when one undertook to drag him there.
At the school of Hypathia was formed Synesius of Cyrene who was more
[224] later bishop of Ptolemaid, one of the most learned philosophers and
the greatest poet of early Christianity;
it was he who wrote:
“The people will always laugh at things that are easy to understand,
he needs impostures. “
When they wanted to elevate him to episcopal dignity, he said in
a letter addressed to one of his friends:
“A spirit friend of wisdom and who contemplates the truth closely
is forced to disguise it in order to have it accepted by the multitudes.
There is indeed a great analogy between light and
truth, as between our eyes and ordinary intelligences. Yes
the eye suddenly received too much light, it would be
dazzled, and the temperate glows of shadows are more useful to those
whose eyesight is still weak; that’s why, in my opinion,
fictions are necessary for the people, and that the truth becomes
disastrous for those who do not have the strength to contemplate it in everything
its shine. So if the priestly laws allow the reserve
judgments and the allegory of words, I will be able to accept the
dignity that I am offered, provided that I will be allowed to be
philosopher at home and abroad narrator of apologists and
parables …. What can the city have in common?
multitude and sublime wisdom? The truth must be held
secret and crowds need proportional education
to their imperfect reason. “
Synesius was wrong to write such things. What else
awkward, in fact, to show an ulterior motive
when one is in charge of public education? It is according to
such indiscretions that many people will repeat again and again
nowadays: we need a religion for the people! but what is
[225] than the people? No one wants to be in when it comes
intelligence and morality.
The most remarkable book of Synesius is a Traite des dreams. He developed there the pure Kabbalistic doctrines and
rises like theosophist to a height that makes his style obscure
and who made him suspect of heresy; but there was neither in him
the stubbornness and fanaticism of a sectarian. He lived and died
in the peace of the Church, frankly exposing her doubts, but
submitting to hierarchical authority: his clergy and his people
did not want to demand anything more.
According to Synesius, the dream state proves the specialty and
the immateriality of the soul which then creates for itself a sky,
countryside, palaces flooded with light, or caves
dark, according to his affections and desires. We can judge from
moral progress through the habits of dreams, for in this state the
free will is suspended, and fantasy surrenders
whole to the dominant instincts. The images then occur,
either as a reflection or as a shadow of thought. The
forebodings take on a body there, memories mingle with
expectations. The dream book is then written in characters sometimes
splendid sometimes obscure, but we can find rules
some to decipher it and to read it.
Jérôme Cardan wrote a long commentary on the Traité des dreames of Synesius, and in a way completed it by a
dictionary of all dreams with their explanation. This work
has nothing in common with the ridiculous little books that we find
in the junk bookstore, and it really belongs to the
serious library of occult sciences.
[226] Some critics have attributed to Synesius the books extremely
remarkable which bear the name of Saint Denis the Areopagite; this
which is now generally recognized is that they are
apocryphal and belong to the heyday of the school
of Alexandria. These books, which cannot be fully understood
sublimity if one is not initiated into the secrets of the high Kabbalah,
are the real monument of the conquest of this science by the
christianity. The main treatises are those of divine names,
of the hierarchy in heaven and of the hierarchy in the Church.
The treatise on divine names explains by simplifying them all
mysteries of rabbinical theology. God, says the author, is the
infinite and indefinable principle perfectly one and unspeakable,
but we give it names that express our aspirations towards
this divine perfection; all of these names, their relationships
with the numbers, compose what is highest in the
human thought, and theology is less the science of God than
that of our most sublime aspirations. The author establishes
then on the primitive scale of numbers all the degrees of the
spiritual hierarchy always governed by the ternary. Orders
angelics are three in number and each order contains three
choirs. It is on this model that the hierarchy must be established
also on earth. The Church presents the most perfect type:
there are the princes of the Church, the bishops and the simple
ministers. Among the princes are cardinal-bishops,
cardinal priests and cardinal deacons; from
bishops, there are archbishops, bishops and prelates
coadjutors; among the ministers, there are the priests, the simple
priests and deacons. We rise to this holy hierarchy by
[227] three preparatory degrees, the sub-diaconate, the minor orders
and the clergy. The functions of all these orders correspond
to those of angels and saints, and must glorify the names
divine triples for each of the three persons, since in
each of the divine hypostases one adores the whole trinity.
This transcendental theology was that of the primitive
Church, and perhaps it has not been attributed to Saint Denis
the Areopagite that as a result of a tradition dating back to time
even of the apostles and of Saint Denis, like the rabbis editors
of Sepher Jezirah attributed this book to Patriarch Abraham,
because it contains the principles of the preserved tradition of
father to son in the family of this patriarch. Whatever
either, the books of Saint Denis the Areopagite are precious for
Science; they consecrate the union of the initiations of the old
world with the revelation of Christianity, by combining a
perfect understanding of supreme philosophy with orthodoxy
the most complete and the most irreproachable.
[228]
BOOK IV.
MAGIC AND CIVILIZATION.
.Daleth, ד
FIRST CHAPTER.
MAGIC AMONG THE BARBARIANS.
CONTENTS .– The Fantastic World of Sorcerers .– Prodigies Accomplished
and monsters defeated during the first centuries of the era
Christian – Magical Gaul – Secret Philosophy of
druids – Their theogony, their rites – Evocations and
sacrifices – Mission and influence of eubages – Origin of
French patriotism – Occult medicine.
Black magic recoiled before the light of Christianity, Rome
was conquered by the cross and wonders took refuge in
this circle of shadow that the barbarian provinces made around
the new Roman splendor. Between a large number of
strange phenomena, here is one that was observed during the reign
of Emperor Adrian:
In Tralles in Asia, a noble girl named Philinnium,
originally from Corinth, and daughter of Demostrates and Charito,
had fallen in love with a young man of low status named
Machatès. A marriage was impossible, Philinnium, like us
said, was noble and she was also an only daughter and
[229] a rich heiress. Machatès was a man of the people and held
a hotel [12]. Philinnium’s passion was exasperated by the
obstacles; she escaped from her father’s house, and came
find Machatès. Illegitimate trade is established between them and
lasted six months, after which the girl was discovered by
her parents, taken back by them and severely kidnapped. We took
even measures to leave the country and take Philinnium to
Corinth; but then the young girl, who had appreciably
wasted since she was separated from her lover, was reached
from a languor illness, she no longer smiled, no longer slept
more, refused all food, and definitively she died.
[Note 12: This circumstance, which is not found in
Phlégon, was added by French demonographers.]
[Illustration: HERMETIC MAGIC from an old manuscript
Imp. Caron-Delamarre, Quai des Gds Augustins, 17, Paris]
The parents then gave up on their departure, and bought a
funeral vault where the young girl was deposited covered with the most
rich clothes. This burial was in an enclosure
belonging to the family, where no one entered, because the
pagans were not in the habit of going to pray near the tombs of
dead.
Machatès did not know what had become of his mistress: everything had
passed in secret, so much did this noble family fear scandal.
The night following the burial of Philinnium, the young man
was ready to go to bed, when his door slowly opened, he
stepped forward holding his lamp in his hand, and recognized Philinnium
beautifully dressed, but pale, cold, and looking at him with
eyes of a frightful fixity.
Machatès ran to her, took her in his arms, gave her a thousand
questions and a thousand caresses, they finally spent the night
[230] together, but before the day Philinnium arose and disappeared
while her lover was still immersed in a deep
sleep.
The young girl had an old nurse who was crying for her and
that she had dearly loved. Maybe this woman had
been an accomplice in the misguidance of the poor dead woman, and since
had buried her beloved she no longer slept, and got up
often at night in a kind of delirium to go prowl around
from the home of Machatès. So a few days after what we
just told, the nanny spending the evening at one o’clock enough
advanced near the house of the young man saw light in
his room. She approached, and looking through the slits of the
door, she recognized Philinnium who was sitting near her
lover, contemplating him without saying anything and surrendering himself to his
caresses.
The poor, distraught woman ran to her masters, awakened her
mother and told her what she had just seen; the mother treated her
first of a visionary and a madwoman, then finally defeated by her
instances, she gets up and goes to Machatès’ house. All
was already asleep, she knocks, no one answers her; she looks
through the slits in the door, the lamp was extinguished, but a ray
the moon still lit the room. On a seat, Charito
recognized her daughter’s clothes and in bed, despite the shadows
from the alcove, she distinguished the shape of two people who
were sleeping.
Terror seized the mother, she returned home in
tottering, did not have the courage to visit the sepulcher of his
daughter and spent the rest of the night in the hustle and bustle
tears.
[231] The next day she returned to Machatès’ house and questioned him.
gently. The young man confessed that Philinnium was returning on
see every night. “Why refuse it to me,” he said to the mother, “
we are engaged before the gods; ” and, opening a safe, he
showed Charito his daughter’s ring and belt. “She me
gave them last night, he added, swearing to me
never belong to me alone; so look no further to us
separate since a mutual promise unites us.
“Will you in your turn find her in her grave,” said the mother.
Philinnium has been dead for four days and it is undoubtedly a
witch or a stryge who will have taken her face to deceive you;
you are the bridegroom of death, tomorrow your hair will turn white,
the day after tomorrow we can bury you too, and it is from this
so that the gods avenge the honor of an outraged family. “
Machatès turned pale and trembled when he heard this language, he feared
to have been the plaything of the infernal powers; he tells Charito
to bring her husband the same evening, he would have them hide near his
room, and by the time the ghost entered, he would give a
signal to warn them.
They did come, and at the usual time Philinnium entered
at Machatès’s, who had gone to bed fully dressed and
pretending to be asleep.
The young girl undresses and comes to stand near him,
Machatès gives the signal, Demostrates and Charito enter with
torches in hand, and utter a loud cry recognizing
their daughter.
Philinnium then lifts her head, pale then she rises all
whole on the bed, and said in a hollow and terrible voice: “O my
father and mother, why were you jealous of my happiness, and
[232] Why are you chasing me beyond the grave itself? My love
had done violence to the infernal gods, the power of death
was suspended for three more days and I was back to life!
but your cruel curiosity destroys the miracle of nature:
you kill me a second time! … “
When she finished these words she fell on the bed like a sledgehammer
inert. His features suddenly withered, a smell
corpse filled the room, and we only saw the remains
disfigured by a girl who had been dead for five days.
The next day the whole town was shocked by the news of this
prodigy. We ran to the circus where the whole story was publicly
told, then the crowd went to the
Philinnium. The girl was no longer there, but it was found
place an iron ring and a golden cup that she had received in
presents from Machatès. The corpse was found in
the hotel industry; Machatès had disappeared.
The diviners were consulted and ordered to bury the remains
of Philinnium outside the city walls. We made
sacrifices to the furies and to the terrestrial Mercury, the
gods manes and offerings were made to the hospitable Jupiter.
Phlegon, freed from Adrian, who was an eyewitness to these facts
and who recounts them in a particular letter, adds that he had to
use his authority to calm the city agitated by a
such an extraordinary event, and ends his story with these words: “If
you deem it appropriate to inform the emperor, please do so
know so that I send you some of those who have been
witnesses of all these things. “
[233] It is therefore a well-established story that that of Philinnium. A
the great German poet made it the subject of a ballad that everyone
world knows by heart, and which is called the Fiancee of Corinth. He assumes that the girl’s parents were
Christians, which gives him the opportunity to make an opposition
strong poetic of human passions and the duties of
religion. The demonographers of the Middle Ages would not have failed
to explain the resurrection or perhaps the apparent death of the
young Greek by a diabolical obsession. We see there, for
our part, a hysterical lethargy accompanied by sleepwalking
lucid; Philinnium’s father and mother killed her in the
awakening and the public imagination exaggerated all
circumstances of this story.
The terrestrial Mercury to which the diviners ordered sacrifices
is nothing other than the personified astral light. It’s the
fluidic genius of the earth, fatal genius for men who
excite him without knowing how to direct him; it is the home of life
physical and the magnetic receptacle of death.
This blind force that the power of Christianity was going
chain and push back into the bottomless pit, that is to say
center of the earth, manifested his last convulsions and
last efforts among the barbarians by childbirth
monstrous. There are hardly any regions where the preachers of
the Gospel did not have to fight animals with shapes
hideous, embodiments of dying idolatry. Wyverns,
the graouillis, the gargoyles, the tarasques, are not
only allegories. It is certain that the disorders
morals produce physical ugliness and in some way
like the appalling figures that tradition attributes to
[234] demons. Fossil bones, with the help of which the science of
Cuvier rebuilt gigantic monsters, do they belong
really all in times prior to our creation?
Is it an allegory that this immense dragon that Regulus owed
attack with war machines, and that we found, according to
Livy and Pliny, on the banks of the Bagrada river? His skin
which was one hundred and twenty feet long was sent to Rome, and was
preserved until the time of the war against Numantia. It was
a tradition among the ancients, that the gods angered by
extraordinary crimes, sent monsters to the earth, and
this tradition is too universal not to be supported
on real events, the related stories belong
mythology less often than history.
In all the memories that remain of the barbarian peoples in
the time when Christianity conquered them to civilization, we
we find with the last traces of the high magical initiation
once widespread by everyone, the evidence of
the obscurity that had undergone this primitive revelation and
idolatrous debasement in which the symbolism of the old
world had fallen; everywhere reigned, instead of the disciples of
magi, diviners, wizards and enchanters. Had
forgot the supreme God to deify men. Rome had
gave this example to his provinces, and the apotheosis of the Caesars
had taught the world the religion of the blood gods. The
Germans, under the name of Irminsul, worshiped this Arminius, or
Hermann, who made Augustus weep for the legions of Varus, and he
offered human victims. The Gauls gave Brennus
[235] attributes of Taranis and Teutates, and burned in his
honor of the wicker colossi filled with Romans. Everywhere reigned
materialism, because idolatry is nothing else, and
superstition always cruel because it is cowardly.
Providence which predestined Gaul to become France very
Christian woman had nevertheless made shine there the light of
eternal truths. The first druids were the real ones
children of the Magi, and their initiation came from Egypt and
Chaldea, that is to say pure sources of the primitive Kabbalah:
they worshiped the trinity under the names of_Isis_ or Ilesus,
supreme harmony; from Belen or Bel, which means in Assyrian
the Lord, name corresponding to that of Adonai; and Camul or
Camaël, name which in the Kabbalah personifies divine justice.
Below this triangle of light they assumed a reflection
divine, also composed of three personified rays: first
Teutates or Teuth, the same as the Thoth of the Egyptians, the verb
or the intelligence formulated, then the strength and the beauty of which
names varied as the emblems. They finally completed the
septenary sacred by a mysterious image that represented the
progress of dogma and its future achievements: it was a young
veiled girl holding a child in her arms, and they dedicated
this image to the virgin who will become a mother [13].
[Note 13: A Druidic statue was found in Chartres having
this form and this inscription:
VIRGINI PARITURAE.]
The ancient druids lived in strict abstinence,
kept the deepest secret of their mysteries, studied
natural sciences and did not admit among them new
[236] adepts only after long initiations. They had at Autun a
famous college whose coat of arms, according to Saint-Foix,
still exist in this city: they are azure to the
lying silver snakes surmounted by an oak mistletoe garnished with
its tassels Vert; it is to distinguish it from other guis
that the coat of arms gives acorns to the oak mistletoe, but the branch
single oak bears acorns. Mistletoe is parasitic foliage
which does not bear fruit like the tree which bore it.
Druids did not build temples, they performed
the rites of their religion on the dolmens and in the forests. We
still wondering with the help of which machines they were able to
lift up the colossal stones that formed their altars, and
that still stand dark and mysterious under the sky
cloudy from Armorica. The ancient shrines had their
secrets that have not come down to us.
The Druids taught that the soul of the ancestors is attached to
children; whether she is happy with their glory or tormented by
their shame; that the protective geniuses attach themselves to trees and
to the stones of the homeland; that the warrior who died for his country has
expiated all his faults and fulfilled his task with dignity, he became
then a genius, and henceforth he exercises the power of the gods.
Also among the Gauls, patriotism was a religion: the
women and children even armed themselves, if necessary, to
repel the invasion, and the Joan of Arc, the Jeanne Hachette of
Beauvais, only continued the traditions of these nobles
daughters of the Gauls.
What attaches to the soil of the motherland is the magic of memories.
[237] The Druids were priests and doctors; they healed by the
magnetism, and they attached their fluidic influence to
amulets. The oak mistletoe and the serpent’s egg were their
universal panaceas, because these substances attract
the astral light in a very special way. Solemnity with
which the mistletoe was harvested, attracted the
popular confidence and magnetized it with great currents. Too
did he perform wonderful cures, especially when he was
applied by the eubages with conjurations and charms.
Don’t accuse our fathers of too much gullibility, they knew
maybe what we no longer know.
The progress of magnetism will one day discover the properties
absorbent of oak mistletoe. We will then know the secret of these
spongy growths that attract unnecessary luxury from
plants and overload themselves with color and flavor:
mushrooms, truffles, tree galls, different
species of mistletoe, will be used with discernment by a
new medicine by dint of being old. We won’t laugh anymore then
of Paracelsus who collected the usnea on the skulls of the hanged;
but we must not walk faster than science, it cannot
move back only to move forward better.
[238]
CHAPTER II
INFLUENCE OF WOMEN.
CONTENTS .– Influence of women among the Gauls .– The virgins of
the island of Sayne – The magician Velléda – Bertha the
spinner – Mélusine – Elves and fairies – Saint Clotilde and
Saint Geneviève .– The witch Frédégonde.
Providence by imposing on woman the duties so severe and so
sweetness of motherhood, gave her the right to protection and
respect for man. Subject by nature itself to
consequences of the ailments that are her life, she leads her
masters with the chains that love gives him; the older she is
subject to the laws which constitute and protect his honor,
the more powerful and respected she is in the sanctuary of the
family. For her, to revolt is to abdicate, and to preach to her
a so-called emancipation is to advise him to divorce him by
vowing in advance to sterility and contempt.
Christianity alone could legitimately emancipate women by
calling him and to virginity to the glory of the sacrifice. Numa had
sensed this mystery when he instituted the vestals; but the
druids were ahead of Christianity by listening to the inspirations
virgins, and paying almost divine honors to
priestesses of Sayne Island.
In Gaul, women did not reign by their coquetry and by
their vices, but they governed by their councils. Onne
made neither peace nor war without having consulted them; the
[239] The interests of the home and the family were thus pleaded by the
mothers, and national pride became righteous when it was so
tempered by maternal love of the fatherland.
Chateaubriand slandered Velléda by making her succumb to
love of Eudore. Velléda lived and died a virgin. She was already
old when the Romans invaded the Gauls: it was a
kind of pythia who prophesied in great solemnities, and
whose oracles were collected with veneration; she was dressed
of a long black dress without sleeves, the head covered with a veil
white down to his feet; she wore a
crown of verbena and had at its girdle a golden sickle;
his scepter was shaped like a spindle, his right foot was
wearing a sandal and his left foot wore a sort of
foal shoe. We later took the statues of Velléda
for those of Berthe with the long foot. The high priestess, in
indeed, wore the insignia of the patron deity of
druidesses; it was Hertha or Wertha, the young Gallic Isis,
the queen of heaven, the virgin who was to give birth. We have it
represented with one foot on land and the other on water,
because she was queen of initiation and she presided over
the universal science of things. The foot she put on
the water was usually carried by a boat similar to the
boat or conch of ancient Isis. She was holding the spindle
Fates loaded with wool half white and half black,
because it presides over all forms and all symbols,
and let it weave the garment of ideas. He was also given the
allegorical form of mermaids half woman and half fish, or
the torso of a beautiful young girl and two legs made in
[240] snakes, to signify mutation and continual mobility
things, and the analogical alliance of opposites in the
manifestation of all the occult forces of nature. Under
this last form, Hertha took the name of Mélusine or
Melosina (the musicienne, the chanteuse), that is to say the
sirène revealing harmonies. This is the origin of
images and legends of Queen Berthe and the fairy Mélusine.
The latter appeared, it is said, in the eleventh century to a
lord of Lusignan; she was loved by it and consented to give it back
happy, on condition that he does not try to spy on
mysteries of its existence; the lord promised it, but the
jealousy made him curious and perjury; he spied on Melusine, and
surprised in her methamorphoses, because once a week the fairy
resumed his snake legs. He uttered a cry to which
answered another cry, more desperate and more terrible. Melusine
had disappeared, but she comes back again, clamoring
lamentable whenever a person from the house of
Lusignan is on the verge of death.
This legend is imitated from the fable of Psyche, and relates,
like this fable, in the danger of sacrilegious initiations or
desecration of the mysteries of religion and love; the story
is borrowed from the traditions of the ancient bards, and it comes out
obviously from the learned school of the druids. The 11th century
grabbed hold of it and made it fashionable, but it had been around since
long time.
Inspiration in France seems to belong mostly to women; the
elfes and the fées preceded the saints, and the saints
almost all of them have something magical about their
[241] legend. Sainte Clotilde made us Christians, sainte Geneviève kept us French by pushing back with energy
of his virtue and his faith the threatening invasion of Attila. Jeanne d’Arc … but this one was more of the fairy family than
of the hierarchy of saints; she died as Hypathia, victim
wonderful gifts of nature and martyrdom of his character
generous. We will talk about this later. Saint Clotilde does
still miracles in our provinces. We saw in Les Andelys
the crowd of pilgrims crowding around a swimming pool where
every year plunges the statue of the saint; the first patient who
then descends into the water is immediately healed, it is
less what popular confidence proclaims aloud. It was
an energetic woman and a great queen than this Clotilde, too
was she experienced by the most poignant pains: her first
son died after receiving baptism, and his death was watched
as the result of a spell; the second fell ill and went
die … The character of the saint does not waver and the Sicambre
one day needing more than human courage remembered the
god of Clotilde. Widowed after having converted and founded in some
emerged a great kingdom, she saw slaughtered, so to speak, under her
eyes the two children of Clodomir. It is by similar
pains that the queens of the earth resemble the queen of
sky.
After the great and resplendent figure of Clotilde, we
let us see appear in history, like a hideous foil, the
fatal character of Frédégonde, this woman whose gaze
is a curse, this witch who kills princes. Fredegonde
willingly accused her rivals of magic and killed them in
[242] in the midst of the tortures that she alone deserved. It remained at
Chilpéric, a son of his first wife: this young prince, who
called Clovis, had fallen in love with a young girl of the people whose
mother passed for a witch. The mother and daughter were accused of having
troubled by potions the reason of Clovis, and to have made
die by magical spells the two children of
Frédégonde. The two unfortunate women were arrested;
Klodswinthe, the young girl, was beaten with rods, they cut her
her beautiful hair, and Frederick herself tied it to the door
of the young prince’s apartment, then Klodswinthe was put
in judgment. His simple and firm answers astonished the judges:
someone advised, says a columnist, to submit it to
the boiling water test; a blessed ring was thrown into a
vat placed on a large fire, and the accused, dressed in white, after
having confessed and having communion, had to plunge his arm into the
tank and look for the ring. To the stillness of the features of
Klodswinthe, everyone believed that a miracle had been accomplished,
but a cry of disapproval and horror arose when the
unhappy child withdrew her terribly burnt arm. So she
asked permission to speak, and said to his judges and to the people:
“You asked God for a miracle to prove my innocence.
God does not want to be tempted and he does not suspend the laws of
nature according to the whim of men; but he gives strength to
those who believe in him, and he has done for me a marvelous good
greater than the one he refused you. This water burned me,
and I plunged my whole arm into it and searched and brought back
the ring. I neither shouted, nor paled, nor faltered in this
[243] horrible torture. If I were a magician, as you say,
I would have used hexes not to burn, but I am
Christian and God has given me the grace to prove it by
constancy of the martyrs. ” This logic was not such as to
to be understood at such a barbaric time. Klodswinthe was renewed
in prison while awaiting the last punishment, but God took her into
pity and called him to him, says the chronicle where we have drawn these
details. If it is only a legend, it must be admitted that it is
beautiful and deserves to be preserved.
Frédégonde lost one of her victims, but the other two did not
did not escape him. Klodswinthe’s mother was put in the
torture, and, overcome by torments, she confessed all that
wanted, even the guilt of his daughter, even the complicity of
Clovis. Frédégonde, armed with her confessions, obtained a ferocious
fool Chilperic abandoning his son. The young prince was
arrested and stabbed in his prison. Frédégonde declared that he
had wanted to escape his remorse by suicide. The corpse of
unhappy Clovis was put before his father’s eyes, the dagger
was still in the wound. Chilperic looked coldly at this
show; he was entirely dominated by Frédégonde who
brazenly cheated with the officers of his palace. We are
concealed so little that the king, in spite of himself, had proof of his
dishonor. Instead of killing the queen and her
accomplice, he left without saying anything for the hunt. He had
perhaps suffered this outrage without complaining for fear of
displease Frédégonde, but this woman was ashamed for him, she
did him the honor of believing in his anger in order to have a pretext
to assassinate him; he had satiated her with crimes and
meanness, she had him killed out of disgust.
[244] Frédégonde, who burned women as witches
guilty only of having displeased her, she herself practiced
black magic, and protected those she truly believed
wizards. Agéric, bishop of Verdun, had a
pythoness who earned a lot of money by finding the
lost items and reporting thieves; it was
presumably a sleepwalker. This woman was exorcised on
devil declared that he would not go out as long as he was held
chained, but that if we left the pythoness alone in a
church, without a supervisor and without guards, he would go out
certainly. They gave into the trap, and it was the woman who
went out; she took refuge with Frédégonde who hid her in
her palace and ends up withdrawing her from exorcisms and
probably at the stake: so this time she did a good deed
by mistake and for the sake of doing wrong.
CHAPTER III.
SALIC LAWS AGAINST WITCHES.
SUMMARY – Provisions of the Salic law against
sorcerers .– A similar passage from the Talmud .– Decisions of
Councils – Charles Martel accused of magic – The cabalist
Zedekiah – Epidemic Visions of the Time of Pepin the
In short – Palaces and aerial vessels – The sylphs put on trial
and condemned not to reappear.
Under the kings of France of the first race, the crime of magic
only resulted in death for the grown-ups, and there were some who
gloried in dying for a crime that uplifted them
[245] above the vulgar, and made them formidable even to
Kings. This is how General Mummol, tortured by order
of Frédégonde, declared that he had not suffered anything and himself
the appalling torments as a result of which he died, in
braving his executioners whom so much constancy had forced into
somehow give him thanks.
In the Salic laws, which Sigebert attributes to Pharamond, and
that it supposes to have been promulgated in 424, we find the
following provisions:
“If anyone has treated someone highly of a_hereburge_ or
strioporte, it is the name of the one who carries the copper vase
to the place where the stryges make their enchantments, and if he cannot
convince him, that he be fined seven thousand
five hundred denarii which make one hundred and eighty sous and a half. “
“If someone treats a woman free from stryge or from
prostitute without being able to prove his point, that he be condemned to
a fine of two thousand five hundred denarii which
sixty-two cents and a half. “
“If a stryge has devoured a man and she is convinced of it,
she will be condemned to pay eight thousand denarii, which makes two
cents. “
We see that at that time, anthropophagy was possible at a price
money and human flesh was cheap.
We paid a hundred and eighty-seven sous and a half to slander a
man: for twelve cents more, one could cut his throat and
to eat it was more loyal and more complete.
This strange legislation reminds us of a passage no less
[246] singular of the Talmud that the famous rabbi Jéchiel explained in a
very remarkable way in the presence of a queen that the book
Hebrew does not name: it is undoubtedly the White Queen, because the
Rabbi Jéchiel lived in the time of Saint Louis.
It was about responding to the objections of a converted Jew,
named Douin, and who had received the first name of Nicolas at baptism.
After several discussions on the texts of the Talmud, it was
at this passage:
“If anyone has offered the blood of his children to Moloch, let him
be punished with death. ” It is the law of Moses.
The Talmud adds in the form of a commentary: “He therefore who will have
offered not only blood, but all blood and flesh
of his children, in sacrifice to Moloch, does not fall under the
prescriptions of the law, and no penalty is brought against
him.”
On reading this incomprehensible reasoning, all
assistants protested; some laughed with pity, others
shuddered with indignation.
Rabbi Jéchiel obtained silence with difficulty, they finally listened to him,
but with marked disfavour, and as if condemning in advance
whatever he was going to say.
“The death penalty in our country,” said Jéchiel then, “is not a
revenge; it is an atonement and therefore a
reconciliation.
“All who die by the law of Israel, die in peace
from Israel; they receive reconciliation with death and sleep
with our fathers. No curse descends with them in the
grave, they live in the immortality of the house of Jacob.
»Death is therefore a supreme grace, it is a healing by
[247] iron from an inflamed wound; but we do not apply iron to
incurable; we no longer have any rights over those that greatness
of their crime forever cut off from Israel.
These are dead, and it is no longer for us to shorten the
torment of their reprobation on earth, they belong to the
wrath of God.
»Man has the right to strike only to heal, that’s why
that we don’t hit the incurable.
The father of the family only punishes his children and he is content
to close its door to strangers.
»The major culprits against whom our law does not pronounce
no penalty, are thereby excommunicated forever, and
this reprobation is a greater penalty than death. “
This response from Jéchiel is admirable, and one feels it breathing
all the patriarchal genius of ancient Israel. Jews are
truly our fathers in science, and if instead of
persecute we had sought to understand them, they would be
now probably less distant from our faith.
This Talmudic tradition proves how old is among the
Jews the belief in the immortality of the soul. What, in fact,
that this reintegration of the culprit into the family of Israel by
an expiatory death, if not a protest against the death
even and a sublime act of faith in the perpetuity of life? The
Count Joseph de Maistre understood this doctrine well when he
raised the mission to a kind of exceptional priesthood
bloody executioner. The torture begs, said this great
writer, and the bloodshed has not ceased to be a
sacrifice. If capital punishment was not a supreme
[248] absolution, it would only be a reprisal for murder: the man
who undergoes his sentence accomplishes all his penance and returns by
death in the immortal society of the children of God.
The Salic laws were those of a still barbaric people where
everything was redeemed, as in war, with a ransom.
Slavery still existed, and human life had only one
questionable and relative value. We can always buy what we
has the right to sell, and one owes only money for the
destruction of an object that costs money.
The only strong legislation of this time was that of
Church, so the councils brought against the stryges and
the poisoners who took the name of sorcerers, the punishments
the most severe. The Council of Agde in the lower Languedoc, held
in 506, excommunicates them; the first council of Orleans, held in
511, expressly forbids divinatory operations; the council
of Narbonne, in 589, strikes the sorcerers with an excommunication
without hope, and orders that they be made slaves and sold
for the benefit of the poor. This same council orders to castigate
publicly the _ devil lovers_, that is to say without doubt
those who took care of it, who feared it, who mentioned it,
who attributed to him part of the power of God. We
sincerely congratulate the disciples of M. le Comte de Mirville
for not having lived during that time.
While these things were going on in France, an ecstatic
had just founded a religion and an empire in the East. Mohammed
was he a deceiver or a hallucinator? For Muslims, it is
[249] still a prophet, and for scholars who know the
Arabic language, the Coran will always be a masterpiece.
Mohammed was a man without letters, a simple conductor of
camels, and he created the most perfect monument in the tongue of
his country. His successes may have passed for miracles, and
the warlike enthusiasm of his successors threatened for a moment the
freedom of the whole world; but all the forces of Asia came
one day crash against the iron fist of Charles-Martel. This
a rough warrior hardly prayed when it was necessary to fight;
did he lack money, he took it in the monasteries and in
churches, he even gave ecclesiastical benefits to
soldiers. God, in the opinion of the clergy, should not bless his
weapons, so his victories were attributed to magic. This
prince had so aroused religious opinion against him,
that a venerable personage, Saint Eucher, Bishop of Orleans, the
lives plunged into hell. The holy bishop, then in ecstasy,
learned from an angel who led him in spirit through the
regions beyond the grave, that the saints of whom Charles-Martel had
looted or desecrated the churches had prohibited him from entering the
heaven, had driven his very body from the grave, and had
precipitated to the bottom of the abyss. Eucher gave notice of this
revelation to Boniface, bishop of Mainz, and to Fulrad,
Archichapelain of Pepin the Short. We opened the tomb of
Charles-Martel, the body was no longer there, the interior stone
was blackened and as if burnt, a foul smoke exhaled from it and
a huge snake came out. Boniface addressed the Brief to Pépin and
to Carloman the minutes of the exhumation, or rather of
the opening of their father’s tomb, inviting them to enjoy
[250] of this terrible example and to respect holy things. But
Was it really to respect them to violate the burial of a
hero on the faith of a dream to attribute to hell this work of
destruction so completely and so quickly completed by death?
During the reign of Pepin the Short, very singular phenomena
shown publicly in France. The air was full of figures
human beings, the sky reflected mirages of palaces, gardens,
agitated waves, ships with sails to the wind and armies in line
in battle. The atmosphere was like a big dream. All the
world could see and distinguish the details of these fantastic
paintings. Was it an epidemic attacking the organs of the
vision or atmospheric disturbance that projected
mirages in condensed air? Wasn’t it rather a
universal hallucination produced by some intoxicating principle
and pestilential spread in the atmosphere? Which would give more
probability to this last assumption is that these
visions exasperated the people; we thought we could distinguish in the air
wizards who spread the powders with both hands
harmful and poisons. The countryside was struck by
sterility, the cattle died, and mortality spread
even on men.
A fable was then spread which was to have all the more
success and credit, that she was more completely
extravagant. There was then a famous Kabbalist, named
Zédéchias, which held a school of occult sciences, and taught
not the Kabbalah, but the amusing hypotheses to which the
Kabbalah can give rise and which form the exoteric part of
[251] this science always hidden from the vulgar. Zedekiah therefore amused
the spirits with the mythology of this fabulous Kabbalah. He
told how Adam, the first man, first created in a
almost spiritual state, dwelt above our atmosphere where
the light gave birth to vegetations for him and to his liking
the most wonderful; there he was served by a crowd of beings
of the greatest beauty, created in the image of man and
woman, of which they were the lively reflections, and formed from the most
pure substance of the elements: these were the sylphs, the
salamanders, merfolk and gnomes; but in the state
of innocence, Adam reigned over the gnomes and the merfolk only
through sylphs and salamanders which, alone,
had the power to ascend to its aerial paradise.
Nothing equaled the happiness of the primitive couple served by the
sylphs; these mortal spirits being of an incredible skill to
build, weave, make light bloom in a thousand more forms
varied than the most brilliant and fruitful imagination
does not have time to design them. The earthly paradise, so named
because it was based on the earth’s atmosphere, so was the
stay of enchantments; Adam and Eve slept in palaces
of pearls and sapphires, roses were born around them and
stretched out in a carpet under their feet; they were sliding on the water
in mother-of-pearl shells drawn by swans, the birds
spoke with delicious music, the flowers were bending down
to stroke them; the fall made them lose everything by
rushing to the earth; the material bodies of which they were
covered, are the skins of animals mentioned in the
Bible. They found themselves alone and naked on a land that
[252] no longer obeyed the whims of their thoughts; they forgot
even Edenic life, and no longer glimpsed it in their
memories that like a dream. However, above
the atmosphere, the paradisiacal regions always extended,
inhabited only by sylphs and salamanders which
thus found guardians of the domains of man, like
grieving servants who remain in the castle of a master whose
no longer hope for the return.
Imaginations were full of these wonderful fictions
when the mirages of the sky and the _ human figures_ appeared
in the clouds. No more doubt then, it was the sylphs and the
salamanders of Zedechias who came to seek their elders
masters; we confuse dreams with the day before, and many
people thought they had been abducted by the air; he was not
rumor that trips to the land of sylphs, as among us we have
talks about animated furniture and fluidic events. Madness
won the best faces, and the Church finally had to
mingled. The Church does not like supernatural communications made
to the multitude; similar revelations destroying respect
due to the authority and the hierarchical chain of education
could be attributed to the spirit of order and light. The
ghosts of the clouds were thus reached and convinced to be
illusions of hell; the people then, eager to attack
someone, somehow crossed against wizards. The
public madness ended in a fit of fury: people
strangers we met in the countryside were accused of
come down from heaven and killed without mercy; several maniacs
confessed that they had been removed by sylphs or by
[253] demons; others, who had already bragged about it, no longer wanted
or could no longer retract from it: they were burned, they were thrown
water and one would hardly believe, says Garinet [14], how many
they destroyed thus throughout the whole kingdom. Thus are unraveled
usually the dramas where the leading roles are played by
ignorance and fear.
[Note 14: Garinet, History of magic in France, 1818, 1 vol.
in-8.]
These visionary epidemics recurred during the reigns
following, and the omnipotence of Charlemagne had to intervene
to calm the public unrest. An edict, since renewed by
Louis le Débonnaire, forbade the sylphs to show themselves under the
most serious penalties. We understood that in the absence of sylphs these
punishments would reach those who would boast of having seen them and
you end up no longer seeing them; the air vessels returned
in the port of oblivion and no one claimed to have
traveled in the sky. Other popular frenzies replaced
that one, and the romantic splendours of the great reign of
Charlemagne came to provide the legendaries with enough other
wonders to believe and other wonders to tell.
[254]
CHAPTER IV.
LEGENDS OF THE REIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE.
CONTENTS .– The enchanted sword and the magic horn of
Roland – The Enchiridion of Leo III – The Sabbath – The Courts
secrets or the free-judges – Provisions of the Capitulars
against sorcerers .– The errant chivalry.
Charlemagne is the true prince of enchantments and
fairyland, his reign is like a solemn and brilliant halt
between barbarism and the Middle Ages; it is an apparition of
majesty and grandeur that recalls the magic pumps of the reign
of Solomon, it is a resurrection and a prophecy. In him
the Roman Empire, spanning Gallic and Frankish origins,
reappears in all its splendor; in him too, as in a
type evoked and realized by divination, shows itself in advance
the perfect empire of the ages of matured civilization, the empire
crowned by the priesthood and leaning his throne against the altar.
In Charlemagne begins the era of chivalry and the epic
wonderful novels; the chronicles of the reign of this prince
all look like the story of the four sons of Aymon or Oberon
the enchanter. The birds speak to put back in the good
on the way the French army lost in the forests; colossi
of brass stand in the middle of the sea and show the emperor
the open roads of the East. Roland, the first of the paladins,
owns a magical sword, baptized as a Christian and named
[255] Durandal; the valiant speaks to his sword, and she seems the
understand, nothing can resist the effort of this supernatural sword.
Roland also has an ivory horn so artistically made that the
the slightest breath produces a noise that can be heard from twenty leagues to
the round and which makes the mountains tremble; when Roland
succumbs to Roncesvalles, rather crushed than defeated, he rises
still like a giant under a deluge of trees and rocks
rolling, he sounds the horn, and the Saracens take flight.
Charlemagne, who is more than ten leagues away, hears the French horn.
Roland and wants to go to his aid; but he is prevented from doing so by the
traitor Ganelon who sold the French army to the barbarians.
Roland, seeing himself abandoned, kisses his
Durandal, then, gathering all his strength, he strikes two
hands a mountain neighborhood he hopes to break it against
so as not to let it fall to the power of the infidels, the
mountain district is slashed without Durandal being
chipped. Roland squeezes her to his chest and dies with a mine
so tall and so proud that the Saracens dare not descend to
approach it and still throw a hail of arrows with trembling
against their victor who is no more.
Charlemagne giving a throne to the papacy and receiving from it
the empire of the world, is the greatest of all the characters
of our history.
We talked about the_Enchiridion_, this little book containing
with the most beautiful Christian prayers the most
hidden from Kabbalah. Occult tradition attributes this small
book to Leo III, and affirms that it was given by the pontiff to
Charlemagne as the rarest of all present. The sovereign
[256] owner of this book, and knowing how to use it with dignity,
had to be the master of the world. This tradition may not be
not to be despised.
It assumes:
1 ° The existence of a primitive and universal revelation,
explaining all the secrets of nature and tuning them with
the mysteries of grace, reconciling reason with faith because
that both are daughters of God and contribute to enlighten
intelligence by their double light;
2 ° The necessity to which one has always been reduced to hide this
revelation to the multitude, lest they abuse it by
misinterpreting it, and that it does not use it against the faith of
forces of reason or powers of faith even to lead astray
the reason that the vulgar never hear well;
3 ° The existence of a secret tradition reserving for sovereigns
pontiffs and to the temporal masters of the world the knowledge of these
mysteries;
4 ° The perpetuity of certain signs or pantacles expressing these
mysteries in a hieroglyphic manner, and known only to
followers.
The Enchiridion would be a collection of allegorical prayers, having
for keys the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabbalah.
We describe here the figure of the main pantacles of
The Enciridion.
The premier, which is engraved on the very cover of the book,
represents an inverted equilateral triangle, inscribed in a
double circle. On the triangle are written so as to form the
[257] prophetic tau, the two words םיהלאד Eloïm, and תואבא
Sabaoth, which means the God of hosts, the balance of forces
natural and the harmony of numbers. On the three sides of the triangle
are the three great names הוהי ,Jehovah, יכבא ,Adonai,
אכלא ,Agla; above Jehovah’s name is written in Latin
formatio, above Adonai, reformatio, and above
d’Agla, transformatio. Thus creation is attributed to the Father,
redemption or reform to the Son, and sanctification or
transformation to the Holy Spirit, following the mathematical laws of
the action of reaction and equilibrium. Jehovah is indeed
also the genesis or the formation of dogma by meaning
elementary of the four letters of the sacred tetragrammaton; Adonai is
the realization of this dogma in human form, in the Lord
visible, who is the Son of God or the perfect man; and Agla,
as we have explained at some length elsewhere, expresses the
synthesis of all dogma and all kabbalistic science,
indicating clearly by the hieroglyphs of which this name
admirable is formed the triple secret of the great work.
The second pantacle is a triple-faced head, crowned
from a tiara and coming out of a vase full of water. Those who are
initiated into the mysteries of the Sohar will understand the allegory of this
head.
The third is the double triangle forming the star of
Solomon.
The fourth is the magic sword, with this caption: Deo duce, comite ferro, emblem of the great arcane and omnipotence
of the insider.
The fifth is the problem of the human size of the Savior,
[258] solved by the number forty: it is the theological number of
Sephiroths, multiplied by that of natural achievements.
The sixième is the pantacle of the spirit, signified by
bones which form two E and two taus: T.
The seventh, and the most important, is the large monogram
magic, explaining Solomon’s collarbones, the tetragrammaton, the
sign of the labarum and the supreme word of the adepts (see Dogme and ritual of high magic, explanation of the figures in volume 1). This
character reads by turning the page like a wheel, and
pronounces rota tarot or tora (see Guilhaume Postel, Clavis absconditorum a constitutione mundi).
The letter A is often replaced in this character by the
number of the letter, which is 1.
We also find in this sign the figure and the value of the four
hieroglyphic emblems of the tarot, the staff, the cup, the sword and
the denarius. These four elementary hieroglyphs are found
everywhere in the sacred monuments of the Egyptians, and Homer has them
figured in his description of Achilles’ shield, placing them
in the same order as the authors of the Enciridion.
But these explanations, if they had to be supported with all their
proofs, would drag us out of our subject here, and
would require special work that we hope to put into
order and publish someday.
The magic sword or dagger featured in the Enciridion appears
to have been the secret symbol of the court of franc judges. This
sword, in fact, is made in the shape of a cross, it is hidden and
as shrouded in legend; God alone directs him, and he
whoever strikes owes no one account of his blows. Terrible
[259] threat and no less terrible privilege! the vehmic dagger, in
effect, reached in the shadows the culprits whose very crime
often remained unknown. To what facts is this
frightening justice? It is necessary here to penetrate into shadows that
history could not clarify, and ask traditions and
legends a light that science does not give us.
The Franc-Judges were an opposing secret society, in
the interests of order and government, to secret societies
anarchic and revolutionary.
Superstitions are stubborn, and degenerate Druidism had
thrown from deep roots in the wild lands of the North. The
frequent uprisings of the Saxons attested to a fanaticism
always stirring and that moral force was powerless to
repress; all cults defeated, Roman paganism,
German idolatry, Jewish rancor, united against the
victorious Christianity. Nocturnal assemblies took place,
and the conspirators cemented their alliance there by the blood of
human victims: a pantheistic idol with goat horns and
monstrous forms presided over feasts that could be
to call the agapes of hatred. The sabbat, in a word, is
still celebrated in all forests and deserts
provinces still wild; the followers went there masked
and unrecognizable; the assembly extinguished its lights and
dispersed before daybreak; the culprits were everywhere,
and nowhere could they be caught. Charlemagne resolved to
fight them with their own weapons.
At the same time, moreover, the feudal tyrannies conspired
[260] with sectarians against legitimate authority: witches
were the prostitutes of the castles; bandits initiated into
Sabbath shared with the lords the bloody fruit of their
plunder; feudal justice was sold to the highest bidder,
and the public burdens weighed with all their weight only on
the weak and over the poor.
Charlemagne sent to Westphalia, where the evil was greatest,
dedicated agents charged with a secret mission. These agents
attracted to them and bound themselves by the oath and the surveillance
mutual all that was energetic among the oppressed, all that
who still loved righteousness, whether among the people or among the
nobility; they discovered to their followers the full powers
which they held from the emperor, and instituted the tribunal of
frank judges.
It was a secret police with the power of life and death. The
mystery which surrounded the judgments, the speed of the executions,
everything struck the imagination of these still barbarous peoples. The
holy vehme assumed gigantic proportions; we shivered in
telling each other of the apparitions of masked men, quotes
nailed to the gates of the most powerful lords in the middle
even of their guards and their orgies, chiefs of brigands
found dead with the terrible cruciform dagger in the
chest, and on the strip attached to the dagger the extract of
judgment of the holy vehme.
This tribunal affected in its meetings the most
fantastic: the culprit cited in some crossroads criticized y
was caught by a black man who blindfolded him and
drove in silence; it was always evening, at one o’clock
[261] advanced, because the judgments were not pronounced until midnight. The
criminal was introduced into vast undergrounds, only one
voice questioned him; then we took off his blindfold: the underground
lit up in all its immense depths, and we could see
the franc-judges all dressed in black and masked. The sentences
were not always fatal, since we knew how
things were happening, without a frank judge ever revealing
anything, for death would have struck at the very moment
developer. These formidable assemblies were sometimes so
numerous, that they resembled an army of exterminators:
one night the emperor Sigismund himself presided over the holy vehme,
and more than a thousand francs-judges sat in a circle around him.
In 1400 there were a hundred thousand franc-judges in Germany. The
people with a bad conscience feared their parents and
friends: “If Duke Adolphe de Sleiswyek comes to visit me,
said Guillaume de Brunswick one day, I will have to
hang, if I don’t want to be hanged. “
A prince of the same family, Duke Frederick of Brunswick, who
was emperor for a moment, had refused to surrender to a citation
free judges; he only came out fully armed and
surrounded by guards; but one day he moved away from his train a little and
needed to get rid of some of his armor: we do not
not live to come back. His guards entered the little wood where the
duke had wanted to be alone for a moment; the unfortunate man expired,
having in the loins the dagger of the holy vehicle, and the
sentence hanged on the dagger. We looked around and we
[262] saw a masked man who took a step back
solemn … No one dared to pursue him!
The court code was printed in Müller’s Reichsthetaer
vehmique, found in the old archives of Westphalia;
here is the title of this old document:
“Code and statutes of the holy secret tribunal of the Frankish Counts and
Free Judges of Westphalia which were established in the year 772 by
Emperor Charlemagne, as the said statutes were
corrected in 1404 by King Robert, who made several
points the changes and increases required
the administration of justice in the courts of the illuminated,
after having invested them again with his authority. “
A notice placed on the first page defends under penalty of death, to
all layman, to cast their eyes on this book.
The name of_illuminés_ that we give here to the affiliates of the tribunal
secret reveals their whole mission: they had to follow in
the shadow worshipers of darkness, they circumvented
mysteriously those who conspired against society at the
favor of mystery; but they were the occult soldiers of the
light, they must have burst the day on all the frames
criminal, and that’s what this sudden splendor meant
which illuminated the tribunal when it pronounced a sentence.
The public provisions of the law under Charlemagne
authorized this holy war against the tyrants of the night. We
can see in the Capitulars what penalties should be
punish sorcerers, diviners, enchanters, knotters
d’iguillette, those who evoke the devil, and the poisoners
by means of so-called love potions.
[263] These same laws expressly forbid disturbing the air,
to stir up storms, to make characters and
talismans, to cast spells, to do hexes, to
practice bewitchments, either on men or on
herds. Wizards, astrologers, diviners, necromancers,
occult mathematicians, are declared execrable and doomed to
same penalties as poisoners, thieves and murderers.
We will understand this severity, if we remember what we
said horrible rites of black magic and its
infanticide sacrifices; the danger had to be great,
since repression manifested itself in forms so
multiplied and so severe.
Another institution that dates back to the same sources as the saint
vehme, was the chevalerie errante. The knights errant
were a kind of free-judges who appealed to God and to
throwing them all the injustices of the squire and all the
malice of the necromans. They were armed missionaries who
slaying the disbelievers after having provided themselves with the sign of
cross; they thus deserved the memory of some noble lady, and
sanctified love by the martyrdom of a lifetime
devotion. That we are already far from these pagan courtesans
to whom slaves were sacrificed, and for which
conquerors of the old world were burning cities! To the ladies
Christians, other sacrifices are needed; you must have exposed your
life for the weak and the oppressed, one must have delivered
captives, it is necessary to have punished the profaners of the ailments
saints, and then these beautiful and white ladies with the skirts
emblazoned, with delicate and pale hands, these living Madonnas
[264] proud as lilies, returning from the Church, their books
hours under their arms and their patenosters on their belts,
will untie their veil embroidered with gold or silver, and give it
as a scarf for the knight kneeling before them who begs them
thinking of God!
We no longer remember the mistakes of Eve, they are a thousand times
forgiven and compensated by this ineffable grace of the nobles
daughters of Mary!
CHAPTER V.
MAGICIANS.
SUMMARY .– Excommunication of King Robert – Saint Louis and the
Rabbi Jéchiel – The Magic Lamp and the Enchanted Nail – Albert the
Great and his wonders – The android – The staff of St. Thomas
Aquinas.
The fundamental dogma of high science, that which consecrates the
eternal law of equilibrium, had obtained its entire
realization in the constitution of the Christian world. Two columns
alive supported the edifice of civilization: the pope and
the emperor_.
But the empire was divided by escaping the weak hands of
Louis le Débonnaire and Charles le Chauve. The power
temporal, abandoned to the chances of conquest or
intrigue, lost this providential unity which put it in
harmony with Rome. The Pope often had to intervene as a great
justice, and at his own risk he suppressed the lusts
and the audacity of so many divided sovereigns.
[265] Excommunication was then a terrible punishment, for it was
sanctioned by universal beliefs, and produced, by a
mysterious effect of this magnetic chain of reprobations,
phenomena which frightened the crowd. This is how Robert the
Pious, having incurred this terrible penalty by marriage
illegitimate, became the father of a monstrous child similar to these
figures of demons that the Middle Ages knew how to render so completely
and so ridiculously misshapen. This sad fruit of a union
condemned at least attested to the tortures of conscience and
dreams of terror which had agitated the mother. Robert saw a
proof of the wrath of God, and submitted to the sentence
pontifical: he renounced a marriage that the Church declared
incestuous; he repudiated Berthe to marry Constance de Provence,
and it was up to him to see in suspicious manners and in
the haughty character of this new wife a second punishment
of the sky.
The chroniclers of that time seem to be very fond of
evil legends, but they show, telling them, well
more credulity than taste. All the monks’ nightmares,
all the sick dreams of the nuns are considered
real appearances. These are disgusting phantasmagorias,
stupid speeches, impossible transfigurations,
which is lacking, to be amusing, only the verve
artistic work of Callot and Cyrano Bergerac. Nothing of the sort,
from the reign of Robert to that of Saint Louis, do we
seems worthy of being told.
Under the reign of Saint Louis lived the famous rabbi Jéchiel,
[266] a great kabbalist and a very remarkable physicist. All we say
of his lamp and his magic nail proves that he had discovered
electricity, or at least that he knew the main ones
uses; because this knowledge, as old as magic, is
transmitted as one of the keys to high initiation.
When night came, a shining star appeared in
the home of Jéchiel; the light was so bright that we did not
could stare at her without being dazzled, she was projecting a radiance
nuanced colors of the rainbow. We never saw her
faint or go out, and we knew that it was
supplied neither with oil nor with any of the substances
fuels then known.
When an intruder or a curious malicious person tried to
to enter Jéchiel’s house, and persisted in tormenting the hammer
from his door, the rabbi knocked on a nail that was stuck in
his cabinet, he escaped at the same time from the head of the
nail and hammer on the door a bluish sparkle, and the
misguided was shaken in such a way that he cried out for mercy,
and thought he felt the earth parting beneath his feet. One day,
a hostile crowd thronged to this door with murmurs and
threats: they held each other’s arms to
resist the commotion and the alleged earthquake. The
more daring shook the hammer on the door furiously. Jechiel
touched his nail. Instantly the assailants overturned
on top of each other and ran away screaming like people
burnt; they were sure they felt the earth open up and the
swallow up to their knees, they didn’t know how they were
gone out; but for nothing in the world they would not have gone back to do
[267] the uproar at the sorcerer’s door. Jehiel thus conquered his
tranquility through the terror it spread.
Saint Louis, who, to be a great Catholic, was not one
less a great king, wanted to know Jechiel; he made him come to
his court, had several talks with him, remained fully
satisfied with his explanations, protected him from his enemies, and
did not cease, as long as he lived, to show him esteem and
to do him good.
At this same time lived Albert the Great, who still passes
among the people for the great master of all magicians. The
chroniclers assure that he possessed the Philosopher’s Stone, and
that he succeeded, after thirty years of work, at the solution of
android problem; that is, he made a man
artificial, alive, speaking and answering all questions
with such precision and subtlety, that Saint Thomas
Aquinas, annoyed at not being able to silence him, broke him
with a blow of a stick. Such is the popular fable; let’s see this
that it means.
The mystery of the formation of man and his appearance
primitive on earth has always seriously preoccupied the curious
who seek the secrets of nature. Man, in fact,
appears the last in the fossil world, and the days of the
creation of Moses deposited their successive debris, attesting
that those days were long eras: how can mankind
did she form? Genesis tells us that God made the first man
silt of the earth, and breathed life into it; we don’t
let us not doubt for a moment the truth of this assertion. Far from
we, however, the heretical and anthropomorphic idea of a God
[268] shaping clay with his hands. God has no
hands, he is a pure spirit, and he brings out his creations
from each other by the very forces which it gives to nature. Yes
therefore the Lord drew Adam out of the silt of the earth, we must
understand that man came out of the earth under the influence of
God, but in a natural way. Adam’s name in hebrew
denotes a red earth; Now, what can this red earth be?
This is what the alchemists were looking for: so that the great
work was not the secret of the transmutation of metals,
indifferent and incidental result, it was the universal arcane of
life was the search for the central point of transformation
where light becomes matter and condenses into a land that
contains within it the principle of movement and life; it was
the generalization of the phenomenon which colors the blood red by the
creation of these innumerable globules magnetized like the worlds
and alive like animals. Metals, for the disciples
Hermes, were the coagulated blood of the passing earth, as
that of the man, from white to black and from black to vermeil, following
the work of light. Put this fluid back into motion by
heat, and restore to it the coloring fertilization of light to
means of electricity, such was the first part of
the work of the wise; but the end was harder and more
sublime, it was a question of rediscovering the Adamic land which is the
coagulated blood of living earth; and the supreme dream of
philosophers was to complete the work of Prometheus by imitating the
work of God, that is, by giving birth to a child man
of science, as Adam was the child of omnipotence
divine: this dream was perhaps foolish, but it was beautiful.
[269] Black magic, which always ape the magic of light, but in
taking it backwards, was also very concerned about the android,
because she wanted to make it the instrument of her passions and
the oracle of hell. For that it was necessary to do violence to the
nature and get some sort of poisonous mushroom full of
concentrated human malice, a living realization of all
crimes. So we looked for the mandrake under the gallows
hanged; it was torn off by a dog that was tied to the
root, and struck with a fatal blow: the dog had to
pluck the mandrake in convulsions of agony. The soul of
dog then passed through the plant and attracted that of the
hanged … But that’s enough horrors and nonsense. The curious
of such a science can consult this vulgar grimoire
known in the countryside under the name of Petit Albert; they there
will see how we can also make the mandrake in the form
of a rooster with a human figure. Stupidity in all these recipes
the contention to the foul, and indeed one cannot outrage
nature voluntarily without overthrowing at the same time all
laws of reason.
Albert the Great was neither infanticide nor deicide, he had
committed neither the crime of Tantalus nor that of Prometheus, but he
had completed creating and arming this theology from scratch
purely scholastic, resulting from the categories of Aristotle and
sentences of Peter Lombard, this logic of the syllogism which
argues instead of reasoning, and who finds an answer to everything
subtly on the terms. It was less a philosophy than
philosophical automaton, responding by spring, and unwinding its
[270] theses as a cogwheel movement; it was not the Word
human, it was the monotonous cry of a machine, the inanimate speech
an android; it was the fatal precision of mechanics,
place of the free application of rational necessities. Holy
Thomas Aquinas suddenly broke all this scaffolding of
words mounted in advance, proclaiming the eternal empire of
reason by this magnificent sentence that we often have
quoted: “A thing is not right because God wills it, but
God wants her because she is righteous. ” The next consequence
of this proposition was this, arguing from most to
less: “One thing is not true because Aristotle said it,
but Aristotle could not reasonably have said it unless it is
true. Seek therefore first of all truth and righteousness, and
science of Aristotle will be given to you in addition. “
Aristotle galvanized by scholasticism was the real android
of Albert the Great; and the masterful staff of St. Thomas Aquinas,
this was the doctrine of the Theological Sum, a masterpiece of
force and reason that we will still study in our schools of
theology when we want to return seriously to the healthy and
strong studies.
As for the philosopher’s stone transmitted by Saint Dominic to
Albert the Great, and through the latter to St. Thomas Aquinas, he
should be understood only the philosophical and religious basis of
ideas of that time. If Saint Dominic had known how to play the big
work, he would have bought for Rome the empire of the world, of which he was
so jealous for the Church, and would have used to heat its crucibles
that fire which burned so many heretics. Saint Thomas Aquinas
changed everything he touched to gold, but that’s figuratively
only and taking gold for the emblem of truth. It is
[271] here the opportunity to say a few more words about science
hermetic_ cultivated since the first Christian centuries by
Ostanes, Romarius, Queen Cleopatra, the Arabs Geber,
Alfarabius and Salmana, Morien, Artéphius, Aristée. This science,
taken in an absolute way, can be called the kabbalah
director or the magie of works; it therefore has three degrees
analogues: religious realization, philosophical realization,
physical realization. Religious achievement is the
lasting foundation of empire and priesthood; the achievement
philosophical is the establishment of an absolute doctrine and a
hierarchical teaching; physical realization is the
discovery and application in the microcosm, or small world,
of the creative law which incessantly populates the grand universe.
This law is that of motion combined with substance, of
fixed with the volatile, moist with the solid; this movement has
for principle the divine impulse, and for instrument the light
universal, ethereal in infinity, astral in stars and
planets, metallic, specific or mercurial in the
metals, vegetable in plants, vital in animals,
magnetic or personal in men.
This light is the epitome of Paracelsus, which is found at
the latent state and in the radiant state in all substances
created; this quintessence is the true elixir of life which
is extracted from the earth by cultivation, from metals by
incorporation, rectification, exaltation and synthesis,
plants by distillation and coction, animals by
absorption, of men by generation, of air by
breathing. What made Aristée say that he must take
[272] air to air; to Khunrath, that the living mercury of
the perfect man formed by the androgyne; to almost all, that it is necessary
extract metals, medicine from metals, and that this
medicine, basically the same for all kingdoms, is however
graduated and specified according to forms and species. Usage
of this medicine had to be threefold: by sympathy, by
repulsion or by equilibrium. The graduated quintessence was only
the auxiliary of the forces; the medicine of each reign was to be
draw from this reign even with the addition of the principiant mercury,
terrestrial or mineral, and living mercury synthesized or
human magnetism.
These are the most abridged and quickest overviews of
this science, vast and deep like the Kabbalah, mysterious
like magic, real like the exact sciences, but decried
by the often disappointed greed of false followers, and the obscurities
whose true sages indeed enveloped their theories and
their work.
CHAPTER VI.
FAMOUS TRIALS.
SUMMARY – Three famous trials – The Templars, Joan of Arc and
Gilles de Laval – Lords of Raitz.
The societies of the old world had perished by selfishness
materialist of the castes who, by immobilizing themselves and
multitudes in hopeless reprobation, had deprived the
[273] captive power in the hands of a small number of elected officials from this
circulatory movement which is the principle of progress, of
movement and life. A power without antagonism, without
competition, and therefore uncontrolled, had been disastrous
to priestly kingships; the republics, on the other hand,
had perished by the conflict of freedoms which, in the absence of
any hierarchically and strongly sanctioned duty, are not
sooner than so many rival tyrannies.
To find a stable environment between these two abysses, the idea of
Christian hierophants had been to create a society dedicated to
self-denial by solemn vows, protected by regulations
severe, which would be recruited by initiation, and which, alone
depositary of the great religious and social secrets, would make
kings and pontiffs without exposing itself to the corruption of
the power. That was the secret of this kingdom of Jesus Christ
who without being of this world would govern all the greatness of it.
[Illustration: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CROSS or the plan of the third
temple.]
This idea presided over the foundation of the great religious orders, if
often at war with secular authorities, either
ecclesiastics or civilians; its realization was also the dream
dissident sects of Gnostics or the illuminated who
claimed to link their faith to the primitive tradition of
Christianity of Saint John. She finally became a threat to
the Church and for society when a rich and dissolved order,
initiated into the mysterious doctrines of the Kabbalah, appeared disposed to
turn against legitimate authority the conservative principles of
hierarchy, and threatened the whole world with an immense
revolution.
The Templars, whose history is so little known, were these
[274] terrible conspirators, and it is time to finally reveal the
secret of their fall, to absolve the memory of Clement V and
Philippe le Bel.
In 1118, neuf knights crossed in the East, of which
were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens,
consecrated to religion and took an oath in the hands of
of the Patriarch of Constantinople, always sits secretly or
publicly hostile to that of Rome since Photius. The stated goal
of the Templars was to protect the Christians who came
visit the holy places; their secret goal was reconstruction
of the temple of Solomon on the model prophesied by Ezekiel.
This reconstruction, formally predicted by the mystics
Judaizers of the first centuries, had become the secret dream of
patriarchs of the East. The temple of Solomon rebuilt and dedicated to
Catholic worship was, in fact, becoming the metropolis of the universe.
The East prevailed over the West, and the Patriarchs of
Constantinople seized the papacy.
Historians, to explain the name templiers given to this
military order, claim that Baudoin II, king of Jerusalem,
had given them a house near Solomon’s temple.
But there they are committing an enormous anachronism, since at this
period not only the temple of Solomon no longer existed, but
there was no stone left on stone of the second temple built by
Zerubbabel on the ruins of the first, and it would have been difficult to
indicate precisely the place.
It must be concluded that the house given to the Templars by
Baudoin was located not near the temple of Solomon, but near the
[275] land on which these secret and armed missionaries of the
Patriarch of the East intended to rebuild it.
The Templars had taken for their models, in the Bible, the
warrior masons of Zerubbabel, who worked while holding the sword
with one hand and the trowel in the other. This is why the sword
and the trowel were the insignia of the Templars, who later,
as we shall see, hid themselves under the name of frères masons.
The Templar trowel is quadruple and the triangular blades
are arranged in the shape of a cross, which makes up a pantacle
Kabbalistic known under the name of cross d’Orient.
The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his order,
was not precisely to serve the ambition of the patriarchs
of Constantinople. At that time there was a sect in the East
of Johannine Christians, who claimed to be the only initiates
true mysteries of the religion of the Savior. They claimed
know the real story of Jesus Christ, and, adopting in
part of Jewish traditions and Talmudic narratives, they
claimed that the facts recounted in the Gospels are not
only allegories of which Saint John gives the key by saying,
“That we could fill the world with books that we would write on
the words and deeds of Jesus Christ; ” words which, following
them, would be a ridiculous exaggeration, if it were not,
indeed, from an allegory and a legend that can be varied and
extend to infinity.
In terms of historical and real facts, here is what the
Johannites said:
A young girl from Nazareth, named Mirjam, betrothed to a young
man of his tribe, named Jochanan, was surprised by a certain
[276] Pandira, or Panther, who abused her by force after
introduced in his room under the clothes and under the name of his
fiancé. Jochanan, knowing his misfortune, left her without
compromise, since indeed she was innocent, and the young
daughter gave birth to a son who was named Josuah or Jesus.
This child was adopted by a rabbi named Joseph who took him
with him in Egypt; there he was initiated into the secret sciences, and
the priests of Osiris, recognizing in him the true
incarnation of Horus long promised to the followers, the
consecrated sovereign pontiff of universal religion.
Josuah and Joseph returned to Judea where the knowledge and virtue of
young man soon aroused the envy and hatred of
priests; who once publicly reproached him for illegitimacy
of his birth. Josuah, who loved and revered his mother,
questioned his master and learned the whole story of the crime of
Pandira and the misfortunes of Mirjam. His first movement was to
deny her publicly by telling her in the middle of a feast of
wedding: “Woman, what do you and me have in common?” But
then thinking that a poor woman shouldn’t be punished
of having suffered what she could not prevent, he cried out: “My
mother has not sinned, she has not lost her innocence; she
is a virgin, and yet she is a mother; a double honor to him
be returned! As for me, I have no father on earth. I
am the son of God and of mankind! ”
We will not take this distressing fiction any further for
Christian hearts; Suffice it to say that the
Johannites went so far as to make Saint John the Evangelist
[277] responsible for this alleged tradition, and which they attributed
to this apostle the foundation of their secret Church.
The great pontiffs of this sect took the title of Christ
and claimed to have succeeded each other since Saint John by a
uninterrupted transmission of powers. The one who appears, to
the time of the founding of the temple order, of these privileges
imaginaries was called Theoclet; he knew Hugues de Payens, he
initiated him into the mysteries and hopes of his pretended Church;
he seduced him with ideas of sovereign priesthood and supreme
royalty, he finally appointed him for his successor.
Thus the order of the knights of the temple was tainted from its
origin of schism and conspiracy against kings.
These tendencies were shrouded in deep mystery and the order
made exterior profession of the most perfect orthodoxy. The
chiefs only knew where they wanted to go; the rest
followed without suspicion.
Acquire influence and wealth, then intrigue, and at the
need to fight to establish the Johannine dogma, such were the
goal and the means proposed to the initiated brothers. “See, their
it was said, the papacy and rival monarchies bargain
today, to buy oneself, to corrupt oneself, and tomorrow maybe
destroy each other. All this will be the inheritance of the temple; the world
will soon ask us for sovereigns and pontiffs. We
balance the universe, and we will be the arbiters of
masters of the world. “
The Templars had two doctrines, one hidden and reserved for
masters, it was that of johannism; the other public, it was
[278] the catholic-Roman doctrine. They thus deceived the
adversaries whom they aspired to supplant, The Johannine
followers was the Kabbalah of the Gnostics, soon degenerated into a
mystical pantheism pushed to the point of idolatry of nature and
hatred of any revealed dogma. To be more successful and make
partisans, they cherished the regrets of the fallen cults and the
hopes of new cults, by promising everyone freedom
of conscience and a new orthodoxy which would be the synthesis
of all persecuted beliefs. They came so until
recognize the pantheistic symbolism of the great masters in
black magic, and, the better to detach from obedience to
religion which condemned them in advance, they returned the honors
divine to the monstrous idol of the Baphomet, as the tribes formerly
dissenters worshiped the golden calves of Dan and Bethel.
Recently discovered monuments, and precious documents that
date back to the 13th century, more than prove that
sufficient all that we have just put forward. Other evidence
still are hidden in the annals and under the symbols of the
occult masonry.
Struck with death in its very principle, and anarchic because it
was dissenting, the Order of the Knights of the Temple had devised a
great work which he was unable to perform, because he
knew neither humility nor personal self-sacrifice. Besides
the Templars being mostly uneducated, and capable
only to wield the sword well, had nothing
was necessary to govern and to chain if necessary this queen of the
world called opinion. Hugues de Payens had not had the
[279] depth of view which later distinguished a founding military
also from a formidable militia to kings. The Templars were
Jesuits badly succeeded.
Their slogan was to get rich to buy the world.
They did in fact, and in 1312 they had in Europe
only more than nine thousand seigneuries. Wealth was their
pitfall; they became insolent and let their disdain pierce
for the religious and social institutions they aspired to
overthrow. We know the word of Richard the Lionheart to whom a
ecclesiastical, to whom he allowed great familiarity,
having said: “Sire, you have three daughters who cost you dearly and
which it would be very advantageous for you to get rid of: these are
ambition, greed and lust – Really! said the king: eh
good! let’s marry them. I give ambition to the Templars, avarice
to monks and lust to bishops. I am sure in advance of
consent of the parties. ”
The ambition of the Templars was fatal to them; we guessed too much their
projects and we warned them. Pope Clement V and King Philippe
Le Bel gave a signal to Europe and the Templars,
enveloped, so to speak, in an immense net, were
taken, disarmed and thrown into prison. Never had a coup
accomplished with a more formidable set. The whole world was
stunned, and we awaited the strange revelations of a
trial which was to have had so much impact through the
ages.
It was impossible to unfold in front of the people the plan of the
conspiracy of the Templars; it would have been to initiate the multitude into
secrets of the masters. The charge of magic was resorted to, and
[280] There were informers and witnesses. The Templars, at
their reception, spit on Christ, denied God,
gave the grand master obscene kisses, worshiped a
brass head with carbuncle eyes, conversing with a large
black cat and mated with devils. This is what we
did not fear to bear seriously on their act
accusation. We know the end of this drama and how Jacques de
Molai and his companions perished in the flames; but before
die, the head of the Temple organized and instituted
occult_. From the depths of his prison, the grand master created four lodges
metropolitan areas, in Naples for the East, in Edinburgh for
the West, in Stockholm for the North and in Paris for the South. The
Pope and King soon perished in a strange way and
sudden. Squin de Florian, the main denouncer of the order,
died assassinated. By breaking the sword of the Templars, we had
made a dagger, and their proscribed trowels did not
more than tombs.
Now let them fade into the darkness or they go
hide by plotting their revenge there. When the big one will come
revolution, we will see them reappear and we will recognize them
to their signs and to their works.
The greatest magic trial that we found in history,
after that of the Templars, is that of a virgin and almost
of a saint. The Church has been accused of having in this circumstance
served the cowardly resentments of a vanquished party, and
asks with anxiety to what anathemas have been doomed by the
saint-sége the assassins of Jeanne d’Arc. Let’s say everything
[281] first of all to those who do not know it, that Pierre Cauchon,
the unworthy bishop of Beauvais, struck with sudden death by the hand
of God, was excommunicated after his death by Pope Callistus IV, and
that his bones torn from the holy land were thrown into the
roads. It was therefore not the Church which judged and condemned the
Maid of Orleans is a bad priest and an apostate.
Charles VII who abandoned this noble girl to his executioners was
since under the hand of a vengeful providence; he let himself
starve for fear of being poisoned by one’s own
son. Fear is the torture of cowards.
This king had lived for a courtesan and had obeyed for her this
kingdom which was kept for him by a virgin. The courtesan and the
virgin were sung by our national poets. Jeanne D’Arc
by Voltaire, and Agnès Sorel by Béranger.
Jeanne had died innocent, but the laws against magic
soon afterwards reached out and punished a great culprit.
He was one of Charles VII’s most valiant captains, and the
services he had rendered to the State could not balance the number
and the enormity of his crimes.
The tales of the ogre and of Croquemitaine were realized and
outdone by the actions of this fantastic villain, and his
history remained in the memory of children under the name of the
Blue Beard.
Gilles de Laval, Lord of Raiz, had indeed such a beard.
black, that it seemed to be blue as can be seen by its
portrait which is in the museum of Versailles, in the room of
Marshals; he was a Marshal of Brittany, brave because he
[282] was French, ostentatious, because he was rich, and a sorcerer
because he was crazy.
The disturbance of the faculties of the Lord of Raiz manifested itself
first by a luxurious devotion and an exaggerated magnificence.
He never walked except preceded by the cross and the banner;
his chaplains were covered with gold and adorned like prelates;
he had at home a whole college of little pages or children of
always richly dressed choir. Every day one of these
children was sent to the marshal, and his comrades did not
did not see return: a newcomer replaced the one who was
gone and children were strictly forbidden to inquire about the
fate of all those who disappeared like this and even to talk about it
between them.
The marshal had these children taken from poor parents,
that were dazzled by promises, and which undertook not to
never again take care of their children, to whom the lord of
Raiz assured, he said, a bright future.
Now, here’s what was happening:
Devotion was only a mask and served as a passport to
infamous practices.
The marshal, ruined by his crazy expenses, wanted at all costs
to create wealth; alchemy had exhausted its last
resources, usurious loans were soon to fail;
he then resolved to try the last experiments in magic
black, and get gold through hell.
An apostate priest, from the diocese of Saint-Malo, a Florentine, appointed
Prélati, and the Marshal’s intendant, named Sillé, were his
[283] confidants and his accomplices. He had married a young girl from
great birth and held it, so to speak, enclosed in its
Machecoul castle: there was in this castle a turret
whose door was walled up. She threatened ruin, said the marshal
and no one ever tried to enter it.
However, Madame de Raiz, whom her husband often left alone
during the night, had seen reddish lights go and
come into this tower.
She did not dare to question her husband, whose bizarre character
and gloomy inspired him with the greatest terror.
On Easter day in the year 1440, the Marshal, after having
solemnly received communion in his chapel, took leave of the
châtelaine de Machecoul, announcing that he was leaving for the
Holy Land; the poor woman did not question him further, so much
she trembled in front of him; she was several months pregnant.
The marshal allowed him to bring his sister to her, in order to
to make a company of it during his absence. Madame de Raiz
made use of this permission, and sent for his sister; Gilles from
Laval then mounted his horse and left.
Madame de Raiz then confided to her sister her concerns and
fears. What was going on at the castle? Why the lord of
Was Raiz that dark? Why these absences multiplied? that
were these children who disappeared every day?
Why these night lights in the walled tower? These questions
aroused the curiosity of the two women to the highest degree.
How to do it, however. The marshal had expressly forbidden
approaching the dangerous tower, and, before leaving, he
formally reiterated this defense.
[284] There must have been a secret entrance: Madame de Raiz and her sister
Anne looked for her; all the lower rooms of the castle were
explored, corner by corner and stone by stone; finally in the
chapel, and behind the altar, a brass button, hidden in a
clutter of sculpture, yielded under the pressure of the hand, a
stone fell over, and the two curious, thrilling
see the first steps of a staircase.
This staircase led the two women to the doomed tower.
On the first floor, they found a sort of chapel whose
the cross was overturned and the candles black; on the altar was
placed a hideous figure presumably representing the demon.
In the second, there were furnaces, retorts, stills,
coal, and finally the whole blower apparatus.
On the third floor, the bedroom was dark; we breathed an air there
bland and fetid which forced the two young visitors to
come out. Madame de Raiz bumped into a vase which
overturned, and she felt her dress and her feet flooded with
thick and unfamiliar liquid; when she returned to the light of
landing, she saw herself bathed in blood.
Sister Anne wanted to run away, but at Madame de Raiz’s
curiosity was stronger than horror and fear; she
went down, took the lamp from the infernal chapel and went up
in the room on the third floor: the a horrible sight
offered himself to his sight.
Copper basins full of blood were arranged in order
[285] along the walls, with labels bearing dates, and
in the middle of the room, on a black marble table, was lying
the corpse of a recently slaughtered child.
One of the basins had been overturned by Madame de Raiz, and a
black blood had spread widely on the wooden floor
rotten and badly swept.
The two women were half-dead with terror. Madame de Raiz
wanted at all costs to erase the indications of his indiscretion;
she went to get water and a sponge to wash the
planks, but it only spread the stain which, blackish
that she was, became bloody and ruddy … Suddenly
a great rumor resounds in the castle; we hear the shouting
people who call Madame de Raiz, and she distinguishes perfectly
these formidable words: “Here is my lord returning!” The
two women rush towards the stairs, but at the same moment
they hear a great sound of footsteps in the devil’s chapel
and voice; Sister Anne runs away, going up to the battlements
of the tower; Madame de Raiz staggers down and finds herself
face to face with her husband, who went up followed by the apostate priest and
by Prélati.
Gilles de Laval grabs his wife by the arm without saying anything to her and
takes him to the devil’s chapel; then Prelati said to the
Marshal: “You see that it is necessary, and that the victim has come
of herself. so be it, said the marshal; start mass
black.”
The apostate priest walked towards the altar, M. de Raiz opened a
small cabinet made in the altar itself and took a large
knife, then he came back and sat down next to his half-wife
[286] fainted and knocked down on a bench against the wall of the chapel;
sacrilegious ceremonies began.
You should know that M. de Raiz, instead of taking the
road to Jerusalem, had taken that to Nantes where
Prelati; he had entered like a madman into this wretched man’s house,
threatening to kill him if he did not give him the means to obtain
what the hell he had been asking her for so long. Prélati for
win a deadline had told him that the absolute conditions of the
master were terrible and it was necessary above all that the
Marshal decided to sacrifice his last child to the devil
forcibly torn from his mother’s breast. Gilles de Laval had nothing
answered, but he returned immediately to Machecoul,
dragging after him the Florentine sorcerer with the priest his
partner in crime. He had found his wife in the walled-up tower and
knows the rest.
However the sister Anne forgotten on the platform of the tower and
not daring to come down, had untied his veil and was doing
distress signals, to which two horsemen responded
followed by a few men-at-arms who galloped towards the castle;
it was his two brothers who, having learned of the alleged departure of
Sire de Laval for Palestine, came to visit and console
Madame de Raiz. They soon entered with a crash into the courtyard of the
castle; Gilles de Laval then interrupting the horrible ceremony,
said to his wife: “Madame, I will be forgiving you, and he will no longer be
question of this if you do what i am going to tell you:
»Go back to your room, change your clothes and come to me
join in the hall of honor where I will receive your brothers;
[287] if in front of them you say a word or make them
suspect something, I’ll bring you back here after they leave,
and we will resume the black mass where we left it, it is
at the consecration that you must die. Take a good look where I
put down the knife. “
He gets up then, leads his wife to the door of his room
and goes down to the hall of honor, where he receives the two
gentlemen with their retinue, telling them that his wife is getting ready
and will come and kiss his brothers.
A few moments later, in fact, appears Madame de Raiz, pale
like a deceased. Gilles de Laval kept looking at her
fixedly and dominated her with his gaze: “You are sick, my
sister? – No, it is the fatigue of pregnancy …. “And all
low the poor woman added: “He wants to kill me, save me ….”
Suddenly sister Anne, who had managed to get out of the
turn, enter the room, shouting: “Take us away, save us,
my brothers, this man is an assassin; ” and it showed Gilles
of Laval.
The marshal calls his people to his aid, the escort of the two
brothers surrounds the two women and puts the sword in their hand; But
the people of the Lord of Raiz, seeing him furious, disarmed him at
instead of obeying him. During this time Madame de Raiz, her sister and
his brothers reach the drawbridge and leave the castle.
The next day, Duke Jean V had Machecoul invested, and Gilles de
Laval, who no longer relied on his men-at-arms, surrendered without
resistance. The Parliament of Brittany had decreed it to take
body as homicide; the ecclesiastical judges prepared to
judge him first as a heretic, sodomite and sorcerer. Voices,
whom terror had long kept silent, rose from
[288] all sides to ask him for the missing children. It was a
mourning and universal clamor throughout the province; we
searched the castles of Machecoul and Chantocé, and they found
remains of over two hundred child skeletons; others
had been burned and completely consumed.
Gilles de Laval appeared before his judges with a supreme
arrogance .– “_ Who are you? _ he was asked, following the
custom .– I am Gilles de Laval, Marshal of Brittany, Lord
de Raiz, de Machecoul, de Chantocé and other places. And you who
question me, who are you? – We are your judges, the
magistrates in the Church Court .– You, my judges! let’s go then; I
you know my masters; you are simoniacs and
ribauds; you sell your god to buy the joys of the devil.
So do not speak of judging me, because if I am guilty you are
certainly my instigators and my accomplices, you who
should be a good example. Cease your insults, and
answer us! – I’d rather be hanged by the neck than
answer you; I am surprised that the president of Brittany
lets know about these kinds of affairs; you question without
doubt to educate yourself and then do worse than you have
done again. “
This insolent height, however, fell before the threat of
torture. He then confessed, before the bishop of Saint-Brieux and the
President Pierre de l’Hôpital, his murders and his sacrileges; he
claimed that the motive for the massacre of children was
execrable pleasure he sought during the agony of these poor
little beings. The president seemed to doubt the truth and
[289] asked the Marshal again. said abruptly
this one, you torment yourself and I with it.
does not torment you, replied the president; so I am very
amazed at what you say to me and can’t just tell me
content, so I desire, and would like to know from you the
pure truth.” The marshal answered him: “Really there was no
no other cause or intention than what I have already told you; than
do you want more, haven’t I confessed enough to
kill ten thousand men? “
What Gilles de Raiz did not want to say is that he was looking for
the philosopher’s stone in the blood of slaughtered children. It was
the greed which drove him to this monstrous debauchery; he
believed, on the faith of his necromancers, that the universal agent of
life had to be suddenly coagulated by action and reaction
a combination of insult to nature and murder; he collected
then the iridescent film that formed on the blood when it
began to cool down, subjected him to various
fermentations and digested the product in the egg
philosophy of the athanor, by adding salt, sulfur and
mercury. He had doubtless taken this recipe from a few
of those old Hebrew grimoires, which would have been enough if they had
been known to doom the Jews to the loathing of the whole earth.
In the persuasion where they were that the act of fertilization
human attracts and coagulates astral light by reacting by
sympathy for beings subjected to the magnetism of man, the
Israelite wizards had come to such deviations that their
reproaches Philo, in a passage reported by the astrologer
[290] Gaffarel. They had their trees grafted by women who
were inserting the graft while a man was engaged on them to
acts outrageous to nature. Always, when it comes to
of black magic, we find the same horrors and the spirit of
darkness is hardly inventive.
Gilles de Laval was burned alive in the meadow of Magdeleine, near
from Nantes; he got permission to go to his death with all the
splendor that had accompanied him during his life, as if he wanted
to devote to all the ignominy of his torment the pomp and greed
who had so completely degraded and so fatally lost it.
CHAPTER VII.
DEVIL SUPERSTITIONS.
SUMMARY – Apparitions – Possessions – Lawsuits against
hallucinated .– Popular nonsense and cruelties .– A few words about
seemingly inexplicable phenomena.
We have said how sober the Church has been in decisions
relative to the genius of evil; she teaches not to fear him,
she advises her children not to take care of it and not to
never pronounce his name. However the inclination of imaginations
sick and weak heads for the monstrous and the horrible
gave, during the bad days of the Middle Ages, an importance
formidable and the most threatening forms to this dark being
which deserves only oblivion, since it eternally ignores the
truth and light.
[291] This apparent realization of the evil ghost was like
an embodiment of human madness; the devil became the
nightmare of the cloisters, the human spirit frightened itself,
and we saw the supposedly reasonable being tremble before his
own chimeras. A dark misshapen monster seemed to have
spread his bat wings between heaven and earth to
prevent youth and life from trusting in the promises of
sun and the peaceful serenity of the stars. This harpy of the
superstition poisoned everything with its breath, infected everything with
his contact: we could not eat and drink without fear of swallowing
the eggs of the reptile; we dared not look at the beauty, because
perhaps it was an illusion of the monster; if we laughed, we
thought he heard the sneer of the
eternal tormentor; if we cried, we thought we saw it
insult to tears. The devil seemed to hold God prisoner
in heaven, and to impose blasphemy on men on earth and
the despair.
Superstitions quickly lead to ineptitude and insanity;
nothing more deplorable and tedious than the series of
stories of evil appearances, including vulgar writers
of the history of magic have overloaded their compilations.
Peter the Venerable sees the devil take a dip in the
latrines; another columnist recognizes it as a
cat which resembled a dog, and which frolicked like a monkey;
a lord of Corasse had at his command an elf named Orthon,
who appeared to him in the form of a prodigiously thin sow
and gaunt. Master Guillaume Édeline, Prior of Saint-Germain
des Prés, declared to have seen it “in the form and semblance of a
[292] sheep that it seemed to him to kiss brutally under the tail
as a sign of reverence and honor. “
Unhappy old women accused themselves of having had it for
lover; Marshal Trivulce was dying of fright while fencing
thrust and size, against devils whose he saw his
full room; the unfortunate idiots were burnt by the hundreds
and the foolish who confessed to having had dealings with the evil one; we
heard only about incubi and succubi; judges
gravely welcomed revelations that should have been dismissed
to doctors; public opinion, moreover, exercised over them a
irresistible pressure, and indulgence for wizards would have
exposed the magistrates themselves to all popular fury.
The persecution of the mad made madness contagious,
and the maniacs were tearing each other apart; we beat to death,
we made it burn slowly, we plunged into ice water the
unhappy that the public rumor accused of magic for the
force to lift the spells they had cast, and justice
only intervened to finish on a pyre what had started
the blind rage of multitudes.
By telling the story of Gilles de Laval, we have
sufficiently proven that black magic can be a real crime and
the greatest of all crimes; but the misfortune of the times was
to confuse the sick with the criminals, and to punish those
that should have been treated with patience and charity.
Where does responsibility begin in humans? where does it end? It is
a problem which must often worry virtuous custodians
of human justice. Caligula, son of Germanicus, seemed
[293] to have inherited all the virtues of his father; a poison that we
makes him confuse his reason, and he becomes the fear of
world. Was he really guilty, and should we not
take only his crimes from those cowardly Romans who
obeyed instead of having him locked up?
Father Hilarion Tissot, whom we have already mentioned, goes further
that we and wants all consent to crime to be madness;
unfortunately he always explains madness by the obsession with
bad spirit. We could ask this good religious this
what he would think of a father who, after closing his
door to a scoundrel recognized capable of all kinds of evil, he
would leave the right to frequent, advise, take,
to obsess her grandchildren? So let’s admit, to be really
Christians, may the devil whoever he be, obsess only those who
give themselves voluntarily to him, and these are responsible for
whatever he can suggest to them, as the drunkard should be
responsible for all the disorders to which he can abandon himself
under the influence of drunkenness.
Drunkenness is fleeting madness and madness is drunkenness
permed; both are caused by engorgement
phosphoric acid from the nerves of the brain, which destroys our balance
luminous and deprives the soul of its precision instrument. Blade
spiritual and personal then resembles Moses bound and
swaddled in his asphalt cradle and abandoned in
swaying of the waters of the Nile; she is carried away by the soul
fluidic and material world, this mysterious water on
which hovered the breath of the Eloisms, when the divine verb
was formulated in these luminous words: Let there be light!
[294] The soul of the world is a force which always tends towards equilibrium; he
the will must triumph over it or triumph over
will. All incomplete life torments her like a
monstrosity, and always strives to reabsorb the
intellectual miscarriages; that’s why maniacs and
hallucinated feel an irresistible attraction to destruction and
the death; annihilation seems to them a good, and not only
they would like to die, but they would be happy to see die
others. They feel that the life escapes them, the conscience
burns them and despairs them; their existence is only feeling
of death, it is the torment of hell.
One hears an imperious voice that orders him to kill his son
to the cradle. He struggles, he cries, he runs away and ends up taking
an ax and by killing the child; the other, and this dreadful
history is very recent, persecuted by voices who
ask for hearts, knock his parents out, open their chests
and half gnaws at their torn hearts. Whoever commits about
released a bad deed, give down payment for destruction
eternal and cannot predict in advance where this disastrous market will
will lead.
Being is substance and life. Life is manifested by the
movement, and movement is perpetuated by balance;
equilibrium is therefore the law of immortality. Consciousness is the
feeling of balance and equilibrium is the correctness and
justice. Any excess, when it is not fatal, is corrected by
a contrary excess; it is the eternal law of reactions, but if
excess rushes out of balance, it is lost in
outer darkness and becomes eternal death.
[295] The soul of the earth entices in the vertigo of the astral movement
all that does not resist him by the balanced forces of
right. Wherever an imperfect and ill-formed life manifests itself,
she brings her forces to destroy her like the spirits
vitals abound to close wounds. Hence these disorders
atmospheres that appear around certain patients,
there these fluidic commotions, these whirling of furniture, these
suspensions, these stone throws, these aerial distensions which
from a distance the sensitive and tangible mirage of
hands or feet of the obsessed. It is nature that torments itself
around a cancer she wants to eradicate, around a wound
that she wants to close, around a kind of vampire that she wants
complete death to bring it back to life.
Spontaneous movements of inert objects can only come from
of the work of the forces which magnetize the earth; a spirit,
that is to say, a thought, does not lift anything without leverage. If he
was otherwise, the almost infinite work of nature for
creation and improvement of organs would be pointless. Yes
the mind free from the senses could make matter obey its
willingly, the illustrious dead would reveal themselves to us first by
harmonious and regular movements; instead we
we always see incoherent and feverish movements
producing around sick, unintelligent and capricious beings.
These beings are disordered magnets that make the soul of
Earth; but when the earth is delirious from the eruption
of these aborted beings is that she herself suffers in
going through a crisis that will end in violent concussions.
[296] There is really a lot of childishness in some men who
pass for serious x. Here, for example, M. le marquis de
Mirville who attributes all phenomena to the devil
inexplicable. But, my dear sir, if the devil had the
power to invert the natural order, wouldn’t he
immediately so as to upset everything? With character
that one supposes, it would undoubtedly not be retained by
scruples – Oh! but, will you answer, the power of god
oppose it! – Gently: the power of God opposes it, or it
does not oppose it. If she opposes it, the devil can do nothing
to do; if she does not oppose it, it is the devil who is the
master … M. de Mirville will tell us that God allows it for a
little. Barely enough to fool the poor men, barely
enough to disturb their already solid brains, as we know.
So, in effect, it is no longer the devil who is the master; it is
God, who would be … But we do not finish: to go further, this
would be blaspheming.
We do not want to understand enough the harmonies of being, which
distribute through the series, as this illustrious
Fourier maniac. The spirit acts on the spirits through the verb.
Matter receives the imprints of the spirit and communicates with it
by means of a perfect organism; harmony in forms is
brings harmony in ideas, the common mediator is
light: light, which is spirit and life; the light, which
is the synthesis of colors, the harmony of shadows, the harmony of
shapes; light, whose vibrations are mathematics
alive. But the darkness and its fantastic mirages, but
[297] the phosphorescent errors of sleep, but the words lost
in delirium, all this creates nothing, achieves nothing; all
that, in a word, does not exist: it is the limbo of life, this
are the vapors of astral intoxication, these are the dazzling
nervous tired eyes. To follow such lights is
walking into a dead end; believe in such revelations,
it is to adore death: nature tells you so herself.
The tables tournantes only write inconsistencies and insults; this
are the tiniest echoes of thought, the most
absurd and the most anarchic; the words finally of which the most
low populace uses itself to express contempt. We are coming from
read a book by Baron de Guldenstubbé, who claims to communicate
by letters with the other world. He got answers, and
what answers! obscene drawings, hieroglyphics
hopeless, and this Greek signature πνευμα θάνατος,
the dead breath, or to better translate l’ esprit de mort. There
the last word of the phenomenal revelations of the doctrine
American, if we separate it from priestly authority and wants to make it independent from the control of the hierarchy. We
do not deny here either the reality or the importance of the phenomena, nor the
good faith of believers; but we must warn them of the dangers
to which they expose themselves if they do not prefer the spirit of
wisdom given hierarchically and divinely to the Church, to all
those messy and obscure communications in which the soul
fluidity of the earth mechanically reflects the mirages of
intelligence and the dreams of reason.
[298]
BOOK V.
ADEPTS AND THE PRIESTHOOD.
.Hey ה
FIRST CHAPTER.
PRIESTS AND POPES ACCUSED OF MAGIC.
SUMMARY – Pope Sylvester II and the so-called papess
Joan .– Impertinent assertions of Martin Polonus and
Platinum – The alleged author of Honorius’ grimoire – Analysis of
this spellbook.
We have said that since the profanations and impiities of
Gnostics, the Church had outlawed magic. The trial of
Templars completed the rupture, and since that time, reduced to
hide in the shadows to meditate his revenge, the magic
in turn outlawed the Church.
More cautious than the heresiarchs who publicly raised
altar against altar, and thus devoted themselves to proscription and
at the stake, the followers concealed their resentments and
doctrines; they bound each other by terrible oaths
and, knowing how important it is to win your case first in
court of opinion, they turned against the accusers and
their judges the sinister rumors which pursued them themselves,
and denounced to the people the priesthood as a school of magic
black.
[Illustration: TWO OCCULT SEALS, one of the great work,
the other of black magic, according to the grimoire of Honorius.]
[299] As long as he has not established his convictions and beliefs on the
unshakeable basis of reason, man is passionate about
unfortunately for the truth as for the lie, and of
on both sides, the reactions are cruel. Who can do
to stop this war? The mind of that one alone who said, “Don’t
return not evil for evil, but triumph over evil by doing
good.”
The Catholic priesthood has been accused of being a persecutor, and
however his mission is that of the good Samaritan, that’s why
that he succeeded the ruthless Levites, who go their way
without having compassion on the poor wounded man of Jericho. It’s in
exercising humanity that they prove their divine consecration.
It is therefore a supreme injustice to reject on the priesthood
the crimes of a few men who unfortunately were
coated. Any man can always be mean:
a true priest is always charitable.
False followers did not understand it that way. The
Christian priesthood, according to them, was tainted with nullity and
usurpation since the proscription of the Gnostics. “What is that,
indeed, they said, that a hierarchy whose science does not
constitute more the degrees? ” The same ignorance of the mysteries and the
same blind faith lead to the same fanaticism or the same
hypocrisy the first leaders and the last ministers of
sanctuary. The blind are leaders of the blind. The
supremacy between equals is only a result of intrigue and
by chance. Pastors consecrate the holy species with a
shameless and crude faith; they are bread crooks and
[300] eaters of human flesh. They are no longer miracles,
they are sorcerers; this is what the sectarians were saying.
To support this calumny, they invented fables; the
popes, they said, had been doomed to the spirit of darkness for
the tenth century. The learned Gerbert who was crowned under the name of
Sylvestre II, would have confessed when dying. Honorius III,
the one who confirmed the order of Saint Dominic and who preached
crusades, was himself an abominable necromancer, author of a
grimoire which still bears his name, and which is exclusively
reserved for priests. We showed and commented on this grimoire, we
thus tried to turn against the most terrible holy see
of all popular prejudices at that time: deadly hatred
of all those who, rightly or wrongly, passed publicly as
wizards.
Malicious or gullible historians have been found to
accredit these lies. So Platinum, this chronicler
scandalous of the papacy, repeats according to Martin Polonus the
calumnies against Sylvester II. If we referred to this
fable, Gerbert, who was versed in the mathematical sciences
and in the Kabbalah, would have evoked the demon and would have asked him
his help in reaching the pontificate. The devil would have it for him
promised and told him moreover that he would die only in Jerusalem,
and we can imagine that the magician made a vow internally not to
never go; so he became pope, but one day he was saying the
mass in a church in Rome, he felt seriously ill, and
remembering then that the chapel where he officiated was called the
sainte Croix of Jerusalem, he understood that it was all over; he
So had a bed stretched out in this chapel and called around
[301] of him his cardinals, he confessed aloud to having had
trade with demons, then he commanded that after his death he should be
put on a new wooden wagon to which we would harness two
virgin horses, one black and the other white; that we would launch these
horses without leading them and that their body would be buried where the
horses would stop. The chariot thus ran through Rome and
stopped in front of the Lateran Church. We then heard great
screams and loud moans, then everything fell silent again and
we could proceed to the burial; so ends this worthy legend
of the blue library.
This Martin Polonus, on whose faith Platinum repeats similar
musings, had borrowed them himself from a certain Galfride and
of a chronicler named Gervaise, whom Naudé calls “the greatest
forger of fables, and the most distinguished liar who ever
hand to pen. ” It is according to such serious historians
that the Protestants published the scandalous legend and
fairly apocryphal, from a pretended popess Joan, who was
witch too, as everyone knows, and to whom we attribute
more books of black magic. We leafed through a
history of the popess by a Protestant author, and we have
noticed two very curious engravings. They are old
portraits of the heroine as claimed by the historian, but in
reality these are two ancient tarots representing Isis crowned
of a tiara. We know that the hieroglyphic figure of the number two
in the tarot is still called the papesse; it’s a woman
wearing a tiara on which we notice the points of the
crescent moon or horns of Isis. That of the book
Protestant is still more remarkable; she has long hair
[302] and scattered; a solar cross on her chest, she is seated
between the two pillars of Hercules, and behind it stretches
the ocean with lotus flowers blooming on the surface
some water. The second portrait represents the same goddess with the
attributes of the sovereign priesthood, and his son Horus in his
arms. These two images are therefore very valuable as documents.
kabbalistic, but that does not take into account lovers of
Pope Joan.
As for Gerbert, to bring down the accusation of witchcraft,
if she could be serious about him it would suffice to say
that he was the most learned man of his century, and that having been
tutor to two sovereigns, he owed his elevation to
recognition of one of his august pupils. He had thoroughly
math and maybe knew a little more physics
that could not be known in his time; he was a man of
universal erudition and great skill, as can be
see by reading the epistles he left behind; it was not a
slinger of kings like the terrible Hildebrand. He liked better
instruct the princes to excommunicate them, and, possessing the
favor of two kings of France and three emperors, he had
no need, as Naudé judiciously remarks, to give
to the devil to successively reach the archbishoprics of Reims
and Ravenna, then finally to the papacy. It is true that there
somehow succeeded in spite of his merit, in a century when
the great politicians were taken for the possessed and the
scholars for enchanters. Gerbert was not only a
a great mathematician and a distinguished astronomer, but he excelled
[303] also in mechanics, and composed in the city of Reims, in
to say of Guillaume Malmesbery, hydraulic machines if
marvelous that the water itself performed symphonies there,
and played there the most agreeable tunes; he also reported
of Ditmare, in the city of Magdeburg, a clock, which
marked all the movements of the sky and the hour of rising and
setting stars; he still did, says Naudé, that we
we like to quote here, “this brazen test, which was so
ingeniously plowed, that the aforesaid Guillaume Malmesbery
is deceived himself, relating it to magic: also Onuphrius,
said he saw in the Farnese library a learned book
of geometry composed by this Gerbert: and for me I estimate that,
without deciding anything about the opinion of Erfordiensis and some
others, who make him author of the clocks and arithmetic that
now we have all this evidence is valid enough
to make us judge that those who had never heard of the
cube, paraléllogram, dodecahedron, almicantharath, valsagora,
almagrippa, cathalzem, and other common and common names to those
who understand mathematics, had the opinion that it was
some spirits he invoked, and that so many rare things do not
could leave a man without extraordinary favor, and
that for this purpose he was a magician. “
Which shows how far impertinence and badness goes
faith of the chroniclers is that Platinum, this echo mischievously
naive of all the Roman pasquinades, assures that the tomb of
Sylvester II is still a sorcerer, let him prophetically weep for the
the coming fall of all the popes, and that in the decline of the life of
[304] each pontiff can be heard quivering and bumping into each other’s bones
reprobates of Gerbert. An epitaph engraved on this tomb is authentic
of this wonder, adds imperturbably the librarian of
Sixtus IV. These are the proofs which seem sufficient to
historians to note the existence of a curious document
historical. Platinum was the Vatican librarian; he
wrote his history of the popes by order of Sixtus IV; he
wrote to Rome where nothing was easier than to verify the
falsity or correctness of this assertion, and yet this
so-called epitaph never existed except in the imagination of
authors from whom Platinum borrows it with incredible
lightness [15], a circumstance which precisely excites the indignation of
honest Naudé. Here is what he says in his Apology for
great men accused of magic: _
[Note 15: That the popes make sure of it, he said, it is for them
that the thing is interesting.]
“It is a pure imposture and manifest falsehood so much for
the experience (of the alleged wonders of the tomb of Sylvester II),
which has hitherto been observed by no one, except
the inscription of this sepulcher, which was composed by Sergius IV, and
which is far from making any mention of all
these fables and cunning, that on the contrary it is one of the most
excellent testimonials that we can have a good life and
the integrity of Sylvestre’s actions. It is in truth a
shameful that many Catholics are the mongers of
this backbiting, of which Marianus Scotus, Glaber, Ditmare,
Helgandus, Lambert and Herman Contract, who made their
contemporaries, make no mention, etc. ”
[305] Let us come to the grimoire d’Honorius.
It is to Honorius III, that is to say to one of the most zealous pontiffs
of the thirteenth century, which is attributed to this unholy book. Honorius III, in
indeed, must be hated by sectarians and necromancers who want
dishonor him by taking him for an accomplice. Censius Savelli,
crowned pope in 1216, confirmed the order of Saint Dominic if
formidable to the Albigensians and Vaudois, these children of
Manichaeans and wizards. He also established the Franciscans and
Carmelites, preached a crusade, wisely governed the Church and
left several decrees. Accuse this pope of black magic if
eminently Catholic, it is to raise the same suspicion on
great religious orders instituted by him, the devil could not
what to gain.
Some old copies of Honorius’s grimoire bear the
name of Honorius II instead of Honorius III; but it is impossible
to make a wizard of this wise and elegant Cardinal Lambert, who,
after his promotion to the sovereign pontificate, surrounded himself with poets
to which he gave bishoprics for elegies, as he did to
Hildebert, bishop of Mans, and learned theologians, such as
Hugues de Saint-Victor. Yet this name of Honorius II is for
us a ray of light, and will lead us to the discovery of
true author of this dreadful grimoire of Honorius.
In 1061, when the Empire began to take umbrage with the
papacy and sought to usurp priestly influence by
stirring up troubles and divisions in the sacred college,
the bishops of Lombardy, excited by Gilbert of Parma,
protested against the election of Anselm, bishop of Lucca, who
[306] had just been called to the sovereign pontificate under the name
of_Alexandre II_. Emperor Henry IV sided with the
dissidents and authorized them to give themselves another pope in their
promising to support them. They chose a headed schemer
Cadulus or Cadalous, bishop of Parma, man capable of all
crimes, and publicly scandalous as simonic and
concubinary. This Cadalous took the name of_Honorius II_ and walked
against Rome at the head of an army. He was beaten and condemned by
all the bishops of Germany and Italy; he returned to the charge,
seized part of the holy city, entered the church
Saint-Pierre, from where he was driven out, took refuge in the castle
Saint-Ange, from which he obtained the power to withdraw by paying a
heavy ransom. It was then that Otho Archbishop of Cologne, sent
by the Emperor, dared to publicly reproach Alexander II for having
usurped the holy see. But a monk, named Hildebrand, took the
word for the rightful pope, and did so with such power
that the Emperor’s envoy returned confused, and that
the Emperor himself asked forgiveness for his attacks. Is that
Hildebrand, in the views of Providence, was already the
thundering Gregory VII, and began the work of his life.
The antipope was deposed at the Council of Mantua, and Henry IV obtained
his forgiveness. Cadalous therefore returned to the darkness, and he is
probable that he then wanted to be the high priest of sorcerers and
apostates; he may therefore have written, under the name of_Honorius
II_, the grimoire which bears this name.
What we know of the character of this antipope would only justify
too much of an accusation of this kind; he was daring in front of
[307] weak and crawling before the strong, scheming and debauched, without
faith as without morals; he saw in religion only one
instrument of impunity and plunder. For such a man,
Christian virtues were obstacles and the faith of the clergy a
difficulty to overcome; so he would have liked to make priests
as it pleases and to compose a clergy of men capable of all
attacks as of all sacrileges; such seems to be, in
indeed, the goal proposed by the author of Honorius’s grimoire.
This spellbook is not without importance for those curious about the
science. At first glance, it seems to be just a fabric of
revolting absurdities; but for those initiated into signs and
secrets of the Kabbalah, it becomes a veritable monument of
human perversity; the devil is shown there as an instrument of
power. Use human credulity and take hold of
the scarecrow that dominates her to make her obey the whims of
the adept, such is the secret of this grimoire; it’s about thickening
darkness over the eyes of the multitude, seizing the
torch of science, which can, if necessary, in the hands of
daring, becoming the torch of executioners or arsonists.
Impose faith with bondage, reserving power and
freedom, is it not to dream, in fact, the reign of Satan over
earth, and will we be surprised if the authors of a conspiracy
similar against common sense and against religion,
flattered to appear and embody in some way on
earth the fantastic ruler of the evil empire?
The doctrine of this grimoire is the same as that of Simon and
most Gnostics: it is the passive principle substituted for the
[308] active principle. Passion, therefore, preferred to reason,
deified sensualism, woman put before man, a tendency which
is found in all anti-Christian mystical systems; this
doctrine is expressed by a pantacle placed at the head of the book. The
isiac moon occupies the center; around the selenic crescent, we
sees three triangles which are one; the triangle is
surmounted by a cross with a double cross; around
triangle which is inscribed in a circle, and in the interval
formed by the three segments of a circle, we see, on one side, the
sign of the spirit and the kabbalistic seal of Solomon, of
the other, the magic knife and the initial letter of the binary,
below an inverted cross forming the figure of the lingam, and the
name of God לא also overthrown; around the circle, we
reads these words drawn in the form of a caption:
superiors, and be submissive to them, because they take heed.
This pantacle, translated into a symbol or profession of faith, is therefore
verbatim the following:
“Fatality reigns through mathematics and there is no other
God than nature.
»Dogmas are the accessory of priestly power and are essential
to the multitude to justify the sacrifices.
The initiate is above the religion which he uses, and he
says absolutely the opposite of what he believes.
»Obedience is not motivated, it is imposed; the initiates are
made to command and laymen to obey. “
Those who have studied the occult know that the ancients
magicians never wrote down their dogma and formulated it
only by the symbolic characters of the pantacles.
[309] On the second page, we see two circular magic seals. In
the first is the square of the tetragrammaton with an inversion
and name substitution.
So instead of:
היהא
Eieie,
הוהי
Jehovah,
ינדא
Adonai,
אלכא
Agla,
provision which means: The Absolute Being is Jehovah, the Lord in three persons, God of the hierarchy and of the Church.
The author of the grimoire has arranged his names as follows:
הוהי
Jehovah,
ינדא
Adonai,
רארד
D’rar,
היהא
Eieie,
which means: Jehovah, the Lord, is nothing but the fatal principle of eternal rebirth personified by this rebirth even in absolute Being. Around the square in the circle is the right name of Jehovah and reversed, the name of Adonai on the left, and on the right, these three letters וחא AEV: followed by a colon, which means: _Heaven and hell are a mirage of each other, this [310] which is above is like that which is below. God is humanity. (Humanity is expressed by the three letters AEV:
initials of Adam and Eve.)
On the second seal we read the name of ARARITA אתירארא and
below סאר RASCH, around twenty-six characters
Kabbalistic, and below the seal ten Hebrew letters,
thus arranged כי ררררכחכם .The whole is a formula of
materialism and fatality, that it would take too long and perhaps
dangerous to explain here.
Next comes the prologue to the grimoire; we transcribe it all
integer:
“The holy apostolic see, to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven
were given, by these words of Jesus Christ to Saint Peter:
I give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with one power
to command the prince of darkness and his angels.
Who, like servants to their master, owe him honor,
glory and obedience, by virtue of these other words addressed
through Jesus Christ to Satan himself: You shall serve only one master.
By the power of the keys the head of the Church was made the
lord of the underworld.
“Up to this day, the sovereign pontiffs have had only the
power to evoke spirits and to command them; but His
Holiness Honorius II, in his pastoral solicitude,
communicate the science and power of evocations and
empire over spirits to his venerable brethren in Jesus Christ
with the usual conjurations, all contained in the bubble
next.”
This is indeed this pontificate of the underworld, this sacrilegious priesthood of
antipopes that Dante seems to stigmatize by this hoarse cry escaped
[311] to one of the princes of his hell: Pope Satan! Pope Satan! aleppe! That the legitimate pope be the prince of heaven is enough
for Antipope Cadalous to be the ruler of the underworld.
Let him be the god of good, I am the god of evil;
We are divided, my power is equal.
Follows the bull of the infernal pontiff.
The mystery of dark evocations is exposed there with a
scary science hidden in superstitious forms and
sacrilegious.
Fasting, vigils, profaned mysteries, ceremonies
allegorical, bloody sacrifices are combined with a
art full of mischief; evocations are not without poetry and
without enthusiasm mixed with horror. So, for example, the author
wants that on the Thursday of the first week of the evocations, we will
get up at midnight, throw holy water in your room,
light a yellow wax candle prepared on Wednesday, which must
be pierced in the shape of a cross. In the trembling light of this candle,
you have to go to a church alone and read in a low voice
the office of the dead, replacing the ninth lesson of
matins this rhythmic invocation that we translate from Latin,
by leaving it with its strange form and its refrains, which recall
the monotonous incantations of the witches of the old world:
Lord, deliver me from hellish terrors,
Free my mind from sepulchral larvae.
I will go to their hells to look for them without fear;
I will impose my will on them as law.
I will tell the night to give birth to the light;
Sun, get up; moon, be white and clear.
[312] To the shadows of hell I speak without fear,
I will impose my will on them as law!
Their faces are horrible and their shapes strange;
I want demons to be angels again.
To these nameless ugliness I speak without fear,
I will impose my will on them as law!
These shadows are the error of my frightened sight;
But, only I can heal their struck beauty,
Because in the depths of hell I dive without fear,
I will impose my will on them as law!
After several other ceremonies, comes the night of the evocation;
then in a sinister place, by the light of a fire fueled by
broken crosses, it is necessary with the charcoal of a cross, to draw a
circle, and at the same time recite a magical hymn composed of
verses from several psalms; here is the translation of this hymn:
The king rejoices, Lord, in your power,
Let me complete the work of my birth.
May the shadows of evil, the specters of the night,
Like the dust in the wind which pursues it.
………………………………………….. ……
Lord, hell lights up and shines in your presence,
Everything ends with you and everything begins with you:
Jehovah, Sabaoth, Eloim, Eloi,
Helion, Helios, Jodhévah, Saddai!
The lion of Judah rises in his glory;
It comes from King David consummate victory!
I open the seven seals of the dreaded book;
Satan falls from the sky like a summer lightning!
You said to me: Far from you hell and its tortures;
They will not approach your pure homes
Your eyes will face the eyes of the basil,
And your fearless feet will tread on the asp.
You will take the snakes tamed by your smile,
You will drink the poisons without them being able to harm you.
[313] Eloïm, Elohah, Shebaoth, Helios,
Eïeïe, Eieazereïe, O Theos Tsehyros!
The earth belongs to the Lord, and all that covers it.
He himself strengthens it on the abyss which is opening.
Who then will be able to ascend the mount of the Lord?
The man with the spotless hand and the simple of heart.
He who does not hold the truth captive
And do not receive her to leave her idle;
The one who with his soul understood the height
And who does not swear by a liar verb:
He will receive strength for his domain.
And such is the infinity of human birth,
Generation by earth and fire,
The divine birth of those who seek God!
Princes of nature enlarge your doors;
Yoke from heaven I lift you! to me, holy cohorts:
Here is the King of Glory! he has conquered his name;
He carries the seal of Solomon in his hand.
The master has broken Satan’s black bondage,
And captive in his train he drags slavery.
The Lord alone is God, the Lord alone is king!
Lord, glory to you alone, glory to you! glory to you!
Wouldn’t we think we heard the dark puritans of Walter Scott
or Victor Hugo, accompanied by their fanatic psalmody
the nameless work of the witches of Faust or Macbeth!
In a conspiracy addressed to the shadow of the giant Nimrod, this
savage hunter who started the tower of Babel, the adept
of Honorius threatens this ancient outcast to tighten his chains
and torment him more and more every day if he doesn’t obey
immediately at his will.
Isn’t it the sublime of delirious pride, and this antipope,
who understood a high priest only as a sovereign of
[314] hell, does he not seem to aspire, as a vengeance of the
contempt and reprobation of the living, the usurped right and
disastrous to torment the dead eternally!
CHAPTER II.
APPEARANCE OF NOMADIC BOHEMIANS.
CONTENTS .– Mores and habits of nomadic Bohemians .– They
come to the Chapel, near Paris, where they are preached and
excommunicated by the bishop – Their divinatory science and their
tarot.
At the beginning of the 15th century, we saw the spread in Europe of
bands of dark and unknown travelers. Called by some
Bohemians, because they said they came from Bohemia, known by
others under the name of Egyptians, because their leader took
the title of Duke of Egypt, they practiced divination, theft
and raiding. They were nomadic hordes, bivouacking under
huts they built themselves; their religion
was unknown; yet they called themselves Christians, but their
orthodoxy was more than doubtful. They practiced among themselves the
communism and promiscuity, and used for their
divinations of a series of strange signs representing the form
allegorical and the virtue of Numbers.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE EGYPTIAN TAROTS.]
Where did they come from? What cursed and gone world were they from
living wrecks? Were they, as the people believed
superstitious, children of witches and demons? What
[315] expiring and betrayed savior had condemned them to walk forever?
Was it the family of the wandering Jew? wasn’t that the rest of the
ten tribes of Israel lost in captivity and in chains
for a long time by Gog and by Magog, in climates
unknown? This is what we wondered with concern when we saw
pass these mysterious aliens, who from a vanished civilization
seemed to have retained only superstitions and vices.
Enemies of work, they respected neither the property nor the
family; they dragged females and cubs after them, and
willingly disturbed by their pretended divination the peace of
honest households. Let’s hear the columnist talking about their
first camp in the vicinity of Paris:
“The following year, 1427, the Sunday after mid-August, which was
on the 17th of the month, twelve of them arrive near Paris
calling themselves penitentiaries, namely a duke, a count and ten men,
all on horseback, who claim to be very good Christians and
originating in low Egypt; they claim to have been
Christians of old, that other Christians have subjugated them and
brought back to Christianity; that those who refused were
put to death, and that those on the contrary who were baptized
remained lords of the country as before on their word
to be good and loyal and to keep the faith of Jesus Christ until
the death; they add that they have king and queen in their country,
which remain in their lordship, because they were made
Christians. And also, they say, some time after we are
Christian facts, the Saracens came to assail us. Tall
number, not firm in our faith, without enduring war, without
defend their country as they should, submitted, made themselves
[316] Saracens and abjured our Lord; and also, they say,
the Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland and other lords
having learned that they had so easily renounced the faith and
had become Saracens and idolaters so soon, they ran to them
sus, easily defeated them, as if they cared about
leave them in their country to bring them back to Christianity;
but the emperor and the other lords, by deliberation of the
the council ruled that they would never have land in their country,
without the consent of the Pope; that for that they had to go to
Rome, that they had all been there, big and small and
great difficulty for children; that they had confessed their sin;
that the Pope, having heard them, had given them for penance, by
deliberation of the council, to go seven years through the world without
to sleep in no bed; that he had ordained that every bishop and
abbot carrying a cross gave them, once and for all, ten
tournaments as a subsidy to their expenses; that he had them
delivered letters in which all this was related, gave them his
blessing and that for five years they had been running around the world.
»A few days later, the day of Saint Jehan Décolace,
that is to say on August 29, the common arrived, which was not left
not to enter Paris, but by justice was lodged at the
Chapelle-Saint-Denis. Their number was about one hundred and twenty
people, both men and women and children. They ensure that
leaving their country they were from one thousand to twelve hundred; that the
rest had died on the way with the king and queen; than those who
had survived hoped to still own goods in this world,
[317] for the Holy Father had promised them a good and fertile land, when
they would have completed their penance.
When they were at the Chapel, we never saw more people in
the blessing of Landit, both from Saint-Denis, from Paris and from
its surroundings the crowd flocked to see them. Their children,
boys and girls, could not have been more skillful
turns. Almost all had their ears pierced, and each
ear one or two silver rings; and they said it was
kindness in their country; they were very black, had the
frizzy hair. Women were the ugliest and most
black that you could see; all had their faces covered with
wound, black hair like a horse’s tail, for all
dress an old flaussoie or schiavina, tied on the shoulder by
a rope or a piece of cloth, and underneath a poor pug or
a shirt for any clothing. In short, they were the most
poor creatures that by memory of age we had never seen in
France. And yet their poverty, they had among them
witches who looked at people’s hands and told everyone
what had happened to him and what was to happen to him; and they
threw disorder in households, because they told the
husband: “Your wife … your wife … your wife” made you coux, “at the
wife: “Your husband … made you …” coulpe; ” and, what is worse, in
speaking to people by magic art, by the enemy of hell or by
skill, they emptied their purses and filled the
their;” and the bourgeois of Paris who reports on these facts
adds: “And really I was three or four times to speak to
them, but no one noticed me a penny of loss; but so
people were saying it everywhere, as long as the news got
[318] the bishop of Paris, who went there, and even with him a brother
minor, named the little Jacobin, who, by the command of
the bishop, made a beautiful preaching there, excommunicating all those
and those who were made and believed and showed their hands.
And agreed that they were going away, and if they left on the day of
Our Lady of September, the 8th, and went to Pontoise. “
It is not known whether they continued their journey still heading
thus towards the north of the capital, but it is certain that their
memory remained in one of the corners of the Nord department.
“There is indeed in a wood near the village of Hamel, and
five hundred paces from a monument of six Druidic stones, one
fountain called Cuisine des sorciers; and, says tradition,
this is where the Cara maras rested and quenched their thirst,
which are undoubtedly the Caras’mar, that is to say the
bohemians, wizards and traveling diviners to whom the old
charters of the country of Flanders granted the right to be fed
by the inhabitants.
They left Paris, but in their place others came, and
France is no less exploited by them than the other countries.
They are not seen landing in England or Scotland, and
yet they are soon in this last kingdom more than a hundred
thousand [16]. They are called ceard and caird, or as who
would say craftsmen, my workers, because this Scottish word is
derived from ker, Sanskrit where the verb to do comes from, Ker-aben
of the Bohemians and the Latin cerdo (cobbler), which they are not
[319] no. If we do not see them either at this time north of
Spain, where Christians take shelter against domination
Muslim, it is undoubtedly that they like better in the south with
the Arabs, but under John II, we can clearly distinguish them from these
last, without knowing however where they come from. Whatever
or, from that time on, they are generally known on
the whole European continent. One of King Sindel’s bands has
presented in Regensburg in 1433, and Sindel himself camped in
Bavaria with its reserve in 1439. It seems to come then from Bohemia,
because the Bavarians, forgetting those of 1433 who gave
for Egyptians, call them Bohemians. It is under this name
that they reappear in France and are known there from now on. Well
willy-nilly, we endure them. Some run the mountains and
seek gold in the rivers, the others forge irons of
horse and dog chains; these, more marauders than
pilgrims, slip and ferret everywhere and everywhere fly and
retreat. There are those who decide to settle down and who,
tired of always pitching and raising their tents,
bordeils, square huts of four to six feet, underground,
and covered with a roof of branches whose ridge, on horseback
on two Y-posts, hardly rises more than two feet
above ground. It is in this den, of which he is hardly
remained in France other memory than the name, which is piled up
a whole family jumbled up; it is in this dungeon, which has no other
opening that the door and a hole for the smoke, that the father
forge, which the children, squatting around the fire, let the
bellows, and that the mother makes go the pot where only
[320] the fruit of some theft; it is in this lair, where hang,
long wooden nails, some old nipples, a bridle and
a haversack, all of the furniture of which consists of an anvil,
pliers and a hammer, it is there, I say, that
meet gullibility and love, the maiden and the
knight, the lord of the lady and the page; this is where they come from
open their bare white hands to the penetrating gaze of the
sibyl; this is where love is bought, where happiness is sold,
that lies are paid for; this is where the
acrobats and card drawers, the starry dress and the
pointed cap of the magician, the mobsters and the slang, the dancers
of the street and the girls of joy. This is the kingdom of laziness
and trupherie, villonie and franches lipées; Those are
people doing everything to do nothing, as a naive storyteller says
of the middle ages; and a scholar as distinguished as he was modest, Mr.
Vaillant, author of a History of the Rom-Muni or
Bohémiens, of which we quote here a few pages, although it
gives great importance in the priestly history of
the old world, does not paint a flattering portrait of it. Also we
does he tell how these strange Protestants of civilizations
primitive, through the ages with a curse on his forehead
and plunder in the hands, first aroused curiosity and then
mistrust, then finally proscription and hatred of Christians
of the middle ages. We understood how dangerous this people could be
homeless, parasite of the whole world and citizen of nowhere;
these Bedouins who crossed the empires like deserts, these
wandering thieves, and who crept in everywhere without settling
never. So soon they became sorcerers for the people,
[321] even demons, spellcasters, child abductors,
and there was some truth to it all; they were accused everywhere of
secretly celebrate awful mysteries. Soon the rumor becomes
generally, they are made responsible for all ignored murders,
of all the mysterious kidnappings; like the Greeks of Damascus
accused the Jews of having killed one of their own to drink the
blood; and it is said that they prefer young boys and
young girls from twelve to fifteen years old. It is undoubtedly a sure
a way to make them abhor them and keep them away from
youth; but this means is odious; because the people and the child do not
are too gullible, and fear breeds hatred, it is
persecution arises. So, it is done! not only do we have them
we avoid them, we run away from them, but we deny them fire and water; Europe
became for them the Indies, and every Christian has become
against them a Brahmin. In some countries, if some young girl,
with pity, approach one of them to put him in the
hand a coin: “Take care, my dear!
distraught housekeeper, it’s a Katkaon, an ogre who will come to you
suck blood that night while you sleep; ” and the young
girl recoils, shuddering; if some young boy passes enough
near them so that his shadow is drawn on the wall near
where they sit, where a whole family eats or is
rests in the sun: “Off! child, shouts his teacher, these
Strigoï (vampires) will take your shadow; and your soul will go
dance with them on the Sabbath all eternity. ” This is how the
hatred of the Christian resuscitates against them the lemurs and
leprechauns, vampires and ogres; and everyone to comment on
[322] their account.
Mambrès who dared to compete in miracles with Moses? Are they not
sent by the king of Egypt to inspect the world
children of Israel and make their plight painful to them? – I would believe,
said another, that these are the executioners Herod used
to exterminate the newborn babies of Bethlehem.
said a third, these pagans do not hear a word of Egyptian,
their language contains, on the contrary, many Hebrews. This does not
are therefore that the unclean offspring of this abject race who
slept in Judea in the sepulchres after devouring the
corpses they contained. fault! shouts a
fourth: it is simply these unbelievers of Jews
themselves who were tortured, chased and burned in 1348, for
poisoning our wells and cisterns, and who are returning
to start over. what does it matter? adds the last, Egyptians
or Jews, Essenes or Chusians, Pharaohs or Caphtorians,
Balistari of Assyria or Philistines of Kanaan, they are
renegades, they said it in Saxony, in France, everywhere, they must be
hang and burn them. “
[Note 16: Borrew.]
Soon this strange book which
is used to them to consult the lot and to render oracles. These
colorful boxes of incomprehensible figures and which are (we do not
not suspect) the monumental summary of all the revelations of
the ancient world, the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, the
Solomon’s collarbones, the primitive writings of Enoch and
of Hermes. Here the author that we have just cited, demonstrates
singularly sagacious, he speaks of tarot like a man who does not
not yet fully understood, but who has it deeply
studied; so let’s see what he says about it:
[323] “The form, arrangement, arrangement of these tablets and the
figures they represent, although variously modified by
time, are so obviously allegorical, and the allegories
are so in accordance with civil, philosophical and
religious of antiquity, that one cannot help but
recognize for the synthesis of all that made the faith of
ancient peoples. By all of the above, we have enough
implied that it is a deduction from the sidereal book
of_Hénoch_ which is Hénochia; that it is modeled on the wheel
Astral of_Athor_, which is Astaroth; that, similar to
the Indian ot-tara_, polar bear or arc-tura of the Septentrion, he
is the force majeure (tarie) on which the
solidity of the world and the sidereal firmament of the terre; than,
consequently, like the polar bear that has been made the
sun, the chariot of David and Arthur, he is, the Greek hour, the
Chinese fate, Egyptian luck, the fate of the Romes; and that
circling incessantly around the polar bear, the stars
the glitz and the gloom unroll on the earth, the light and
shadow, heat and cold, from which flow good and evil,
the love and hatred which make men happy and unhappy.
“If the origin of this book is lost in the mists of time,
that we do not know where or when it was invented, everything bears
to believe that it is of Indo-Tartar origin and that, variously
modified by the ancient peoples, according to the nuances of their
doctrines and the character of their sages, it was one of the books
of their occult sciences, and perhaps even one of their
sybin books. We have given enough glimpse of the road
[324] that he was able to hold out to reach us; we saw that he
must have been known to the Romans, and that it could have been
brought not only to the early days of the empire, but already
even from the earliest days of the republic, by these numerous
foreigners who, coming from the East and initiated into the mysteries of Bacchus
and Isis, brought their knowledge to the heirs of Numa. “
M. Vaillant does not say that the four hieroglyphic signs of
tarot, sticks, cups, swords and denarii or cycles
gold, found in Homer, carved on the shield
Achilles, but following him:
“The cups equal the arches or arches of time, the vases or
vessels of the sky.
“The deniers equal the stars, the astonished, the stars; the
swords equal fires, flames, rays; sticks
equal shadows, stones, trees, plants.
“The ace of cups is the vessel of the universe, ark of the truth of the
heaven, earth principle.
“The ace of deniers is the sun, unique eye of the world, food and
element of life.
“The ace of sword is the lance of Mars, source of wars, of
misfortunes, victories.
“The ace of a staff is the eye of the serpent, the staff of the shepherd,
the sting of the herdsman, the club of Hercules, the emblem of
agriculture.
“The 2 of cup is the cow, io or isis, and the ox apis
or mnevis.
“The 3 of cups is isis, the moon, lady and queen of the night.
“The 3 of denarius is osiris, the sun, lord and king of the day.
[325] »The 9 of denarius is the messager Mercury or the_ angel Gabriel_.
»The 9 of cup is the gestation of good fate, from which is born the
happiness.”
Finally, says M. Vaillant, there is a Chinese painting.
composed of characters that form large compartments in
long square, all equal, and precisely the same size as
tarot cards. These compartments are distributed in six
perpendicular columns, the first five of which contain
fourteen compartments each, in all seventy; while
that the sixth, which is only half-filled, contains only
seven. Moreover, this table is formed from the same
combination of the number 7; each full column is 2 times 7 =
14, and the one that is only half contains seven.
looks so much like tarot, that the four colors of tarot
fill its first four columns; only of its 21 assets 14
fill the fifth column, and the 7 other trumps there
sixth. This sixth column of the 7 assets is therefore that of
six days of the creation week. However, according to the Chinese, this
painting dates back to the early ages of their empire, to the
of the flood waters by Iao; we can therefore conclude that it is or
the original or the copy of the tarot, and, in any case, that the
tarot predates Moses, which it goes back to the origin of
centuries, at the time of the making of the Zodiac, and
consequently it has 6,600 years of existence [17].
[Note 17: For all that is tarot, see Court de Gebelin,
1 vol. in-8, and the Dogma and ritual of high magic, by
Éliphas Lévi. 1856, 2 vol. in-8, with 23 figures.]
[326] »Such is this tarot of the Romes, of which by antilogy the Hebrews have
does the torah or law of Jehovah. Far from being a game then, like
today it was a book, a serious book, the book of
symbols and emblems, analogies or relationships of
stars and men, the book of destiny, with the help of which the
sorcerer unveiled the mysteries of the spell. His figures, their names,
their number, the spells that were cast from them, naturally made them,
for Christians, the instrument of a diabolical art, of a
work of magic; so we can imagine with what rigor they last
proscribe it as soon as it became known to them through breaches of trust
that the indiscretion of the Sagi committed on credulity
public. It was then that, faith in his word being lost, the
tarot became a game, and that its tablets were modified according to the
taste of the people and the spirit of the century. It is from this game of
tarots that our playing cards come from, whose
combinations are as inferior to those of the tarot as the
checkers is the game of chess. It is therefore wrong that we
fixes the origin of modern maps in the reign of Charles VI; because
as early as 1332, those initiated into the order of the gang, established by
Alfonso XI, King of Castile, already took an oath not to
play cards. Under Charles V, known as the Wise, Saint Bernard of
Siena condemned the cards to fire, then say triomphales,
of the game of triomphe which was already played in honor of the
triumphant Osiris or Ormuzd, one of the tarot cards;
moreover, this king himself proscribed them, in 1369, and the little
Jean de Saintré was only honored with his favors because he
was not playing.
So they were called, in Spain, naïpes, and better, in
Italy, naïbi, because the naïbi are the diablesses, the
sybilles, the pythoness. “
[327] M. Vaillant, whom we have just let speak, therefore supposes that
the tarot has been modified and changed, which is true for the tarot
Germans with Chinese figures: but what is not true for the
Italian tarots which are only altered in a few details,
nor for the tarots of Besançon, in which we still find
traces of early Egyptian hieroglyphics. We said,
in our Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, how many
unfortunate the works of Etteilla or Alliette on the tarot.
This enlightened hairdresser who did not succeed, after thirty years of
combinations, than to create a bastard tarot whose keys are
inverted, the numbers of which no longer agree with the
signs, a tarot, in a word, at Etteilla’s convenience and at the
measure of his intelligence which was far from marvelous.
We do not believe, with M. Vaillant, that the Bohemians were
the legitimate owners of this key to initiations. They
no doubt owed to the infidelity or recklessness of some
Jewish Kabbalist. The gypsies are originally from India, their
historian has proved it with sufficient probability. Gold tarot
that we still have and which is that of the gypsies, came from
Egypt through Judea. The keys of this tarot, in
effect, relate to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and
some of the figures even reproduce the shape of the
characters of this sacred alphabet.
What were these gypsies? It was, as the
poet:
The filthy rest
From an old world;
it was a sect of Indian Gnostics that their communism
[328] exiled from all the earth. They were, as they said
almost themselves, profaners of the great arcane, delivered to a
fatal curse. Herd lost by some faquir
enthusiastic, they had made themselves travelers on earth,
protesting against all civilizations in the name of a so-called
natural law which dispensed them almost from all duty. However, the
right that wants to impose itself by freeing itself from duty, it is
aggression, it is looting, it is plunder, it is the arm of
Cain raised up against his brother, and the society that defends itself seems
avenge the death of Abel.
In 1840, workers from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, weary,
they said, to be deceived by journalists and to serve
instruments with the ambitions of fine speakers, resolved to
found themselves and write a journal of pure radicalism and
of a logic without evasions and without ambiguity.
So they met and held a council to establish squarely
their doctrines; they took as a basis the republican motto:
freedom, equality and the rest. Freedom seemed to them
impossible with the duty to work, equality with the right
to acquire, and they concluded with communism. But one of them did
observe that in communism the most intelligent
would preside over the division and take the lion’s share. He was
therefore stopped that no one would be entitled to superiority
intellectual. Someone noticed that even physical beauty
constitutes an aristocracy, and the equality of
ugliness. Then, as one becomes attached to the land while cultivating it, he
was decided that the true communists could not be
[329] farmers, having only the world for their homeland and humanity for
family, they had to organize themselves in caravans and
eternally around the world. What we are telling here is
not a parable, we knew the characters present at
this deliberation, we read the first issue of their
newspaper entitled l’Humanitaire, which was continued and suppressed
in 1841 (see the press trials of that time). If this
newspaper could have continued, if the nascent sect had recruited
followers, as the former prosecutor Cabet did then
the Icarian emigration, a new band of gypsies
organized and wandering mobsters would have one more people.
CHAPTER III.
LEGEND AND HISTORY OF RAYMOND LULLE.
SUMMARY – His works, his great art, why he is called the
Illuminated Doctor – His Theories in Hermetic Philosophy – The
magic among the Arabs – Raymond Lulle’s ideas on the Antichrist
and on universal science.
The Church, as we have said, had proscribed initiation in
hatred of the profanations of gnosis. When Muhammad armed in
the East fanaticism against faith, to the piety which ignores and which
pray, he came to oppose savage credulity which fights. His
successors gained a foothold in Europe and soon threatened to
invade it. “Providence chastises us, said the Christians;”
and the Muslims replied: “Fatality is for us.”
[330] The Kabbalist Jews, who feared being burned as
sorcerers in Catholic countries, took refuge near the
Arabs who were in their eyes heretics, but not
idolaters. They admire some to the knowledge of
mysteries, and Islamism, already triumphant by force, could
soon aspire to triumph also through the science of those whom
literate Arabia contemptuously called the Barbarians of the West.
The genius of France had opposed the invasions of force
the blows of his terrible hammer. An iron gloved finger had
drew a line before the rising tide of the Mohammedan armies,
and the great voice of victory had cried out to the flood: You will not go no further.
The genius of science aroused Raymond Lulle who claimed for
the Savior, son of David, the inheritance of Solomon, and who called
for the first time children of blind belief in
splendours of universal knowledge.
You have to see with what contempt still speak of this great man
false scholars and false sages! But also instinct
popular avenged him. The novel and the legend have taken hold of
his history. He is represented to us in love like Abailard,
initiated like Faust, alchemist like Hermes, penitent and scholar
like Saint Jerome, traveler like the wandering Jew, pious and
enlightened like Saint Francis of Assisi, martyr finally as a saint
Stephen, and glorious in death as the Savior of the world.
Let’s start with the novel; it is one of the most touching and the most
beautiful that we knew: A Sunday day in the year 1250,
[331] in Palma, in the Island of Mallorca, a wise and beautiful lady, named
Ambrosia di Castello, native of Genoa, went to church.
A richly dressed rider was passing through the street;
he sees the lady, he stops as if struck down; she enters
church and will disappear into the shadow of the porch. The horseman,
without knowing what he is doing, throws his horse and walks in after her
in the midst of the frightened faithful: great rumor and great scandal.
The rider is known; it is Lord Raymond Lulle, seneschal
of the Islands and mayor of the palace: he has a wife and three children;
two sons, one, named Raymond after him; the other, Guillaume, and
a girl named Madeleine. Madame Ambrosia di Castello is
also married and, moreover, enjoys an unblemished reputation.
Raymond Lulle then passed for a great seducer. His entry
riding in the church of Palma caused a stir in the city.
Ambrosia, quite confused, consulted her husband who was no doubt
a wise man who did not find his wife offended
because her beauty had turned the head of a young and bright
Lord; but he advised Ambrosia to cure his madness
worshiper by the very madness of which it was the cause. Raymond already
Llull had written to the lady to apologize or to accuse himself
more. “What she had inspired in him,” he said, “was
strange, superhuman, fatal: he respected his honor, his
affections which he knew belonged to another. But he was
struck by lightning, he needed dedication,
sacrifices to be made, miracles to be performed, penance of
stylite, the prowess of a knight errant. “
Ambrosia replied:
[332] “To respond to a love that you say is superhuman, he
would need an immortal existence.
This love heroically and fully sacrificed to
our duty throughout the life of those who are dear to us
(and I want it to be long), could create an eternity for
us at the time when God and the world would allow us to
like.
It is said that there is an elixir of life; try to find it, and
when you are sure of your discovery, come and see me.
‘Until then, live for your wife and children, as I
will live for my husband whom I love, and if you meet me in the
street, don’t even recognize me. ”
It was a gracious leave which, as we can see, put back our
in love with the Greek calends; but he did not hear it that way,
and from that day the brilliant lord disappeared to make
make way for a dark and serious alchemist. Don Juan had become
Faust. Years passed. Raymond Lulle’s wife
died, Ambrosia di Castello, in her turn, was widowed; But
the alchemist seemed to have forgotten her to only take care of
of the great work.
One day, finally, the widow being alone, one announces to her Raymond
Llull: she sees a pale and bald old man enter who was
in the hand a vial full of an elixir red as fire; he
staggering forward and looking for her with his eyes: she is in front
him and he does not recognize her, because in his mind she is
always young and beautiful as in the church of Palma. “It’s me,
she said at last, what do you want from me? ” At the accent of this voice,
the alchemist trembles, he recognizes her, he thinks he sees her young
[333] again, he threw himself at her feet, and, handing her the flask with
delirium: “Here,” he said, “take, drink, that’s life.” I put
in there thirty years of mine, but I tried it, I’m in it
sure, it is the elixir of immortality!
–How did you try it? said Ambrosia with a sad
smile.For two months, '' said Raymond, after having drunk a quantity of elixir like that, I abstained from any food. Hunger twisted my guts, but not only I am not dead, I can say that I feel more life in me and more strength than ever.I believe you, ” said Ambrosia,but this elixir that retains life does not bring back youth, my poor friend, look at yourself, ”and she held up a mirror to him. Raymond Lulle stepped back. Never, for thirty years, had he dreamed to look at each other. "Now, Raymond, look at me," Ambrosia said when she discovered his white hair; then, unfastening the clip from her dress, she told him showed her breast which had been almost completely eaten away by a cancer: Is this, she added, that you want immortalize? " Then, seeing the dismayed alchemist: "Listen to me," she said, "for thirty years I have loved you and I have never do not want to sentence you to life imprisonment in the body of an old man; do not condemn me, in your turn. Make me grace of this death which we call life. Let me transform to revive, let's re-immerse ourselves in youth eternal. I don't want your elixir that prolongs the night of the grave, I aspire to immortality. " [334] Raymond Lulle then threw the vial on the ground, which broke. “I deliver you,” he said, “and I remain in prison for you. Live in the immortality of heaven, I am condemned forever to the living death of the earth. " Then, hiding his face in his hands, he fled, melting in tears. A few months later, a monk of the order of Saint Francis attended Ambrosia di Castello in her last moments: this monk, it was Raymond Lulle. Here the novel ends and the legend goes to start. This legend making only one man of the three or four Raymond Lulle who have existed at different times, gives the alchemist repenting several centuries of existence and atonement. The day when naturally the poor follower had to to die, he felt all the anguish of agony, then, in a supreme crisis, he felt life recovering him, as the Prometheus' vulture resumed its reborn feast. The Savior people, who already held out their hands to him, sadly returned to the sky was closing, and Raymond Lulle found himself on the land with no hope of ever dying. He began to pray and devoted his life to good works; God bestowed on him all his graces except death, and that make others without that one which must complete them and crown all? One day the tree of science appeared to him laden with its luminous fruits; he understood the being and his harmonies, he guessed the Kabbalah, he laid the foundations and traced the plan of a universal science, and since that time it has not been called more than the _enlightened doctor_. [335] He had found glory. This fatal reward for the work that God in his mercy hardly sends to great men that after their death because it intoxicates and poisons the living. But Raymond Lulle who could not have died to make him place must still fear seeing her die before him, and this glory seemed to him only a mockery of his immortal misfortune. He knew how to make gold and he could buy the world and all its monuments without being able to ensure the enjoyment of a single tomb. He was the poor man of immortality. Everywhere he went begging dead and no one could give it to him. He had taken body to body the philosophy of the Arabs, he was fighting victoriously against Islamism and had everything to fear from sectarian fanaticism; everything to be feared, that is to say maybe something to look forward to, and what he hoped for was death. He took a most fanatic young Arab as a servant and laid before him a scourge of the doctrine of Mahomet. Arabic murdered his master, that was what Raymond Lulle was waiting for, but he did not die of it as he had hoped, could not obtain the grace of his murderer and had a remorse on his conscience place of deliverance and peace. Barely healed of his wounds, he embarked and left for Tunis; he publicly preaches Christianity there, but the bey admiring his knowledge and his courage defends him against the fury of the people and takes him on board with all his books. Raymond Lulle returns, preaches in Bône, Bougie and other towns in Africa; the Stunned Muslims dare not lay a hand on him. He returns [336] finally in Tunis, and amassing the people in the streets, he exclaims that he has already been driven out of the country, but that he returns there in order to confuse the ungodly dogmas of Muhammad and die for Jesus Christ. This time all protection is impossible, the furious people pursue him, it is a real sedition; he flees to excite them more, he is already broken with blows, flooded with blood, covered with wounds, and he still lives. It finally falls literally buried under a mountain of stones. The following night, two Genoese merchants, named Etienne Colon and Louis de Pastorga, passing through the open sea, saw a great light rising from the port of Tunis. They approached and saw a heap of stones which threw this miraculous splendor; they searched under these stones and found there Raymond Lulle broken and alive, they embarked him on their ship and brought him back to Mallorca, his homeland. But in view of this island the martyr finally expired, God had delivered him by a miracle and his penance was accomplished. Such is the odyssey of the fabulous Raymond Lulle: let's come now to historical realities. Raymond Lulle the philosopher and the follower, the one who deserved the nickname of illuminated doctor, was the son of this seneschal of Mallorca, famous for its unhappy passion for Ambrosia di Castello. He did not compose the elixir of immortality, but he did gold in England for King Edward III; this gold was called Raymond's gold, and there are still very rare pieces the truth, which the curious call raymondines. M. Louis Figuier supposes that these raymondines are the nobles at the [337] rose, minted during the reign of Edward III, and advanced enough slightly maybe Raymond Lulle's alchemy was not that a sophistication of gold, difficult to recognize in a time or chemical processes were much less perfected than nowadays. This scientist does not recognize any minus the scientific value of Raymond Lulle, and here is how he judges it (Doctrine and works of the alchemists, p. 82): "Raymond Lulle, whose genius was exercised in all branches of human knowledge, and who expounded in his book, Ars magna, a whole vast system of philosophy summarizing the encyclopedic principles of the science of his time, could not failing to leave a useful legacy for chemists. He perfected and carefully described various compounds which are very in use in chemistry. It is to him that we owe the preparation of the carbonate of potash by means of tartar and by means of ashes of wood, the rectification of the spirit of wine, the preparation of essential oils, the cupellation of silver and the preparation of sweet mercury. " Other scholars, convinced of the purity of the gold of the nobles at the rose, have thought that practical chemistry having, in the Middle Ages, highly imperfect processes, the transmutations of Raymond Lulle and from the other adepts was nothing but the separation of gold hidden in silver mines, and purified by means of antimony, which is in fact designated by a large number of hermetic symbols, as the efficient and main element of spray powder. We will agree with them that chemistry did not exist by means of age, and we will add that it was created by adepts or [338] rather than the followers, keeping to themselves the secrets of synthesis, this treasure of magical sanctuaries, taught their contemporaries some of the methods of analysis, processes which have since been perfected, but which have not again led our scientists to rediscover this ancient synthesis which is strictly speaking Hermetic philosophy. Raymond Lulle included in his philosophical testament all the principles of this science, but in a veiled way, as it was the use and the duty of all the followers: also he composed a key to this will, then a key to the key, that is to say a codicil which is, in our opinion, the most important of his writings on alchemy. The principles found therein and the processes which are set out therein have nothing in common with the sophistication of pure metals, nor with the separation of alloys. It is a theory in accordance with the principles of Geber and d'Arnauld de Villeneuve for the practice, and at the highest conceptions of the Kabbalah for doctrine. Serious minds who do not let themselves be discouraged by discredit or ignorance sometimes brings down the big things, must, to continue after the mightiest geniuses of the old world in search of the absolute, first study and kabbalistically meditate on the codicil of Raymond Lulle. All the life of this wonderful follower, the first initiate after Saint John who was dedicated to the hierarchical apostolate of holy orthodoxy, all his life, we say, was spent in pious foundations, in preaching, in scientific work immense. Thus, in the year 1276 he founded in Palma a college of Franciscans dedicated to the study of oriental languages and especially of [339] the Arabic language, with the special mission of refuting the books Mohammedan doctors, and to preach to the Moors the faith Christian. John XXI confirmed this institution with a brief dated of Viterbo, the 16th of Calends of December, the first year of his pontificate. From the year 1293 until the year 1311, he requested and obtained Pope Nicholas IV and the kings of France, Sicily, Cyprus, Mallorca, the establishment of several colleges for the study of languages. Everywhere he teaches his great art which is a synthesis universal knowledge of human beings, and which aims to get men to have only one language as they will have only one thought. He comes to Paris, and amazes the more learned doctors; then he goes to Spain, stops at Complute, and founded there a central academy for the study of languages and sciences; he reformed several convents, traveled in Italy and recruits soldiers for a new military order including he solicits the institution at the same council of Vienna which condemns the Templars. It is Catholic science, it is true initiation of Saint John who wants to take infidels the sword defender of the temple. The great of the earth laugh at poor Raymond Lulle, and do everything in spite of themselves he wants. This enlightened one who derisively calls Raymond the fantastic, seems to be the pope of the popes and the king of kings: he is poor like Job, and gives alms to sovereigns; we do it says mad, and he confuses the wise. The biggest politics of time, Cardinal Ximenès, a spirit as vast as he was serious, speaks of him that by calling him the divine Raymond Lulle and the very enlightened doctor. He died, according to Génbrard, in 1314, or [340] in 1315, according to the author of the preface to _Meditations de Hermit Blaquerne._ He was eighty years old, and the late of her laborious and holy existence came the feast day and of the martyrdom of the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Disciple of the great Kabbalists, Raymond Lulle wanted to establish a universal and absolute philosophy, replacing the conventional abstractions of systems the fixed notion of realities of nature, and in the ambiguous terms of scholasticism, a simple and natural verb. He criticized the definitions of scholars of his time to perpetuate disputes by their inaccuracies and their amphibologies. Man is an animal reasonable_, says Aristotle; man is not an animal, can we answer, and it is rarely reasonable. In addition, _animal_ and _reasonable_ are two terms that cannot be matched. A crazy, according to you, would not be a man, etc. Raymond Lulle defines things by their very name and not by synonyms or roughly; then he explains the names by etymology. So to this question: what is man? he will answer: this word, taken in a general sense, means the human condition; taken in a particular sense, it designates the person human. But what is the human person? --Originally, this is the person God made by giving a breath of life to a body drawn from the _terre (humus) _; currently, it's you, it's me, it's Pierre, it's Paul, etc. People accustomed to scientific jargon will therefore cry out and tell the enlightened doctor that everyone could say as much, that he reasons like a child; that with this method everyone would be knowledgeable, and we would prefer [341] common sense of the common people to all the doctrine of academies: that's what I want, would simply reply Raymond Lulle. Hence the reproach of childishness addressed to all scholarly theory of Raymond Lulle, and she was childish indeed, childish as the moral of the one who said: if you do not become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, is it not also the kingdom of science, since all the celestial life of men and of God is what intelligence and love! Raymond Lulle wanted to oppose the Kabbalah which had become Christian to the fatalistic magic of the Arabs, the traditions of Egypt to those from India, the magic of light to black magic; he said that in the last days, the doctrines of the Antichrist would be materialized realism, and that then would resuscitate all monstrosities of bad magic; so he prepared the spirits at the return of Enoch, that is to say at the last revelation of this science, whose key is in the alphabets hieroglyphics of Enoch, and whose conciliatory light of reason and faith will precede the messianic and universal reign of Christianity on earth. For true Kabbalists and seers, this man was therefore a great prophet, and for the skeptics who at least know how to respect large characters and high aspirations, he was a sublime dreamer. [342] CHAPTER IV. ALCHEMISTS. CONTENTS .-- Flamel, Trithéme, Agrippa, Guillaume Postel and Paracelsus. _Flamel_ belongs exclusively to alchemy, so do not will we only mention him to talk about this book hieroglyphic of Abraham the Jew, in which the writer of the rue Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie found the absolute keys to the great artwork. This book was combined on the keys of Tarot and was only one hieroglyphico-hermetic commentary on Sepher Jezirah. We let us see, in fact, in Flamel's description of it, that the leaves were twenty-one, that is to say twenty-two with the title, and that they were divided into _three septenaries, _ with one sheet without writing on every seventh page. Note that the Apocalypse, this sublime kabbalistic summary and prophetic of all occult figures, also shares his images in three septenaries, after each of which there is a silence in the sky, striking analogy with the leaf no written from the mystical book of Flamel. The septenaries of the Apocalypse are first of all seven seals open, that is, seven mysteries to know and seven difficulties to overcome; seven trumpets to sound, that is to say seven words to understand, and seven cups to pour, that is to say seven substances to be volatilized and fixed. [Illustration: THE SEVEN PLANETS AND THEIR GENIES (Magic of Paracelsus.)] [343] In Flamel's book, the first seventh leaf bears for hieroglyph the rod of Moses triumphant over the projected serpents by Pharaoh's enchanters and who devour each other, figure analogous to the triumphant of the Tarot harnessing to his cubic chariot the Egyptian magic white and black sphinx. This figure corresponds to the seventh dogma of the symbol of Maimonides: We only have one prophet, and that's Moses. It represents the unity of science and work; she also represents the mercury of the wise which is formed by dissolution of the mixtures and by the reciprocal action of sulfur and salt of metals. The figure of the _second septenary_ was the representation of brass serpent fixed on a cross. The cross represents the marriage of purified sulfur and salt, and the condensation of astral light; the number 14 of the Tarot represents an angel, that is to say the spirit of the earth mixing together the liquids of a vase of gold and of a vase of silver. So it's the same symbol figured in another way. In the _last septenary_ of Flamel's book, we saw the desert, fountains and snakes running all around, picture space and universal life. In the Tarot, the space is represented by the four signs of the cardinal points of the sky, and the life by a naked girl running in a circle. Flamel does not say the number of fountains and snakes. There could be have four fountains springing from the same source, as in the Edenic pantacle, with four, seven, nine or ten serpents. [344] In the fourth sheet, we saw Time ready to decide the feet to Mercury. Near there was a flowering rose bush, the root of which was blue, the stem white, the leaves red and the flowers Golden. The number four is that of elementary realization: Time is the atmospheric nitre; his scythe is acid that can be made and which fixes the mercury by transforming it into salt; the rosebush is the work with its three colors successive: it is the magisterium in black, white and red which sprout and flourish gold. On the fifth leaf (the number five is that of the large mystery), at the foot of the flowering rose bush we could see the blind to search the earth in search of the great agent who is everywhere; a few, wiser, weighed a white water similar to thickened air; on the back of the page we saw the massacre of Innocents and the sun and the moon that came to bathe in their blood. This allegory, which indeed expresses the great secret hermetic art, relates to this art of taking the air in the air_ as Aristée says, or, to speak a language intelligible, to use air as a force by dilating it by means of the astral light, as water is dilated into vapor by the action of fire, which can be done using electricity, magnets and a powerful projection of the will of operator led by science and goodwill. The blood of children represents that essential light that fire philosophical extracts from elementary bodies and in which the sun and moon come to bathe, that is, money there is dyed in gold and that the gold acquires a degree of purity that transforms sulfur into real spray powder. We are not doing a treatise on alchemy here, although this [345] science is really the high magic implemented, we reserve for other more special and more extensive works revelations and wonders. Popular tradition assures that Flamel is not dead and that he buried a treasure under the Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie tower. This treasure contained in a cedar chest lined with blades of the seven metals, would be nothing else, say the enlightened adepts, that the original copy of the famous book of Abraham the Jew, with its handwritten explanations from Flamel, and samples of spray powder sufficient to turn the Ocean into gold if the ocean was mercury. After Flamel came _Bernard le Trévisan_, _Basile Valentin_ and other famous alchemists. The twelve keys of Basil Valentin are at the same time kabbalistic, magical and hermetic. Then in 1480 appeared _Jean Trithême_ who was the master of Cornelius Agrippa and the greatest dogmatic magician of the Middle Ages. Tritheme was an abbot of the order of Saint Benedict, of an irreproachable orthodoxy and the most regular conduct. He did not have the recklessness of writing openly about occult philosophy like his disciple the adventurous Agrippa; all his works magic roll on the art of hiding mysteries; as for his doctrine, he expressed it by a pantacle, according to the use of true followers. This extremely rare pantacle is only found in a few handwritten copies of the _Traité des causes seconds_. A Polish gentleman who is a lofty spirit and a noble heart, Count Alexander Branistki, has one curious copy that he was kind enough to communicate to us. [346] This pantacle is made up of two triangles united by the base, one white and the other black; under the tip of the black triangle is lying a madman who painfully raises his head and looks with a grimace of fear in the darkness of the triangle where his own image; on the point of the white triangle leans a man in the prime of life, dressed as a knight, with a firm gaze and the attitude of a strong and peaceful command. In the white triangle are traced the characters of the divine tetragrammaton. We could explain this pantacle by this legend: "The sage relies on the fear of the true God, the fool is crushed by the fear of a false god made in his image. This is the natural meaning and exoteric of the emblem; but meditating on it as a whole and in each of its parts, the followers will find the last word of the kabbalah, the unspeakable formula of the great arcanum: the distinction between miracles and wonders, the secret of apparitions, the universal theory of magnetism and the science of all mysteries. Trithême has composed a story of magic all in pantacles, under this title: _Veterum sophorum sigilla and imagines magicæ_; then in his steganography and in his polygraphy he gives the key to all occult scriptures and explains in terms veiled the real science of incantations and evocations. Trithême is the master of masters in magic, and we hesitate not to proclaim him the wisest and most learned of adepts. It is not the same with _Cornélius Agrippa_, who was his entire life a seeker and who found neither true science nor peace. Agrippa's books are full of learning and daring; he [347] himself was of a whimsical and independent character, so passed for an abominable sorcerer and was he persecuted by the clergy and by princes; he finally wrote against the sciences who could not give him happiness, and he died in the misery and neglect. We finally arrive at the sweet and good figure of this scholar and sublime _Postel_ that we only know through his too mystical love for an enlightened old maid. There is however in Postel anything other than Mother Jeanne's disciple; but the vulgar minds are so happy to denigrate in order to dispense to learn, that they will never want to see anything better. This is not therefore to these that we are going to reveal the genius of Guillaume Postel. Postel was the son of a poor peasant from the outskirts of Barenton in Normandy: by dint of perseverance and sacrifices he succeeded to learn and soon became the most learned man of his time; poverty always accompanied him and misery even sometimes forced to sell his books. Postel, always full of resignation and leniency, worked like a man of labor to earn a piece of bread and then came back to study: he learned all known languages and all sound sciences time; he discovered precious and rare manuscripts, between others the apocryphal Gospels and the Sepher Jezirah; he initiated himself to the mysteries of the high Kabbalah and in his naive admiration for this absolute truth, for this supreme reason of all the philosophies and all the dogmas, he wanted reveal to the world. He therefore spoke openly the language of mysteries, wrote a book entitled: _The key to things [348] hidden since the beginning of the world_. He addressed this book to Fathers of the Council of Trent by conjuring them to enter the path of reconciliation and universal synthesis. Nobody understood, some accused him of heresy, the more moderate just said he was crazy. The Trinity, he said, made man in his image and in his resemblance. The human body is double and its ternary unit is made up of the union of the two halves; the human soul is also double: she is _animus_ and _anima_, she is spirit and tenderness; she has two sexes, the paternal sex sits in the head, maternal sex in the heart; the fulfillment of redemption must therefore be twofold in humanity: it is necessary that the spirit by its purity redeems the wanderings of the heart, then it the heart must redeem the droughts by its generosity selfish of the head. Christianity, he added, has not yet been understood that by reasoning heads he did not descend to the hearts. The Word became man, but that's when he _femme_ will have made the world saved. It's genius mother of religion which will teach men the sublime greatness of the spirit of charity, and then reason becomes reconcile with faith because it will understand, explain and will rule the holy follies of devotion. See now, he added, what is the religion of greater number of Christians: ignorant partiality and persecutor, a superstitious and stupid stubbornness, and above all fear, cowardly fear! And why that? Because they don't have women's hearts, because they don't smell of the divine enthusiasms of maternal love that would explain to them the [349] whole religion. The power that took hold of them brain and which binds their mind, it is not the good God, intelligent and long-suffering, _that's the wicked and foolish and cowardly Satanas_, they fear the devil more than they love God. They are frozen, shrunken brains placed like tombs over dead hearts. Oh! when grace will resuscitate hearts, what an awakening for intelligences! what a rebirth for reason! what a triumph for the truth! Why am I the first and almost the only one to understand it? What can a risen person do alone among the dead who cannot hear nothing yet! Come then, come this maternal spirit which appeared to me in Venice in the soul of a virgin inspired by God, and that he teaches the women of the new world their mission redemptrix and their apostolate of holy and spiritual love! These noble inspirations, Postel indeed owed them to a pious girl named Jeanne, whom he had known in Venice; he was the spiritual confidant of this elite soul and was drawn into the current of mystical poetry swirling around her. When he gave her Communion, he saw her radiant and transfigured, she was then over fifty years old, and the poor father naively admits that he would not have given him fifteen, so much the sympathy of their hearts transfigured her in his eyes. Strange wanderings of love in two pure souls, marriage mystic of two virginities, lyrical, celestial childishness hallucinations; to understand all this you have to have lived ascetic life. It is she, said the enthusiast, it is the spirit of Jesus Christ living in her who must regenerate the [350] world. This light of the heart which must drive out all spirits the hideous specter of Satan, it is not a chimera of my dreams, I saw her, she appeared in the world, she was embodied in a virgin, and I greeted in her the mother of the world to come up! Here we are analyzing Postel rather than translate, but the quick summary that we give of its feelings and his language is it not enough to make understand that all this was said figuratively and that following the judicious remark of the Jesuit scholar Desbillons, in his notice on the life and works of Postel, nothing was further from his thought to do, as has been claimed, a second incarnation and a divinity of this poor hospitable sister who had seduced him only by the brilliance of his humble virtues. We sincerely believe that slanderers and mockers of the good Postel were not as good as Mother Jeanne. The mystical relations of Postel and this nun lasted about five years, after which Mother Jeanne died. She had promised his confessor never to part with him and to assist her when she is free from the chains of life present. "She kept my word," said Postel, "she came since visiting me in Paris, she has illuminated me with her light, she reconciled my reason with my faith. _His substance and body spiritual_, two years since his ascension to heaven, has descended on average, and my body stretched out everywhere, so much so that it is she and not me who lives in me. " Since that time, Postel has never been called other than the Risen One, he signed _Postellus restitutus_, and in fact a singular phenomenon is accomplished in him, his hair of white [351] that they were turned black again, his wrinkles faded and the the ruddy color of youth spread over her face, paling and exhausted by austerities and vigils; his biographers scoffers claim that he used to dye his hair, and that he fardait: as if it was not enough to have made a madman, they still want a man so noble and so generous character was a juggler and a charlatan. There is something more stupendous than the eloquent unreason enthusiastic hearts, it is stupidity or bad faith of skeptical and cold minds who judge them. “We imagined ourselves,” wrote Father Desbillons, “and I see that still believes today, that the regeneration, which it presupposes to have been made by mother Jeanne, is the foundation of her system; the system he never left, except perhaps a few years before his death, survived in full before he had heard of this mother Jeanne. He is silent put in mind that the evangelical reign of Jesus Christ, established by the apostles, could no longer support himself among the Christians, nor spread among the infidels, except by lights of reason .... At this principle, who looked at him personally, he attached another which consisted in the destination of a king of France to the universal monarchy, he it was necessary to prepare the way for him by the conquest of hearts and conviction of spirits, so that there is no longer in the world that one belief, and that Jesus Christ reigned there by one king, by one law and one faith. " This is what proves, according to Father Desbillons, that Postel was crazy. [352] Crazy, for having thought that religion should reign over spirits by the supreme reason of its dogma, and that the monarchy, for be strong and enduring, must bind hearts with conquests of public prosperity of peace. Crazy, for having believed in the advent of the reign of the one to whom we let us ask every day for his reign to come. Crazy, because he believed in reason and justice on the Earth!... Well, they're telling the truth: poor Postel was mad. The proof of his madness is that he wrote, as we have said to the fathers of the Council of Trent, to beg them to bless everyone and not to curse anyone. Another madness; he tried to convert the Jesuits to his ideas, and to make them preach universal harmony among men, peace between sovereigns, reason for priests and kindness to the princes of this world. Finally, last and supreme folly, he neglected the property of land and the favor of the great, always lived humbly and poorly, never possessed anything but his science and his books, and never aspired to anything other than truth and justice. God make peace to the soul of poor Guillaume Postel! He was so gentle and so good that his ecclesiastical superiors took pity on him, and probably thinking, as has been said later de La Fontaine, that he was dumber than wicked, they contented themselves with locking him up in a convent for the rest of his days. Postel thanked them for the calm they gave at the end of his life and died peacefully retracting everything [353] his superiors wanted. The man of universal harmony could not be an anarchist, and above all it was the most sincere of Catholics and the most humble of Christians. One day we will find Postel's works, and we will read them with astonishment. Let's move on to another madman, this one is called _Théophraste Auréole Bombast_, and it is known in the wizarding world as famous of _Paracelsus_. We will not repeat what we said about this master in our _dogma and ritual of high magic_, we will add only a few remarks on occult medicine, of which Paracelsus was the renovator. This truly universal medicine is based on a vast theory of light, which adepts call fluid or potable gold. The light, this creative agent, whose vibrations give all things movement and life; the light latent in the ether universal, radiating around the absorbent centers, which saturated with light in turn project movement and life, and thus form creative currents; astralized light in the stars, animalized in animals, humanized in men; the light which vegetates in the plants, which shines in metals, which produces all forms of nature, and the balance all by the laws of universal sympathy, it is this light which produces the phenomena of magnetism guessed by Paracelsus, it is she who colors the blood by freeing itself from air, sucked in and returned by the airtight bellows of the lungs; the blood then becomes a real elixir of life where globules [354] ruddy and magnets of living light swim in a fluid lightly golden. These globules are real ready seeds to take all the forms of the world of which the human body is in short, they can subtilize and coagulate, renewing thus the spirits which circulate in the nerves, and the flesh which strengthens around the bones; they radiate outside or rather within themselves spiritualizing they let themselves be carried away by the currents of light, and circulate in the astral body, this inner body and luminous that the imagination expands in ecstatic people, so that their blood will sometimes color from a distance objects that their astral body penetrates to identify them. We will demonstrate in a special book on occult medicine, everything we go on here, some strange and some paradoxical that this may appear at first to scientists. Such were the bases of the medicine of Paracelsus, he cured by _sympathy of light_, he applied the drugs not to the external body and material which is everything passive, and that we can even cut and tear without him feeling nothing when the astral body withdraws, but to this inner medium, to this body, the principle of sensations whose quintessence by sympathetic quintessences. Thus, by example, he healed wounds by applying powerful reactive to the spilled blood from which it returned to the body the soul physical and purified sap. To heal a sick limb, he made a wax limb to which he attached, by power of his will, the magnetism of the sick member; he applied to this wax vitriol, iron and fire, and thus reacted by imagination and magnetic correspondence on the patient himself, of which this wax member had become the appendix and the [355] supplement. Paracelsus knew THE MYSTERIES OF BLOOD, he knew why the priests of Baal, to bring down the fire of sky, incisions were made with knives; they had why the Orientals who want to inspire a woman to physical love, shed their blood before her; they had how the shed blood cries out for revenge or mercy and fills look like angels or demons. It is the blood, in fact, that is the instrument of dreams, it is he who makes the images abound in our brain during sleep, because the blood is full of astral light. The globules are bisexual, magnetized and shod, friendly and repellent. From the physical soul of blood, we can bring out all shapes and images from the world ... Let's read the story of an esteemed traveler: "At Baroche," said the traveler Tavernier, "the English have a strong beautiful home, and I remember arriving there one day, coming back from Agra to Surat, with the President of the English, he immediately came charlatans ask him if he wanted them to show him a few tricks of their trade: what he had the curiosity to see. The first thing they did was light a big fire, and to redden iron chains with which they twisted the body, pretending to feel some pain, but basically receiving no damage. Then they took a small piece of wood, and, having planted it in the ground, they asked someone from the company what fruit he wanted to have. We tell them we wanted mangoes, and then a of these charlatans, covering themselves with a shroud, crouched down [356] land up to five or six times .-- I had the curiosity to go up to a room to see from above through an opening in the shroud, what this man was doing, and I saw that, cutting his flesh under the armpits with a razor, he rubbed his blood piece of wood. Every time he got up, the wood grew visibly, and in the third, branches with buds. The fourth time the tree was covered with leaves, and on the fifth one saw flowers. The President of the English then had his minister with him, having taken him to Amadabat to baptize a child of the Commander Dutch, and of whom he had been asked to be the godfather; because he It should be noted that the Dutch do not hold ministers that in places where they have together merchants and soldiers. The English minister had protested at first that he could allow Christians to attend similar shows; and as soon as he saw that, from a piece of dry wood, these people brought in, in less than half an hour, a tree four or five feet tall, with leaves and flowers as in spring, he proceeded to go and break it, and said loudly that he would never give Communion to any of those who would remain more to see these things. This forced the president to fire these charlatans. " Doctor Clever de Maldigny, from whom we borrow this quote, regret the mangoes stopped looking so beautiful way, but he does not undertake to explain the phenomenon. We believe it was a fascination with the magnetism of the radiant light of blood; that was what we defined elsewhere: a phenomenon of_ magnetized electricity_, identical with [357] that which is called _palingenesis_, and which consists in making appear a living plant in a vase that contains ash of the same long dead plant. These were the secrets that Paracelsus knew, and it is in employing for the purposes of medicine these hidden forces of nature, that he made himself so many admirers and so many enemies. Paracelsus was far from being a man like Postel, he was naturally aggressive and pugnacious; his familiar genius was hidden, he said, in the pommel of his great sword, and he never left her. His life was a relentless struggle; he he traveled, he argued, he wrote, he taught. It was more curious about physical results than moral conquests, also he was the first of the magician operators and the last wise followers. His philosophy was all sagacity, too he himself called it _philosophia sagax_. He guessed no more that nobody without ever having known anything completely. Nothing equals his intuitions, if not the temerity of his comments. He was the man of daring experiments, he got drunk on his opinions and his words, he would even get drunk if one its chroniclers believe it. The writings he left are valuable for science, but they should be read with care; we can call him the divine Paracelsus, by taking this adjective in the sense of divinator, it is an oracle, but it is not a true master; it is above all as a doctor that he is great, since he had found universal medicine: he could not however keep his own life, and he died still young, exhausted by his labors and his excesses, leaving behind him a name of a fantastic and dubious glory, founded on [358] discoveries which his contemporaries did not profit from. He died without having said his last word, and he is one of those characters mysterious which we can say like Enoch and Saint John: He is not dead, and he will return to visit the earth before the last day! CHAPTER V. FAMOUS WIZARDS AND WIZARDS. SUMMARY .-- The _Divine comedy_ and the _Roman de la rose _.-- The Renaissance .-- The Quarrels of Martin Luther and the Devil .-- Catherine de Médicis - Henri III and Jacques Clément - The rose-crosses - Henri Kunrath - Osvald Crollius - Alchemists and Magicians at beginning of the 17th century. There have been many comments and studies on the work of _Dante_, and no one we know of has reported it main character. The work of the great Gibelin is a declaration of war on the papacy by the bold revelation of mysteries. Dante's epic is Joannite and Gnostic, it is a bold application of the figures and numbers of the Kabbalah to Christian dogmas, and a secret negation of all that there is absolute, in these dogmas; his journey through the worlds supernatural is accomplished as the initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries and Thebes. It is Virgil who leads him and protects him in the circles of the new Tartarus, as if Virgil, the tender and melancholy prophet of the destinies of Pollion's son, was eyes of the Florentine poet the illegitimate but true father of [359] the Christian epic. Thanks to the pagan genius of Virgil, Dante escapes this abyss on the door of which he had read a sentence in despair, he escapes by putting his head in place of his feet_ and his _feet in place of his head_, that is to say in taking the opposite of dogma, and then it comes back to the light by using the demon himself as a monstrous ladder; he escapes terror by dint of terror, from the horrible force of horror. Hell, he seems to say, is only a dead end for those who do not know how to turn around; he takes the devil to against the grain, if I may use this expression here familiar, and emancipated by its audacity. It is already the Protestantism exceeded, and the poet of the enemies of Rome has already guessed Faust ascending to heaven on the head of Mephistopheles defeated. Note also that Dante's hell is only one negative purgatory. Let us explain: his purgatory seems to have formed in his hell as in a mold, it is the cover and like the stopper of the abyss, and we understand that the titan Florentine while climbing paradise would like to throw foot purgatory in hell. Its sky consists of a series of divided Kabbalistic circles by a cross like the pantacle of Ezekiel; at the center of this cross blooms a rose, and we see it appear for the first time exposed publicly and almost categorically explained the symbol of the rose-cross. We say for the first time, because Guillaume de Lorris, died in 1260, five years before the birth of Alighieri, had not completed his _Roman de la rose_, which was continued by Clopinel, [360] half a century later. We will not discover without astonishment that the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy are the two forms opposites of the same work: the initiation into the independence of the spirit, the satire of all contemporary institutions and the allegorical formula of the great secrets of the Society of pink Cross. These important manifestations of occultism coincide with the time of the fall of the Templars, since Jean de Meung or Clopinel, contemporary of Dante's old age, flourished during his best years at the court of Philippe le Bel. The _Roman de la rose_ is the epic of old France. It's a deep book in a light form, it's a revelation too learned as that of Apuleius of the mysteries of occultism. The Rose de Flamel, that of Jean de Meung and that of Dante were born on the same rosebush. Dante had too much genius to be a heresiarch. Great men impress upon the intelligence a movement which is proves later by acts the initiative of which belongs to the restless mediocrities. Dante may never have been read, and would certainly never have been understood by Luther. However the work of the Ghibellines fertilized by the powerful thought of the poet, slowly raised the empire against the papacy, perpetuating under various names from century to century, and finally made Germany protestant. It was certainly not Luther who made the reform, but the reform took hold of Luther and pushed him into before. This monk with square shoulders was only stubborn and daring, but it was the right instrument for ideas revolutionary. _Luther_ was the Danton of theology [361] anarchic; superstitious and reckless, he believed himself obsessed with the devil; the devil dictated to him arguments against the Church, the devil made him reason, unreason and above all write. This inspiring genius of all the Cains then asked only to ink, of course with this ink distilled by the pen of Luther, he would soon be spilling blood. Luther felt it and he hated the devil because he was still a master; One day he threw his writing board at her as if he wanted to satiate with this violent libation. Luther throwing his inkwell at the head of the devil, reminds us of this facetious regicide who, in signing the death of Charles I, smeared his accomplices with ink. "_Rather Turkish than papist! _" Was Luther's motto; and in Protestantism is basically, like Islamism, only the pure deism organized in conventional worship, and only differs from it by remnants of poorly erased Catholicism. Protestants are, from the point of view of the negation of Catholic dogma, Muslims with a few more superstitions and one less prophet. Men are more willing to renounce God than the devil, apostates of all times have sufficiently proved this. Disciples of Luther, soon divided by anarchy, no longer had between them a bond of common belief, they all believed in Satan, and this specter growing as their spirit of revolt moved away from God, reached terrible proportions. Carlostad, Archdeacon of Württemberg, being one day in the pulpit, saw a black man enter the temple who sat down in front of him, and looked at him the whole time of his sermon with a steadfast terrible; he gets confused, gets down from the pulpit, questions the [362] assistants; no one saw the ghost. Carlostad returns to him terrified, the youngest of his sons comes to meet him, and tells him that a stranger dressed in black came on ask and promised to come back in three days. No more doubt for the hallucinated; the visitor is none other than the specter of the vision. Fright gives him a fever, he goes to bed and dies before the third day. These unfortunate sectarians were afraid of their shadow, their conscience remained Catholic and damned them mercilessly. Luther walking one evening with his wife Catherine of Bora, looked at the sky full of stars, and said to half-voice with a deep sigh: "Beautiful sky that I will not see never! ”-“ What, ”said the woman,“ do you think you are reprobate? ”-“ Who knows, ”said Luther,“ if God will not punish us to have been unfaithful to our wishes? " Maybe then if Catherine, seeing him thus doubting himself, would have abandoned him. cursing him, the reformer, broken by this warning divine, would have recognized how criminal he had been in betraying the Church his first wife, and turned her eyes in tears towards the cloister which he himself had abandoned! But God who resists the superb, no doubt did not find him worthy of this salutary pain. The sacrilegious comedy of Luther's marriage had been the providential retribution for his pride, and as he persevered in his sin, his punishment did not leave him and ridiculed until the end. He died between the devil and his wife, frightened of one and very embarrassed of the other. Corruption and superstition work well together. The epoch of debauched, persecuting and gullible rebirth, [363] was certainly not the rebirth of reason. _Catherine from Medici_ was a witch, _Charles IX_ consulted necromancers, _Henri III_ played parts of devotion and debauchery. It was then the good times for astrologers, although we tortured a few from time to time to force them to change their predictions. The court wizards at this time always mixed a little poisoning and deserved the rope enough. _Trois-Échelles_, the magician of Charles IX, was a conjurer and rogue; he confessed a day to the king, and it was not peccadilloes that his misdeeds; the king pardoned him with threat of hanging in case of relapse. Trois-Échelles fell and was hanged. When the league had sworn the death of the weak and miserable _Henri III_, she had recourse to the spell of black magic. The Star assures us that the wax image of the king was placed on the altars where the leaguing priests said mass, and that pierced this image with a penknife while pronouncing a prayer of curses and anathema. As the king did not die enough quickly, we conclude that he was a wizard. Pamphlets ran where Henry III was represented holding conventicles where the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah were only the prelude more unheard of and more dreadful attacks. The king, it was said, had among his cuties an unknown character who was the devil in no one; we kidnapped young virgins like this prince violently prostituted in Beelzebub; the people believed in these fables, and at last he found himself a fanatic to carry out the threats of bewitchment. _Jacques Clément_ had visions and heard imperious voices commanding him to kill the King. This hallucinated one ran to the regicide like a martyr, and died [364] laughing like the heroes of Scandinavian mythology. Of scandalous chroniclers have claimed that a great lady of the court had united to the inspirations of the monk's solitude, the magnetism of his caresses: this anecdote lacks probability. The monk's chastity maintained his exaltation, and if he had started living the fatal life of passions, a thirst insatiable pleasure would have taken hold of his whole being, and he would no longer have wanted to die. While the wars of religion bloodied the world, the secret societies of illuminism, which were only schools of theurgy and high magic, took consistency in Germany. The oldest of these societies appears to have been that of the rose-cross whose symbols go back to the time of Guelphs and Ghibellines, as we see from the allegories of Dante's poem, and by the figures of the Roman de la rose. The rose, which has always been the emblem of beauty, of life, love and pleasure, mystically expressed the thought secret of all the protests manifested at the rebirth. It was the flesh in revolt against the oppression of the spirit; it was nature declaring itself the daughter of God, like grace; it was love that did not want to be stifled by celibacy; it was life that no longer wanted to be sterile, it was humanity aspiring to a natural religion, all reason and of love, founded on the revelation of the harmonies of Being, of which the rose was for the initiates the living and flowery symbol. The rose, in fact, is a pantacle, it is circular in shape, the leaves of the corolla are cut in the heart, and rest harmoniously on top of each other; its color presents the [365] the softest shades of primitive colors, its chalice is purple and gold. We have seen that Flamel, or rather the book of the Jew Abraham, made it the hieroglyphic sign of the accomplishment of the great work. This is the key to the novel by Clopinel and Guillaume de Lorris. The conquest of the rose was the problem posed by initiation into science while the religion was working to prepare and establish the triumph universal, exclusive and definitive of the cross. Reuniting the rose with the cross, such was the problem posed by the high initiation, and indeed occult philosophy being the universal synthesis, must take into account all the phenomena of being. Religion, considered only as a fact physiological, is the revelation and satisfaction of a need souls. Its existence is a scientific fact: to deny it, this would be to deny humanity itself. Nobody invented her, she was formed like laws, like civilizations, by necessities of moral life; and considered only at this point from a philosophical and restricted point of view, religion must be looked at as fatal if we explain everything by fatality, and as divine if we admit a supreme intelligence at the source of natural laws. From this it follows that the character of all religion proper being to report directly to the divinity by a supernatural revelation, no other mode of transmission giving dogma sufficient sanction, it must be concluded that the true natural religion is the revealed religion, that is, it is natural to adopt a religion only in revealed believer, any true religion requiring sacrifice, and [366] man never having either the power or the right to impose it on his fellows, outside and above all above the conditions ordinary people. It is on the basis of this rigorously rational principle that the Rosicrucians came to respect the dominant religion, hierarchical and revealed. They could therefore no longer to be enemies of the papacy than of the legitimate monarchy, and if they conspired against popes and kings, it was that they considered them personally as apostates from duty and supreme instigators of anarchy. What, in fact, is it that a despot is spiritual or temporal, if not a crowned anarchist? It is by this consideration that we can explain the Protestantism and even the radicalism of certain great followers more Catholic than some popes, and more monarchical than some kings, some eccentric followers, such as Henry Khunrath and the true enlightened ones of his school. _Henri Khunrath_ is a character little known to those who have not make the occult sciences a special study; it is yet a master and a master of the first order; he's a prince sovereign of the rose-cross, worthy in all respects of this scientific and mystical title. His pantacles are splendid like the light of Sohar, learned like Tritheme, exact like Pythagoras, revealers of the great work like the book of Abraham and Nicolas Flamel. Henri Khunrath was a chemist and doctor, he was born in 1502, and he was forty-two years old when he reached the high theosophical initiation. The most remarkable of his works, his [367] _Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom_, was published in 1598, because the approval of Emperor Rudolf annexed to it is dated June 1 of that same year. The author, although he did profession of radical Protestantism, therein strongly claims the name of Catholic and Orthodox; he declares to have in his possession, but keep secret as appropriate, a key of the apocalypse, a triple and unique key like universal science. The division of the book is _septenaire_, and it divides into seven degrees initiation into high philosophy; the text is a mystical commentary on Solomon's oracles; the work ends by synoptic tables, which are the synthesis of the high magic and occult Kabbalah, in all that can be written and published verbally. The rest, that is to say the esoteric part and unspeakable to science, is expressed by magnificent pantacles drawn and engraved with care. These pantacles are at number nine. The _premier_, contains the dogma of Hermes. The _second_, the magical achievement. The _third_ represents the path of wisdom and works preparatory work for the work. The _fourth_ represents the door of the sanctuary lit by seven mystical rays. The _fifth_ is a rose of light, in the center of which a human form extends its arms in the shape of a cross. The _sixth_ represents the magic laboratory of Khunrath, with its kabbalistic oratory, to demonstrate the need to unite prayer at work. The _seventh_ is the absolute synthesis of science. The _eighth_ expresses the universal equilibrium. [368] The _ninth_ summarizes the particular doctrine of Khunrath with a vigorous protest against all its detractors. It's a hermetic pantacle framed in full german caricature of verve and naive anger. The enemies of the philosopher are disguised as insects, goslings, oxen and donkeys, the all adorned with Latin legends and large epigrams in German; Khunrath is represented there on the right and on the left, in town suit and cabinet suit, facing his adversaries, either inside or outside: in town clothes, he is armed with a sword and walks on the tail of a scorpion; in cabinet suit, he is equipped with tweezers and walks on the head of a snake; outside he demonstrates, and at home he teaches, as his gestures make it clear enough, always the same truth without fear of the impure breath of its adversaries, breath so pestilential yet that the birds of the sky fall dead at their feet. This very curious board is missing in a large number of copies of the _Amphitheater_ of Khunrath. This extraordinary book contains all the mysteries of the most high initiation; he is, as the author announces in his title same: _Christiano-Kabbalistic, divine-magic, physico-chemical, triple unique and universal_. It is a true manual of high magic and philosophy hermetic, and one could not find elsewhere, except in the Sepher Jésirah and the Sohar, a more complete and more perfect initiation. In the four important corollaries which follow the explanation of the third figure, Khunrath establishes: 1. That the expenditure to [369] do for the major work (apart from maintenance and expenses operator's personal) must not exceed the _ sum of thirty thalers_; I speak of it knowingly, adds the author, having it learned from someone who knew it. Those who spend more get it wrong and lose their money. These words: having learned from someone who knew it, prove that Khunrath or did not himself the philosopher's stone, or does not mean that he has it done, and that for fear of persecution. Khunrath then establishes the obligation for the adept not to devote to his personal uses that the tenth part of his wealth and devote everything else to the glory of God and charities. Third, he asserts that the mysteries of Christianity and those of nature explaining and illustrating each other, the future reign of the Messiah (messianism) is established on the double basis of science and faith, so that the book of nature confirming the oracles of the Gospel, we can convince by science and by reason the Jews and Mohammedans of truth of Christianity, so much so that with the help of grace divine, they will infallibly be converted to the religion of unity; he finally ends with this sentence: SIGILLUM NATURAE AND ARTIS SIMPLICITAS. _The stamp of nature and art is simplicity_. In Khunrath's time there lived another medical initiate, philosopher hermetic and continuator of the medicine of Paracelsus; it was _Oswald Crollius_, author of the _Book of signatures, or of the true and living anatomy of the great and the small world. In this work whose preface is a very well done abridgment of the [370] Hermetic philosophy, Crollius seeks to establish that God and nature have in a way signed all their works, and that all the products of any force of nature bear, so to speak, the stamp of this force printed in indelible characters, so that the initiate to the scriptures occults can read the sympathies and the antipathies of things, properties of substances and all the other secrets of creation. The characters of the different writings would originally be borrowed from these signatures that exist in stars and flowers, on the mountains and on the humblest pebble. The figures of crystals, broken minerals, would be imprints of the thought that the Creator had in forming them. This idea is full of poetry and grandeur, but it lacks a grammar to this mysterious language of the worlds, it lacks a vocabulary reasoned to this primitive and absolute verb. King Solomon alone passes for having accomplished this double work; or the occult books of Solomon are lost: Crollius therefore undertook not to redo, but to find the fundamental principles of this universal language of the creative Word. By these principles one would recognize that the primitive hieroglyphs formed from the very elements of geometry would correspond to constitutive and essential laws of the forms determined by the alternating or combined movements determined by the attractions balancing; one would recognize by their only external figure the simple and the compound, and by the analogies of the figures with the numbers, we could make a classification mathematics of all the substances revealed by the lines of [371] their surfaces. At the bottom of these aspirations, which are reminiscences of Edenic science, a whole world of discoveries to come for the sciences. Paracelsus had them forebodings, Crollius indicates them, another will come for them. realize and demonstrate them. The madness of yesterday will be the genius of tomorrow, and progress will salute these sublime researchers who had guessed this lost world and found this Atlantis of knowledge human! The beginning of the 17th century was the heyday of alchemy, then appeared: _Philippe Muller_, _Jean Thorneburg_, _Michel Mayer_, _Ortelius_, _Poterius_, _Samuel Northon_, the _baron de Beausoleil_, _David Planiscampe_, _Jean Duchesne_, _Robert Flud_, _Benjamin Mustapha_, the _president of Espagnet_, the cosmopolitan that should be called the first, _de Nuisement_, which translated and published the remarkable writings of the cosmopolitan, _Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont_, _Irénée Philalèthe_, _Rodolphe Glauber_, the sublime shoemaker _Jacob Boehm_. The main ones these initiates devoted themselves to the research of high magic, and in carefully hid the disparaged name under the guise of hermetic research. The Mercury of the wise men they wanted to find and give to their disciples, it was the synthesis scientific and religious, it was the peace that resides in sovereign unity. The mystics were then only the believers blind of the true enlightened ones, and Illuminism properly said was only the universal science of light. In 1623, at spring, we found displayed in the streets of Paris this strange proclamation: “We, deputies of the Rosicrucian Brothers, make our stay visible and [372] invisible in this city, by the grace of the Most High, towards which turns the hearts of the wise; we teach, without any kind of external means, to speak the languages of the countries that we inhabit, and we draw men, our fellows, from the terror and death. "If someone wants to see us out of curiosity only, he never communicates with us; but if his will actually and in fact leads him to register on the registers of our brotherhood, we, who judge thoughts, will make him see the truth of our promises, so much so that we don't put point the place of our abode, since thought, joined to real will of the reader, will be able to make us known to him and him to us. " Public opinion was then preoccupied with this mysterious manifestation, and if someone then loudly asked what it was rose-cross brothers, often an unknown character took part questioner, and said to him gravely: "Predestined for the reform which must soon be accomplished in all the universe, the Rosicrucians are the custodians of the supreme wisdom, and peaceful possessors of all the gifts of nature, they can dispense them as they see fit. "Wherever they are, they know all the things that are happening in the rest of the world, that if they were present; they are not subject to hunger or thirst, and do not have to fear old age or disease. "They can command the spirits and geniuses the most powerful. [373] “God has covered them with a cloud to defend them from their enemies, and we can only see them when they want to, even if we eyes sharper than the eagle's. "They hold their general assemblies in the pyramids from Egypt. "But these pyramids are for them like the rock from which gushed forth the source of Moses, they walk with them in the desert, and will follow them until they enter the earth promise. " CHAPTER VI. MAGIC TRIAL. CONTENTS .-- Gaufridi, Urbain Grandier, Boulé and Picart, the father Girard and Mademoiselle Cadière - Phenomena of convulsions .-- Various anecdotes. The Greek author who wrote the description of the allegorical painting de Cebès ends his work with this admirable conclusion: “There is only one real good to be desired, and that is wisdom; and he there is only one evil to be feared, it is madness. " Moral evil indeed, wickedness, crime, are none other nothing but real madness: and Father Hilarion Tissot has all the sympathies of our heart, when it repeats endlessly in its insanely courageous brochures that instead of punishing criminals, they should be treated and cured. [374] We say the sympathies of our heart, because our reason protests against this too charitable interpretation of the crime the consequences of which would be to destroy the sanction of moral by disarming the law. We compare madness to drunkenness, and considering that drunkenness is almost always voluntary, we applaud the wisdom of the judges who, not looking spontaneous loss of reason as an excuse, punish without pity the offenses and crimes committed in drunkenness. One day may even come when drunkenness will be counted among the aggravating circumstances, and where any intelligent being who will voluntarily put out of reason, will find himself out of law. Isn't the law the reason of humanity? Woe to the man who gets drunk either with wine, or with pride, or of hatred, or even of love! He is blind, he is unfair, he is the plaything of fate; it is a plague that works, it is a living calamity; he can kill, he can rape; he's a fool without chain; haro on him! Society has the right to defend itself; it is more than her right, it is her duty, for she has children. These reflections come to us on the subject of the processes of magic which we have to be accountable. The Church and the society of judicial murder of madmen; we admit that wizards were fools no doubt, but they were fools of perversity; if among them some innocent sick people perished, these are misfortunes of which Church and society cannot be responsible. Every man condemned according to the laws of his countries and judicial forms of his time, is precisely [375] condemned, his possible innocence no longer belongs to God alone; before men he is and must remain guilty. Ludwig Tieck, in a remarkable novel entitled _Sabbat des witches_, portrays a holy woman, a poor old woman exhausted from maceration, the head weakened by fasting and prayers, which, full of horror for wizards, and arranged by excess of humility in accusing oneself of all crimes, ends up to believe indeed witch, accuses himself of it, is convinced of it by error and prevention, then is burned alive. This story were it true, what would it prove? That a miscarriage of justice is possible, nothing more, nothing less. But if miscarriage of justice is in fact possible, it cannot being in law: otherwise what would become of human justice? _Socrates_ condemned to death could have fled, and his judges themselves would have provided him with the means, but he respected the laws and wanted to die. It is to the laws and not to the courts of the Middle Ages that we must take the rigor of certain sentences. But Gilles from Laval, whose crimes and torture we have described, was it unjustly condemned, and should he be absolved because he was crazy? Were they innocent these horrible fools who composed potions from the marrow of small children? The black magic, moreover, was the general madness of this unhappy time: the judges, by dint of studying the questions of witchcraft sometimes ended up believing themselves to be wizards themselves. Witchcraft, in several localities, was becoming epidemic, and the tortures seemed to multiply the culprits. [376] We can see in demonographers, such as Delancre, Delrio, Sprenger, Bodin, Torre-Blanca and the others, the stories of a large number of trials, the details of which are as tedious as revolting. The condemned are for the most part hallucinated and idiots, but wicked idiots and dangerous hallucinations; erotic passions, greed and hatred are the causes of their reason: they were able to of all. Sprenger says witches got along with midwives to buy them child corpses newborns. Midwives were killing these innocent people at the time even from birth, by inserting long needles into them in the brain, a child was declared dead and buried. When night came, the strygus scratched the earth and tore up the corpse, they boiled it in a boiler with narcotic and poisonous herbs, then distilled, convoluted, mixed this human gelatin. The liquid served as elixir of long life, the solid was crushed and incorporated into black cat fat mixed with soot which were used for magic friction. The heart rises in disgust at reading these abominable revelations, and indignation makes silence pity; but when it comes to procedures, when sees the credulity and cruelty of the judges, the false promises of grace that they use to obtain confessions, the tortures atrocious, obscene visits, shameful precautions and ridiculous, then after all that, the stake in public place, the derisory assistance of the clergy who delivers to the secular arm in begging for mercy on those he dedicates to death, we are forced to [377] conclude that in the midst of all this chaos, religion alone remains holy, but that men are all equally fools or villains. Thus in 1598, a Limousin priest, named _Pierre Aupetit_, was burned alive for a ridiculous confession which was extracted from him by the torture. In Dôle, in 1599, a woman named _Antide Collas_ was burnt, because that there was something phenomenal about his sexual conformation, that we thought could only be explained by an infamous trade with Satan. The unfortunate woman, put and put back to torture, stripped, probed, visited in the presence of doctors and judges, crushed by shame and pain, confessed everything to end it. _Henri Boguet_, judge of Saint-Claude, tells himself that he made to torture a woman as a witch, _because something was missing thing on the cross of his rosary_, sure sign of witchcraft, according to this ferocious fool. A twelve-year-old child, styled by the inquisitors, comes to accuse his father for taking him to the Sabbath. Father dies in prison by continuation of his tortures, and it is proposed to burn the child. Boguet is opposed to it and takes credit for this leniency. A woman of thirty-five, _Rollande de Vernois_, is forgotten in a dungeon so freezing that she promises to confess guilt magic, if we want to let it get close to the fire. As soon as she feels heat, she falls into terrible convulsions, she has the fever and delirium; in this state we put her to torture, she says whatever she is made to say, she is dragged dying to the stake. A thunderstorm breaks out, the rain extinguishes the fire, Boguet congratulates himself [378] of the sentence he rendered, since obviously this woman the sky seemed to defend, had to be protected by the devil. The even Boguet still burned two men, _Pierre Gaudillon_ and the big _Pierre_, for having run at night, the one in the shape of hare, the other in the shape of a wolf. But the trial that made the most noise at the beginning of the 17th century century, was that of Messire _Louis Gaufridi_, parish priest of parish of Accoules in Marseille. The scandal of this case gave a fatal example which was only too soon followed. A priest accused by priests! a parish priest dragged to court by his colleagues! Constantine had said that if he saw a priest dishonor his character with a shameful sin, he would cover him with its purple it was a beautiful and royal word. The priesthood, indeed, must be impeccable, as justice is infallible before public morals. In December 1610, a young girl from Marseille named _Magdelaine de la Palud_, having gone on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, in Provence, was seized with ecstasy and convulsions. Another devotee named _Louise Capeau_ soon suffered from the same disease. Dominicans and Capuchins believed in the presence of the devil, and performed exorcisms. Magdelaine de la Palud and her companion gave then the spectacle which was repeated so often a century later during the seizure epidemic. They screaming, twisting and asking to be beaten and trodden at the feet, one day six men walked at the same time on the chest of Magdelaine who felt no pain; in this state she accused herself of the strangest disturbances; she stops talking delivered to the devil body and soul, she said; she had been [379] betrothed to the demon by a priest named Gaufridi. Instead of locking up this madwoman, they listened to her, and the exorcist fathers hurried to Marseille three Capuchins to secretly inform the superiors ecclesiastics about what was happening at Sainte-Baume, and bring, if it was possible, without violence and without scandal parish priest Gaufridi to confront him with the alleged demons. However, we began to write the infernal inspirations of two hysterics, they were speeches of ignorant devotion and fanatic, presenting religion as it was understood the exorcists themselves. The possessed seemed to be telling the dreams of those who questioned them: it was exactly the phenomenon of the _tables talking_ and the _médiums_ of our time. The devils gave themselves names as incongruous as those of the American minds; they declaimed against the printing press and against books, gave sermons worthy of the most fervent and the most ignorant. In the presence of these demons made to their image and likeness, the fathers no longer doubted the truth of the possession and veracity of spirits hellish. The ghosts of their sick imaginations took bodies and appeared to them alive in these two women whose obscene confessions excited their curiosity and indignation full of secret lusts, they became furious and they needed a victim: such were their arrangements when the unhappy Louis was finally brought to them Gaufridi. Gaufridi was a fairly worldly priest, with a pleasant face, of a weak character and of a morality more than suspicious, he [380] had been the confessor of Magdelaine de la Palud, and he had inspired a relentless passion; this passion, turned into hate by jealousy, had become a fatality, it brought about unhappy priest in his whirlwind of madness which led him at the stake. Everything the accused could say in defense had returned against him. He testified to God and Jesus Christ, and his holy mother and his precursor Saint John the Baptist, and he was answered: you recite the Sabbath litanies wonderfully; by god you hear _Lucifer_, by Jesus Christ, _Beelzebub_, by the holy Virgin, the _mother apostate_ of the Antichrist, by saint John the Baptist, the _false prophet_ precursor of Gog and Magog ... Then we put him to the torture, and we promised him his pardon if he wanted to sign Magdelaine de la Palud's declarations. The poor priest, distraught, circumvented, broken, signed everything that was wanted: he signed enough to be burned, and that was what asked. The Capuchins of Provence finally gave the people this terrible spectacle, they taught him to violate the privileges of sanctuary, they showed him how to kill priests, and the people remembered it later. O holy temple, said a rabbi who witnessed the wonders that preceded the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, oh holy temple, what have you got? And why are you scaring yourself? Neither the Holy See nor the bishops protested against the murder of Gaufridi, but the eighteenth century would come dragging the revolution in its wake. One of the possessed women who had killed the parish priest of Accoules declared a day that the demon left her to go and prepare the loss of a [381] another priest, whom she named in advance prophetically and without know; she named him _Urbain Grandier_. Then reigned the terrible _cardinal de Richelieu_, who understood absolute authority as the salvation of states; unfortunately the tendencies of the cardinal were rather political and skilful than truly Christian. This great spirit had as its limit a certain narrowness of heart which made him sensitive to offense personal, and relentless in his vengeance. What he pardoned talent the least, it was independence; he wanted to have spirit people for helpers, rather than for flatterers, and he had a certain joy in destroying all that wanted to shine without him. His head aspired to dominate everything, the father _Joseph_ was his right arm and _Laubardemont_ his arm left. There was then in the provinces, in Loudun, an ecclesiastic of a remarkable genius and of great character, he had and talent, but little circumspection; made to please multitudes and to attract the sympathies of the great, he could on occasion become a dangerous sectarian; protestantism then moved in France, and the parish priest of Saint-Pierre de Loudun, too open to new ideas because of his lack of attraction for ecclesiastical celibacy, could become at the head of this party a preacher brighter than Calvin and as daring as Luther, his name was _Urbain Grandier_. Already serious quarrels with his bishop had signaled his skill and inflexibility, unhappy skill and awkward, moreover, since he had called powerful enemies to the king and not to the cardinal; the king had him [382] being right, the cardinal had to prove him wrong. Grandier was returned triumphantly to Loudun, and allowed himself to boast little clerical to enter there a branch of laurel in the hand. AT from that day it was lost. The Ursuline nuns of Loudun then had for Superior, under the name of Mother Joan of the Angels, a certain _Jeanne de Belfiel_, granddaughter of Baron de Cose. This nun was nothing less than fervent, and her convent did not pass for one of the most regular in the country, he did nocturnal scenes attributed to spirits. The parents the boarders were withdrawing, and the house would soon be devoid of any resource. Grandier had some intrigues and did not hide them enough, he was, moreover, too prominent a character for the idleness of a small town did not make much noise of its weaknesses. The residents of the Ursulines heard about it with mystery from their parents, the nuns spoke about it between them to deplore the scandal, and all remained preoccupied with the scandalous personage, they reigned over it; they do it saw during the night appear in the dormitories with attitudes very much in line with what people said about their customs, they cried out, thought they were obsessed, and there was the devil in the House. The directors of these girls, mortal enemies of Grandier, saw how much they could get out of this affair in the interest of their resentment and in the interest of the convent. We did exorcisms in secret first, then in public. Friends of Grandier felt that something was up and urged [383] the parish priest of Saint-Pierre du Marché to swap his profits, and to leave Loudun. Everything would calm down as soon as we saw him gone; but Grandier was a valiant man, he did not know what was that of yielding to calumny, he remained, and was arrested a morning as he entered his church, dressed in his clothes priestly. Barely arrested, Grandier was treated as a state criminal, his papers were seized, seals affixed to his furniture, and he himself was taken under guard to the fortress of Angers. During this time a dungeon was being prepared for him at Loudun which seemed to more made for a ferocious beast than for a man. Richelieu, educated in everything, had dispatched Laubardemont to put an end to Grandier, and had made parliament forbid to know of this case. If the conduct of the parish priest of Saint-Pierre had been that of a worldly, the outfit of Grandier, prisoner and accused of magic, was that of a hero and a martyr. Adversity thus reveals the great souls, and it is much easier to endure the suffering than prosperity. He wrote to his mother: "... I bear my affliction with patience, and no longer pity the yours than mine. I am very inconvenienced, having no bed; try to get mine to bring me, because if the body does not rest, the spirit succumbs. Finally send me a breviary, a Bible and a Saint Thomas, for my consolation; besides, don't you do not grieve, I hope that God will bring my innocence to light ... " God, in fact, sooner or later takes the side of innocence oppressed, but he does not always deliver her from her enemies on [384] the earth, or deliver it only by death. Grandier had to soon to experience it. However, let's not make men meaner than they are in fact: Grandier's enemies did not believe in his innocence, they pursued him with rage, but it was a great guilty they thought they were pursuing. Hysterical phenomena were then poorly known and sleepwalking entirely ignored: the contortions of the nuns, their movements outside habits and human strength, the proofs they gave at a frightening second sight, it was all likely to convince the less gullible. A famous atheist of that time, the Sieur de Kériolet, adviser to the Parliament of Brittany, came see exorcisms to make fun of it. The nuns who do had ever seen him apostrophized him by name and revealed out loud sins that the counselor believed he hadn't done to know anyone. His conscience was shattered and he passed from one extreme to the other, as do all fiery natives; he cried, he confessed, and devoted himself for the rest of his life to the most rigorous asceticism. The fallacy of the exorcists of Loudun was this absurd paralogism that M. de Mirville still dares to maintain today: _The devil is the author of all phenomena that do not cannot be explained by the known laws of nature. To this antilogical aphorism, they added another of which they were sort of an article of faith. _The duly exorcised devil is forced to speak the truth, and we can admit him to testify in court. [385] The unfortunate Grandier was therefore not handed over to scoundrels; he was dealing with furious lunatics; also, strong of their conscience, they gave to this incredible trial the most great publicity. Never had such a scandal afflicted the Church: nuns howling, writhing, indulging in most obscene gestures, blaspheming, seeking to pounce on Grandier like the Bacchantes on Orpheus; then the things most sacred of religion mingled with this hideous spectacle, trails in this mire; Grandier alone calm, shrugging shoulders and defending themselves with dignity and gentleness; pale judges, distraught, sweating profusely, Laubardemont in a red dress hovering over this conflict like the vulture waiting for a corpse. Such was the trial of Urbain Grandier. Let's say it loudly for the honor of humanity: a conspiracy similar to that which the legal assassination of this man, if we do not admit the good faith of the exorcists and judges, is fortunately impossible. Monsters are also rare as heroes; the crowd consists of mediocrities too incapable of great crimes than great virtues. Most holy figures of that time believed in the possession of Loudun; Saint Vincent de Paul was no stranger to this history and was called to share his opinion. Richelieu himself, who, in any case perhaps, would have found a way to get rid of Grandier, ends up believing him guilty. His death was the crime of ignorance and prejudices of his time, and it was a catastrophe rather than assassination. We will not afflict our readers with the details of his tortures: he remained firm, resigned, without anger and confessed nothing; he did not affect not even to despise his judges, he gently prayed to [386] exorcists to spare him: "And you, my fathers," he said to them, " moderate the severity of my torments, and do not reduce my soul to despair. " We feel through this sob of nature that is pity, all the leniency of the forgiving Christian. The exorcists, to hide their emotion, answered him with invectives, and the executioners wept. Three of the nuns, in one of their lucid moments, came bow down before the tribunal, shouting that Grandier was innocent; it was believed that the demon spoke through their mouths, and this confession only hastened the ordeal. Urbain Grandier was burned alive on August 18, 1634. He was patient and resigned until the end. When we got him out of the cart, as his legs were broken, he fell roughly with his face against the ground without uttering a single cry or a single moan. A Cordelier, named Father Grillau, then split through the crowd and came raise the patient whom he embraced crying: "I bring you, he said, your mother's blessing she and I pray God for you. '' Thank you, father, '' replied Grandier,you alone.
here have pity on me, console my poor mother and serve her as
son.” The provost’s lieutenant, quite moved, then said to him:
“Sir, forgive me for the part I am forced to take in
your torment. ”You did not offend me, '' replied Grandier,
you are obliged to fulfill the duties of your office. ” We him
had promised to strangle him before burning him, but when the
executioner wanted to pull the rope, she found herself tied, and the
unhappy priest of Saint-Pierre fell alive in the fire.
The main exorcists, the father Tranquille and the father
Lactance, died soon after, in the transport of a
[387] furious frenzy; Father Surin, who replaced them, went mad.
Manoury, the surgeon who had helped to torture Grandier,
died pursued by the ghost of the victim. Laubardemont
tragically lost his son, and himself fell into the
disgrace of his master; the nuns remained stupid; so much
it is true that it was a terrible disease and
contagious: the mental illness of false zeal and false
devotion. Providence punishes men by their own
faults, she instructs them by the sad consequences of their
errors.
Barely ten years after Grandier’s death, the scandals of
Loudun were renewed in Normandy. Nuns of Louviers
accused two priests of having bewitched them; a death
priests was dead, the majesty of the tomb was violated for
snatch the corpse, the phenomena of possession were the
same as in Loudun and Sainte-Baume. These hysterical girls
translated into foul language the nightmares of their
directors; the two priests, one dead and the other alive, were
condemned to the stake. Horrible thing, we tied to the same post a
man and a corpse! The torture of Mézence, this fiction of
pagan poet, found Christians to realize it, a people
Christian coldly witnessed this sacrilegious execution, and the
pastors did not understand that by thus profaning the priesthood and
death, they gave a dreadful signal to impiety.
We called the seventeenth century, he came to extinguish the pyres with the
blood of priests, and as almost always happens, these were
the good who paid for the wicked.
[388] The eighteenth century had begun, and
men; faith was already lost, and we gave up by
hypocrisy the young Labarre to the most horrible tortures for
refusing to greet the procession. Voltaire was then at
world and felt growing in his heart a vocation similar to
that of Attila. Human passions desecrated religion, and
God was sending this new devastator to take religion back to
a world that was no longer worthy of it.
In 1731, a young lady Catherine Cadière de Toulon accused her
confessor, the father Girard, Jesuit, of seduction and magic;
this girl was a stigmatized ecstatic who had spent
long for a saint; it was a whole terrible story of
lascivious poisons, secret flogging, touching
lush … What infamous place has mysteries like those of a
imagination celibate and disturbed by a dangerous mysticism?
La Cadière was not taken at his word, and Father Girard escaped
the dangers of conviction; the scandal was no less
immense, and the noise he made was echoed in laughter:
we have said that Voltaire was then in the world.
Superstitious people had hitherto explained the
extraordinary phenomena through the intervention of the devil and
spirits; the school of Voltaire, no less absurd, denied against all
evidence the phenomena themselves.
What we can’t explain is from the devil, said
each;
What we cannot explain does not exist, replied
others.
Nature, always reproducing under circumstances
[389] analogous the same series of eccentric and marvelous facts,
protested against the presumptuous ignorance of some and the science
narrow-mindedness of others.
At all times, physical disturbances have accompanied
certain nervous diseases; the insane, the epileptics, the
cataleptics, hysterics, have exceptional faculties,
are prone to contagious hallucinations and produce
sometimes, either in the atmosphere or in the objects which
surround, concussions and disturbances. The hallucinated
projects his dreams around him, and he is tormented by his
shadow; the body is surrounded by its reflections made deformed by
suffering of the brain; we look at each other then in a way
in the astral light whose excessive currents, acting at
the way of the magnet, move and rotate the furniture; we
then hears noises and voices as in dreams. These
phenomena, repeated so many times nowadays that they have become
vulgar, were attributed by our fathers to ghosts and
demons. Voltairian philosophy found shorter of them
deny, calling eyewitnesses fools and fools
of the most indisputable facts.
What could be more proven, for example, than the wonders of
convulsions at the tomb of deacon Paris, and in the meetings of
ecstatic of Saint Medard? How to explain these strange
what help did the convulsants ask for? thousands of
logs on the head, pressure to crush a
hippopotamus, twisting the udders with iron clamps, the
crucifixion even with nails driven into the feet and
hands? then superhuman contortions, climbs
[390] aerial? The Voltairians wanted to see nothing but grimaces
and gambols, the Jansenists cried miracle and the real ones
Catholics moaned; but the science which alone should
intervene to explain this fantastic disease, science is
kept away: it is to her alone, however, that
now the Ursulines of Loudun, the nuns of Louviers,
American convulsionists and médiums. Phenomenons
magnetism don’t they put her on the path of discovery
news? The chemical synthesis which is being prepared, will it not lead to
not besides our physicists with the knowledge of the light
astral? And this universal force once known, which
will prevent determining the strength, number and direction of
his magnets? It will be quite a revolution in science, we
will have returned to the high magic of the Chaldeans.
Much has been said about the presbytère de Cideville, MM. of
Mirville, Gougenot Desmousseaux and other believers without criticism
saw in the strange things that happened there a revelation
contemporary of the devil; but the same things happened to
Saint-Maur, in 1706, all of Paris was running there. We could hear knocking
heavy blows against the walls, the beds rolled without
that you touched it, the furniture moved: it all ended up
a violent crisis accompanied by a profound fainting
during which the master of the house, a young man from
twenty-four to twenty-five years old, of a frail constitution and
nervous, thought he heard spirits talking to her at length, without
to never be able to repeat from a word of what they had to him
said.
[391] Here is a story of an apparition from the beginning of the 18th century;
the naivety of the story proves its authenticity, there are some
characters of truth that inventors do not imitate.
A good priest from the city of Valogne, named Bézuel, being prayed
at dinner on January 7, 1708, with a lady, a relative of the abbot of
Saint-Pierre, with this abbot, told them, according to their wishes,
the appearance of one of his comrades, which he had had in broad daylight
twelve years ago.
“In 1695,” Bézuel told them, being a young schoolboy of about fifteen
years ago, I got acquainted with the two children of Abaquène,
prosecutor, school children like me. The oldest was my age, the youngest
was eighteen months younger, his name was Desfontaines; we
were doing our walks and all our fun
together; and either that Desfontaines had more friendship for me,
either that he was more cheerful, more obliging, more spiritual than his
brother, I also loved him more.
In 1696, both of us walking in the Capuchin cloister,
he told me that he had recently read a story of two friends
who had promised themselves that the one who died first would come
to tell the living being of the news of his condition; that the dead returned, and
tells him surprising things. On that, Desfontaines told me
that he had a favor to ask of me, that he asked for it
urgently: it was to make such a promise to him, and that,
for his part, he would do it to me; I told him I didn’t want to.
He was several months talking to me often and very seriously;
I still resisted. Finally, around August 1696, as he
had to go to study in Caen, he pressed me so hard,
tears in my eyes, that I consented. He pulled in moment two
[392] small papers which he had written all ready, one signed by his own
blood, where he promised me, in case of death, to come and say
news of his condition, the other where I promised him the same
thing. I pricked my finger, a drop of blood came out
with which I signed my name; he was delighted to have my ticket,
and, embracing me, he thanked me a thousand times.
Some time later he left with his brother. Our separation
caused us much grief; we wrote to each other from time to time
from our news, and it was only six weeks that I had
received from his letters, when it happened to me that I was leaving
to tell.
On July 31, 1697, a Thursday, he will remember it all my life,
late M. de Sortoville, with whom I was staying, and who had
kindness to me, begged me to go to a meadow near the
Cordeliers, and to help squeeze his people who were making hay;
I wasn’t there a quarter of an hour until around half past two
I suddenly felt dizzy and seized with weakness; I
leaned in vain on my hay fork, I had to
put on a little hay, where I was about half an hour
come to my senses. It happened; but like nothing ever
similar had happened to me, I was surprised, and I feared the
beginning of an illness, however, only a few
printing the rest of the day; it is true that at night I slept
less than usual.
The next day at the same time, as I was leading M. de
Saint-Simon, grandson of M. de Sortoville, who was then ten
years, I found myself on the road attacked by such a weakness, I
sat down on a stone in the shade. This happened, and we
[393] continued on our way; nothing more happened to me that day,
and at night I hardly slept.
Finally, the next day, second day of August, being in the attic
where we squeezed the hay that we brought from the meadow, precisely to the
at the same time, I was seized with such dizziness and
similar weakness, but greater than the others. I
passed out and lost consciousness. One of the lackeys noticed it.
I was told that I was then asked what I had; and
I replied: I saw what I would never have believed; but he doesn’t
remembers neither the request nor the answer. This however
agrees with what I remember seeing then as a
nobody half-naked, but whom I did not recognize, however.
I was helped down the ladder; I stood by
echelons; but as I saw Desfontaines, my comrade, at the bottom of
the ladder, weakness took hold of me, my head went between two
echelons and I lost consciousness again. They took me down and we
put me on a large beam which served as a seat on the large
place of the Capuchins; I no longer saw M. de Sortoville there, nor
his servants, although present; but seeing Desfontaines
towards the foot of the ladder, which beckoned me to come to him,
I drew back in my seat, as if to make room for it, and those
who saw me, and that I did not see, although I had the
eyes open, noticed this movement.
As he was not coming, I got up to go to him; he
walked up to me, took my left arm with his right arm, and
led me, thirty paces away, down a side street, holding me
so hung. The servants believing that my giddiness
[394] had passed, and that I was going to some necessities, went away
each to their work, except a little lackey who came to tell
M. de Sortoville whom I spoke to myself. M. de Sortoville believed
that I was drunk; he approached, and heard me do a few
questions and some answers he has told me since.
I was there nearly three quarters of an hour chatting with
Desfontaines. I promised you, he told me, that if I died
before you, I will come and tell you. I drowned the day before yesterday at
the Caen river; around this time I was at the
walk with such and such, it was very hot, he took us
want to bathe, there came a weakness in the river,
and I fell to the bottom. The Abbé de Ménil-Jean, my comrade, plunged
to get hold of myself, I grabbed his foot; but, whether he was afraid
that it was not a salmon, because I held it very tight, either
that he wanted to get back on the water quickly, he shook so
roughly the hock, which he gave me a big blow on the chest,
and threw me at the bottom of the river, which is very deep there.
Desfontaines then told me everything that had happened to them in
the walk, and what they had talked about. I was fine
ask him questions if he was saved, if he was damned, if he
was in purgatory, if I was in a state of grace, and if I
would follow closely, he continued his speech as if he hadn’t
not heard, and as if he had not wanted to hear me.
I approached several times to kiss her; but it seemed to me
that I did not kiss anything; yet I felt that he
held tightly by the arm, and that when I tried to
turn my head away so as not to see it anymore, because I did not see it
[395] that in afflicting me, he was shaking my arm, as if to force me
to watch it and listen to it.
He always seemed taller to me than I had seen him, and more
even taller than he was at the time of his death, although he had grown
for eighteen months since we had seen each other; I live it
still half-length and naked, her head bare with her beautiful hair
blonde, and a white sign, twisted in her hair, on
his forehead, on which there was writing, where I could not read
that these words: In, etc.
It was the same sound of his voice: he seemed neither happy nor sad,
but in a calm and peaceful situation; he begged me, when
his brother would have come back, to say some things to him to say
his father and his mother; he begged me to say the seven psalms he
had had in penance the previous Sunday, which he did not have
still recited; then he recommended me again to speak to his
brother, and then bade me farewell, walked away from me saying:
“Until, until,” which was the ordinary term which
was used when we left for the promenade to go
each of us.
He told me that when he was drowning, his brother, writing a
translation, had repented of letting it go without
accompany him, fearing some accident: he painted me so well
where he had drowned, and the tree in the avenue de Louvigni where he
had written a few words, which two years later, finding me with
the late knight of Gotot, one of those who were with him
when he drowned, I marked the spot for him, and that
counting the trees on a certain side, that Desfontaines had me
specified, I went straight to the tree, and I found his handwriting: he
[396] also tells me that the article of the seven psalms was true, that
leaving confession, they had said their penance to each other; his brother
told me since that it was true that at this time he was writing his
version, and that he reproached himself for not having accompanied his
brother.
As I spent almost a month without being able to do what had to me
said Desfontaines with regard to his brother, there appeared to me two more
time before dinner at a country house where I had been
dinner, a league from here. I felt bad; I say that I am
left, that it was nothing, that I was going to come back: I went to
the corner of the garden. Desfontaines having appeared to me, he gave me
reproaches that I had not yet spoken to his brother, and
spoke to me for another quarter of an hour without wanting to answer my
Questions.
While going in the morning to Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire, it appeared to me
again, but for less time, and still urged me to speak
to his brother, and left me always saying to me “Until,
until, ”and without wanting to answer my questions.
It’s a remarkable thing that I always had a pain in
the place of the arm he had grabbed me the first time, until
what I would have spoken to his brother. I was three days that I did
not asleep from the astonishment where I was. At the end of the first
conversation, I told M. de Varonville, my neighbor and my
schoolmate, that Desfontaines had been drowned, that he was coming
himself to appear to me and tell me. He always went away
running to parents to find out if this was true; we
had just received the news; but, by a misunderstanding, he
[397] understood that it was the eldest. He assured me he had read the letter
de Desfontaines, and he believed it so: I always supported him
that it could not be, and that Desfontaines himself
had appeared to me: he turned around, came back, and said to me, weeping:
is all too true. ”
Nothing has happened to me since, and this is my natural adventure.
It has been told variously; but I only told it as I
just told you. The late knight of Gotot told me that
Desfontaines also appeared to M. de Ménil-Jean. But I don’t
not know; he lives twenty leagues from here, near Argentan,
and I cannot say anything more. “
It is necessary to notice the dream character which shows itself everywhere in
this vision of a man awake, but half asphyxiated by the
hay fumes. We will recognize the astral intoxication produced by
congestion of the brain. The state of sleepwalking which is the
consequence, and which shows M. Bézuel the last reflection
alive that his friend left in the light. He is naked, and we
can only see it at half-length, because the rest was already
hidden by the water of the river. The bandage in the hair
was undoubtedly a handkerchief or a cord which had been used
bather to hold back his hair. Bézuel then had the intuition
sleepwalking about everything that had happened, it seemed to him
learn it from his friend himself. This friend besides does not
seemed neither sad nor cheerful, a way of expressing the impression that
gave him this lifeless image, all of reminiscence and reflection.
When this vision first came to him, Mr. Bézuel,
intoxicated by the smell of hay, drops from a ladder and
wounds in the arm: it seems to him then, with the logic of dreams,
[398] that his friend squeezes his arm, and when he wakes up he still feels
pain, which is naturally explained by the sudden
that he had given himself; moreover, the speeches of the deceased were
all retrospective, nothing of death or the other life, which
proves once again how impassable the barrier is
that separates the other world from this one.
Life in Ezekiel’s prophecy is represented by wheels that
rotate into each other; elementary forms
represented by the four animals, go up and down with
the wheel, and continue without ever reaching each other like the
Zodiac signs. Never will the wheels of perpetual motion
return on themselves; forms never retreat towards
the stations they left; to come back from where we are
gone, you must have gone around the circle in one movement
always the same and always new. Let us conclude that all
which manifests itself to us in this life, is a phenomenon of this
same life, and that it is not given here below, neither to our thought, nor to
our imagination, not even our hallucinations and our dreams,
to cross, if only for a moment, the barriers
dreadful of death.
[399]
CHAPTER VII.
MAGICAL ORIGINS OF MASONRY.
CONTENTS .– The legend of Hiram or Adoniram .– Other legends
Masonic – The Secret of Freemasons – Spirit of their
rites – Meaning of their ranks, their allegorical pictures, their
signs.
The great Kabbalistic association, known in Europe as
of masonry, suddenly appears in the world at the moment when
the protest against the Church has just dismembered the unity
Christian. Historians of this order do not know how
explain the origin: some give her a free mother
association of masons, formed during the construction of the
Strasbourg cathedral; others give him Cromwell for
founder, without asking too much if the rites of Masonry
in the days of Cromwell were not organized against this
leader of Puritan anarchy; there are those ignorant enough to
to attribute to the Jesuits, if not the foundation at least the
continuation and management of this long-secret society
and still mysterious. Apart from this last opinion, which
refutes on its own, we can reconcile all the others,
saying that the Masons borrowed from the builders of the
Strasbourg cathedral their name and the emblems of their art,
that they organized themselves publicly for the first time in
England, thanks to radical institutions and despite the
Cromwell’s despotism.
[400] We can add that they had the Templars as models, the
rose-crosses for fathers and joannites for ancestors. Their dogma
is that of Zoroaster and Hermes, their rule is the initiation
progressive, their principle equality regulated by the hierarchy and
universal brotherhood; they are the continuers of the school
of Alexandria, heir to all ancient initiations; this
are the custodians of the secrets of the apocalypse and the sobar;
the object of their worship is the truth represented by the light;
they tolerate all beliefs and profess only one
and the same philosophy; they only seek the truth, do not teach
that reality and want to gradually bring all the
intelligences to reason.
The allegorical goal of masonry is the reconstruction of
temple of Solomon; the real goal is the reconstitution of unity
social by the alliance of reason and faith, and the
reestablishment of the hierarchy, according to science and virtue,
with initiation and trials for degrees.
Nothing is more beautiful, we can see it, nothing is bigger than these
ideas and tendencies, unfortunately the doctrines of unity
and submission to the hierarchy were not preserved in the
universal masonry; soon there was a masonry
dissident, opposed to Orthodox Masonry, and the most
great calamities of the French revolution were the result
of this split.
Freemasons have their sacred legend, it is that of Hiram,
completed by that of Cyrus and Zerubbabel.
Here is the legend of Hiram:
When Solomon built the temple, he entrusted his plans to a
architect named Hiram.
[401] This architect, in order to put the works in order, divided
workers by rank of skill, and like their multitude
was great, in order to recognize them, either to employ them
according to their merit, or to remunerate them according to their
work, he gave to each category, to apprentices, to
companions and masters, passwords and signs
individuals.
Three companions wanted to usurp the rank of masters without
have merit, they ambushed the three main
doors of the temple, and when Hiram presented himself to go out, one
companions asked him for the watchword of the masters,
threatening to rule.
Hiram answered him: This is not how I received the word that
you are asking me.
The furious companion smote Hiram with his iron rule, and made him
a first injury.
Hiram ran to another door, he found the second companion there,
same request, same answer, and this time Hiram was hit with
a set square, others say with a lever.
At the third gate was the third assassin, who completed the
master with a mallet.
These three companions then hid the corpse under a heap of
rubble, and planted on this improvised grave a branch
acacia tree, then they fled like Cain after the murder
from Abel.
However, Solomon, not seeing his architect return, sent
nine masters to seek him out, the acacia branch revealed to them the
corpse, they pulled him out of the rubble, and as there was
stayed long enough, they cried, lifting him up: Mac benach! which means: the flesh is detached from the bones.
[402] Hiram was given the last duties, then twenty-seven teachers
were sent by Solomon to search for the murderers.
The first was surprised in a cave, a lamp was burning near
from him and a stream flowed at his feet, a dagger was near
of him for his defense; the master who entered the cave
recognized the murderer, seized the dagger and struck him, shouting:
Nekum! Word which means revenge; his head was brought to
Solomon, who shuddered when he saw her, and said to him who had killed
the assassin: Unhappy, didn’t you know that I had reserved myself
the right to punish? So all the masters bowed down and
asked mercy for the one whose zeal had taken too much
far.
The second murderer was betrayed by a man who had given him
asylum; he was hidden in a rock near a burning bush,
on which shone a rainbow, a dog was lying near
him, the masters deceived the vigilance of the dog, seized the
guilty, bound him and brought him to Jerusalem, where he perished from
last torture.
The third assassin was killed by a lion, which had to be defeated
to seize his corpse, other versions say that he
defended himself with an ax against the masters, who
finally succeeded in disarming him and led him to Solomon, who
made him expiate his crime.
This is the first legend, now here is the explanation.
Solomon is the personification of science and wisdom
supreme.
The temple is the realization and the figure of the hierarchical reign
of truth and reason on earth.
[403] Hiram is the man who came to empire through science and
wisdom.
He governs by justice and order, rendering to each
according to his works.
Each degree of the order has a word that expresses it
intelligence.
There is only one word for Hiram, but this word is spoken
in three different ways.
In a way for apprentices, and pronounced by them it means
nature and is explained by work.
In another way for the companions, and with them it means
thought by explaining itself through study.
In another way for the masters, and in their mouth it
means truth, a word that can be explained by wisdom.
This word is the one we use to designate God, whose
the real name is indescribable and incommunicable.
So there are three degrees in the hierarchy, just as there are three
doors to the temple;
There are three rays in the light;
There are three forces in nature;
These forces are represented by the rule which unites, the lever which
lifts and the mallet which strengthens.
The rebellion of brutal instincts, against the aristocracy
hierarchy of wisdom, arms itself successively with these three
forces which it diverts from harmony.
There are three typical rebels:
The rebel to nature;
The rebel to science;
The rebel to the truth.
They were represented in the hell of the ancients by the three heads
of Cerbère.
[404] They are figured in the Bible by Korah, Dathan and Abiron.
In Masonic legend, they are referred to by names which
vary according to the rites.
The first one usually called Abiram or murderer
Hiram, strike the grand master with the ruler.
It is the story of the righteous put to death, in the name of the law, by the
human passions.
The second named Miphiboseth, named after a ridiculous suitor and
cripple to the kingship of David, strike Hiram with the lever or
with the square.
This is how the popular lever or the square of a madwoman
equality becomes the instrument of tyranny in the hands of
multitude and expectation, more unfortunately still than the rule, to
the royalty of wisdom and virtue.
The third finally finishes Hiram with the mallet.
As brutal instincts do, when they want to do
order in the name of violence and fear by crushing
intelligence.
The acacia branch on Hiram’s tomb is like the cross on
our altars.
It is the sign of science which outlasts science; it’s here
green branch that announces another spring.
When men have thus disturbed the order of nature,
Providence intervenes to restore it, like Solomon to avenge
Hiram’s death.
[405] The one who murdered with the rule, dies by the dagger.
Whoever struck with the lever or the square, will die under the
ax of the law. It is the eternal stop of the regicides.
He who triumphed with the mallet, will fall victim to force
which he abused, and will be strangled by the lion.
The assassin by the rule, is denounced by the same lamp which
enlightens it and by the source where it drinks.
That is to say, that the penalty of retaliation will be applied to him.
The assassin by the lever will be surprised when his vigilance is in
default like a sleeping dog, and it will be delivered by its
accomplices; for anarchy is the mother of treason.
The lion which devours the assassin by the mallet, is one of the forms
of the Sphinx of Oedipus.
And this one will deserve to succeed Hiram in his dignity which will have
defeated the lion.
Hiram’s rotting corpse shows shapes changing, but
let the spirit remain.
The source of water flowing near the first murderer, recalls the
flood that punished crimes against nature.
The burning bush and the rainbow that reveal the second
assassin, represent light and life, denouncing the
attacks on thought.
Finally, the vanquished lion represents the triumph of the spirit over
matter and the final submission of force to intelligence.
Since the beginning of the work of the mind to build the
temple of unity, Hiram has been killed many times, and he
always resurrects.
[406] It is Adonis killed by the boar, it is Osiris murdered by
Typhoon.
It is Pythagoras proscribed, it is Orpheus torn by
Bacchantes, it is Moses abandoned in the caves of Mount Nebo,
it is Jesus put to death by Caiaphas, Judas and Pilate.
True masons are therefore those who persist in wanting
build the temple, following Hiram’s plan.
Such is the great and principal legend of masonry; the
others are no less beautiful and shallower, but we do not
believe it is our duty to divulge its mysteries, although we
have received initiation only from God and our works, we
let’s look at the secret of high masonry like ours.
Achieved by our efforts to a scientific rank which imposes on us
silence, we believe we are better committed by our convictions
than by an oath. Science is a nobility which obliges, and
we will not demerit the princely crown of the rose-crosses.
We too believe in Hiram’s resurrection!
The rites of masonry are intended to transmit the
memory of the legends of the initiation, to keep it among the
brothers.
We may be asked how, if the masonry is so
sublime and so holy, it could have been proscribed and so often
condemned by the Church.
We have already answered this question, talking about
splits and desecration of masonry.
Masonry is gnosis, and false Gnostics have made
condemn the real ones.
What forces them to hide is not the fear of
[407] light, light is what they want, what they seek,
what they love.
But they fear the profaners, that is to say, the fake ones
performers, slanderers, silly laughing skeptics,
and the enemies of all belief and all morality.
In our time, moreover, a large number of men who believe themselves
Freemasons, ignore the meaning of their rites, and have lost the
key to their mysteries.
They no longer even understand their symbolic paintings, and
no longer understand the hieroglyphic signs, of which are
historiated the carpets of their lodges.
These tables and signs are the pages of the book of science
absolute and universal.
They can be read using the Kabbalistic keys, and they do not have
nothing hidden for the initiate who owns the collarbones of
Solomon.
Masonry has not only been desecrated, but has served
even veil and pretext for plots of anarchy, for
the occult influence of Jacques de Molay’s avengers, and
continuators of the schismatic work of the temple.
Instead of avenging Hiram’s death, we avenged his assassins.
The anarchists have taken up the rule, the square and the mallet, and
have written freedom, equality, fraternity on it.
That is to say, freedom for the lusts, equality in the
baseness, and brotherhood to destroy.
These are the men whom the Church has rightly condemned and whom she
will always condemn!
[408]
BOOK VI.
MAGIC AND REVOLUTION.
.Wow, ו
FIRST CHAPTER.
REMARKABLE 18th CENTURY AUTHORS.
SUMMARY – Important discoveries in China – Books
kabbalislics of fo-hi – The y-Kun and the trigrams – Kong-Fu-Tzée
and fo – Jesuits and theologians – Movement of spirits
in Europe .– Swedenborg and Mesmer.
Until the end of the 17th century, China was roughly
unknown to the rest of the world. It was only at this time that this
vast empire, explored by our missionaries, is revealed to us by
them, and appears to us as a necropolis of all the sciences
the past. The Chinese seem to be a people of mummies. Nothing
progress at home, and they live in the stillness of their
traditions whose spirit and life have since withdrawn
long time. They don’t know anything anymore, but they remember
vaguely of everything. The genius of China is the dragon of
Hesperides who defends the golden apples of the garden of science.
Their human type of divinity, instead of defeating the dragon
like Cadmus, crouched down, fascinated and magnetized by the monster
which shimmers before him the changing reflection of its scales.
[409] The mystery alone is alive in China, science is in lethargy,
or at least she sleeps soundly and never speaks except in dreams.
[Illustration: THE GREAT HERMETIC ARCANE following Basile
Valentine.]
We said that China has a tarot calculated on
same kabbalistic and absolute data as the Sepher Jezirah
of the Hebrews, it also has a hieroglyphic book composed
only combinations of two figures, this book is
the_y-Kim_ attributed to the emperor Fo-hi, and M. de Maison, in
his Letters on China, declares it perfectly
indecipherable.
It is not, however, any more than the Sohar of which it appears to be a
very curious complement, and a precious appendix. The Sohar is
the explanation of the work of the scale or the balance
universal: the y-Kim is the hieroglyphic demonstration and
encrypted.
The key to this book is a pantacle known as the
Trigrams of Fo-hi. According to the legend reported in the
Vay-Ky, a collection of great authority in China, which was
composed by Léon-Tao-Yuen, under the Soms dynasty, there are seven
or eight hundred years, Emperor Fo-hi one day meditating on the shore
of a river on the great secrets of nature, lives out of
water a sphinx, that is to say, an allegorical animal having the
mixed form of a horse and a dragon. His head was lying down
like that of the horse, it was four feet and ended with a
snake tail; his back was covered with scales and on each
from its scales shone the figure of the mysterious Trigrams,
smaller towards the ends, wider on his chest and
on the back, but in perfect harmony with each other. This
dragon was reflected in the water, and its reflection had the same
[410] forms, and bore the same images as him, but in reverse
real shapes and images. This snake horse, inspirer
or rather a bearer of inspirations like the Pegasus of mythology
Greek, symbol of universal life, like the serpent of
kronos, initiated Fo-hi to universal science. The trigrams him
served as an introduction, he counted the scales of the
snake-horse, and combined Trigrams in as many ways
that he conceived a synthesis of comparative and united sciences between
they by the pre-existing and necessary harmonies of the
nature; the drafting of the y-Kim tables was the result of
this wonderful combination. The numbers of Fo-hi are the
same as those of the high Kabbalah, his pantacle is analogous to
that of Solomon, as we explained in our dogma and ritual of high magic; its tables correspond to thirty-two ways and the fifty gates of light, and the y-Kim cannot have obscurity for the wise Kabbalists who have the key to sepher Jezirah and Sohar. The science of absolute philosophy therefore existed in China. The Kims are just the comments of this absolute hidden in profane, and they are to y-Kim what the _Pentateuque of Moses
is to the revelations of Zéniuta’s Siphra, which is the book of
mysteries, and the key to Sohar among the Hebrews. Koug-fu-tzée, or
Confucius, would have been only the revealer or revoilateur of
this Kabbalah that he might have denied in order to deflect
research by laymen, such as the scholar Talmudist Maimonides
denied the realities of Solomon’s collarbone, then came the
materialist Fo, who substituted the traditions of witchcraft
[411] Indian memories of the high magic of the Egyptians. The cult
de Fo paralyzed the progress of science in China, and the
abortive civilization of this great people fell into routine and
in the stupor.
A philosopher of admirable sagacity and great
depth, the wise Leibnitz, who would have been so worthy of being
initiated into the supreme truths of absolute science, believed to see
in y-Kim his own invention of binary arithmetic, and
in the straight line and the broken line of Fo-hi, he found
the characters 1 0, used by itself in its calculations; he
was very close to the truth, but he only glimpsed it in
one of its details, he could not embrace the whole.
Theological disputes were the occasion for the most
most important on the religious antiquities of China. He
the question was whether the Jesuits were right to tolerate
among Chinese converts to Christianity the worship of heaven and
that of the ancestors; in other words, if one were to believe that
by heaven the scholars of China heard God or
simply space and nature. It was only natural to
relate to the literati themselves and to common sense, but this does not
are not there theological authorities; so we argued, we
wrote a lot, they intrigued more, the Jesuits who had
reason for the substance were convinced to be wrong for the form,
and new difficulties were created for them which are not
still overcome and which are nowadays even flowing in China
the blood of our tireless martyrs.
While religion was thus disputed for its conquests in
Asia, an immense anxiety was agitating Europe. Christian faith
[412] seemed ready to be extinguished there and there was no noise from all sides
what new revelations and miracles. A man
seriously posed in science and in the world, Emmanuel Swedenborg, astonished Sweden by its visions and Germany
was full of new enlightened ones; dissident mysticism
conspired to replace the mysteries of religion
hierarchical by the mysteries of anarchy; an imminent
disaster was brewing.
Swedenborg, the most honest and sweetest of false prophets
Illuminism, was not therefore less dangerous than the
other. To claim, in fact, that all men are called to
to communicate directly with the sky is to replace
regular religious education and progressive initiation through
all the ramblings of enthusiasm and all the follies of
imagination and dreams. The intelligent enlightened ones felt
although religion being one of the great needs of humanity,
it will never be destroyed; also they wanted to make
religion itself and the fanaticism that it entails through a
fatal consequence of the enthusiasm inspired by ignorance, of
weapons to destroy the hierarchical authority of the Church, counting
to see a hierarchy emerging from the conflicts of fanaticism
news of which they hoped to be the founders and leaders.
“You will be like gods, knowing everything without having had the
trouble to learn anything; you will be like kings, possessing
everything without having had the trouble of acquiring anything. “
These are in summary the promises of the revolutionary spirit
to envious multitudes. The revolutionary spirit is
[413] the spirit of death; it is the old serpent of the Genèse, and
however he is the father of movement and progress, since
generations are renewed only through death; that’s why
whom the Indians worshiped Shiva, the ruthless destroyer, whose
the symbolic form was that of physical love and
material generation.
Swedenborg’s system is nothing but the Kabbalah, less
the principle of hierarchy; it is the temple without keystone
and unfounded; it’s a huge building, luckily everything
fantastic and airy, because if we had never tried to
realize on earth he would fall on the head of the first child
who would try, we will not say to shake it, but to
lean only against one of its main columns.
Organizing anarchy is the problem that
revolutionaries have and will have eternally to resolve; it’s the
rock of Sisyphus which will always fall on them; to exist a
moment alone they are and will always be fatally reduced to
improvise a despotism for no other reason than the
necessity, and which, therefore, is violent and blind as
she. One escapes the harmonious monarchy of reason, only
to fall under the disorderly dictatorship of madness.
The means indirectly proposed by Swedenborg, to communicate
with the supernatural world, was an intermediate state that holds
of dreams, ecstasy and catalepsy. The Swedish illuminated
affirmed the possibility of this state, but he did not give the
theory of the practices necessary to achieve this; maybe his
disciples, to fill this gap, would they have resorted to
magic ritual of India, when a man of genius came to complete
[414] by a natural thaumaturgy the prophetic intuitions and
kabbalistics of Swedenborg. This man was a doctor
German, named Mesmer.
Mesmer had the glory of rediscovering, without initiator and without
occult knowledge, the universal agent of life and its
wonders; his Aphorisms [18], that the scholars of his time
were to look like so many paradoxes, will one day become
the basics of physical synthesis.
[Note 18: Mesmer, Memoires et aphorismes, followed by procedures d’Eslon, new edition, 1846, 1 vol. gr. in 18.]
Mesmer recognizes in the natural being two forms, which are the
substance and life, from which result the fixity and the movement which
constitute the balance of things.
It recognizes the existence of a fluidic raw material,
universal, capable of fixity and movement, which,
fixing, determines the constitution of substances, and which,
always moving, modifies and renews forms.
This fluidic matter is active and passive: as passive it
attracts itself, as active it projects itself.
Through it the worlds and the living beings that inhabit the worlds,
attract and repel each other; she passes from one to another through
circulation comparable to that of blood.
It maintains and renews the life of all beings, it is
agent of their force and can become the instrument of their
will.
Wonders are the results of forces or wills
exceptional.
[415] The phenomena of cohesion, elasticity, density or
subtlety of bodies, are produced by the various combinations
of the two properties of the universal fluid or of matter
first.
Illness, like all physical disorders, comes from a
disturbance of the normal balance of the raw material in a
organized body.
Organized bodies are either sympathetic or unsympathetic to each other
to others, owing to their special equilibrium.
Sympathetic bodies can heal each other,
mutually restoring their balance.
This property of bodies to balance each other by
the attraction or projection of the raw material, Mesmer la
called magnetism, and as it is specified according to the
specialties of beings, when he studies their phenomena in
animate beings, he calls it animal magnetism.
Mesmer proved his theory by works, and his experiments
were crowned with complete success.
Having observed the analogy that exists between the phenomena of
animal magnetism and those of electricity, he made use of
metallic conductors, resulting in a common reservoir which
contained earth and water, to absorb and to throw
the two forces; we have since abandoned the complicated apparatus of
tubs, which can be replaced by a living chain of hands
superimposed on a circular body and poor conductor like the
wood for a table, the silk or woolen material of a hat, etc.
[416] He then applied to living beings and organized the processes
of metallic magnetization, and he acquired the certainty of
reality and the similarity of the phenomena that followed.
Only one step remained for him to take, and that was to declare that
effects attributed in physics to the four imponderable fluids
are the various manifestations of one and the same force
diversified by its uses, and that this inseparable force from
raw and universal material that it causes to move, sometimes
splendid, sometimes igneous, sometimes electric and sometimes magnetic,
has only one name given by Moses in the Genesis, when he
makes it appear at the call of the Almighty, before all
substances and before all forms: LIGHT; יאי א ד
And now let’s not be afraid to say it in advance, because we
will recognize later.
The great thing of the eighteenth century is not the encyclopedia, it
is not the sneering and derisory philosophy of Voltaire, this
is not the negative metaphysics of Diderot and d’Alembert,
it is not Rousseau’s hateful philanthropy; it’s here
sympathetic and miraculous physique of Mesmer! Mesmer is tall
like Prometheus, he gave men the fire from heaven that
Franklin had only known how to deflect.
Mesmer’s genius lacked neither the sanction of hatred, nor
the consecration of persecutions and insults; he had been
driven out of Germany, they laughed at him in France, all in him
making a fortune, for his healings were evident and the
sick people went to him and paid him, then said they were cured
by chance, so as not to attract on them the animadversion of
scholars. The constituted bodies did not even do the miracle worker
[417] the honor of examining his discovery and the great man had to
resign to pass for a clever charlatan.
Scientists alone were not hostile to mesmerism,
sincerely religious men were alarmed by the dangers of
new discovery, and the superstitious cried scandal and
to magic. The wise foresaw abuse, the foolish
did not even admit the use of this wonderful power.
Weren’t they going in the name of magnetism to deny the miracles of the Savior
and of his saints, said some; what will become of the power
the devil, said the others? And yet the religion that is
true, should not fear the discovery of any truth;
moreover, by giving the measure of human power, the
does not magnetism give divine miracles a sanction
new, instead of destroying them? It is true that fools
will attribute fewer wonders to the devil, which will leave them
fewer opportunities to exercise their hatred and fury; but
are certainly not people of true piety who
will never think of complaining about it: the devil must lose some
ground when the light shines and when ignorance withdraws;
but the conquests of science and light extend,
strengthen and make the world love more and more the empire and
the glory of God!
[418]
CHAPTER II
WONDERFUL 18th CENTURY CHARACTERS.
SUMMARY – The Count of Saint-Germain – The Adept Lascaris and the
Great Cophte says the doctor Joseph Balsamo .– The Baron of the Phoenix
and the Count of Cagliostro.
The eighteenth century had no credulity except for magic, because the
vague beliefs are the religion of souls without faith:
miracles of Jesus Christ and resurrections were attributed to
comte de Saint-Germain. This singular character was a
mysterious theosophist who was passed off as having the secrets
great work and to make diamonds and stones
precious; he was, moreover, a man of the world, of a
pleasant conversation and of great distinction in his
manners. Madame de Genlis, who, during her childhood, saw him
almost every day, assures us that he knew how to give even to
jewels he represented in painting, all their brilliance
natural and a fire that no chemist or painter could
guess the secret; had he found a way to stare at the light
on the canvas, or did he use some mother-of-pearl preparation or
some metallic inlay? that’s what we are
impossible to know, since we do not have any of these
wonderful paintings.
The Count of Saint-Germain made profession of religion
Catholic, and observed its practices with great
loyalty; however, there was talk of suspicious evocations and
strange appearances, he flattered himself that he possessed the secret of
[419] eternal youth. Was it mysticism, was it madness?
No one knew his family, and hearing him talk
things of the past, it seemed that he had lived through several
centuries; he spoke little of everything related to science
occult, and when asked for initiation, he claimed
know nothing; he himself chose his disciples, and their
first demanded passive obedience, then he
spoke of a royalty to which they were called, that of
Melchizedek and Solomon, the kingship of initiates who is also
a priesthood. “Be the torch of the world,” he said; if your
light is only that of a planet, you will be nothing in front of
God: I reserve for you a splendor which that of the sun is
than the shadow, then you will lead the march of the stars, and you
rule those who reign over empires. “
These promises, whose meaning well understood has nothing that
may astonish the true followers, are reported, otherwise
textually, at least as to the meaning of the lyrics, by the author
anonymous from a History of Secret Societies in Germany, and
are enough to make it clear to which initiation belonged
the Count of Saint-Germain.
Now here are some so far unknown details about
this illuminated:
He was born in Lentmeritz, Bohemia, at the end of the 17th century, he
was the natural or adopted son of a Rosicrucian who was
call Comnes cabalicus, the cabalist companion, and who was
ridiculed under the name of comte de Gabalis, by the
unhappy Abbot of Villars; Saint-Germain never spoke of
his father. At the age of seven, he said, I was outlawed and
[420] I wandered with my mother in the forests. This mother he wanted
to speak was the science of the adepts; her age of seven is
that of initiates promoted to the rank of masters; forests are the
empires devoid, according to the adepts, of true civilization and
real light. The principles of Saint-Germain were those
roses, and he had founded in his homeland a company
from which he later separated when the anarchic doctrines
the associations of the new sectarians of the
gnosis. So he was disowned by his brothers, even accused of
treason, and some authors of memoirs on Illuminism
seem to imply that he was thrown into the oubliettes of the
Ruel castle. Madame de Genlis, on the contrary, kills him
in the Duchy of Holstein, tormented by his conscience and restless
by the terrors of the other life. What is certain is that he
suddenly disappeared from Paris, without anyone knowing
just where he had retired, and the enlightened ones left
fall, as far as it was possible for them, on his memory the
veil of silence and oblivion. The company he founded
under the title of Saint-Jakin, of which Saint-Joachim was made, lasted
until the revolution and then disappeared or transformed, as
so many others. Here is an anecdote about this company
found in pamphlets hostile to Illuminism; she
is taken from a correspondence from Vienna. All this, as we
sees it, has nothing very authentic or very certain. Here is
however the anecdote:
“I was very well received, at your recommendation, by
MNZ … He had already been notified of my arrival. The_harmonica_ had
[421] all his approval. He spoke to me first of certain tests
individuals whom I understood nothing at all; it’s only
recently that my intelligence can suffice. Yesterday, around the
evening he took me to his countryside, whose gardens are
beautiful. Temples, caves, waterfalls, labyrinths,
underground passages provide the eye with a long series of
enchantments; but a very high wall that surrounds these beauties
I displeased me greatly, it hides an enchanting site from the eye ….
“I had taken the_harmonica_, according to the invitation of MNZ,
in order to touch it, only for a few minutes, in a
designated place and to an agreed sign. He led me, after our
visit to the garden, to a room at the front of the house, and
soon left me under some pretext. It was very late: I
did not see him return; boredom and sleep began to
win me over, when I was interrupted by the arrival of several
coaches. I opened the window: it was night, I couldn’t do anything
see; I understood even less the low and mysterious whispering of
those who appeared to enter the house. Soon sleep
took hold of me completely; and, after having slept for about one
hour, I was awakened with a start by a servant sent to
guide me and carry the instrument. He walked very fast and strong
far ahead of me; I followed him quite automatically, when
I heard the sounds of trumpets that seemed to come out of the
depths of a cellar; at that moment, I lost sight of my
guide; and advancing on the side where the noise seemed to come, I
halfway down the stairs of a cellar that opened up in front of
I. Judge my surprise! A funeral song was chanted there.
[422] I distinctly saw a corpse in an open coffin; at
on the side, a man dressed in white appeared to be filled with blood; he is
it seemed that a vein had been opened in his right arm. AT
except those who lent him their ministry, the others
were wrapped in long black coats, with the sword drawn
by hand. As much as the terror I was struck with allowed me
To judge from it, there were at the entrance of the vault of the heaps
human bones piled on top of each other. The light that
lit up this dismal spectacle seemed to me produced by a flame
similar to that of the spirit of burning wine.
“Unsure if I could join my guide, I hastened to
remove; I found him precisely a few steps away which
was looking for; he had a haggard eye, he took my hand with a
kind of worry, and dragged me after him in a garden
particular where I thought I was transported by the effect of magic. The
clarity shed by a prodigious number of lanterns, the murmur
waterfalls, the song of artificial nightingales, the perfume
that one breathed there first exalted my imagination. I was
placed behind a cabinet of greenery, the interior of which was
richly decorated, and in which a
unconscious person (presumably one who appeared in a
coffin in the vault); I was immediately given the signal to touch my
instrument.
Excessively moved during this scene, many things must have
[423] escape [19]; I observed, however, that the individual passed out
came to him as soon as I had touched the instrument, and he
these questions with surprise: Where am I? … what voice do I hear? … Jubilations of joy accompanied by
trumpets and timpani were the only answer; we ran to
arms and we went into the interior of the garden where I saw everything
the world disappear.
[Note 19: The neophyte referred to in this letter,
and which was taken for a corpse, was in the state of
somnambulism produced by magnetism. About the firm of
greenery in question, and the effects of the_harmonica_, we
can consult a curious work, Histoire critique du animal magnetism, by Deleuze, 2nd ed., 1819, 2 vol. in-8; he
contains very sharp notices on the chain and the tub
magnetic, magnetized trees, music, the voice of
magnetizer, and the instrument he uses. The author is
moreover a supporter of mesmerism, which does not make his
suspicious opinions.]
“I am writing this to you still quite agitated … If I had not taken the
precaution to note this scene on the spot, I will take it
today for a dream. “
What is most inexplicable about this scene is the
presence of the layman who tells it. How the association
could she thus expose herself to the disclosure of her mysteries? He
it is impossible for us to answer this question, but for this
which are mysteries themselves, we can easily them
explain.
The successors of the old rose-crosses, gradually departing from
the austere and hierarchical science of their ancestors in
initiation, had erected into a mystical sect; they had
eagerly welcomed the magic dogmas of the Templars, and
believed themselves to be the sole custodians of the secrets of the Gospel of
Saint Jean; they saw in the accounts of the Gospel a series
allegorical rites to complete initiation, and
believed that the story of Christ should be fulfilled in the
person of each of the followers; they told a legend
[424] Gnostic according to which the Savior, surrounded by perfumes and
bandages, would not have been enclosed in the new sepulcher of
Joseph of Arimathea, and would have come back to life in the same house
of Saint John. It was this so-called mystery that they were celebrating at
sound of harmonica and trumpets. The recipient was
invited to make the sacrifice of his life, and suffered, in fact,
a bloodletting which caused him to faint; this
fainting, he was told it was death, and when he
came to him, fanfares of joy and cries of triumph
celebrated his resurrection. These various emotions, these scenes
alternately gloomy and brilliant, must have impressed
never his imagination and make him fanatic or clairvoyant.
Many believed in a real resurrection and believed themselves
assured of no longer dying. The heads of the association put
thus in the service of their hidden projects the most formidable of
all the instruments, madness, and made sure on the part of
their followers one of those fatal and indefatigable devotions that the
unreason is produced more often and more surely than friendship.
The sect of Saint-Jakin was therefore a society of Gnostics
given to the illusions of fascinating magic, she held
rose-crosses and Templars, its name of Saint-Jakin came from
one of the two names engraved in initials on the two main ones
columns of the temple of Solomon, Jakin and Bohas. The initial of
Jachin in Hebrew is the Jod, sacred letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
initial of the name of Jehovah that that of Jachin is used to veil
profane, which is why it was called the St. Jakin.
The Saint-Jakinites were theosophists who cared
far too much theurgy.
[425] All that is said about the mysterious Count of Saint-Germain gives
place to believe he was a skillful physicist and chemist
distinguished: it is said that he had the secret of welding together
diamonds without being able to see any trace of the work;
he had the art of purifying precious stones and thus giving a
great price to the most imperfect and the most common; the author
fool and anonymous that we have already quoted, grant him this
talent, but denies that he ever made gold, as if one
not making gold by making precious stones.
Saint-Germain also invented, according to the same author, and bequeathed to
industrial science the art of giving copper more shine and
ductility, another invention that was enough to make the fortune
of its author. Such works must make forgive the
Count of Saint-Germain for having known Queen Cleopatra a lot,
and even having talked familiarly with the Queen of Sheba.
He was also a good and gallant man who loved children,
and enjoyed making delicious sweets for them himself and
wonderful toys; he was dark and short,
still richly dressed, but very tastefully, and
moreover pleasing to all the refinements of luxury. We assure
that King Louis XV received him familiarly, and looked after him with
him with diamonds and precious stones. It is probable that this monarch
entirely dominated by courtesans and absorbed by his
pleasures, yielded, inviting Saint-Germain to a few audiences
particular, rather to some whim of feminine curiosity
than a serious love for science. Saint-Germain was a
fashionable moment, and as he was a lovely young old man
[426] who knew how to combine the babble of a wheeler with the ecstasies of a theosophist, he
was all the rage in some circles, then was soon replaced by
other fantasies; SO goes the world.
It has been said that Saint-Germain was none other than this mysterious
Althotas who was the master of magic of a follower, of whom we are going
soon to occupy us, and which took the kabbalistic name
of_Acharat_; nothing is less founded than this supposition, as
we will see it by studying this new character.
While the Comte de Saint-Germain was in fashion in Paris, a
another mysterious follower roamed the world recruiting
apostles for the philosophy of Hermes: he was an alchemist who
called himself Lascaris, and called himself archimandrite
from the East, charged with collecting alms for a Greek convent;
only, instead of asking for alms, Lascaris seemed to be sweating
gold, and left a trail of it after him everywhere. Everywhere there
was only appearing, and his appearances were changing
shapes; here he showed himself to be old, elsewhere he was still young;
he did not publicly make gold himself, but he did
had his disciples do it, to whom he left them
leaving some spray powder. Nothing more proven and
better established than the transmutations operated by the emissaries of
Lascaris. M. Louis Figuier, in his learned work on
alchemists, doubts neither the reality nor the importance.
Now, since there is nothing, especially in physics, more inexorable
that the facts, it would therefore be necessary to conclude from them, that the
philosopher’s stone is not a reverie, if the immense tradition
of occultism, if ancient mythologies, if the works
[427] The seriousness of the greatest men of all ages did not demonstrate
not, moreover, sufficiently existence and reality.
A modern chemist, who hastened to publish his secret,
succeeded in extracting gold from silver by a ruinous process,
for the money destroyed by him returns in gold only the tenth or
approximately of its value. Agrippa, who never got to the
discovery of the universal solvent, had however been more
happy that our chemist, because he had found in gold a value
equivalent to that of the money used, so he had not lost
absolutely that his job, if it is to lose it than to employ it
in search of the great secrets of nature.
Engage men by the attraction of gold in research which will
would lead to absolute philosophy, such seems to have been the
purpose of Lascaris’ propaganda, the study of hermetic books
must necessarily bring back the men of study to the
knowledge of the Kabbalah. The initiates, in fact, were thinking of
Eighteenth century that their time had come, some to found a
new hierarchy, the others to overthrow all authority and
to walk on all the luminaries of the social order the level
egalitarian. Secret societies sent their scouts to
around the world to survey and awaken public opinion if necessary:
after Saint-Germain and Lascaris, Mesmer; after Mesmer,
Cagliostro. But not all were from the same school:
Saint-Germain was the man of the illuminated theosophists, Lascaris
represented the naturalists attached to the tradition of Hermes.
Cagliostro was the agent of the Templars, so he wrote in
a circular addressed to all Freemasons in London, that
[428] the time had come to put in the work to
rebuild the temple of the Lord. Like the Templars,
Cagliostro indulged in the practices of black magic, and
practiced the fatal science of evocation; he guessed the
past and present, predicted the future, took cures
wonderful and also claimed to make gold. He had
introduced into masonry a new rite which he called rite
Egyptian, and he was trying to resuscitate the mysterious cult
of Isis. Himself, his head wrapped in bandages and wearing his hair like
a sphinx of Thebes, he presided over nocturnal solemnities in
apartments full of hieroglyphics and torches. He had
for priestesses of the maidens whom he called doves, and
that he exalted to ecstasy to make them return
oracles by means of hydromancy, water being an excellent
conductor, a powerful reflector and a very refractive medium
for the astral light, as evidenced by the mirages of the sea
and clouds.
Cagliostro, as we see, continued Mesmer, and had
found the key to the phenomena of mediomania; himself was a
medium, that is to say a man of a nervous organization
exceptionally impressionable: he added to this a lot
of finesse and poise, public exaggeration and imagination
women especially did the rest. Cagliostro had a success
crazy; we were tearing it off, his bust was everywhere with this
inscription: the divine Cagliostro. From that moment we could foresee
a reaction equal to this vogue: after having been a god,
Cagliostro became a schemer, a charlatan, a pimp of his
woman, finally a villain, whom the inquisition of Rome thought
grace by condemning him only to life imprisonment. What
[429] made believe that he was selling his wife, it is because his wife sold him.
He was brought and taken in a trap, he was tried and
published what they wanted of this trial. The revolution happened on these
meanwhile, and everyone forgot about Cagliostro.
This follower is however not without importance in the history of
Magic; his seal is as important as that of Solomon, and
attests to his initiation into the most raised secrets of
science. This seal, explained by the Kabbalistic letters of
names of Acharat and Althotas, expresses the main characters
of the great arcanum and of the great work. It is a serpent pierced with a
arrow, depicting the letter aleph, א ,image of the union of
the active and the passive, the mind and the life, the will and
light. The arrow is that of the ancient Apollo, the
serpent is the Python of the fable, the green dragon of the philosophers
airtight. The letter aleph represents balanced unity. This
pantacle is reproduced in various forms in the talismans of
the old magic, but sometimes the snake is replaced by the peacock
of Juno, the peacock with a royal head and a multicolored tail,
the emblem of the analyzed light, the bird of the great work of which
the plumage is all dripping with gold; sometimes instead of the peacock
colored, it is the white lamb, the lamb or the young solar ram
crossed by the cross, as can still be seen in the coat of arms
of the city of Rouen. The peacock, the ram and the serpent
represent the same hyeroglyphic sign: that of the principle
passive and the scepter of Juno, the cross and the arrow, it is the
active principle, the will, the magic action, the coagulation of the
solvent, fixation by the projection of the volatile, the
penetration of the earth by fire. The union of the two is the
[430] universal scale, it is the great arcane, it is the great
work, it is the balance of Jakin and Bohas.
The trigram L.-. P.-. D.-. who accompanies this figure, wants
to say freedom, power, duty, it also means light proportion, density, law, principle and right.
The Freemasons changed the order of the letters, and in
writing it L .-. D .-. P.-. they make them the initials of the words
freedom to think that they inscribe on a symbolic bridge, in
reading there for laymen: freedom to pass . In deeds
of Cagliostro’s trial, it is noted that he himself gave to these
three letters in his interrogations another meaning;
he would have translated them by this legend: Lilia destrue pedibus, trample the lilies; and we can cite in support
of this version, a Masonic medal of the XVIth or XVIIth
century, where we see a sword cutting a branch of lily with these
words on the exergue: Talem dabit ultio messem.
The name of_Acharat_ that Cagliostro took, written
Kabbalistically in Hebrew this way:
עא
ךא
הא
expresses the triple unity, עא ,unity of principle and
balance;
ךא ,unity of life and perpetuity of the regenerative movement.
הא ,end unit in an absolute synthesis.
The name of Althotas, master of Cagliostro, consists of the name of
Thoth and the syllables al and as, which, read Kabbalistically, are
Sala which means messenger, sent; the whole name therefore means
[431] Thoth, the messiah of the Egyptians, and such was indeed he whom
Cagliostro recognized above all as a master.
The doctrine of the great Copte, such was, as we know, the title that
was taking Cagliostro; his doctrine, we say, had a double
object, moral regeneration and physical regeneration.
Here are the precepts of the great Copte for moral regeneration:
“Go up on Sinai with Moses, on Calvary, then on the
Thabor with Phaleg, on Carmel with Elijah.
»On the highest point of the mountain, you will build your tabernacle.
»It will be divided into three buildings united together and that of the
middle will have three floors.
»The ground floor or the first floor will be the refectory.
»The middle floor will be a round bedroom with twelve beds around it.
and one in the middle will be the bedroom of sleep and dreams.
»The upper room, on the third floor, will be square and
sixteen windows, four on each side, this will be the
light chamber.
»There you will pray alone for forty days, and you will sleep
for forty nights in the dormitory of the twelve masters.
»Then you will receive the signatures of the seven geniuses and you
will obtain from them the pentagram drawn on the sheet of parchment
Virgin.
»This is the sign that no one knows, except the one who
receives.
[432] “It is the occult character of the white pebble of which it is spoken
in the prophecy of the youngest of the twelve masters.
»Then your mind will be illuminated with divine fire and your body
will become pure like that of a child. Your penetration will have
no limits, your power will be immense; you will enter the
perfect rest, which is the beginning of immortality, and you
will be able to say with truth and without pride: I am the one who is.
This riddle means that in order to regenerate morally, one must
study, understand and realize the high Kabbalah.
The three chambers are the alliance of physical life,
religious aspirations and philosophical light; the twelve
masters are the great revelators whose
symbols; the signature of the seven spirits is the initiation into
great arcanum, etc., etc. All this is therefore allegorical, and it does not
No longer is it a matter of actually building a house for three
floors, that in the masonry it is not a question of building a temple
Jerusalem.
Let us now come to the secret of physical regeneration.
To get there, always following the prescriptions
occults of the great Cophte:
Make a forty-day retreat every fifty years in
jubilee manner, during the full moon in May.
Alone, in the countryside with a faithful person:
Fast for forty days, drinking the dew of May, gathered
on the budding wheat with a linen pure and white, eating
tender and new herbs.
[433] Beginning the meal with a large glass of dew and ending it
by a cookie or a simple crust of bread.
On the seventeenth day, light bloodletting.
Take six drops of azoth balm in the morning and six in the evening,
increase by two drops per day until the thirty-second.
To renew then the small emission of blood at the twilight of the
morning, then sleep and stay in bed until the end of the
quarantine.
Take the first time you wake up, after bleeding, a first grain of
universal medicine.
One will experience a fainting which should last three hours, then
seizures, sweating and evacuations
considerable, we will then change linen and bed.
It is then necessary to take a beef consomme without fat,
seasoned with rue, sage, valerian,
verbena and lemon balm.
The next day, second seed of universal medicine,
that is, of astral mercury combined with golden sulfur.
The next day, take a lukewarm bath.
On the thirty-sixth day, drink a glass of Egyptian wine.
The thirty-seventh day, third and last grain of medicine
universal.
A deep sleep will follow.
Hair, teeth and nails will be renewed, skin
will renew itself.
On the thirty-eighth day, herbal bath above
named.
[434] On the thirty-ninth day, swallow in two spoonfuls of wine
red, ten drops of the elixir of Acharat.
On the fortieth day, the work is completed and the old man is
rejuvenated.
It was by means of this jubilee regime that Cagliostro claimed
to have lived several centuries himself. It was, as we see,
a new preparation of the famous immortality bath of
Menandrian Gnostics. Did Cagliostro seriously believe in it?
In front of his judges he showed a lot of firmness and presence
of spirit, he declared himself a Catholic, and said that he honored in the
pope the supreme head of the religious hierarchy. On the
questions relating to the occult sciences, he answered
enigmatic way, and as he was told that his answers
were absurd and unintelligible: How can you know
that they are absurd, he replied, if you find them
unintelligible? The judges got angry and asked him
suddenly the names of capital sins: Cagliostro named the
lust, greed, envy, gluttony and laziness .– You
forget pride and anger, they said.
resumed the accused, I do not forget them, but I did not want them
name it in front of you out of respect and for fear of offending yourself. We
sentenced to death: then the sentence was commuted to detention
perpetual. In his prison, Cagliostro asked for confession and
pointed out the priest himself, he was a man of almost his
shape and size. The confessor entered and after
for some time he was seen coming out; a few hours later, the
jailer on entering the condemned man’s prison found the corpse
[435] of a strangled man, this disfigured corpse was covered with clothes
from Cagliostro; the priest is never seen again.
Fans of the marvelous assure that the great Cophte is
currently in America, and that there is the Supreme Pontiff and
invisible from believers to striking spirits.
CHAPTER III.
PROPHECIES OF CAZOTTE.
SUMMARY – The Martinists – Cazotte’s supper – The novel by
Diable in love .— Nahéma, queen of the strygus .– The mountain
bloody – Mademoiselle Cazotte and Mademoiselle de
Sombreuil .– Cazotte before the revolutionary tribunal.
The school of unknown philosophers founded by Pasqualis Martinez and
continued by Saint-Martin, seems to have contained the last
followers of the true initiation. Saint Martin knew the
old key of the tarot, that is to say the mystery of the alphabets
sacred and hieratic hieroglyphics; he left several
very curious pantacles that have never been engraved and of which we
have copies. One of these pantacles is the key
tradition of the great work, and Saint-Martin calls it the key
from hell, because it is the key to riches; the
Martinists among the illuminated were the last Christians, and
they were the initiators of the famous Cazotte.
We said that in the 18th century a split had taken place
in illuminism: some, conservators of the traditions of
[436] nature and science, wanted to restore the hierarchy; the
others, on the contrary, wanted to level everything by revealing the great
arcane, which would make it impossible in the world
priesthood. Among the latter, some were ambitious and
scoundrels, who hoped to be enthroned over the wreckage of the world; the
others were fools and fools.
The true initiates saw with horror the company launched thus
towards the precipice, and foresaw all the horrors of
the anarchy. This revolution which was later to appear in
dying genius of Vergniaud under the dark figure of Saturn
devouring his children, already stood armed in dreams
prophetic by Cazotte. One evening he was in the middle of
blind instruments of future Jacobinism, he predicted to them,
all, their destiny: to the strongest and to the weakest,
the scaffold; to the most enthusiastic, suicide; and his prophecy
which only appeared then that a dismal joke was fully
performed [20]. This prophecy was, in fact, only a calculation of
probabilities, and the calculation was rigorous, because the
probable chances were already changed into consequences
required. The Harp that this prediction struck with astonishment
later added some details to make it more
wonderful, like the exact number of razor strokes that
had to give himself one of the guests, etc.
[Note 20: Deleuze, Memory on the faculty of precision, in-8,
1836.]
We must forgive a little of this poetic license to all
storytellers of extraordinary things; such ornaments are not
not exactly lies, it’s just poetry
and style.
[437] Give naturally unequal men absolute freedom,
it is to organize social war; and when those who must
contain the ferocious instincts of multitudes are mad enough to
unleash, you don’t have to be a deep magician to see
that they will be the first to be devoured, since the lusts
animals will tear each other apart until the arrival of a hunter
daring and skilful who will end up with gunshots or
just one catch of the net. Cazotte foresaw Marat, Marat foresaw
a reaction and a dictator.
Cazotte began in the world with a few pamphlets by
frivolous literature, and it is said that he owed his initiation to
publication of one of his novels entitled Diable d’amore. This
novel, indeed, is full of magical intuitions, and most
great of the trials of life, that of love, is shown
in the true light of the doctrine of the adepts.
Physical love indeed, this delusional passion, this madness
invincible for those who are the toys of the imagination, is
than a seduction of death which wants to renew its harvest by
birth. The physical Venus is death made up and dressed in
courtesan; love is destructive, like his mother, he recruits
victims for her. When the courtesan is satisfied, the
death unmasks himself and asks for his prey in turn. that’s why
the Church that saves birth through the sanctity of marriage,
reveals and prevents the debauchery of death by condemning without
pity all the wanderings of love.
If the beloved woman is not an angel who immortalizes herself by
sacrifices of duty in the arms of the one she loves, it is
[438] a stryge which annoys him, exhausts him and kills him, by
finally showing to him in all the hideousness of his brutal selfishness.
Woe to the victims of the devil in love! Woe to those who
let take to the lascivious flattery of Biondetta! soon the
graceful face of the girl will change for them in this
frightful camel’s head which appears so tragically at the end of the
novel by Cazotte.
There are in the underworld, say the Kabbalists, two queens of
stryges: one is Lilith the mother of abortions, and the other,
it is Nahema, the fatal and murderous beauty. When a man is
unfaithful to the wife whom heaven intended for him, when he vows
from the wanderings of a sterile passion, God takes back his wife
legitimate and holy to deliver him to the embraces of Nahema.
This queen of stryges knows how to show herself with all the charms of
virginity and love: it turns away the hearts of fathers and
urges them to abandon their duties and their children; she
pushes married men to widowhood, and forces them to marry
sacrilege men consecrated to God. When she usurps the
title of wife, it is easy to recognize her: the day of her
marriage she is bald, because the hair of the woman being the
the veil of modesty is forbidden to him for that day; then after
marriage, it affects the despair and loathing of
existence, preaches suicide, and finally leaves with violence
the one who resists it by leaving it marked with a star
hellish between the two eyes.
Nahema can become a mother, they still say, but she is not raising
never his children; she gives them to devour to Lilith, her fatal
sister.
These kabbalistic allegories that can be read in the book
[439] Hebrew of the Revolution of souls, in the Dictionary Kabbalistic of Sohar, and in the Comments of Talmudists on the Sota, seem to have been known or guessed
by the author of Diable d’Amour; also we assure that after the
publication of this work, he received a visit from a character
unknown, wrapped in a cloak in the manner of the Franc-Judges. This
character made him signs that Cazotte did not understand, then
finally he asked him if he was really an initiate. On the
Cazotte’s negative response, the stranger assumed a less
dark, and said to him: I see that you are not a custodian
unfaithful to our secrets, but a chosen vessel for science.
Do you really want to command human passions and
unclean spirits? Cazotte was curious, a long conversation
ensued, it was the preliminary of several others, and
the author of the Diable d’Amour was really initiated. His
initiation was to make him a staunch supporter of order and a
dangerous enemy for anarchists, and, indeed, we have
since it is a question of a mountain on which we rise to
regenerate according to the symbols of Cagliostro, but this
mountain is white with light like Tabor, or red with fire
and blood like Sinai and Calvary. There are two syntheses
chromatic, says the Sohar: the white, which is that of
harmony and moral life; the red one, which is that of the
war and material life: the color of day and that of
blood. The Jacobins wanted to raise the standard of blood, and their
altar was already rising on the red mountain. Cazotte had lined up
under the banner of light, and his mystical tabernacle was
[440] posed on the white mountain. The bloody mountain triumphed a
moment, and Cazotte was proscribed. He had a daughter, a heroic
child, who saved him from the Abbey massacre. Miss
Cazotte had no nobiliary particle in front of his name, and this
was what saved her from this horrible fraternity toast, by
which immortalized the filial piety of Mademoiselle de
Sombreuil, this noble girl who, to exonerate herself from being a
noble daughter, had to drink the grace of her father in the glass
bloody cutthroats!
Cazotte had prophesied his own death because his conscience
urged him to fight to the death against anarchy. He
continued to obey his conscience, was arrested again and
appeared before the revolutionary tribunal; he was condemned
in advance. The President, after pronouncing his judgment, gave him
a strange speech, full of esteem and regret: he
urged him to be worthy of himself to the end and to die in
a man of heart as he had lived. The revolution, even at
court, was a civil war and the brothers greeted each other
before taking his own life. Is that on both sides there was
sincere and therefore respectable convictions. The one
who dies for what he believes the truth, is a hero, even
when he is wrong, and the anarchists of the bloody mountain
were not only daring to send others to
the scaffold, they mounted it themselves without turning pale: that God and
posterity be their judges!
[441]
CHAPTER IV.
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
CONTENTS .– The tomb of Jacques de Molai .– The vengeance of the
Templars – Propaganda against the priesthood and royalty – Louis
XVI in the Temple – Spoliation and desecration of churches – The Pope
prisoner in Valencia – Fulfillment of the prophecies of saint
Methodius.
There had been a man in the world deeply indignant at
feeling cowardly and vicious, and blaming his shame badly
devoured to the whole of society. This man was the lover
unhappy with nature, and nature, in her anger, had
armed with eloquence as with a plague. He dared to argue against the
science the cause of ignorance, against civilization that of
barbarism, against all social heights in a word that
of all meanness. The people instinctively stoned this
fool, but the grown-ups welcomed him, the women
fashion, he was so successful that his hatred against humanity
increased by it and that he ended up killing himself with anger and disgust.
After his death, the world moved to turn in
realization of the dreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the
conspirators who, since the death of Jacques de Molai, had
swore the ruin of the social building, established rue Platrière, in
the very house where Jean-Jacques had lived, a lodge inaugurated
under the auspices of the fanatic of Geneva. This lodge became the
center of the revolutionary movement, and a prince of royal blood
came to swear the loss of the successors of Philip the Fair, on the
tomb of Jacques de Molai.
[442] It was the nobility of the eighteenth century who corrupted the people; the
at that time, were seized with a fury of equality which
had begun with the orgies of the regency; we slammed
then for pleasure, and the court amused itself by speaking the jargon of
halls. The registers of the Templar Order attest that the
regent was grand master of this formidable secret society, and
that he had for successor the Duke of Maine, the princes of
Bourbon-Condé and de Bourbon-Conti, and the Duke of Cossé-Brissac.
Cagliostro had rallied in his Egyptian rite the auxiliaries of
second order: everything hastened to obey this secret impulse
and irresistible which pushes towards their destruction
civilizations in decline. Events did not happen
wait, they came as Cazotte had foreseen them, they
rushed forward, pushed by an invisible hand. The unfortunate Louis
XVI was advised by his most mortal enemies; they arranged
and thwarted the unfortunate escape plan which brought about
catastrophe of Varennes, as they had made the orgy of
Versailles, as they ordered the carnage of August 10; all over
they had compromised the king, everywhere they saved him from the
the fury of the people, to exasperate this fury and bring
the event they had been preparing for centuries; it was a
scaffold needed for the vengeance of the Templars!
Under the pressure of the civil war, the national assembly
declared the king suspended from his powers, and assigned him to
residence the Luxembourg Palace, but another assembly more
secret had decided otherwise. The residence of the fallen king, this
was to be a prison, and this prison could only be
the former palace of the Templars, remained standing with its keep and
[443] his turrets, to wait for this royal prisoner promised to
inexorable memories.
The king was in the Temple and the elite of the French clergy were in
exile or at the Abbey. The cannon thundered on the Pont-Neuf, and
threatening signs proclaimed the homeland in danger. So some
unknown men organized the massacre. A hideous character,
gigantic, long bearded, was everywhere there were
priests to slaughter. Here, he said to them with a sneer
wild, here it is for the Albigenses and the Vaudois! there you are
for the Templars! here is for Saint-Barthélémy! that’s it for
the outlaws of the Cévennes; and he was hitting with rage, and he
always struck with the saber, with the cleaver, with the
club. The weapons broke and renewed themselves in his
hands, he was red with blood, from head to toe, his beard in
was all stuck, and he swore with blasphemies
appalling that he would wash her only with blood.
It was this man who offered a toast to the nation, to the angelica
Mademoiselle de Sombreuil.
Another angel prayed and cried in the tower of the Temple,
offering to God her sorrows and those of two children, to
obtain from him the forgiveness of royalty and of France. For
to expiate the mad joys of the Pompadours and Dubarry, it was necessary
all the suffering and all the tears of this
virgin martyr, the holy madame Élisabeth.
Jacobinism was already named before we had chosen
the former church of the Jacobins to bring together the heads of the
conjuration; this name comes from that of Jacques, fatal name and
[444] predestined for revolutions. The exterminators in France have
always been called the Jacques; the philosopher whose fatal
celebrity prepared new jacqueries and served projects
bloody joannite conspirators was called Jean-Jacques,
and the occult engines of the French revolution had sworn
the overthrow of the throne and the altar on the tomb of James
by Molai.
After the death of Louis XVI, at the very moment when it had just expired
under the ax of the revolution, the man with the long beard, this
Jew wandering from murder and revenge, climbed on the scaffold
in front of the terrified crowd, he took full royal blood from his two
hands and shaking them on the heads of the people, he cried with a voice
terrible: “French people, I baptize you in the name of Jacques and
freedom [21]! “
[Note 21: Prudhomme, in his diary, reports the
words of this man. We hold the ones we give here
of an old man who heard them.]
Half the work was done, and it was now against the
pope that the Temple army was to direct all its efforts.
The spoliation of churches, the desecration of sacred things,
derisory processions, the inauguration of the cult of reason in
the metropolis of Paris, were the signal for this new war.
The Pope was burnt in effigy at the Palais-Royal, and soon the
armies of the republic prepared to march on Rome.
Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs,
but their avengers have dishonored their memory. Royalty is
regenerated on the scaffold of Louis XVI, the Church triumphed in the
[445] captivity of Pius VI, dragged prisoner to Valencia and dying of
fatigue and pain, but the unworthy successors of the ancients
Knights of the Temple all perished, buried in their fatal
victory.
In the ecclesiastical state there had been great abuses and
great scandals caused by the misfortune of great wealth;
the riches disappeared and the great virtues were seen to return.
These temporal disasters and this spiritual triumph had been
foretold in the_Revelation_ of Saint Methodius, of which we have
already talked about. We have a written copy of this book
Gothic, printed in 1527, and adorned with the most astonishing figures:
we first see unworthy priests throwing holy things
swine, then the revolted people assassinating the priests and
breaking the sacred vessels on their heads; we first see the
pope prisoner of the men of war, then a crowned knight
who with one hand raises the standard of France and with the other extends
his sword over Italy; we see two eagles and a rooster carrying
a crown on the head and a double fleur-de-lys on the
chest; we see the second eagle that makes an alliance with the
griffins and unicorns to drive the vulture out of its range, and
many other amazing things. This singular book is
comparable to an illustrated edition of the prophecies of the abbot
Joachim (of Calabria), where we see the portraits of all
popes coming up with the allegorical signs of their reign until
the coming of the Antichrist. Strange chronicles of the future told
like the past and which would make believe in a succession of worlds
where events are repeated, so that the forecast of
future things would only be the evocation of the lost reflections of the
past!
[446]
CHAPTER V.
MEDIOMANIA PHENOMENA.
CONTENTS – Dark sect of mystical joannites – Catherine Théot
and Robespierre – Prediction Fulfilled – Visions and So-called
miracles of the saviors of Louis XVII.
In 1772, an inhabitant of Saint-Mandé named Loiseaut, being at
church, believed to see kneeling beside him a very singular
character: he was a very swarthy man who wore for everything
clothing coarse woolen boxer shorts. This man had a beard
long, frizzy hair and around the neck a scar
ruddy and circular, he carried a book on which was
traced in gold letters this inscription: Ecce Agnus Dei.
Loiseaut was greatly astonished when he saw that this strange figure was
noticed by no one, he finished his prayer and returned home; l
he found the same character waiting for him, he stepped forward to
talk to him and asked him who he was and what he wanted, but
the fantastic visitor had suddenly disappeared. Loiseaut is
went to bed with fever and could not fall asleep; at night he lives
suddenly his room lit by a reddish glow, he thought
to a fire and suddenly rose to his seat, then at the
in the middle of the room, on his table, he saw a golden dish and in
this dish soaked in blood the head of its visitor from the
Eve. This head was surrounded by a red halo, it
rolled his eyes in a terrible way, and opening his mouth
as if to cry out, she said in a strangled, hissing voice:
[447] I await the heads of kings and those of courtiers of kings, I await Herod and Herodias; then the halo died out
and the patient no longer saw anything.
A few days later he was healed and was able to return to his
business. As he was crossing Place Louis XV, he was approached
by a poor man who asked him for alms, Loiseaut without looking at him
drew a coin and threw it in the hat of
the stranger: Thank you, said this man, _ he is a king’s head,
but here_, he adds, stretching out his hand and pointing to the
middle of the square, there will fall another one, and it is
the one I’m waiting for. Loiseaut then looked at the poor man with
surprised and gave a cry recognizing the strange figure of his
vision .– “Shut up,” said the beggar to him, “you would be taken for a
crazy, because no one here can see me except you. You have me
recognized, I see it, I am indeed Saint John the Baptist the
precursor, and I come to announce the punishment of the successors
of Herod and the heirs of Caiaphas, you can repeat all that
I’ll tell you.”
Since that time, Loiseaut believed to see almost every day
Saint John the Baptist near him. The vision spoke to her for a long time
misfortunes which were to fall on France and on the Church.
Loiseaut told his vision to a few people who were
struck and who became visionaries like him. They formed
together a mystical society which met in great secrecy;
the members of this association placed themselves in a circle in
holding hands and waiting for communications in silence; they
often waited several hours, then the figure of saint
Jean appeared among them; they all fell together or
successively in magnetic sleep and watched
[448] under their eyes the future scenes of the revolution and the
future restoration.
The spiritual director of this sect or circle was a
religious named dom Gerle, he became its leader on the death of
Loiseaut arrived in 1788, then at the time of the revolution, having
was won over by Republican enthusiasm, it was rejected by the
other sectarians who followed in this the inspirations of their
main sleepwalker they called the Françoise sister André.
Dom Gerle also had his sleepwalker and he came to practice in a
Paris attic the then new profession of magnetizer; the
clairvoyant was a nearly blind old woman named Catherine Théot, she made predictions that came true, she healed
many sick people, and as the prophecies had always
something political, the police of the Committee of Public Safety
did not take long to worry about it.
One evening, Catherine Théot surrounded by her followers was ecstatic:
“Listen,” she said, “I hear the sound of his footsteps, he’s the chosen one
mysterious of Providence, he is the angel of revolution; it is
the one who will be its savior and its victim is the king of
ruins and regeneration, do you see it? He approaches: him
also, his forehead is surrounded by the bloody halo of the precursor;
it is he who will bear all the crimes of those who will do it
die. Oh! that your destinies are great, you who are going to close
the abyss by falling into it! Do you see him dressed as for a party, he
holds flowers in her hand … these are the wreaths of her
martyrdom … “Then, moving and bursting into tears:” May they
[449] Your trials have been cruel, O my son, she cried, and
how many ungrateful people will curse your memory through the ages!
Stand up! stand up! and bow, here it is! it’s the
king … he is the king of bloody sacrifices.
At that moment the door opened silently, and a man, the hat
folded over his eyes and wrapped in a cloak, entered the
bedroom; the assembly rose, Catherine Théot stretched out towards the
newcomer his shaking hands: “I knew you had to
come, she said, and I was waiting for you; the one you don’t see and
that I see to my right showed you to me today, when a
report has been given to you against us: we were accused of conspiring
for the king, and indeed I spoke of a king, of a king whose
forerunner is showing me the blood-stained crown right now, and
do you know what head it hangs on? On yours,
Maximilian! “
At this name the stranger shuddered as if a red iron had bitten him
to his chest he cast a quick, worried look around him,
then resuming an impassive countenance:
–What do you mean? he whispered, in a short voice and
jerky, I don’t understand you.I mean, '' resumed Catherine Théot,that it will be sunny.
that day and a man dressed in blue and holding a
scepter of flowers, will for a moment be the king and the savior of the world;
I mean you’ll be great like Moses and like Orpheus,
when, putting the foot on the head of the monster ready to
devour, you will tell the executioners and the victims that there is a
God. Stop hiding it, Robespierre, and show us without
to turn pale this brave head that God is going to throw in the tray
[450] empty of his balance. Louis XVI’s head is heavy, and yours
only can balance the weight.Is that a threat, '' said Robespierre coldly, leaving drop his coat, and we believe by this juggling astonish my patriotism and influence my conscience? Do you pretend, by fanatic threats and ramblings from old women, surprise my resolutions, as you have watched my steps? You were expecting me, it seems to me, and woe to you waiting for me! because, since you force the curious, the visitor unknown, the observer to be Maximilien Robespierre, representative of the people, as representative of the people, I denounce the Committee of Public Safety and I will proceed to your arrest. Having said these words, Robespierre threw his coat back around his powdered head, and walked stiffly to the door, no one neither dared to hold him back, nor to speak to him. Catherine Theot folded his hands and said: Respect his wishes, he is king and pontiff of the new era; if he hits us, it's because God wants to strike us: let us stretch our throats at the knife of Providence. Catherine Théot's initiates waited all night for came to stop them, no one appeared; they separated during the next day; two more days and two more nights during which the members of the sect did not seek not to hide. On the fifth day, Catherine Théot and those we called his accomplices, were denounced to the Jacobins by a secret enemy of Robespierre, who skillfully insinuated listeners doubts against the tribune. We were talking about dictatorship, [451] the name of king had even been pronounced. Robespierre knew it and how did he tolerate it? Robespierre shrugged his shoulders, but the the next day, Catherine Théot, dom Gerle and a few others were arrested and sent to these prisons which no longer opened, a once we entered it, only to provide the daily chore of the executioner. The story of Robespierre's interview with Catherine Théot sweated outside, we do not know how. Already the counter-police of future Thermidorians spied on the presumed dictator and accused him of mysticism, because he believed in God. Robespierre was not yet neither the friend nor the enemy of the sect of the new joannites; he had come to Catherine's to observe phenomena; displeased to have been recognized, he left, uttering threats he did not realize, and those who turned into conspiracy the conventicles of the old monk and the old blissful had hoped to get out of this trial a doubt or less a ridicule that would attach to the reputation of the incorruptible Maximilian. Catherine Théot's prophecy had its fulfillment by the inauguration of the cult of the Supreme Being and the rapid reaction of thermidor. During this time, the sect which had rallied to Sister André, whose revelations a Sieur Ducy wrote, continued his visions and his miracles. Their fixed idea was the conservation of legitimacy through the future reign of Louis XVII: several times they saved in a dream the poor little orphan of the Temple, and really believed they had saved him; ancient prophecies promised the throne of the lilies to a once captive young man. Sainte Brigitte, Saint Hildegarde, Bernard Tollard, [452] Lichtemberger, all announced a miraculous restoration after great disasters. The neo-joannites were the interpreters and continuers of these predictions, never the Louis XVII did not fail them, and they had successively seven or eight, all perfectly authentic and no less perfectly preserved; it is to the influences of this sect that we have had since the revelations of the peasant Martin (of Gallardon) and the prodigies of Vintras. In this magnetic circle as in the assemblies of Quakers or of the tremors of Great Britain, the enthusiasm was contagious and was passed on from brother to brother. After the death of Sister André, second sight and the ability to prophesy were shared by a named Legros, who was in Charenton when Martin was put there provisionally. He recognized a brother in the Beauceron peasant, whom he had never seen. All these sectarians, by dint of wanting Louis XVII, created him in some sort, that is, they evoked such hallucinations, that mediums were made in the image and likeness of the magnetic type, and really believing himself to be the royal child escaped of the Temple, they drew to themselves all the reflections of this sweet and frail victim, and remembered known circumstances only from the family of Louis XVI. This phenomenon, some unbelievable that it seems, is neither impossible nor unheard of. Paracelsus assures us that if, by an extraordinary effort of will, we could imagine that we are a person other than ourselves, we would immediately know the most secret thought of this other person and you would attract your most intimate memories. Often after an interview that put us in touch [453] of imagination with our interlocutor, we dream while sleeping unpublished reminiscences of his life. Among the fake Louis XVII, we must therefore recognize a few who were not impostors, but hallucinated, and among these, it is necessary distinguish a Genevan, named Naundorff, visionary as Swedenborg, and with such a contagious conviction that servants of the royal family recognized him and threw themselves his feet crying: he wore the special signs and the scars of Louis XVII; he told his childhood with a startling truth, entered into these insignificant details, which are decisive for intimate memories. His very features were those that the orphan of Louis XVI would have had, if he had lived. Finally, only one thing was missing to be really Louis XVII was not to be Naundorff. The infectious power of the magnetism of this hallucinated was such that his death did not undeceive any of the believers in his reign future. We have seen one of the most convinced, to which we timidly objected when he spoke of the Restoration next to what he called _real legitimacy_, which his Louis XVII was dead .-- Is it then more difficult for God to to resuscitate that it was up to our fathers to save him from the Temple! he replied with a smile so triumphant that he was almost dismissive. We had nothing to say to that, and We were forced to bow to such a conviction. [454] CHAPTER VI. THE ILLUMINATED OF GERMANY. CONTENTS .-- Lavater and Gabildone .-- Stabs and Napoleon .-- Carl Sand and Kotzebue .-- The Mopses .-- The magical drama of Faust. Germany is the birthplace of metaphysical mysticism and ghosts; ghost herself of the ancient Roman Empire, she always seems to evoke the great shadow of Hermann, in him consecrating the simulacrum of the captive eagles of Varus. The the patriotism of young Germans is still that of the old Germans: they do not dream of invading the laughing lands of Italy, at most they only accept it as revenge, but they would die a thousand times in defense of their homes: they love their old castles and their old legends of banks of the Rhine; they patiently read the most obscure treatises of their philosophy, and see in the mists of their sky and in the smoke of their pipe a thousand unspeakable things which initiate to the wonders of the other world. Long before there was talk in America and France of mediums and of evocations, there were enlightened and seers in Prussia who held regular conferences with the dead. A big lord had built in Berlin a house intended for evocations: King Frederick William was very curious about all these mysteries and often locked himself in this house with a follower named _Steinert_; the impressions he received there produced in him such vivid sensations that he fell in [455] failure and did not come back to him until he was given a few drops of a magic elixir similar to that of Cagliostro. We find in a secret correspondence on early days of the reign of this prince, cited by the Marquis de Luchet in his _Diatribe against the illuminated_, a description of the dark room where the evocations were made: she was square, separated in two by a transparent veil in front of which was placed the magic furnace or the altar of perfumes; behind the veil was a pedestal on which the spirit was shown. Eckartshausen, in his German book on magic, describes everything the apparatus of this phantasmagoria. It is a machine system and of processes to help the imagination to create ghosts that she desires, and to throw the consultants into a kind of awake sleepwalking, somewhat similar to over-arousal nerve produced by opium or hashish. Those who are will be satisfied with the explanations given by the author that we just quoted will see in the apparitions only effects of magic lantern; there is certainly something else, and the lantern magic is in this matter only a useful instrument, but no absolutely necessary for the production of the phenomenon. We do not not come out of the reflections of a colored glass of the faces formerly known and evoked by thought; we don't do speak the painted images of a lantern, and they do not come not answer questions of conscience. The King of Prussia, at who owned the house, knew how it was engineered, and was not fooled by juggling, as claimed the author of the secret correspondence. Natural means [456] prepared and did not perform the miracle; it was happening really things to astonish the most skeptical and to disturb the most daring. _Schroepffer_, moreover, did not use the magic lantern nor the veil, but he made his visitors a punch prepared by him: the figures he made to appear were like those of the American medium _Home_, to half bodily, and produced a strange sensation to those who were trying to touch them. It was something analogous to an electric shock that made the skin shiver, and one felt nothing if, before touching the vision, one had took care to wet his hands. Schroepffer was in good faith, as is also the American Home; he believed in the reality of spirits he evoked and killed himself when he came to doubt it. _Lavaler_, who also died a violent death, was entirely addicted to the evocation of spirits, he had two at his command; he was part of a circle where we went into ecstasy at means of the harmonica, we then made the chain, and a species idiot served as the interpreter of the mind by writing under its impulse. This spirit pretended to be a dead Jewish Kabbalist before the birth of Jesus Christ and caused the medium to write things quite worthy of the sleepwalkers of _Cahagnet_ [22], like, for example, this revelation on the sorrows of the other life where the spirit assures that the soul of Emperor Francis is [457] condemned in the other world to take stock and the exact state of any snail shells that may exist or have existed throughout the universe. He also revealed that the real names of the three wise men were not, as the tradition of the legendary, _Gaspar_, _Melchior_ and _Balthasar_, but well _Vrasapharmion_, _Melchisedech_ and _Baleathrasaron_; we believe read names written by our modern _tables revolving_. The spirit further declared that he himself was in penance for to have raised the magic sword against his father, and that he was willing to give his portrait as a gift to his friends. On his request, we placed behind a screen, paper, colors all prepared and brushes; we then saw taking shape on the screen the silhouette of a small hand, and we heard a small friction on the paper; when the noise ceased everyone came running, and they found a crudely painted portrait, depicting an old rabbi dressed in black with a white strawberry falling on the shoulders and a black cap on the top of the head, a little motley costume for a character prior to Jesus Christ; the paint, moreover, was stained and incorrect, and closely resembled the work of some child who would have had fun coloring with his eyes closed. [Note 22: M. Cahagnet is author of the following works: _Arcanes de la vie future_, 1848-1854, 3 vols. gr. in-12; _Light of the dead_, 1851, 1 vol. in-12; _Magnetic magic_, 2nd edition, 1858.1 vol. in-12; _Sanctuaire du spiritualisme_, 1850,1 vol in-12; _Revelations from beyond the grave_, 1856, 1 vol. in-12, etc.] The instructions written by the hand of the medium under the impulse of Gablidone are of an obscurity which prevails over that of all German metaphysicians. "We must not give the name of majesty lightly," he said; majesty comes from a magus, because the magi, being pontiffs and kings, were the first majesties. To sin mortally is to offend God in his majesty, that is to say to hurt him as a father [458] by throwing death into the sources of life. The source of the Father is light and life, the source of the Son is blood and water, the light of the Holy Spirit is fire and gold. We sin against the Father by the lie, against the Son through hatred, and against the Holy Spirit by debauchery which is the work of death and destruction. Good Lavater received these communications as oracles, and when he asked the mind for some clarification new: "The great initiator will come," replied Gablidone, "he will be born with the next century: then the religion of the patriarchs will be known on our globe. He will explain the trigram to the world of Agion, Helion, Tetragrammaton and the Lord whose body is surrounded by a triangle will appear on the fourth step of the altar; the supreme angle will be red and the mysterious motto of triangle will be: _Venite ad patres osphal _.-- What does the word mean? osphal? one of the assistants asked in spirit. The medium wrote these three words: _Alphos, M: Aphon, Eliphismatis_, without giving other explanations; some interpreters concluded that the mage promised in the 19th century would be called _Maphon_ fils of Éliphisma: it was a perhaps a little risky explanation. Nothing is more dangerous than mysticism, because it produces the madness that thwarts all the combinations of wisdom human. It's always crazy people who turn the world upside down, and what great politicians never foresee are the head shots and the helping hands of fools. The architect of temple of Diana at Ephesus, promising herself eternal glory, had counted without Erostratus. The Girondins had not planned _Marat_. What was needed for [459] change the balance of the world? says Pascal about Cromwell: a grain of sand formed by chance in the bowels of a man. That great things are accomplished by causes which are not nothing! When the temple of civilization collapses, it is always a blind man like Samson, who shook its pillars. A wretch of the dregs of the people has insomnia and thinks he is called to deliver the world from the Antichrist. This man stabs Henri IV, and teaches dismayed France the name of _Ravaillac._ The German miracle workers see in _Napoléon_ the Apollyon of _the Apocalypse, _ and there is found a child, a young enlightened man, named _Stabs_, to kill this military Atlas who, at this moment, carried on his shoulders the world torn from chaos of anarchy; but this magnetic influence that the emperor called his _star_, was more powerful while the fanatic movement of German circles: Stabs could not or dared hit. Napoleon wanted to question him himself, and admired his resolution and daring; however, as he knew each other in greatness, he did not want to diminish the new Scevola in him pardoning him, he esteemed him enough to take him seriously and to let him shoot. _Carl Sand_ who killed _Kotzebue, _ was also an unhappy child lost of mysticism, misled by the secret societies where one swore revenge on daggers. Kotzebue deserved perhaps bellows, Sand's knife rehabilitated him and said a martyr: it is indeed beautiful to die the enemy and victim of those who avenge themselves by ambush and murder! Germany's secret societies had [460] ceremonies and rites which related more or less to those old magic; in the society of mopses, for example, we renewed with soft and almost pleasant forms the celebration of the mysteries of the Sabbath and the secret reception of templars. The baphometic goat was replaced by a dog, it was Hermanubis instead of Pau; science instead of nature, equivalent substitution, since we do not know the nature than by science. Both sexes were admitted to mopses as on the Sabbath; the reception was accompanied by barking and grimaces, and, as with the Templars, the the recipient of the devil's backside, the one of the grand master or that of the mopse; the mopse was, like us just said, a small cardboard figure covered with silk, representing a dog, named _mops_ in German. We had to in fact, before being received, kiss the backside of the mopse, as they kissed that of the goat Mendes, in the initiations of the Sabbath. The mopses did not engage with each other by oaths, they simply gave their word of honor, which is the most sacred oath of honest people; their meetings are passed like those of the Sabbath, in dances and feasts, only, the ladies remained dressed, did not hang cats alive to their belts and did not eat little children: it was a civilized Sabbath. The Sabbath had its great poet in Germany and magic its epic: this epic is the gigantic drama of Faust, this Babel completed by human genius. _Goethe_ was initiated into all mysteries of philosophical magic, he had even practiced in [461] his youthful ceremonial magic, and the result of these daring attempts had been for him at first a profound disgust with life and a violent desire to die. He accomplishes in effect his suicide, not in an act, but in a book: he wrote _Verther_'s novel, that fatal work which preaches death and who made so many proselytes; then, finally victorious over discouragement and disgust, arrived at the serene regions of truth and peace, he wrote _Faust_. Faust is the magnificent commentary on one of the most beautiful pages of the Gospel, the parable of the prodigal son. It is the initiation into sin by rebellious science, to pain through sin; at atonement and science harmonious through pain. Human genius, represented by Faust, takes for a servant the spirit of evil, who aspires to become his master, he quickly exhausts all that the imagination brings joy to illegitimate loves, it through the orgies of madness, then, attracted by the charm of sovereign beauty, he rises from the depths of his disenchantments to rise to the heights of abstraction and the ideal imperishable, there, Méphistophélès is no longer at ease, the laughing implacable becomes sad, Voltaire gives way to Chateaubriand; at as the light shines, the angel of darkness twists himself and torments himself, the angels chain him, he admires them in spite of himself, he loves, he cries, he is defeated. In the first part of the drama, we saw Faust separated violently from Marguerite, and voices from heaven had cried: She is saved, while they were leading her to death; but Faust can he be lost, since he is still loved by Marguerite, is not his heart already betrothed in heaven! The great work of the [462] redemption through solidarity is accomplished. Would the victim be never consoled for her tortures, if she did not convert her executioner? Is not forgiveness the vengeance of the children of the sky? The love that was the first to reach heaven draws to it science by sympathy; Christianity is revealed in its admirable synthesis. The new Eve washed with the blood of Abel the spot on Cain's forehead, and she weeps for joy over her two children holding each other hugged. Hell, now useless, is closed for expansion of the sky. The problem of evil has received its last solution and the much alone necessary and triumphant will reign in eternity. Such is the beautiful dream of the greatest of all poets, but unfortunately here the philosopher forgets all the laws of balance, he wants to absorb the light in a splendor without shadow and movement in absolute rest that would be the termination of life. As long as there is visible light, there is will have a shadow proportional to that light. Rest will not be never happiness, if it is not balanced by a similar movement and contrary; as long as there is a free blessing, the blasphemy will be possible; as long as there is a sky, there will be a hell. It is the immutable law of nature, it is the will eternal righteousness which is God! [463] CHAPTER VII. EMPIRE AND RESTORATION. CONTENTS .-- The marvelous side of Napoleon's reign .-- Predictions who had announced it .-- Prophecies _of Liber mirabilis_, of Nostradamus and Olivarius - Role played under the Empire by Miss Le Normand - The Holy Alliance and the Emperor Alexander - Madame Bouche and Madame de Krudener - The visions of Martin (from Gallardon). Napoleon filled the world with wonders and he was himself the greatest wonder in the world; his wife, the Empress Joséphine_, curious and credulous as a Creole, passed from enchantments to enchantments. This glory had been to him predicted, it is said, by an old gypsy, and the people of the countryside still believes that Josephine herself was the right genius of the emperor; it was indeed a sweet and modest counselor, who would have ruled him out of many pitfalls if he had always listened to his voice, but fatality or rather Providence pushed him forward, and what he had to become was written. In a prophecy attributed to Saint Césaire, but which is signed Jean de Vatiguerro, and which is in the _Liber mirabilis_, collection of predictions printed in 1524, we read these words amazing: "The churches will be defiled and desecrated, public worship will cease ... "The eagle will fly around the world and subdue many nations ... "The greatest and most august ruler of all the West, will be put to flight after a supernatural defeat ... [464] “The most noble prince will be taken captive by his enemies and will grieve thinking of those who were attached to him ... "Before peace is reestablished in France, the same events will start over and happen several times ... "The eagle will be crowned with three diadems, and it will return victorious in his area from which he will only come out for rise to the sky ... " _Nostradamus_, after predicting the theft of churches and the murder of priests, announces that an emperor will be born near Italy, that its sovereignty will cost France a lot of blood, and that his own will betray him and accuse him of shedding blood. An emperor will be born near Italy, Who, to the empire, will be sold very dear; But he has to see what people he allies with, Who will say it less a prince than a butcher. From a simple soldier will reach the empire, From short dress will succeed in the long run; Valiant in arms, in the Church at worst, Treat priests like water sponges. That is to say, at the time of the greatest calamities of the Church, he will fill priests with goods. In a _Recueil de prophéties_, published in 1820, which we we have a copy, we find, after a prediction that concerns Napoleon I, this sentence: "And the nephew will do what the uncle could not do." The famous Mademoiselle _Lenormand_ had in her library a hardback volume, on parchment back, containing the _Treate [465] of Olivarius on the prophecies_, followed by ten manuscript pages where Napoleon's reign and his fall were formally advertisement. The diviner communicated this book to the Empress Josephine. Since we have just named Mademoiselle Lenormand, we must say a few words about this singular woman: she was a fat very ugly young lady, emphatic in her speeches, amphigouric in his style, but awake somnambulist and of a very particular lucidity; it was under the first empire and under the restoration the fashionable diviner. Nothing is more tedious than reading her works, but she pulled the cards with the greatest success. The fortune-telling found in France by Éteilla is nothing else that the consultation of the fate by means of signs agreed in advance; these signs combined with the numbers, inspire oracles in the a medium that becomes magnetized by looking at them. We draw these signs at chance after having slowly mixed them together, they are arranged by number Kabbalistic, and they always respond to the thought of the one who questions them seriously and in good faith, because we wear within us a whole world of forebodings to which one needs only one pretext to appear to us. Impressionable natures and sensitive receive from us the magnetic shock which communicates the imprint of our nervous state. The medium can so read our fears and our hopes in the wrinkles of water, in the configuration of the clouds, in the points thrown to the chance on earth, in the drawings left on a plate by coffee grounds, in the chances of a deck of cards or a tarot. The tarot especially, this kabbalistic and scholarly book, of which [466] all the combinations are a revelation of the harmonies existing between signs, letters and numbers, the tarot is then of a truly marvelous use. But we don't can with impunity snatch the secrets from ourselves in this way of our intimate communication with the universal light. The consultation of cards and tarots is a real evocation which cannot be done without danger and without crime. In the evocations, we force our astral body to appear to us, in divination we force him to speak to us; we let's give a body to our chimeras and we make a reality of this future that will truly be ours, when we will have evoked it by the Word and adopted by faith. Acquire the habit of divination and consultations magnetic, it is to make a pact with the vertigo: however, we have already established that vertigo is hell. Mademoiselle Lenormand was madly infatuated with her art and of itself; the world did not roll without her, and she believed necessary for the European balance. During the congress from Aix-la-Chapelle, the soothsayer left followed by all her furniture, did business at all customs, and tormented all the authorities so that we were somehow forced to take care of her: she was the real fly of the boat, and what fly! On her return, she published her impressions and put in mind of her book a vignette in which she represents herself surrounded by all the powers which consult it and which tremble before she. The great events which had just taken place in the world at that time had turned souls towards mysticism, a [467] religious reaction had begun, and the rulers who formed the holy alliance felt the need to the cross their scepters united in bundles. The emperor _Alexandre_, above all, believed that the time had come for holy Russia to convert the world to universal orthodoxy. The sect of the _sauveurs de Louis_ XVII, an intriguing and stirring, wanted to take advantage of this arrangement to found a new priesthood and managed to introduce near the emperor of Russia one of its illuminated. This new Catherine Théot, that the sectarians called Sister Salomé, was called _madame Mouth_; she spent eighteen months at the emperor's court, having often with him secret talks; but Alexander had more devout imagination than genuine enthusiasm, it is pleased the marvelous, and pretended to be amused. His mystical confidants presented her with a new prophetess who made him forget Sister Salomé, it was the famous Madame of _Krudener_, that amiable coquette of piety and virtues, who did and was not Valérie. His ambition, however, was that believed the heroine of her book, and like one of her intimate friends urged to name her the hero, she appointed an eminent man of that time. ''But then, ” said the friend, “ the outcome of
book does not conform to the truth of the anecdote, because this
sir is not dead – Oh! my dear, exclaimed Madame de
Krudener, I assure you it’s not much better. This
answer made a fortune. Madame de Krudener exercised a
little weak of Alexander an influence great enough to alarm
his counselors, he often shut himself up with her to pray,
but she was lost by excess of zeal. One day, like the emperor
[468] was going to leave her, she threw herself in front of him and implored him
not to go out. God reveal to me, she said, that you run a
great danger: we want your life; an assassin is hidden in
the palace. The emperor is alarmed, he rings the bell, he is surrounded by
guards, we do searches and we end up finding a
poor devil with a dagger. This man, questioned,
confuses and ends up confessing that he was introduced by Madame
Krudener herself. Was it true, and had this lady played
in this affair the role of Latude near Madame Pompadour?
Was it wrong, and this man, posted by the enemies of
the emperor, did he have a secret mission, if the murder did not
not succeed, to lose Mrs. Krudener? Anyway, the
poor prophetess was lost. The emperor, ashamed to have been
taken for fool, dismissed her without hearing it, and she had to
consider myself happy again to be off so cheaply.
The little church of Louis XVII did not consider itself beaten by the
disgrace of Madame Bouche, and lives in that of Madame de
Krudener a true divine retribution, they continued their
prophecies, and performed miracles when necessary. Under the reign of
Louis XVIII, they put forward a peasant from Beauce, named
Martin, who claimed to have seen an angel. This angel, whom he
described the costume and the figure, had all the appearance of a
lackey of a good house: he had a very long frock coat and
very tight at the waist, yellowish or blonde in color, it
was pale and thin and wore a hat on his head
probably braid and varnished. What is strange, and what
proves once again how many resources there are in the
[469] persistence and daring is that this man was caught
seriously, and managed to get in close to the king. We assure
that he astonished her with revelations of his intimate life, revelations
which have nothing impossible or even extraordinary, now
that the phenomena of magnetism are better observed and better
known.
Louis XVIII, moreover, was skeptical enough to be credulous.
Doubt in the presence of being and its harmonies, the
skepticism in the face of eternal mathematics and laws
unchanging of life that make divinity present and visible
everywhere, isn’t it the silliest of superstitions and the most
inexcusable as the most dangerous of all credulities?
[470]
BOOK VII.
MAGIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
.. Zain, ז
FIRST CHAPTER.
MYSTICAL MAGNETIZERS AND MATERIALISTS.
SUMMARY – An evocation in the Church of Notre-Dame – The fakes
prophets and false gods.
The negation of the fundamental dogma of the Catholic religion, if
poetically formulated in Faust’s poem, had carried its
fruits in the world. Morality deprived of its eternal sanction
was becoming doubtful and tottering. A materialistic mystic
returned the Swedenborg system to create on earth the
paradise of attractions proportional to destinies. By the
attractions, Fourier heard the sensual passions,
to which he promised an integral and absolute expansion.
God, who is the supreme reason, marked with a terrible seal these
disapproved doctrines: the disciples of Fourier had begun
through absurdity, they ended in madness.
They seriously believed in the coming change of the Ocean into a
vast bowl of lemonade, to the future creation of antilions and
antiserpents, to the epistolary correspondence of the planets
[471] with each other. We are not talking about the famous tail of
thirty-two feet which they said they wanted to gratify the species
human, because they themselves had the generosity to renounce
to this tail and consider its possible advent, following
the master, as purely hypothetical.
[Illustration: General plan of the doctrine of the Kabbalists.]
It is to such absurdities that the negation must lead
balance, and there is at the bottom of all this follies more than
logical than you think. The same reason that requires pain
in humanity, makes essential the bitterness of the waters of
Wed; suppose the integral expansion of instincts to be good, and you
will no longer be able to admit the existence of ferocious animals; give
to man for all morality the ability to satisfy his
appetites, he will always have something to envy
orangutans and monkeys. To deny hell is to deny heaven
since, following the highest interpretation of the unique dogma
of Hermes, hell is the balancing reason of heaven, because
harmony results from the analogy of opposites. Quod superius, sicut quod inferius, superiority exists because of
inferiority; it is the depth which determines the height, and
if you fill in the valleys you will make the mountains disappear;
likewise, if you erase the shadows, you will annihilate the light
which is visible only by the graduated contrast of the shadow and the
day, and you will produce universal darkness by an immense
glare; even colors only exist in light
by the presence of the shadow, it is the triple alliance of the day and
of the night, it is the luminous image of dogma, it is the light
make a shadow, as the Savior is the Word made man, and all
it is based on the same law, the first law of creation, the
[472] unique and absolute law of nature, that of distinction and
the harmonious weighting of opposing forces in equilibrium
universal.
It’s not the dogma of hell, it’s the interpretations
reckless of this dogma which revolted the public conscience.
These barbaric dreams of the Middle Ages, these atrocious and
obscene carved on the porticoes of churches, this infamous
boiler in which human flesh is cooked forever alive for
suffer and in the smoke of which the elect rejoice, all
this is absurd and ungodly, but all this does not belong to the
sacred dogma of the Church. The cruelty attributed to God is the most
frightful blasphemies, and it is for this very reason that
never without a remedy, when the will of man refuses to
God’s goodness. God does not inflict on the damned the tortures of
disapproval, that he does not kill those who commit suicide.
“Work to own, and you will be happy,” said to the man there.
supreme justice. - I want to own and enjoy without working!
- Then you will fly and you will suffer.
–I will revolt! - Then you will break and you will suffer more.
- I will always rebel!
- Then you will suffer eternally. “
Such is the judgment of absolute reason and sovereign justice;
What can the pride of human madness answer to this?
Religion has no greater enemies than mysticism
reckless who takes the visions of his fever for revelations
[473] divine. It was not the theologians who created the empire of
devil, they are the false devotees and the sorcerers.
Believe in a vision of our brain rather than in the authority of
public reason and piety, such is always the beginning
of heresy in religion, of madness in the order of
human philosophy; a madman would never be mad if he believed in
the reason of others.
Visions never fail in revolted piety, no more than
chimeras for a reason which excommunicates itself and which goes astray.
From this point of view, magnetism certainly has its dangers: because
the state of crisis brings on both hallucinations and
lucid intuitions.
In this book we will devote a special chapter to
magnetizers, some mystical, others materialistic, and
we will warn them, in the name of science, of the dangers to which
they expose themselves.
Consultations of fate, magnetic experiments and
evocations belong to one and the same order of phenomena.
However, these are phenomena that cannot be abused with impunity,
reason and life are at stake.
Thirty or forty years ago, a choir vicar of the church
of Notre-Dame, a very pious and highly esteemed man,
had fallen in love with magnetism, and indulged in frequent
experiences, he was spending more time than he would have
perhaps due to reading the mystics, and especially the
dizzying Swedenborg; his head soon got tired, he was
worked with insomnia, he would get up to study, or even
when the study could not calm the agitations of his
[474] brain, he took the key to the church and entered it by the door
red, he then entered the choir lit only by
the weak lamp of the high altar, reached its stall and remained there
until the morning, sunk in prayers and meditations
deep.
One night the subject of his meditation was eternal damnation,
he thought of the threatening doctrine of the few chosen ones,
and did not know how to reconcile this rigorous exclusion of the most
many with the infinite goodness of this God who wants all
men be saved, says the Holy Scriptures, and let them
come to the knowledge of the truth; he was thinking about this torture
fire that the most cruel tyrant of the earth would not want
inflict, if he could, for one day only, on his
more cruel enemy, and doubt entered from all sides in his
heart; then he began to think about the conciliatory explanations of
the theology. The Church does not define hellfire, it is
eternal, according to the Gospel, but it is not written a thousand part that
the greater number of men must suffer it eternally.
Many reprobates may only have to endure the pain
of dam, that is to say, the deprivation of God; finally the Church defends
absolutely to assume anyone’s damnation. The pagans have
could be saved by baptism of desire, scandalous sinners
by a sudden and perfect contrition, finally we must hope for
all and pray for all, except for one, the one from whom it is
Savior said it would have been better for that man to
not to have been born.
The vicar stopped at this last thought, and thought of everything
blow that a single man thus officially bore the weight of
[475] reprobation for centuries; than Judas Iscariot, because it is from
him that it is about in the passage of the Scripture, after having
repented of his crime to the point of death, had become the goat
emissary of humanity, the Atlas of hell, the Prometheus of
damnation, he whom the Savior ready to die had called his friend!
Her eyes then filled with tears, it seemed to her that the
redemption was of no effect if it had not saved Judas;
it is for that one and for that one alone, he repeated in his
exaltation, that I would have liked to die a second time, if
I had been the Savior! but isn’t Jesus Christ better
than me a thousand times? What must he do now in the
Heaven, while I weep for his unhappy apostle over the
earth? … What he does, added the priest, getting more excited.
in addition, he pities me and he consoles me; I feel it, he says to my
heart that the outcast of the gospel is saved, and that he will
long curse that still weighs on his memory, the redeemer
of all the outcasts … – But if it is so, it is a new
Gospel that must be proclaimed to the world … that of mercy
infinite, universal, in the name of regenerated Judas … But I
go astray, I am a heretic, an impious! … No, however,
since I am in good faith! … Then joining hands with
fervor: “My God,” said the vicar, “give me what you do not
did not deny faith in the past, what you do not deny to it
again … a miracle to convince and reassure me, a
miracle as a pledge of a new mission … “
The enthusiast then gets up, and in the silence of the night, if
formidable, at the foot of the altars, in the immensity of this church
silent and somber, he pronounces aloud, in a slow voice and
[476] solemn, this evocation: “You who have been cursed for eighteen
centuries, and that I cry, because you seem to have taken hell for
you alone, in order to leave us heaven, unhappy Judas, if he
it is true that the blood of your Master has purified you, if you are saved,
come lay your hands on me for the priesthood of mercy and
of love!”
The vicar having said these words, and while the awakened echo
with a start still murmured them under the terrified vaults, the
vicar gets up, crosses the choir, and goes to kneel under the
lamp at the foot of the high altar. “So,” he said (because it is
himself that we owe the recounting of this story), then I
felt positively and really two hands, two warm hands
and alive, to rest on my head, as do those of the bishop
on the day of the ordination, I was not sleeping, I was not
passed out, and I felt them; it was a real contact and that lasted
a few minutes. God had heard me, the miracle was done, of
new duties were imposed on me, and a new life
started for me; from the next day I had to be a
new man … “
The next day, in fact, the unfortunate vicar was mad.
The dream of a heaven without hell, Faust’s dream did well
other victims in this unhappy century of doubt and selfishness
who only managed to achieve a hell without a sky. God himself
became useless in a system where everything was allowed, where everything
was good. Men who have come to no longer fear a supreme judge
found it very easy to do without the God of good people,
less God, in fact, than the good people themselves. The fools who
set themselves up as conquerors of the devil came to
[477] gods. Our century is above all that of these masquerades
so-called divine, we have known all kinds. The
god Ganneau, good and too poetic nature, who would have given his
shirt to the poor, and who rehabilitated thieves, Ganneau who
admired Lacenaire, and who would not have killed a fly; the God
Cheneau, button merchant on rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs,
who was visionary like Swedemborg and who wrote his
inspirations in the style of Jeannot, the god Tourreil, good and
excellent man who deifies woman, and wants Adam to be out
of Eve; the god Auguste Comte, who kept religion
Catholic everything, except two things, two miseries: the existence
of God and the immortality of the soul; the god Wronski, true scholar
that one, who had the glory and the happiness of rediscovering the
first theorems of the Kabbalah, and who, having sold the
communication one hundred and fifty thousand francs to a rich fool
named Arson, states in one of his most serious books that
said Arson, for refusing to pay it in full, is
become really and truly the beast of the_Revelation_. Here is
this curious passage that we want to quote, so that we do not
accuse no injustice to a man whose work has
have been helpful, and which we have sincerely praised in our
previous publications.
Wronski, to force Arson to pay him, had published a brochure
titled Yes or No, that is, did you buy me, yes or
no, for one hundred and fifty thousand francs my discovery of the absolute?
[478] Now, here is in what terms, in his book entitled: Reforme de philosophy, Wronski [23] reminds the entire universe that
hardly cares, the publication of this pamphlet; We will find
at the same time in this passage a curious sample of the
style of this absolute dealer.
[Note 23: Wronski, Reforme de la Philosophie, p. 512.]
“This fact of the discovery of the absolute, which seems so strongly
revolt men, is already found in a great
scandal, that of the famous YES or NO, also decisive by
the dazzling triumph of the truth that was the outcome, that it is
remarkable by the sudden appearance of the symbolic being whose
threatens the_Apocalypse_, of this monster of creation, which
forehead the name of MYSTERY, and who, this time, fearing to be
mortally struck, could no longer contain his
hideous convulsions, and came, through the newspapers and
all the other routes where the public is trained, spread out
broad daylight his infernal rage and his extreme deception, etc. “
It is good to know that poor Arson who is accused here of
infernal rage and extreme deception had already paid off
the hierophant forty or fifty thousand francs.
The absolute that Wronski sold so dearly, we found it after
him, and we gave it to our readers for nothing, because the
truth is due to the world, and no one has the right to appropriate it
and to make it a profession and a commodity. May this act of justice
to atone for the fault of a man who died in a state close to
misery, after having worked so much, not for science, but
[479] to enrich himself by means of science, which he was perhaps
worthy neither to understand nor to possess.
CHAPTER II.
HALLUCINATIONS.
SUMMARY – Again the sect of the saviors of Louis
XVII .– Singular hallucinations of a named cardboard worker
Eugène Vintras .– His prophecies and his pretensions
miracles .– Accusations leveled against him by sectarians
dissidents – Mores of false Gnostics – Hallucinations
contagious.
At the bottom of the fanaticism of all sects we always find a
principle of ambition or greed; Jesus Christ himself had
often severely reprimanded those of his followers who do not
surrounded him, during the days of his privations and his exile
even in the midst of his homeland, only in the hope of a kingdom where
they would have the first places. The higher the expectations are
crazy, the more they seduce certain imaginations; we pay
then from his purse and his person the happiness of hope. It is
as the god Wronski ruined imbeciles in their
promising the absolute; that the god Auguste Comte was made six
a thousand pounds of annuities at the expense of his worshipers, to whom he
had distributed in advance fantastic dignities, achievable
when his doctrine would have conquered the world; thus
some magnetizers drew money from a large number of
fooled by promising them treasures that the spirits disturb
always. Some sectarians actually believe in what they
[480] promise, and these are the most indefatigable and the most
bold in their intrigues: money, miracles,
prophecies, nothing misses them, because they have this absolute of
will and action that really works wonders, they are
magicians without knowing it.
The sect of the saviors of Louis XVII belongs, in this respect,
to the history of magic. The madness of these men is contagious
to the point of winning over to their beliefs those who come to
find to fight them; they get the most
important and the most unobtainable, attract to them the most
singular witnesses, evoke lost memories, command
the army of dreams, reveal angels to Martin, blood to
Rose Tamisier, an angel in rags from Eugène Vintras. This
last story is curious because of its aftermath
phenomenal, and we’ll tell it.
In 1839, the saviors of Louis XVII who had completed the
almanacs of prophecies for the year 1840, bearing in mind that, if
everyone expected a revolution, this revolution does not
would soon be accomplished, the saviors of Louis XVII who
no longer had their prophet Martin resolved to have one
other; some of their most zealous agents were in
Normandy, country of which the false Louis XVII had the claim
to be the duke; they cast their eyes on a devout worker, with a
elated character and a weak head, and here is the trick they
they took it into their heads: they assumed a letter had been addressed to the prince,
that is to say to the so-called Louis XVII, completed this letter of
emphatic promises of the future reign, attached to expressions
[481] mystics capable of making an impression on a weak head and
dropped this letter into the hands of the worker who
named Eugène Vintras, with the circumstances that he himself
tell us:
“August 6, 1839.
At around nine o’clock, I was busy writing …
the door to the room where I was; believing he was a worker
who was dealing with me, I answer rather sharply: Come in. I
was very surprised, instead of a worker, to see an old man
ragged; I only asked him what he wanted.
»He answered me very quietly: Do not get angry, Pierre-Michel (names that no one ever uses for me
appoint; all over the country they call me Eugene, and even, when
I sign something, I never put these two first names).
This answer from my old man gave me a certain sensation;
but it increased when he said to me: “I am very tired;
everywhere I show up, I am looked at with contempt or as a
thief.” These last words scared me a lot, though
say with a sad and unhappy air. I got up, and took in front
me not change, but a dime that I to him
put in his hand saying to him: I do not take you for that,
my good man. And by saying this to him, I made him realize that
I wanted to turn him away. He asked for nothing better and turned it over to me.
back with a pained look.
“No sooner had he put his foot on the last step than I pulled out.
the door on me, and locked it. Not hearing it
[482] get off, I called a worker and told him to get up to my
bedroom. There, under the pretext of business, I hoped to make him
walk with me all the places I thought possible to
hide my old man, whom I had not seen leaving. This worker
go up to my room, I go out with him, locking my door,
and I went through all the smaller reductions. I do not see anything.
»I was going to enter the factory, when suddenly I hear
ring a mass. I took pleasure in thinking that despite the
disturbance of my old man, I could nevertheless attend
mass. So I ran to my room to pick up a book of
prayers. I found, in the place where I was writing, a letter
addressed to Madame de Generès, in London. This letter was
signed and written by M. Paul de Montfleury, from Caen, and contained
a refutation of heresy and a profession of Orthodox faith.
This letter, although addressed to Madame de Generès, was
intended to put before the eyes of the duc de Normandie the most
great truths of our holy catholic, apostolic religion
and Roman. On the letter was placed the ten-sous coin that
I had given to my old man. “
In another letter, Pierre-Michel admits that the figure of this
old man was not unknown to him, but that by seeing him thus
suddenly appear, he was extraordinarily afraid, he
locked and barricaded the door when he was out, listened
long at the door if he heard her come down. The old
beggar undoubtedly took off his shoes to go down without
noise, for Vintras heard nothing; he then runs to the window
[483] and did not see him go out, since he had been out since
long time. Here is my man upset, he calls for help,
look everywhere, finally find the letter we wanted to write to him
to read is obviously a letter fallen from the sky. This is Vintras
devoted to Louis XVII, he was a visionary for the rest of his
days, because henceforth the image of the old beggar will never leave him
more. This beggar will become Saint Michael, because he called him
Pierre-Michel, association of ideas similar to those of dreams.
The hallucinated of the sect of Louis XVII had guessed, with the
second sight of maniacs, just the moment to strike
the weak head of Vintras to make it in a single instant a
enlightened and a prophet.
The sect of Louis XVII consists mainly of former servants of
the legitimist royalty, also Vintras, become their medium,
is he the faithful reflection of all these imaginations full of
chivalrous memories and antiquated mysticism. Those are
everywhere, in the visions of the new prophet, lilies bathed in
blood, angels in knight costume, saints disguised as
troubadours. Then appear hosts stuck on silk
blue. Vintras is sweating blood, and his blood appears on the
hosts, where he draws hearts with captions of the writing
and the spelling of Vintras; empty chalices appear all
full of wine, then where the wine falls, appear
blood spots. The initiates believe they hear music
delicious and breathe unfamiliar scents; priests called
to note these wonders are drawn into the current of
enthusiasm.
A priest of the diocese of Tours, an old and venerable
[484] ecclesiastical, left his cure, and followed the prophet.
We saw this priest, he told us about the wonders of
Vintras with the accent of the most perfect conviction, he gave us
showed bloodshot wafers in an inexplicable way,
he gave us signed minutes of more than
fifty witnesses, all honorable people and well placed in the
world, artists, doctors, lawyers, a
Chevalier de Razac, a Duchess of Armaillé. Doctors have
analyzed the ruddy fluid that flowed from the hosts, and recognized
that it was truly human blood; the very enemies of
Vintras, and he has cruel ones, do not dispute miracles and
just attribute them to the demon. But do you conceive, we
said Father Charvoz, the priest of Touraine whom we have spoken of,
do you conceive of the demon falsifying the blood of Jesus Christ on
Hosts really consecrated? Because Father Charvoz is good
really priest, and these signs also occur on
hosts he consecrates. However the sect of Vintras is
anarchic and absurd, therefore God does not perform miracles in his
favor. There remains the natural explanation of the phenomena, and in the
in the course of this work, we have indicated it enough for it to be
no need to develop it here.
Vintras, whom his sectarians pose as the new Christ, also had
his Iscariots: two members of the sect, a certain Gozzoli and
one named Alexandre Geoffroi, published against him the
most odious revelations. To believe them, the sectarians of
Tilly-sur-Seules (as their residence was called) indulged
to the most obscene practices; they celebrated in their
[485] particular chapel, which they called the cenacle, of masses
sacrileges which the elect attended in a complete state
of nudity; at a certain moment, all gesticulated, melted into
tears crying: Love! love! and they threw themselves into each other’s arms
one another; we will be allowed to do away with the rest.
These were the orgies of the ancient Gnostics, but without
worth turning off the lights. Alexandre Geoffroi ensures that
Vintras initiated him into a kind of prayer that consisted in the act
monstrous Onan, exercised at the foot of the altars, but here the
whistleblower is too heinous to be taken at his word. The abbot
Charvoz, to whom we told about these infamous accusations, we
said they had to be attributed to the hatred of two men
expelled from the association for having committed the acts themselves
of which they accuse Vintras. Anyway, the disorders
moralities naturally engender physical disorders, and
abnormal overexcitations of the nervous system almost produce
always eccentric disturbances in manners; if so
Vintras is innocent, he could and still can become
guilty.
Pope Gregory XVI, by a brief of November 8, 1843, condemned
formally the sect of Vintras.
Here is a specimen of the style of this illuminated man, besides without
instruction and whose emphatic writings teem with mistakes
of French.
“Sleep, sleep, indolent mortals: stay, stay still on your
soft layers; smile at your dreams of celebrations and greatness;
the angel of the covenant descended on your mountains, he wrote
his name even in the chalice of your flowers; he touched
[486] rings which adorn his feet, the rivers which are your pride
and your hope; the oaks of your forests have taken on the brilliance of
his forehead for a new dawn; the sea, with a voluptuous leap,
greeted his gaze! Elie preceded him! Lean to the side of the
earth, but do not be frightened by this active noise of
tombs. Sleep, sleep still; I saw it towards the east; he
chiseled his name on inaccessible mountains; he cried out to time
to hasten his boat, and I saw him smile the oldest of
old men. Sleep, sleep still; Elie, in the West, poses a
cross at the door of the temple; he seals it with fire and steel
with a dagger. “
Again the temple, the fire and the dagger! Strange thing! crazypeople
each other is reflected, all fanaticisms exchange
their inspirations, and the prophet of Louis XVII becomes here
the echo of the Templar cry of vengeance.
It is true that Vintras does not believe himself responsible for his
writings; this is how he talks about it himself.
“Oh! if my mind had anything to do with these writings that
one condemns, I would bow my head, and fear would enter
in my soul. This is not my work: I have not lent it
my competition by research or desire. Calm is in me; my
diaper does not experience insomnia; the days before have not tired
my eyelids; my sleep is pure as when God created it: I
then say to my God with a free heart: Custodi animam meam and erue me: non erubescam, quoniam speravi in te. “
Another so-called reformer, the one who posed as the messiah of the
[487] convict and scaffold, Lacenaire, to which we will not compare
certainly not Vintras, also wrote from his prison:
Like a chaste and pure virgin
In dreams of love I wake up and fall asleep.
Will someone teach me what remorse is?
Vintras’ argument, to legitimize his inspiration, is therefore
inconclusive, since it was also used by Lacenaire for
to excuse and even to legitimize too, no longer reveries, but
crimes.
Condemned by the Pope, the sectarians of Tilly-sur-Seules
condemned the Pope in their turn, Vintras, of his authority
private, was created sovereign pontiff. The shape of his clothes
priesthood was revealed to him: he wears a golden diadem with a
Indian lingam on the forehead, he dons a purple robe and holds
in hand a magic scepter ending in a hand whose fingers
are closed with the exception of the thumb and little finger, the
fingers dedicated to Venus and Mercury, hieroglyph of
the ancient hermaphrodite, emblem of the ancient orgiastic cults and
of the sabbath priapeas. So the reminiscences and reflections of
the black magic brought by the astral light come to connect
to the mysteries of India and to the profane cult of the Baphomet, the
ecstasies of this contagious patient whose infirmary is in London,
and who continues to make proselytes and victims there.
So the exaltation of the poor prophet is not always
free from fear and remorse, no matter what he says, and sometimes
he lets out the saddest confessions. This is what we
we find in a letter addressed to one of his most intimate friends:
[488] “I am always waiting for new torments. Tomorrow is coming
the Orchard family, I will see in their features the purity of
their soul announcing itself by their joy; we will call back all my
past happiness; we will name names that I pronounced with love
in not very distant times. Finally, everything that will delight you
others will be new tortures for me! It will be necessary to be at
table; while my heart will be searched with a sword, I
should smile! Oh! if yet these terrible words that I have
heard were not eternal, I would still cherish my cruel
torture! Sorry, my dear, I could not live without loving God!
»Listen, if your human charity allows you, as minister
of the living God, I do not claim it, the one that your master has
vomited from his mouth must be cursed by you:
»In the night from Sunday to Monday (May 17 to 18) a dreadful dream
dealt a mortal blow in my soul as in my body. I was
at Sainte-Paix, there was no one left at the chateau; however
the doors were open. I promptly went up to the
Holy Chapel; I was going to open the door when I saw it written
on this door, in letters of fire: “Do not approach this
place, you whom I vomited out of my mouth! ” I couldn’t get off; I
fell overwhelmed on the first step; but judge my
fright when I only saw around me a wide and deep
abyss! there were hideous monsters in the background that
called me their brother!
»The thought occurred to me at this moment that the holy archangel too
[489] called me his brother. What a difference! made him jump my
soul of the most lively joy; and these, hearing them
call myself that, I writhed in convulsions similar to
those which made them feel the virtue which God had attached
to my cross of grace during their appearance on April 28th.
I tried to hold on to something to avoid
to roll in this bottomless pit. I prayed to the mother of God, the
divine Marie, I called on her to help me. She was deaf to my
voice! During this time I was still driving leaving shreds
of my flesh with the rocky points which bordered this dreadful
abyss! Suddenly swirls of flames rise towards me
from the depth where I would soon fall. I heard the screams
with fierce joy, and I could no longer pray. Suddenly a
voice more frightening than the long booms of thunder
in a violent storm resounds in my ears. I heard these
words: “You thought you were conquering me and you see that I conquered you; I
taught you to be humble in my own way: come and taste my
sweets, become one of my best; get to know the
tyrant of the sky; come with us to vomit blasphemies and
imprecations: anything else is useless for you now! “
Then starting with a long burst of laughter he said to me: “Look at Marie,
the one you called your shield against us, see her smile
gracious, hear her sweet voice. “
»My dear, I saw her above the abyss: her blue eyes
heavenly are filled with fire, her ruddy lips are
turned purple, her voice so sweet and so divine has changed,
it has become hard and terrible! she threw me these words like
[490] a thunderbolt: “Roll, proud, in these places filled with fire
where do demons live! “
All my blood flowed back to my heart; I thought the time was
sounded where earthly hell was going to give way to eternal hell!
I was still able to collect a few words from the Ave Maria; I do not
know how long I’ve been; i know i found the
servant lying down on her way home: she told me it was late.
Ah! if I make known to the enemies of the work of the
mercy what’s going on in me, don’t they
would cry victory? they would say that these are the proofs
of a monomania. Would to God that it were! I would be less at
complain! But fear not, if God won’t hear my
voice for me I will pray for him to double my sufferings,
but let him hide them from his enemies. “
Here the triumphant hallucination rises to the sublime Vintras
consent to be damned, provided that one does not say that he is mad;
last instinct of the inestimable price of the reason which survives the
very reason: the drunken man is only preoccupied with the fear of
pass for drunk; the fool and the monomaniac demand death
rather than confess their delirium. Is that, following the beautiful
sentence of Cebes that we have already quoted, there is no
man that a desirable good is wisdom which is the use of
reason, and there is also only a true and supreme misfortune to
to fear is madness.
[491]
CHAPTER III.
MAGNETIZERS AND SLEEPERS.
SUMMARY – Mr. Baron Du Potet and his work on the
magic – Experiments of the magic mirror, analogous to
of hydromancy .– The turntables and the catastrophe of
Victor Hennequin – The monster and the magician.
The Church, in her lofty wisdom, forbids us to consult fate
and to violate by an indiscreet curiosity the secrets of
the future; but nowadays the voice of the Church is hardly
heard, and the crowd returns to the diviners and the pythoness; the
sleepwalkers have become the oracles of those who no longer believe
to the precepts of the Gospel, and we do not think that the
concern of a predicted event somehow removes
our freedom, and paralyzes our means of defense: by consulting
magic to predict future events, we give
down payment for fatality.
Sleepwalkers are the sybils of our time, like the
sybilles were the somnambulists of antiquity: happy the
consultants who do not put their credulity at the service of
immoral or foolish magnetisers, for they would communicate through the
even makes their voluntary consultation to immorality or
madness of the inspirers of the oracle: the profession of magnetizer is
easy and the dupes are in great number.
It is therefore important to know among those who deal with
magnetism, what are the really serious men.
[492] Among these we must put in the first row M. le baron Du Potet, whose conscientious work has already made a
big step for the science of Mesmer. M. Du Potet opened in Paris
a practical school of magnetism where the public is admitted to
learn procedures and verify phenomena.
Baron Du Potet is an exceptional nature and
particularly intuitive. Like all contemporaries, even
the most educated, he ignores the Kabbalah and its mysteries, and
yet magnetism has revealed magic to him; he felt the
need to reveal and hide this scary science again
for himself, and he wrote a book which he only sells to his
followers and under the seal of the most absolute secrecy. This secret,
we did not promise it to M. Du Potet, but we will keep it
out of respect for the hierophant’s convictions; let us
suffice to say that his book is the most remarkable of all
works of pure intuition; we do not believe it is dangerous,
because Baron Du Potet indicates forces which he does not
not specify the use. He knows that we can harm or do good,
kill or save by magnetic means; but these processes,
it does not indicate them in a clear and practical way, and we
we congratulate him, moreover, because the right of life and death
supposes a divine sovereignty, and this sovereignty, we
would regard as unworthy the one who, knowing her and
possessing, would agree to sell it in any way
keg.
M. Du Potet victoriously establishes the existence of this light
universal in which the crisiacs perceive all the
images and all reflections of thought; it causes
powerful projections of this light by means of a device
[493] absorbent that he calls the mirror magic: it is quite simply
a circle or square covered with fine powdered charcoal and
sifted. In this negative space, the light projected by the
crisiac and by the magnetizer together, soon color and realize
all the forms corresponding to their nervous impressions.
In this truly magical mirror, appear for the subject
subjected to sleepwalking all dreams of opium or hashish,
some laughing, others gloomy; the patient must be torn off
to this show, if we do not want it to fall into
convulsions.
These phenomena are analogous to those of hydromancy practiced
by Cagliostro: water, considered carefully, dazzles and
disturbs the eyesight; then eye fatigue favors
hallucinations of the brain. Cagliostro wanted for these
experiences of virgin and perfectly innocent subjects, in order to
not to have to fear the nervous ramblings produced by
erotic reminiscences. Du Potet’s magic mirror is
perhaps more tiring for the entire nervous system,
but the dazzles of hydromancy must have a
more formidable influence on the brain.
M. Du Potet is one of those strongly convinced men who
courageously endure the disdain of science and the
prejudices of public opinion, whispering the profession of faith
secret of Galileo: The earth turns, however!
It was recently discovered that the tables are also turning, and
that human magnetization gives to movable objects subjected to
the influence of crisiacs a rotational movement. The masses
even the heaviest can be lifted and walked around
[494] space by this force, because gravity only exists due to
of the balance of the two forces of the astral light, increase
the action of one of the two, the other will give way immediately. But if
the nervous apparatus inhales and breathes this light making it
positive or negative, depending on the personal excitement of the
subject, all the inert bodies subjected to its action and impregnated with
his life will become lighter or heavier, depending on the flow and
the reflux of light which brings about in the new equilibrium of
its movement porous and bad conductors around a
living center, as the stars in space are carried away,
swayed, and revolve around the sun.
This eccentric power of attraction or projection supposes
always a sickly state in the one who is the subject, the
médiums are all eccentric and unbalanced beings; the
mediomania supposes or causes a series of other manias
nervousness, fixed ideas, appetite disturbances, erotomania
disorderly, inclinations to murder or suicide. In beings
thus affected, moral responsibility seems to no longer exist;
they do evil with the awareness of good; they cry of piety
in church and can be surprised in hideous bacchanalia;
they have a way of explaining everything, it’s the devil, it’s
the spirits that obsess and train them. That their
Do you want? what do you ask them? They no longer live in
themselves; it is a mysterious being who animates them, it is he who
acts in their place, and being is called legion!
The repeated attempts of a healthy person to create themselves
the faculties of médium tire her, make her ill, and
[495] may disturb his sanity. This is what happened to Victor
Hennequin, former editor of the Démocratie pacifique, and
member, after 1848, of the National Assembly: he was a young
an advocate of abundant and easy speech, he neither lacked
of education, nor of talent, but he was infatuated with
Fourier: exiled after December 2, he indulged in inaction
from his retirement to the experiences of the turntables; soon he
was affected by mediomania, and believed to be the instrument of
revelations of the soul of the earth. He published a book entitled:
Save mankind, it was a mixture of memories
phalansterians and Christian reminiscences, one last
glimmer of dying reason still shines there, but the experiences
continued and madness triumphed. In a last work of which
the first volume was only published, Victor Hennequin represents
God as a huge polyp placed in the center of the earth with
antennae and proboscis twisted into tendrils that go and
come through his brain and that of his wife Octavia.
Soon after we learned that Victor Hennequin had died of
after a fit of furious dementia in a house of the insane.
We have heard of a lady of the great world who is
engaged in conversations with the so-called spirits of
furniture, and which, scandalized beyond measure by the answers
unseemly of her pedestal table, made the trip to Rome to defer
the heretical furniture in the holy see; she took with her
the culprit, and made a fire-decker in the capital of the world
Christian. Better to burn your furniture than to go mad,
and in truth for this lady the danger was imminent.
[496] Do not laugh at her, we children of a century of reason where
serious men, like the Comte de Mirville, attribute to the devil
unexplained phenomena of nature.
In a melodrama that plays out on the boulevards, it is about
of a magician who, to make himself a formidable auxiliary, created
an android, a monster with lion claws, bull horns,
hevathan scales, he gives life to this hybrid sphinx, and
immediately, terrified by his work, he fled. The monster
pursues him, appears between him and his fiancee, sets his
house, burns his father, kidnaps his son, chases him to
the sea, climb with him on his ship which he swallows up and
ends in love at first sight. This awful sight,
laughable by force of terror, was made in the history of
humanity, poetry has been personified the ghost of evil has
lent all the forces of nature. She wanted this
scarecrow make a moral aid, then she got scared
of that ugliness brought about by his dreams. Since that time the
monster chases us through the ages, it appears hideous and
grinning between us and the objects of our loves, nightmare
filthy, it suffocates our children in their sleep, it brings
in creation, this paternal house of humanity,
the unquenchable fire of hell, it burns and tortures forever
our fathers and mothers; he spreads his black wings for us
hide the sky and he cries out to us: No more hope! he goes up
group and gallop after us like sorrow; he dives into
the ocean of despair the last ark of our hope; it is
the ancient Arimanes of the Persians, it is the Typhoon of Egypt, it is
the black god of the sectarians of Manès, the count of Mirville and
[497] the black magic of the devil is the horror of the world and the idol of
bad Christians. The men tried to laugh about it and they have it
fear. They make caricatures of them, and they flinch, because
that they seem to see these very caricatures come to life in order to
make fun of them in turn. However his reign is over, but he
will not perish crushed by lightning from the sky: science has conquered
thunder fire, and she made torches, the monster
will vanish before the splendours of science and the truth: the
genius of ignorance and of the night can only be struck down by
the light!
CHAPTER IV.
THE FANTASTICISTS IN MAGIC.
CONTENTS. – _ The Magician_, by Alphonse Esquiros – Books and
the miracles of Henri Delaage – The experiences of the count
of Ourches .– The book of Baron de Guldenstabbé .– A word on the
necromancers and vampires .– The fortune-teller Edmond.
About twenty years ago that one of our childhood friends,
Alphonse Esquiros, published a book of high fantasy,
titled the Magician. It was all that the romanticism of then
could imagine more bizarre, the author gave his magician
a seraglio of dead women, but embalmed by a process
since found by Gannal. A bronze android who preached the
chastity, a hermaphrodite in love with the moon and who maintained
with her a continued correspondence, and many other things
[498] yet we do not remember. Alphonse Esquiros, by the
publication of this novel, founded a school of fantasies in magic
whose young and interesting Henri Delaage is currently the
most distinguished representative.
Henri Delaage is a fertile writer, an unknown miracle worker and
a skillful fascinator. His style is no less astonishing than the
ideas of Alphonse Esquiros, his initiator and his teacher; so
in his book resuscités, he says, speaking of a
objection against Christianity: “I will take this
objection to the throat, and when I let go, the earth will resound
dully under the weight of his strangled corpse. ” It is true
that he does not respond much to this objection afterwards, but
what do you want us to answer to a strangled objection, when
once the earth sounded dully under the weight of its
corpse?
Henri Delaage is, we have said, an unrecognized miracle worker; he has
admitted, in fact, to a person of our acquaintance that during
a winter where ruthlessly reigned this chest affection
so annoying that we call the flu, he just had to introduce himself
in a living room to immediately cure all those who
were there; it is true that he was the victim of the miracle,
because he gained a slight hoarseness that did not leave him
since.
Several friends of Henri Delaage have assured us that he has the gift
of ubiquity, we have just left it at the Patrie office, we
find him at Dentu, his publisher, we run away scared, we
goes home and we find … Delaage waiting for you.
[499] Henri Delaage is also a skillful fascinator. A lady of the world
who had just read one of her books, declared that she did not
knew nothing in the world more beautiful and better written, but this
it is not only to his books that Delaage communicates the gift of
beauty. One day we had just read a signed soap opera
Fiorentino, where it was said that the physical charms of the young
magician equaled or even surpassed those of the angels. We
meet Delaage and we question him with curiosity about
this singular revelation. Delaage then puts his hand in his
vest, turn three quarters and look up smiling
towards the sky … Fortunately we had the_Enchiridion_ on us
of Leo III, which is, as we know, a preservative against
enchantments, and the angelic beauty of the fascinator remained
invisible to our eyes.
We will give Henri Delaage more serious praise than those
admirers of his beauty, he sincerely declares himself
Catholic, and loudly proclaims his respect and love for
religion; but religion will be able to make him a saint, which
is a more esteemed and more glorious title than that of
Wizard.
It is because of his quality as a publicist that we have named this
young man the first among the fantasies of magic. This
rank in all other respects belonged to M. le comte of Ourches, a man venerable by his age who devotes his life and his
fortune to magnetic experiments. At home the furniture and
sleepwalking ladies indulge in frantic dances, the furniture
get tired and break, but the ladies, it is assured, do not
all the better for it.
[500] For a long time the Earl of Ourches was dominated by an idea
fixed: the fear of being buried alive, and he made several
briefs on the need to record deaths in a way
more certain than is usually the case. M. d’Ourches had
all the more reason to fear, as his temperament is
plethoric, and that his extreme nervous susceptibility,
daily overexcited by her experiences with pretty
somnambulists, perhaps exposes him to strokes.
M. le Comte d’Ourches is in magnetism the pupil of Abbe Faria,
and in necromancy it belongs to the school of the baron de
Guldenstubbé.
The baron of Guldenstubbé published a book entitled:
Positive and experimental pneumatology; the reality of spirits and the marvelous phenomenon of their direct writing. Here is how he himself recounts his discovery: “It was already in the course of the year 1850, _about three years before the turntable epidemic invasion, that
the author wanted to introduce the circles of
spiritualism of America, the mysterious blows of Rochester and purely mechanical rewriting of mediums. He met unfortunately a lot of obstacles from others magnetizers. The _fluidists, and even those who called themselves
spiritualist magnetizers, but who were in truth only
bottom sleepwalkers, dealt with the beatings
mysterious of American spiritualism of follies and dreams
hollow. So it is only after more than six months that
the author was able to form the first circle according to the
Americans, thanks to the zealous assistance given to him by M. Roustan,
[501] former member of the society of spiritualist magnetizers,
simple man, but full of enthusiasm for the holy cause of
spiritualism. Several other people came to join
to us, among which we must cite the late l’abbé Châtel, the
founder of the French Church, who, despite his tendencies
rationalists, ended up admitting the reality of a revelation
objective and supernatural, an indispensable condition of
spiritualism and all positive religions. We know that American circles are based (apart from
certain moral conditions, also required) on the distinction between magnetic or positive and electric principles or negatives.
»These circles consist of twelve people, of whom six
represent the positive elements, and the other six, the
negative or sensitive elements. The distinction of the elements
should not be made according to the sex of the persons, although
generally women have negative attributes and
sensitive_, and that men be endowed with _ positive qualities
and magnetic_. We must therefore study the moral constitution
and physical of each, before forming the circles, because there is
delicate women who have masculine qualities, like
a few vigorous men are only moral women. We
place a table in a spacious and airy place. The médium (or
circles) must sit at the end of the table and be
fully insulated; it serves as a conductor of electricity by its
calm and contemplative tranquility. A good somnambule is in
overall an excellent MEDIUM. We place the six natures electrical or negative that are generally recognized by
loving qualities of the heart and their sensitivity, right
of the medium, immediately placing the person near the medium
[502] the most sensitive or negative of the circle. It is the same
as _ to positive natures_ that we place to the left of the
medium, among which the most positive person, the most
intelligent must also be placed near the medium. For
form the chain, it is necessary that the twelve people pose the
right hand on the table, and that they put the _ left hand
of the neighbor above_, thus going around the table of the
same way. As for the medium or the mediums, if there are any
many, they remain entirely isolated from the twelve people who
form the chain.
»After several sessions, we obtained certain
remarkable phenomena, such as simultaneous shaking,
felt by all the members of the circle at the time of
the mental_evocation_ of the smartest people. It
the same is true of mysterious bangs and strange sounds; many
people even very insensitive have had simultaneous visions,
although they had remained in the ordinary waking state. When
sensitive subjects, they have acquired the admirable faculty of
mediums, to write mechanically thanks to an attraction
invisible_, who uses an arm without intelligence to
express his ideas. In addition, insensitive individuals
felt this mysterious influence of an external breath,
but the effect was not strong enough to set in motion
their members. Moreover, all these phenomena obtained according to the
mode of American spiritualism, have the defect of being even more
or less indirect, because we cannot happen in these experiences of the intermediary of a human being, of a medium. He
[503] The same is true of the rotating and talking tables, which have no
invaded Europe only at the beginning of 1853.
»The author has done a lot of table experiments with his
honorable friend, M. le Comte d’Ourches, one of the most
versed in magic and the occult sciences. We are
gradually managed to set the tables in motion without
any touching; M. le Comte d’Ourches les made lift even without touching. The author ran the tables with high speed also without touching and without the help of a magnetic circle. It is the same for vibrations of the strings of a piano, a phenomenon already obtained on the 20th January 1856 in the presence of the counts of _Szapary and d’Ourches.
All these phenomena clearly reveal the reality of certain forces
occult, but these facts do not sufficiently demonstrate the real and substantial existence of intelligences invisible, independent of our will and our
imagination, which we enlarge, it is true, disproportionately, of our
power days. Hence the reproach addressed to
American spiritualists to have only communications
insignificant and vague with the spirit world, which
manifest that by certain mysterious blows, and by the
vibration of some sounds. Indeed there is only one phenomenon
direct, intelligent and material at the same time, independent of our will and our imagination, such as the direct writing of spirits, which we have not even evoked nor invoked, which can serve as irrefutable proof of the reality of the supernatural world. »The author, always looking for proof intelligent and tangible at the same time, of reality [504] of the supernatural world, in order to demonstrate by irrefutable facts, the immortality of the soul, never ceased to address fervent prayers to the Lord to be good enough indicate to men an infallible way to strengthen faith in the immortality of the soul, this eternal basis of religion. The Lord, whose mercy is infinite, has amply answered this weak prayer. One fine day, it was August 1, 1856, the idea came to the author to try if the spirits could write _directly, without the_ intermediary of a medium_. Knowing
the direct and wonderful writing of the Decalogue according to Moses, and
the equally direct and mysterious writing during the feast of the
King Baltazar following Daniel, having furthermore heard of
modern mysteries of Strattford in America, where we had
found some illegible and strange characters drawn on
pieces of paper, and which did not appear to come from
médiums, the author wanted to see the reality of a phenomenon
whose scope would be immense, if it really existed.
So he put on a white writing paper and a pencil cut out of
a small locked box, always carrying this key
on himself and without sharing this experience with anyone.
He waited for twelve days in vain, without noticing the slightest
trace of a pencil on the paper, but what was his astonishment,
when he noticed on August 13, 1856 certain characters
mysterious, traced on paper; barely had he noticed them
that he repeated ten times during that day, forever
memorable, the same experience, always putting at the end of a
[505] half an hour, a new sheet of white paper in the same
box. The experience was successful each time
full.
The next day, August 14, the author made another twenty
experiences, leaving the box open and not losing it
no view; it was then that the author saw that characters and
words in the Aesthonian language were formed or were engraved
on the paper, without the pencil moving. From that moment,
the author, seeing the uselessness of the pencil, stopped putting it on
the paper; he simply places a white paper on a table at
him, or on the pedestal of ancient statues, on
sarcophagi, on urns, etc., at the Louvre, at Saint-Denis, at
the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, etc. It is the same for
experiences made in the various cemeteries of Paris. Of
remains, the author does not like cemeteries, most of them
spirits preferring the places where they lived during their career
terrestrial, in the places where their mortal remains rest. “
We are far from calling into question the singular phenomena
observed by the baron, but we will point out to him that the
discovery had been made before him by Lavater and that there is
still far from a few lines obtained by M. de Guldenstubbé in
portrait painted in watercolor by the kabbalist Gablidone.
Now in the name of science we will tell Mr.
Guldenstubbé, not for him who will not believe us, but for
serious observers of these extraordinary phenomena:
Mr. Baron, the scriptures you get don’t come
from the other world; and it is you yourself who trace them without your knowledge.
[506] You have by your experiences multiplied to excess and by
the excessive tension of your will destroys the balance of your
fluidic and astral body, you force it to realize your dreams and
he traces in characters borrowed from your memories the reflection of your
imaginations and your thoughts.
If you were immersed in a perfectly magnetic sleep
lucid, you would see the luminous mirage of your hand stretching out
like a shadow in the setting sun, and trace on the paper
prepared by you or your friends the characters that amaze you.
This bodily light that emanates from the earth and from you is
contained by an extremely elastic fluidic envelope, and
this envelope is formed from the quintessence of your vital spirits
and your blood.
This quintessence borrows a determined color from light
by your secret will she does to herself what you dream she
is; then the characters print on the paper like the
signs on the body of children who have not yet been born under
the influence of their mothers’ imaginations.
This ink that you see appearing on the paper is your
blackened and transfigured blood. You get exhausted as the
writings multiply. If you continue your experiments,
your brain will gradually weaken, your memory will weaken
will lose; you will feel in the joints of the limbs and
fingers of inexpressible pain and you will die at last, either
suddenly struck down, or in a long agony accompanied
hallucinations and dementia. Here is for M. le baron de
Guldenstubbé.
[507] Now we will say to the Earl of Ourches: You will not be
buried alive, but you may die by the precautions
same that you will take not to be.
Moreover, people buried alive cannot have under
earth that rapid awakenings of short duration, they can
however live there a long time preserved by the astral light
in a complete state of lucid sleepwalking.
Their souls are then on earth still chained to the body
asleep by an invisible chain, then if they are souls
greedy and criminal, they can aspire to the quintessence of
blood of people asleep from natural sleep, and transmit
this sap to their buried body to keep it longer
in the vague hope that he will finally be brought back to life. This is this
frightening phenomenon called vampirism, a phenomenon which
the reality has been ascertained by numerous experiments too
well attested that all that is most solemn in
the story.
If you doubt the possibility of this magnetic life of the body
human in the dirt, read this story from an English officer named
Osborne, story whose loyalty has been attested to Baron Du
Potet by General Ventura.
“On June 6 (1838),” said Mr. Osborne, “the monotony of our life as
camp was fortunately interrupted by the arrival of an individual
famous in Punjab. He enjoys among the Sikhs a great
veneration because of the faculty he has to remain buried under
land for as long as it pleases. We brought back to the country
such extraordinary facts about this man, and so many people
[508] respectable guarantees the authenticity, that we were
extremely eager to see him. He told us himself that he
exercised what he calls his _ profession_ (that of being
bury) for several years; we saw him repeat
this strange experience at various points in India. From
serious and trustworthy men who bear witness to it, I must
quote Captain Wade, political agent in Lodhiana. This officer
told me very seriously that he himself attended the
resurrection of this fakir after a funeral that had taken place
a few months earlier, in the presence of General Ventura, the
maharaja and major Sikh chiefs. Here are the details we
had given him on the funeral, and those he added,
according to his own authority, on the exhumation.
»Following some preparations which had lasted a few
days and that he would be reluctant to list, the fakir declared that he was ready
to undergo the test. The Maharaja, the Sikh chiefs and the general
Ventura gathered near a masonry tomb built
on purpose to receive it. Before their eyes, the fakir closed with
wax, with the exception of the mouth, all its openings
bodies which could give entry to the air; then he stripped himself
clothes he was wearing: he was then wrapped in a bag of
canvas, and, according to his desire, we returned his tongue in
rear so as to block the entrance to the throat; immediately
after this operation the fakir fell into a sort of lethargy.
The bag which contained it was closed, and a seal was affixed to it by
the maharaja. This bag was then placed in a wooden crate
[509] padlocked and sealed which was lowered into the tomb: they threw
a large amount of earth on it, we walked on this for a long time
earth and barley was sown therein; finally sentries were
placed all around with the order to watch day and night.
Despite all these precautions, the Maharaja retained
doubts; he came twice in the space of ten months, time
during which the fakir remained buried, and he opened in front of
him falls; the fakir was in the bag as it was put there,
cold and lifeless. The ten months expired, we proceeded to the exhumation
final of the fakir. General Ventura and Captain Wade
saw the padlocks open, break the seals and raise the box
out of the grave. The fakir was withdrawn: no pulsation either at
heart, or pulse, did not indicate the presence of life. As
first measure intended to revive him, a person
very gently put the finger in the mouth and replaced his
tongue in the natural position. The top of the head was
only remained the seat of a sensible heat. By pouring
slowly warm water on the body we obtained little by little
some signs of life: after two hours of treatment, the fakir
got up and began to walk, smiling.
This truly extraordinary man says that during his
burial he has delicious dreams, but that the moment of
awakening is always very painful to him; before returning to the
conscious of his own existence, he feels dizzy.
He is about thirty years old; his face is disagreeable and has
a certain cunning expression.
We chatted for a long time with him, and he offered to
[510] bury in our presence. We took him at his word, and we
we met in Lahore, promising to do so
stay underground throughout our stay in
this city.”
This is Mr. Osborne’s account. This time again the fakir is
did he let it be buried? The new experience could be
decisive. Here is what happened.
»Fifteen days after the fakir’s visit to their camp, the officers
English arrived in Lahore; they chose a place that they liked
appeared favorable, had a masonry tomb built with
a very solid wooden crate, and asked for the fakir. This one
came to find them the next day, showing them the ardent desire
to prove that he was not an impostor. He already had,
he said, having undergone the necessary preparations for the experiment; his
His demeanor, however, betrayed anxiety and despondency. He
first wanted to know what his reward would be: he was promised
a sum of fifteen hundred rupees, and an income of two thousand
rupees per year that we would take care of obtaining from the king. Satisfied
on this point, he wanted to know what precautions were taken
take; the officers showed him the padlock device and
keys, and warned him that sentries chosen from among the
English soldiers would watch around for a week. The
fakir cried out and exhaled many insults against the Frenghis,
against unbelievers who wanted to rob him of his reputation; he
expressed the suspicion that someone wanted to attempt his life, he refused
to abandon himself completely to the surveillance of
Europeans, he asked that the double keys of each padlock
were given to one of his co-religionists, and he
especially insisted that the sentries should not be
[511] enemies of his religion. The officers did not want to access
under these conditions. Various interviews took place without
result; finally the fakir let it be known through one of the Sikh chiefs that the
maharaja having threatened him with his anger if he did not fulfill his
engagement with the English, he wanted to submit to the test,
although fully convinced that the only goal of the officers was
to take his life, and that he would never come out of his life alive.
falls; the officers declared that as on this last point
they completely shared his conviction, and they did not
did not want to have his death to blame, they held him
leaves his promise.
»Are these hesitations and fears of the fakir proof
peremptory against him? Does it follow that all people
who previously claimed to have seen the facts on which rests
his celebrity wanted to impose it or were the dupes of a
clever deceit? We confess that we cannot doubt,
according to the number and character of the witnesses, that the fakir
is done often and really buried; but even admitting
that after the burial he succeeded each time in
communicate with the outside, it would still be inexplicable how
he could have been breathless the whole time
that elapsed between his funeral and the moment when his
accomplices came to his aid. Mr. Osborne quotes in footnote one
extract from the Medical topography of Lodhiana, by doctor Mac
Gregor, an English doctor who attended one of the exhumations, and
who, witnessing the state of lethargy of the fakir and his return
gradual to life, seriously seeks to explain it. Another
English officer, M. Boileau, in a work published
[512] a few years ago, says he witnessed another
experience where all the facts happened in the same way.
People who would like to more fully satisfy their
curiosity, those who would see in this story the indication of a
curious physiological phenomenon, can go back with confidence
to the sources we have just indicated. “
There are still a large number of minutes on
exhumation of vampires. The flesh was in a state
remarkable preservation, but they oozed blood, their
hair had grown in an extraordinary way and escaped
in tufts between the slits of the coffin. Life no longer existed
in the apparatus used for respiration, but only in the
heart which from an animal seemed to have become vegetable. To kill the
vampire, you had to cross her chest with a stake, so
a terrible cry announced that the somnambulist of the tomb
woke up with a start in a real death.
To make this death final, the tomb of the
vampire with swords stuck in the ground with their points in the air, for the
phantoms of astral light decompose by the action of
metal spikes which, by attracting this light towards the
common reservoir, destroy the coagulated clusters.
Let us add, to reassure fearful people, that cases of
vampirism are fortunately very rare, and that a healthy person
of mind and body cannot be the victim of a vampire if
she did not abandon her body and soul to him during her lifetime
by some complicity in crime or wanton passion.
[513] Here is a vampire story which is reported by Tournefort,
in his Voyage au Levant:
“We were witnesses (says the author), in the island of Mycone, of a
very singular scene, on the occasion of one of these deaths, that we
thinks they see return, after their burial. Peoples of the North
call them Vampires; the Greeks refer to them as
Broucolaques. The one whose story we are going to give was a
peasant of Mycone, naturally sorrowful and quarrelsome; it’s a
circumstance to be noted in relation to such subjects: it was
killed in the countryside, we do not know by whom or how.
“Two days after he was buried in a chapel in the
town, it was rumored that he was seen walking at night in
big steps: that he came into houses to overturn furniture,
turn off the lights, kiss people from behind, and do
a thousand little mischievous tricks. They only laughed at first; But
the matter became serious, when the most honest people
started to complain. The papas (Greek priests) themselves
agreed with the fact, and no doubt they had their reasons.
We did not fail to have masses said: however the peasant
continued the same life without correcting himself. After several
assemblies of the principal of the city, priests and
religious, we conclude that it was necessary, I do not know by which elder
ceremonial, wait nine days after the burial.
“On the tenth day, a mass is said in the chapel where the
body, in order to chase away the demon that we believed to be there
closed. After the mass, we dug up the body, and we removed the
[514] heart; the corpse smelled so bad that we had to burn
incense; but the smoke, confused with the bad smell, does not
only increased it, and began to heat up these poor people. We
He took it into his head to say that a thick smoke was coming out of this body.
We, who were witnesses, did not dare to say that it was that of
incense.
“Several of the assistants assured that the blood of this unfortunate
was very ruddy; others swore the body was still
hot; from which it was concluded that the dead man was very wrong to
not to have died, or, to put it better, to have left
revive by the devil; this is precisely the idea they have
of a broucolaque; we then sounded that name in a way
amazing. A crowd of people, who appeared, protested all
up that they had noticed that this body was not
become stiff, when they carried him from the country to the church to
bury it; and that, consequently, it was a real broucolaque;
that was the refrain.
“When we were asked what we believed in this dead man, we
replied that we thought he was very much dead; and that for this
alleged ruddy blood, one could easily see that it was not
than a very stinking mud; Finally, we did our best to
cure, or at least not to sour their stricken imagination,
explaining to them the alleged vapors and heat of a
corpse.
“Despite all our reasoning, we were of the opinion to burn our hearts
of the dead, who, after this execution, was not more docile
than before, and made even more noise. He was accused of beating
people at night, breaking down doors, breaking windows,
[515] to tear clothes and empty jugs and bottles.
He was a very thirsty dead man. I believe he only spared the
house of the consul, where we were staying. Everyone had
imagination overturned. People of the best mind appeared
struck like the others. It was a real disease of
brain, as dangerous as mania and rage. We saw
whole families abandon their homes, and come from
ends of the city carry their beds instead to there
spend the night. Everyone complained of some new insult,
and the more sane retired to the country.
“The citizens most zealous for the public good believed that we
had missed the most essential point of the ceremony; he … not
It was necessary, according to them, to celebrate mass only after having removed the heart
to this unfortunate. They claimed that with this precaution, we
would not have failed to surprise the devil; and no doubt he
would not have taken care to return to it; instead of having started with the
mass, he had had plenty of time to run away, and to return to his
easy.
“After all this reasoning, we found ourselves in the same embarrassment
that the first day. We assembled evening and morning; we made
processions for three days and three nights; we forced them
not to fast; we saw them running in the houses, the
bottle brush in hand, pour in holy water and wash the
doors: they even filled the mouth of this poor
broucolaque.
“In such general prevention, we took the side of doing nothing
say. Not only would we have been called ridiculous, but
infidels. How to bring back a whole people? All
[516] mornings, we were given the comedy, by telling the news
follies of this night owl; he was even accused of having committed
the most abominable sins.
However, we repeated so often to the administrators of the
city, which, in such a case, we would not miss, in our
country, to keep watch at night, to observe what is happening
would pass, that at last we arrested a few vagabonds, who,
undoubtedly, were part of all these disorders: but they are
released too soon; because, two days later, to compensate for the
fast they had done in prison, they began to empty again
jugs of wine, among those who were foolish enough to
abandon their homes at night. So we had to come back
to prayers.
One day, as we were reciting certain prayers, after having
planted I do not know how many naked swords on the grave of the corpse,
that we dig up three or four times a day, depending on the
whim of the first comer, an Albanian, who happened to be there,
to say, in a doctor’s tone, that it was very ridiculous
such cases, to use the swords of Christians. “Do you see
not, poor people, he said, that the keeping of these swords
a cross with the handle, prevent the devil from coming out of this
body? Why don’t you use the Turkish sabers instead? ”
The advice of this clever man was of no use; the broucolaque does not
seemed no more treatable, and we no longer knew which saint to
vow, when everything in one voice, as if we had given ourselves the
Word, we began to shout, throughout the city, that it was necessary to burn
the whole broucolaque; that after that they challenged the devil
[517] to return to nest there; that it was better to resort to this
end, than to leave the island deserted. Indeed, there was
already families who packed their bags to go and settle
elsewhere.
“We therefore carried the broucolaque, by order of the administrators, to
the tip of the island of Saint-Georges, where we had prepared a
great pyre with tar, lest the wood, some dry
that it was, was not burning fast enough. The remains of this unfortunate
corpses were thrown there and consumed in a short time. It was the
first day of January 1701. From then on, no more
complaints against broucolaque; we just said that the
devil had been caught that time, and we did a few
songs to make a fool of him. “
Note in this story by Tournefort, that he admits the reality
visions that terrified a whole people.
Let him not dispute the flexibility or the warmth of the corpse,
but that he tries to explain them, and that only with the aim
it is undoubtedly commendable to reassure these poor people.
That he does not talk about the decomposition of the corpse, but only
of its stench; natural stench to vampiric corpses like
with poisonous mushrooms.
That he finally attests that the corpse once burnt, the wonders
and the visions ceased.
But here we are, far from the fantasies of magic,
let’s come back to forget the vampires, and say a few words about
the fortune-teller Edmond.
Edmund is the favorite wizard of the ladies of the
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, it occupies, rue Fontaine-Saint-Georges, n.
30, a small and pretty apartment, its anteroom is
[518] always full of clients and sometimes also of clients. Edmond
is a tall man, a little obese, his complexion is pale,
his open countenance, his rather sympathetic words. It seems
believe in his art and continue in conscience the exercises and the
fortune of Éteilla and the Lenormand ladies. We have it
asked about his procedures, and he answered us with the accent of
frankness and with great politeness that he has been since his
childhood passionate about the occult sciences and that he
practiced early in divination; let him ignore the secrets
philosophies of the higher sciences and that he does not have the keys to
the Kabbalah of Solomon, but that he is sensitive to the highest
point, and that the mere presence of his customers impresses him so
keenly that he feels in some way their destiny. It seems to me,
he said, that I hear singular noises, noises of
chains around the predestined in the penal colony, the cries and
moans around those who will die a violent death,
supernatural odors come to assail me and suffocate me. A
day, in the presence of a veiled woman dressed in black, I took
I shuddered, smelled of straw and blood ….
Madam, I cried out to her, get out of here, you are surrounded by a
atmosphere of murder and prison. Well! yes, then say this
woman, by revealing her pale face, I was accused
infanticide and I get out of prison. Since you saw the
past, also tell me the future.
One of our friends and our disciples in Kabbalah, perfectly
unknown to Edmond, one day went to consult him, he had paid
in advance and awaited the oracles, when Edmond rising with
respect begged him to take his money back. I have nothing for you
[519] say, he added; your destiny is closed to me with the
key to occultism; all I can tell you, you
know as well as I do, and he took him back while greeting him
a lot.
Edmond also deals with forensic astrology, he draws up at most
fair price for horoscopes and nativity charts; he holds in
a word all about his condition. It is also a sad
and tiring job than his: with how many sick heads and
of unhealthy hearts must it not be continually
report! and then the foolish demands of some, the reproaches
unfairness of others, embarrassing confidences, requests for
potions and bewitchments, the obsessions of madmen, all that,
in truth makes him earn his money.
Edmond is on the whole only a sleepwalker like Alexis, he
magnetizes himself with his colorful boxes of figures
devilish, he dresses in black and gives his consultations in
a dark cabinet: it is the prophet of mystery.
CHAPTER V.
INTIMATE MEMORIES OF THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS .– Influence of the Enlightened and the Maniacs on
historical events – The mapah – Sobrier and the revolution of
February 1848 .– The magnetic power of certain men .– A
static sleepwalker.
In 1839, the author of this book received a visit from Alphonse one morning.
Esquiros.
[520] – Come with me, see the mapah, said the latter.
–What is the mapah?
–He is a god.
–Thank you, so I only love the invisible gods. - Come on, he is the most eloquent, the most radiant and
the most beautiful we have ever seen.
–My friend, I am afraid of madmen, madness is contagious.
–H my dear, I come to see you, me!
–That’s true: and since you want to, well, let’s go see the
mapah.
In a dreadful garret, was a bearded man, with a
majestic and prophetic, it usually wore
clothes an old woman’s pelisse, which gave him enough
looking like a poor dervish, he was surrounded by several men
bearded and ecstatic like him and a woman with
motionless that looked like a sleeping sleepwalker.
His manners were blunt but sympathetic, his eloquence
lively, her hallucinatory eyes; he spoke emphatically,
came alive, heated until a whitish foam came
tuck her lips. Someone defined the Abbé de Lamennais,
ninety-three doing his Easter; this definition
would better suit the mysticism of Mapah, one can judge by
this fragment escaped his lyrical enthusiasm:
“Mankind had to fail: thus its destiny wanted it, in order to
that it was itself the instrument of its reconstitution, and that
in the grandeur and majesty of human labor passing through
[521] all its phases of light and darkness, appeared
manifestly the greatness and majesty of God.
“And the original unity is broken by the fall; pain
enters the world in the form of the serpent; and the tree of
life becomes tree of death.
“And things being so, God said to the woman: Thou shalt give birth
in pain; then he adds: It is through you that the head of
snake will be crushed.
“And the woman is the first slave; she understood her mission
divine, and the painful childbirth has begun.
“This is why, since the hour of the fall, the task of
humanity has only been a task of_initiation_, a great task and
terrible; that’s why all the terms of this same
initiation, of which our common mother Ève is the alpha, and our
common mother Liberté, the omega, are also holy and sacred
in the sight of God.
“I saw a huge vessel surmounted by a gigantic mast
finished in a beehive, and one side of the ship looked
the West and the other the East.
“And, on the western side, this vessel was based on the
cloudy summits of three mountains, the base of which was lost in
a raging sea;
“And each of these mountains had its bloody name attached to
his side. The first was called Golgotha; the second, mount
Saint Jean; the third Saint Helena.
“And in the center of the gigantic mast, on the western side, was
fixed a cross with five branches on which a woman expired.
[522] “Above the head of this woman, we read:
France:
June 18, 1815;
Good Friday.
“And each of the five branches of the cross, on which it
was extensive, represented one of the five parts of the world; her
head rested on Europe and a cloud surrounded it.
“And from the side of the ship which looked towards the East the darkness
did not exist; and the hull was stopped at the threshold of the city
of God on the top of a triumphal arch that the sun illuminated
of its rays.
“And the same woman appeared again, but transfigured and
radiant. She lifted the stone from a sepulcher: on this
pierre it was written:
Restoration, days of the tomb.
July 29, 1830;
Easter.“
The mapah was, as we see, a continuator of Catherine
Théot and Dom Gerle, and yet a strange sympathy for follies
between them, he declared to us one day confidentially that he
was Louis XVII, returned to earth for a work of
regeneration, and that this woman who lived with him had been
Marie-Antoinette from France. He then explained his theories
revolutionary to the point of extravagance, like the last word of
violent claims of Cain, intended to bring back by a
fatal reaction the triumph of the righteous Abel. Esquiros and I, we
had gone to see the mapah to have fun with his dementia, and
[523] our imaginations were struck by his speeches. We were two
college friends in the style of Louis-Lambert and Balzac, and
we had often dreamed together of impossible devotions and
unknown heroisms. After hearing Ganneau, so
called the one who called himself the mapah, we took to
think it would be nice to tell the world the last word of the
revolution and to close the abyss of anarchy, by throwing ourselves into it
like Curtius. This pride of schoolchildren gave birth to
the_Gospel of the people_ and the Bible of liberty, follies
that Esquiros and his unfortunate friend have so dearly
paid.
Such is the danger of enthusiastic manias, they are
contagious, and one does not lean with impunity on the edge of
abysses of dementia; but here is something quite different
terrible.
Among the Mapah’s followers was a nervous young man
and stupid named Sobrier. This one completely lost his mind,
and believed himself predestined to save the world by causing the crisis
supreme of a universal revolution.
The days of February 1848 arrived. A riot had provoked
a change of ministry, everything was over, the Parisians
were happy and the boulevards were illuminated.
A young man suddenly appears in the populous streets of
Saint-Martin district. He is preceded by two kids, one
carrying a torch, the other beating the recall, a rally
many are formed, the young man climbs on a terminal and harangues
the crowd. These are inconsistent, inflammatory things, but the
[524] conclusion is that you have to go to boulevard des Capucines
bring the will of the people to the ministry.
At the corner of all the streets the energetic repeats the same harangue,
and he walks at the head of the rally, two pistols in his fists
and always preceded by his torch and his drum.
The crowd of curious people who crowded the boulevards joined by
curiosity in the haranguer’s procession. Soon it is no longer a
gathering, it is a mass of people who roll on the
Boulevard des Italiens.
In the midst of this waterspout, the young man and the two kids
disappeared, but in front of the hotel des Capucines a pistol shot
is shot at the troops.
This pistol shot was the revolution, and it was fired by a
crazy.
Throughout the night, two dumpers loaded with corpses stand
strolled through the streets by torchlight; the next day
all Paris was at the barricades, and Sobrier unconscious
was brought home. It was Sobrier who, without knowing what
he was doing, had just given the world a shake.
Ganneau and Sobrier are dead, and we can now, without
danger for them, reveal to history this terrible example of
magnetism of enthusiasts and fatalities that can
lead after them to the nervous diseases of certain men.
We take the things we tell for sure and
we believe this revelation may bring relief to
the conscience of the Belisarius of poetry, the author of the_History
des Girondins_.
[525] The magnetic phenomena produced by Ganneau even lasted
after his death. His widow, an uneducated woman with a
fairly negative intelligence, daughter of an honest Auvergnat, is
remained in the static sleepwalking where her husband had
diving. Similar to those children who undergo the form of
imaginations of their mothers, she became a living image
of Marie-Antoinette, a prisoner at the Conciergerie. His manners
are those of a queen forever widowed and desolate, sometimes
only she lets out a few complaints which are
exclaim that her dream tires her, but she is indignant
sovereignly against those who seek to awaken it; she does not
moreover gives no sign of insanity; his conduct
exterior is reasonable, his life perfectly honorable and
regular. Nothing is more touching, in our opinion, than this
enduring obsession with a madly loved one who survives
in a marital hallucination. If Artemisia existed, he is
allowed to believe that Mausole was also a powerful magnetizer,
and that he had trained and fixed forever the affections of a
a very sensitive woman outside the limits of free will and
of reason.
CHAPTER VI.
OCCULT SCIENCES.
SUMMARY .– A synthetic glance at the occult sciences .– The
search for the absolute.
The secret of the occult sciences is that of nature
itself, it is the secret of the generation of angels and
worlds, it is that of the omnipotence of God!
[526] You will be like the Elohims, knowing good and evil,
had said the serpent of Genesis, and the tree of knowledge is
become the tree of death.
For six thousand years, the martyrs of science have worked and
die at the foot of this tree so that it becomes again the tree of
life.
The absolute sought by fools and found by the wise is
the truth, the reality and the reason of balance
universal!
Balance is the harmony that results from the analogy of
opposites.
Until now mankind has tried to stand on one foot,
sometimes on one, sometimes on the other.
Civilizations rose up and perished, either by
anarchic insanity of despotism, or by despotic anarchy
of revolt.
Sometimes the superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the miserable
calculations of materialistic instinct have led the nations astray, and God
finally pushes the world towards believing reason and beliefs
reasonable.
We have had enough prophets without philosophy and
philosophers without religion, blind believers and
skeptics are alike and they are as far apart as the
others of eternal salvation.
In the chaos of universal doubt and the conflicts of science and
of faith, great men and seers were only
sick artists who sought the ideal beauty at the risk and
perils of their reason and their life.
So see them all again, these sublime children, they are
[527] whimsical and nervous like women, nothing hurts them,
reason offends them, they are unfair to each other,
and they who only live to be crowned, they are the
first to do in their whimsical moods what Pythagoras
defends so touchingly in his admirable symbols,
they tear and trample on crowns! Those are the
alienated from glory, but God, to prevent them from becoming
dangerous, contains them with the chains of opinion.
The court of mediocrity judges genius without appeal, because
the genius being the light of the world, is regarded as null and
as dead, as soon as it does not light up.
The enthusiasm of the poet is controlled by the coolness of the
prosaic multitude. The enthusiast than common sense
do not accept, is not a genius, he is a madman.
Don’t say that great artists are slaves to
ignorant crowd, because it is from it that their talent receives
the balance of reason.
Light is the balance of shadow and light.
Movement is the balance of inertia and activity.
Authority is the balance of freedom and power.
Wisdom is balance in thought.
Virtue is balance in affections; beauty is
balance in forms.
The beautiful lines are the right lines, and the magnificences of
nature are an algebra of graces and splendors.
[528] All that is fair is beautiful: all that is beautiful must be
fair.
Heaven and hell are the balance of moral life; the good and
evil are the balance of freedom.
The great work is the conquest of the central point where the
balancing force. Everywhere else, the reactions of the force
balanced maintain universal life through movement
perpetual of birth and death.
This is why hermetic philosophers compare their gold
under the sun.
This is why this gold heals all diseases of the soul and
gives immortality. The men who have reached this central point are
the true followers are the miracle workers of science and
of reason.
They are masters of all the riches of the world and of the worlds,
they are the confidants and friends of the princes of heaven, the
nature obeys them because they want what the law wants which
make nature work.
This is what the Savior of the world calls the domain of God!
it is the sanctum regnum of the holy kabbalah. This is the crown
and Solomon’s ring is Joseph’s scepter before which
bow the stars of the sky and the harvests of the earth.
We have found this omnipotence, and we do not
not sell, but if God had instructed us to sell it, we would not
would not find enough of all the fortune of
buyers; we would ask them again, not for us, but
for her all their soul and all their life!
[529]
CHAPTER VII.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.
CONTENTS .– The enigma of the Sphinx .– The questions
paradoxical – Scope of the discoveries of magical science in
the religious order, in the moral order and in the order
policy .– Object and purpose of this work.
It remains for us to sum up and conclude.
To sum up the history of a science is to sum up science. Too
are we going to recap the main principles of initiation
preserved and passed down through all ages.
Magic science is the absolute science of balance.
This science is essentially religious, it presided over the
formation of the dogmas of the old world, and was thus the mother
nurse of all civilizations.
Modest and mysterious mother, who, suckling with poetry and
inspired the nascent generations, covered his face and
her breast!
Above all principle, it tells us to believe in God, and to
adore it without trying to define it, because often for our
imperfect intelligence, a definite God is in a way a
God finished! But after God, she shows us as rulers
principles of things, eternal mathematics and forces
balanced.
It is written in the Bible that God arranged everything by weight,
the number and the measure, here is the text:
Omnia in weighted and number and mensurâ arranged Deus.
[530] Thus the weight, that is to say the balance, the number or the
quantity and measure, that is to say the proportion, such are
the eternal or divine bases of the science of nature.
The equilibrium formula is this:
“Harmony results from the analogy of opposites.”
The number is the scale of analogies whose proportion is the
measured.
The whole occult philosophy of Sohar could be called the
science of balance.
The key to the numbers is found in the Sepher Jezirah. The
generation of numbers is analogous to the lineage of ideas and to
the production of forms.
So that, in their sacred alphabet, the wise hierophants of
the Kabbalah brought together the hieroglyphic signs of numbers,
ideas and forms.
The combinations of this alphabet give equations of ideas,
and measure, indicating them, all possible combinations
in natural forms.
God, says Genesis, made man in his own image: now man
being the living summary of creation, it follows that the
creation too is made in the image of God.
There are three things in the universe: the_spirit_, the mediator plastic and material.
The ancients gave the spirit as an immediate instrument, the
igneous fluid to which they gave the generic name of sulfur; at
plastic mediator, the name Mercury because of the symbolism
represented by the caduceus, and to matter the name of sel, to
cause of the fixed salt which remains after combustion and which resists
the action of fire.
[531] They compared sulfur to the father, because of the activity
fire generator; mercury to the mother, for her power
attraction and reproduction; and the salt was for them
the child or the substance subjected to the education of nature.
The substance created for them was one, and they named it
light.
Positive or igneous light, volatile sulfur; negative light or
made visible by the vibrations of fire, the fluid mercury
ethereal; and neutralized light or shadow, the mixed coagulated or fixed
in the form of earth or salt.
This is why Hermès trismegistus expresses himself thus in his
symbol known as Emerald Table:
“What is above is like what is below, and what is
down is like what is up to form the wonders of the
unique thing. “
That is, the universal movement is produced by the
analogies of the fixed and the volatile, the volatile tending to be fixed,
and fixes it to volatilize, which produces a continual exchange
between the forms of the unique substance and, through this exchange, the
ceaselessly renewed combinations of universal forms.
The fire is Osiris or the sun, the light is Isis or the
moon, they are the father and mother of the great Telesma, that is to say
of universal substance, not that they are its creators,
but they represent its two generating forces, and their
combined effort produces the fixed or the earth, which causes
Hermes that their strength has reached its full manifestation when
the earth was formed from it.
[532] Osiris is therefore not God, even for the great hierophants of the
Egyptian shrine. Osiris is only the luminous or igneous shadow
of the intellectual principle of life, and that is why
moment of the last initiations we threw running into
the ear of the adept this formidable revelation: Osiris is a dark god.
Woe, indeed, to the recipient whose intelligence is not
would not be raised by faith above symbols purely
physical aspects of the Egyptian revelation! This word became for
him a formula of atheism and his mind was struck
of blindness. On the contrary, she was for the believer of a genius
higher, the pledge of the most sublime hopes. Child,
seemed to tell him the initiator, you take a lamp for the
sun, but your lamp is only a star of the night; it exists
a real sun; come out of the night and seek the day!
What the ancients called the four elements were not
for them simple bodies, but the four forms
elemental elements of the single substance. These four forms were
depicted on the sphinx: air through the wings, water through the
woman, earth by the body of a bull, fire by the claws
lion.
Substance one, three times triples in essence mode, and
quadruple in the form of existence, such is the secret of the three
triangular pyramids of elevation, square at the base and
guarded by the sphinx. Egypt, by erecting these monuments, had
wanted to lay the Pillars of Hercules of universal science.
So the sands have risen, the centuries have passed and the
ever-large pyramids offer nations their enigma which
[533] the word has been lost. As for the sphinx, it seems to have sunk in
dust of ages. Daniel’s great empires reigned
alternately on the earth, and sank with all their weight
in the tomb. Conquests of war, foundations of work,
works of human passions, everything is swallowed up with the body
symbolism of the sphinx; now the human head stands alone
above the sands of the desert, as if waiting for empire
universal thought.
Guess or die! such was the terrible dilemma posed by the sphinx
to aspirants to the kingship of Thebes. This is because the
secrets of science are those of life; it is a question of reigning or
to serve, to be or not to be. Natural forces us
will break, if they do not serve us to conquer the world. King or
victim , there is no middle ground between this abyss and this summit,
unless we let ourselves fall into the mass of those who do not
are nothing, because they never wonder why they
live nor what they are.
The shapes of the sphinx also represent by analogy
hieroglyphic the four properties of the magic agent
universal, that is to say of the astral light: to dissolve,
coagulate, reheat, cool. These four directed properties
by the will of man, can modify all forms of
nature, and produce, according to the given impulse, life or
death, health or disease, love or hate, wealth
even or poverty. They can put at the service of
the imagination all reflections of light; they are there
paradoxical solution of the most reckless questions that
can pose to high magic.
[534] Here are the paradoxical questions of human curiosity;
we will ask them and answer them:
- Can we escape death?
- Does the Philosopher’s Stone exist, and how do I
find? - Can we be served by the spirits?
- What are Solomon’s collarbone, ring, and seal?
- Can we predict the future by certain calculations?
- Can we do good or bad at will by influence?
magical? - What does it take to be a true magician?
- What exactly are the forces of black magic?
We call paradoxical those questions which are outside
all science, and which seem to be resolved in advance
negatively by faith.
These questions are reckless if they are made by a
layman, and their complete solution given by a follower
would look like a sacrilege.
God and nature have closed the intimate sanctuary of the high
science, so that beyond a certain limit those who know,
would speak in vain, he would no longer make himself understood; the
revelation of the great magical arcane is therefore fortunately
impossible.
The solutions that we are going to give will therefore be the last
expression of the magic verb; we will make them as clear
that they can be, but we don’t take care of them.
make all our readers understand.
[535] QUESTIONS 1 and 2. - Can we escape death?
- Does the Philosopher’s Stone exist, and how do I
find?
ANSWERS.
There are two ways to escape death, in time and
in eternity.
In time, by curing all diseases and avoiding
the infirmities of old age;
And in eternity, perpetuating by memory the identity
personal in the transformations of existence.
Let us first pose in principle:
1 ° That the life resulting from movement can only be preserved by
the succession and improvement of forms;
2 ° That the science of perpetual motion is the science of
life;
3 ° That the object of this science is the fair weighting of
balanced influences;
4 ° That all renewal takes place through destruction, and
that thus every generation is a death, and every death a
generation.
Now let us establish with the ancient sages that the principle
universal life is a substantial movement or substance
eternally and essentially motive and motive, invisible and
impalpable, in a volatile state, and which manifests itself materially
by being fixed by the phenomena of polarization.
[536] This substance is unwavering, incorruptible, and by
therefore immortal.
But its manifestations in form are eternally changed
by the perpetuity of movement.
So everything dies because everything lives, and if we could eternalize
a form, we would stop the movement and we would have created the
only real death.
Imprisoning forever a soul in a mummified human body, such as
would be the horrible solution to the magical paradox of immortality
claimed in the same body and on the same earth.
Everything is regenerated by the universal solvent which is the substance
first.
This solvent concentrates its strength in the quintessence,
that is, at the balancing center of a double polarity.
The four elements of the ancients are the four polar forces
of the universal magnet represented by a cross.
This cross which turns indefinitely around its center, in
thus posing the enigma of the squaring of the circle.
The creative Word is heard from the middle of the cross and he
shouts: Everything is consumed.
It is in the right proportion of the four elementary forms
that it is necessary to seek the universal medicine of the bodies, like the
medicine of the soul is presented to us by religion in the one who
offered himself eternally on the cross for the salvation of the world.
The nourishment and polarization of celestial bodies results from
[537] their balanced gravitation around the suns, which are the
common reservoirs of their electro-magnetism.
The vibration of the quintessence around the common reservoirs is
manifested by light, and light reveals its polarision by
colors.
White is the color of quintessence. Towards its pole
negative, this color condenses in blue and fixes in black;
but towards its positive pole, it condenses in yellow and fixes
in red.
Radiant life therefore always goes from black to red, passing
by white; and the absorbed life descends from red to black,
crossing the same medium.
The four intermediate or mixed shades produced with the
three colors of the syllepsis of analysis and synthesis
luminous, what are called the seven colors of the prism or
solar spectrum.
These seven colors form seven atmospheres or seven zones
luminous around each sun, and the dominant planet in
each zone is liked in a manner analogous to the
color of its atmosphere.
Metals in the bowels of the earth are formed as
planets in the sky, by the specialties of a latent light
which decomposes passing through various media.
Take hold of the subject in which the metallic light is latent,
before she specialized, and push her to the extreme pole
positive, that is to say bright red, by a light borrowed from the
light itself, such is the whole secret of the great work.
We understand that this positive light at its extreme degree of
[538] condensation is life itself which has become fixed, and can serve as a
universal solvent and medicine to all kingdoms of
nature.
But to extract from the marcasite, the stibium, the arsenic of
philosophers his living androgynous metallic sperm, it takes a
first solvent which is a saline mineral period, it is necessary to
plus the competition of magnetism and electricity.
The rest is done by itself, in a single vase, in a single
athanor, and by the graduated fire of a single lamp; it is, say
the followers, a work of women and children.
What modern chemists and physicists call
heat, light, electricity, magnetism, was not for
ancient than the elementary phenomenal manifestations of
unique substance called aour, od, tik et ob, by the
Hebrews. Od is the name of the asset, ob the name of the liability, and
aour, of which the Hermetic philosophers made their gold, is the
name of the mixed androgynous and balanced.
Common gold is metallized gold, philosophical gold is
l’aour in the state of soluble stones.
In theory, according to the transcendental science of the ancients, the
philosopher’s stone which heals all diseases and operates
transmutation of metals, therefore undoubtedly exists.
Does it exist and can it actually exist? If we say so,
we wouldn’t be believed, so let’s give this statement as a
paradoxical solution to the paradoxes expressed by the first two
questions and let’s move on to the second chapter.
Note .– We are not answering the subsidiary question:
[539] How to find it, because M. de La Palisse
himself would answer for us that to find he is
essential to seek, unless one does not find by chance.
We have said enough to direct and facilitate the research.
QUESTIONS 3 AND 4.
3 – Can we be served by the spirits?
4 .– What is the collarbone, seal and ring of Solomon.
ANSWERS.
When the Savior of the world had triumphed, in his temptation to
desert, of the three lusts which enslave the human soul:
The lust of appetites, the lust of ambitions and that
greed.
It is written that the angels approached him and served him.
For the spirits are at the service of the sovereign spirit, and
the sovereign spirit is the one who chains the turbulences
irregularities and unjust training of the flesh.
Note, however, that he is against the order of
Providence to invert the natural series of communications
between beings.
We do not see that the Savior and the Apostles mentioned the
souls of the dead.
Immortality of the soul being one of the most consoling dogmas of
religion, should be reserved for the aspirations of faith, and not
will therefore never be proven by facts accessible to the
criticism of science.
Therefore the shaking or the loss of reason is it and
[540] will it always be the punishment of those who have temerity?
to look, in the other life, with the eyes of this one.
So magical traditions always reveal the
deaths evoked, with sad and angry faces.
They complain that they have been disturbed in their rest and do not
utter only reproaches and threats.
The keys or collarbones of Solomon are religious forces and
rationales expressed by signs, and which serve less to
evoke spirits to preserve oneself from any
aberration in the experiments relating to the occult sciences.
The seal summarizes the keys, the ring indicates their use.
Solomon’s ring is both circular and square, and it
thus represents the mystery of the squaring of the circle.
It consists of seven squares arranged to form a
circle. We adapt two kittens, one circular, the other square,
one in gold, the other in silver.
The ring should be made of filigree of the seven metals.
In the silver kitten a white stone is embedded, and in
the golden kitten a red stone with these signatures:
On the white stone, the sign of the macrocosm;
On the red stone, the sign of the microcosm.
When you put the ring on your finger, one of the stones should be
inside the hand, the other outside, depending on what you want
to command the spirits of light or the powers of darkness.
Let us explain in a few words the omnipotence of this ring.
[541] The will is all-powerful when it arms itself with
vivid nature.
Thought is idle and dead until it manifests
by the verb or by the sign, it can therefore neither excite,
nor direct the will.
The sign being the necessary form of thought is the instrument
indispensable of the will.
The more perfect the sign, the more strongly the thought is formulated,
and the more therefore the will is directed with power.
Blind faith moves mountains, so what will it be?
faith enlightened by a complete and immutable science?
If our soul could concentrate all its intelligence and all
his energy in the emission of a single word, this word for
would she not be all-powerful?
Solomon’s ring with its double seal, that’s all science
and all the faith of the Magi summed up in one sign.
It is the symbol of all the forces of heaven and earth and
of the holy laws which govern them, either in the macrocosm
heavenly, or in the human microcosm.
It is the talisman of talismans and the pantacle of pantacles.
Solomon’s ring is almighty, if it is a living sign,
but it is ineffective, if it is a dead sign; the life of signs
it is intelligence and faith, intelligence of nature, faith in
its eternal engine.
[542] The in-depth study of the mysteries of nature can lead away from
God the inattentive observer in whom fatigue of the mind
paralyzes the impulses of the heart.
This is where the occult sciences can be dangerous
and even fatal to certain souls.
Mathematical accuracy, the absolute rigor of the laws of
nature, the whole and the simplicity of these laws, give
many the idea of a necessary, eternal, inexorable mechanism,
and Providence disappears for them behind the iron cogs
of a perpetually moving clock.
They do not reflect on the dreadful fact of freedom and
the autocracy of intelligent creatures.
A man disposes of the existence of organized beings as he pleases.
him; it can reach birds in the air, fish in
water, wild beasts in the forests; he can cut or
burn down the forests themselves, mine and blow up the
rocks and mountains, changing around it every
forms, and despite the ascending analogies of nature, it does not
would not believe in the existence of intelligent beings like him who
could move, break and set the worlds on fire,
to blow on the suns to extinguish them, or to crush them to
make stars … beings so large that they escape his
view, as we doubtless escape that of the moth or the
ciron …. And if such beings exist without the universe being
a thousand times upset, shouldn’t we admit that they obey
all to a supreme will, to a powerful and wise force, which
forbids them to move worlds, as she forbids us to
to destroy the swallow’s nest and the butterfly’s crysalis? For
[543] the magus who feels this force at the very bottom of his consciousness, and
who sees in the laws of the universe only the instruments
of eternal righteousness, the seal of Solomon, his collarbones and
his ring are the insignia of supreme royalty.
QUESTIONS 5 AND 6. - Can we predict the future by certain calculations?
- Can we do good or bad by magical influence?
ANSWERS.
Two chess players of equal strength, are seated at a table, they
start the game, which of the two will win?
–The one who will be the most attentive to his game.
If I know each other’s concerns, I can
certainly predict the outcome of their game.
In chess, predicting is winning, it is the same in playing
of life.
Nothing in life happens by chance, chance is the unforeseen;
but the unforeseen of the ignorant had been foreseen by the wise.
Any event, like any form, results from a conflict or a
balance of forces, and these forces can be represented by
numbers.
The future can therefore be determined in advance by calculation.
All violent action is balanced by an equal reaction, the
laughter predicts tears, and that is why the Savior
said: Happy are those who cry!
[544] This is why he also said: He who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Today Nebuchadnezzar makes himself God, tomorrow he will be changed into
stupid.
Today Alexander makes his entry into Babylon, and is
offer incense on all the altars, tomorrow he will die
brutally drunk.
The future is in the past; the past is in the future.
When the genius foresees, he remembers.
The effects are linked so necessarily and so exactly to the
causes and then themselves become causes of effects
new so conformed to the first in their manner of
produce, that a single fact can reveal to the seer a whole
genealogy of mysteries.
When Christ came, it is certain that the Antichrist
will come: but the coming of the Antichrist will precede the triumph of
Holy Spirit.
The silver century in which we live is the forerunner of the most
abundant charities and the greatest good works that are
have seen in the world again.
But you should know that the will of man modifies the causes
fatal, and that a single impulse given by a man can
change the balance of a whole world.
If such is the power of man in the world which is his
domain, what must be the geniuses of the suns!
The lesser of the egregores could with a breath, by dilating
suddenly the latent caloric of our earth, to make it burst
and disappear like a small cloud of ash.
[545] Man too can make all happiness vanish with a breath.
of one of his fellows.
Men are magnetized like the worlds, they radiate their
special light like the suns.
Some are more absorbent, others radiate more
gladly.
No one is isolated in the world, every man is inevitable
or a providence.
Augustus and Cinna meet: both are proud and
implacable, that is fate.
Cinna fatally and freely wants to kill Augustus, Augustus is
fatally trained to punish him, he wants to forgive him and
freely he forgives her. Here fatality turns into
providence, and the century of Augustus inaugurated by this kindness
sublime becomes worthy to see born the one who will say:
your enemies! Augustus, with thanks to Cinna, expiated all
the revenge of Octavian.
As long as man is enslaved to the demands of fate, it is
a layman, that is to say a man who must be pushed away from
sanctuary of science.
Science, in fact, would be an instrument in his hands
terrible destruction.
The free man on the contrary, that is to say the one who dominates by
intelligence the blind instincts of life, this one is
essentially conservative and restorative, because nature is the
domain of his power, the temple of his immortality.
When the layman wanted to do well, he would do wrong.
The free initiate cannot want to do wrong; if he knocks, it is
to chastise and to heal.
[546] The breath of the layman is mortal, that of the initiate is
invigorating.
The layman suffers to make others suffer, the initiate
suffer so that others do not suffer.
The layman dips his arrows in his own blood and
poisoned; the initiate, free with a drop of his blood, heals
the most cruel wounds.
QUESTIONS 7 AND 8. - What does it take to be a real magician?
- What exactly are the forces of black magic?
ANSWERS.
The man who disposes of the occult forces of nature, without
expose himself to being crushed by them, this one is a true magician.
We recognize him by his works and his end, which is always a
great sacrifice.
Zoroaster created the dogmas and primitive civilizations of
Orient, and disappeared like Oedipus in a thunderstorm.
Orpheus gave poetry to Greece, and with this poetry the
beauty of all sizes, and he perished in an orgy at
which he refused to interfere.
Julien, despite all his virtues, was only an initiate in magic
black. He died a victim and not a martyr; his death was a
destruction and defeat, he did not understand his time.
He knew the dogma of high magic, but he applied it
wrong the ritual.
[547] Apollonius of Thyane and Synesius were nothing but
wonderful philosophers, they cultivated real science, but
they did nothing for posterity.
The Magi of the Gospel then reigned in the three parts of the
known world, and the oracles were silent listening to the
cries of the little child of Bethlehem.
The king of kings, the magus of the Magi, had come into the world, and
cults, laws, empires, everything was changed!
Between Jesus Christ and Napoleon, the wonderful world remains empty.
Napoleon, this Word of war, this armed messiah, came
inevitably and without knowing it, to complete the Christian word. The
Christian revelation only taught us to die, the
Napoleonic civilization must teach us to conquer.
Of these two apparently contrary verbs, devotion and
victory, suffer, die, fight and overcome, is formed the
great arcane of HONOR!
Cross of the Savior, cross of the brave, you are not complete the one
without the other, because only that one knows how to conquer who knows how to devote himself
and die!
And how to devote yourself and die, if you don’t believe in life
eternal?
Napoleon, who had apparently died, was to return to the
world in the person of a man who realizes his mind.
Solomon and Charlemagne will also return as a single monarch, and
then Saint John the Evangelist, who, according to tradition, must
[548] to live again at the end of time, will also be resuscitated in the person
of a sovereign pontiff, who will be the apostle of intelligence and
the charity.
And these two princes united, announced by all the prophets,
will accomplish the wonder of the regeneration of the world.
Then the science of true magicians will flourish: for, until
now, our miracle workers have been for the most part
fatal men and sorcerers, that is to say, instruments
blind to fate.
The masters that fate throws into the world are soon overthrown
by she. Those who triumph through the passions will be the prey
hobbies. When Prometheus was jealous of Jupiter and he
stole his thunderbolt, he also wanted to make himself an immortal eagle,
but he only created and immortalized a vulture.
The fable still says that an unholy king named Ixion wanted to do
violence to the queen of heaven, but he only kissed a cloud
lying, and was bound by fiery serpents to the wheel
inexorable of fate.
These deep allegories threaten false followers,
profaners of science, the minions of black magic.
The force of black magic is the contagion of vertigo, it is
the epidemic of unreason.
The fatality of passions is like a fiery serpent that rolls and
wriggles around the world devouring souls.
But the peaceful intelligence, smiling and full of love,
represented by the mother of God, puts her foot on her head.
Fatality devours itself; it is the ancient serpent of
Chronos that eternally gnaws its tail.
[549] Or rather there are two enemy serpents who fight and
tear with bites, until harmony enchants them and
make them embrace peacefully around the caduceus of Hermes.
CONCLUSION.
Believe that there is no intelligent principle in the being
universal and absolute, it is the most reckless and the most absurd
of all beliefs.
Belief, because it is the negation of the indefinite and of
the indefinable.
Reckless belief, because it is isolating and distressing;
absurd belief, because it supposes the most complete nothingness, to
the place of the most complete perfection.
In nature, everything is preserved by balance and renews itself
by movement.
Balance is order; and movement is progress.
The science of balance and movement is the absolute science
of nature.
Man, by this science, can produce and direct
natural phenomena always rising towards an intelligence
higher and more perfect than his.
Moral balance is the collaboration of science and faith,
distinct in their strengths and united in their action to
give to the mind and heart of man a rule which is the
right.
For science that denies faith is as unreasonable as faith
who denies science.
[550] The object of faith can neither be defined nor, above all, denied by the
science, but science itself is called upon to observe the
rational basis of the assumptions of faith.
An isolated belief does not constitute faith because it is lacking
of authority, and consequently of moral guarantee, it cannot
lead only to fanaticism or superstition.
Faith is the confidence that a religion gives, that is to say a
communion of belief.
True religion is constituted by universal suffrage.
She is therefore essentially and always Catholic,
that is, universal. It is an acclaimed ideal dictatorship
generally in the revolutionary realm of the unknown.
The law of equilibrium, when it is better understood, will stop
all the wars and revolutions of the old world. There is
has had conflict between the powers as between the moral forces.
The popes are currently being blamed for clinging to power
temporal, without thinking of the Protestant tendency of the princes to
the usurpation of spiritual power.
As long as the princes claim to be popes, the pope
will be forced, by the very law of equilibrium, to the pretension
to be king.
The whole world still dreams of unity of power, and does not understand
not the power of balanced dualism.
Before kings usurpers of spiritual power, if the
Pope was no longer a king, he would be nothing. The pope in
the temporal order is subjected like any other to the prejudices of its century.
[551] He cannot therefore abdicate his temporal power when this
abdication would be a scandal for half the world.
When the sovereign opinion of the universe will have loudly proclaimed
that a temporal prince cannot be pope, when the czar of
all the Russias and the ruler of Great Britain will have
renounced their ridiculous priesthood, the Pope will know what
remains to be done.
Until then he must fight and die, if necessary, to defend
the integrity of the heritage of Saint Peter.
The science of moral balance will put an end to the quarrels of
religion and philosophical blasphemies. All the men
intelligent will be religious, when it is well recognized that the
religion does not expect freedom of examination, and all men
truly religious will respect a science which will recognize
the existence and necessity of a universal religion.
This science will shed new light on the philosophy of
history and give a synthetic plan of all the sciences
natural. The law of balanced forces and compensations
organic will reveal new physics and chemistry; so
from discoveries to discoveries, we will come back to philosophy
hermetic, and one will admire these wonders of simplicity and
clarity forgotten for so long.
Philosophy will then be exact like mathematics, because the
true ideas, that is to say, identical to being, constituting the
science of reality supply with reason and justice
exact proportions and rigorous equations such as
numbers. Error, therefore, will no longer be possible except through ignorance; the
true knowledge will no longer be mistaken.
[552] Aesthetics will cease to be subordinated to the whims of taste which
changes like fashion. If beauty is the splendor of truth, we
will have to subject to infallible calculations the radiation of a
light whose focus will be undoubtedly known and determined
with rigorous precision.
Poetry will no longer have crazy and subversive tendencies. The
poets will no longer be such dangerous enchanters as Plato
banished from his republic by crowning them with flowers; they
will be the musicians of reason and the gracious mathematicians
of harmony.
Does this mean that the earth will become an Eldorado? No, because, so much
that there will be a humanity, there will be children, that is to say
of the weak, the small, the ignorant and the poor.
But society will be ruled by its true masters, and it
There will be no more unresolved evil in human life.
It will be recognized that divine miracles are those of order
eternal, and we will no longer worship the ghosts of the imagination on
the faith of unexplained wonders. The strangeness of phenomena does not
proves that our ignorance before the laws of nature. When
God wants to make himself known to us, he enlightens our reason and
do not try to confuse or surprise her.
We will know how far the power of the man created in the image extends and
in the likeness of God. We will understand that he too is
creator in his sphere, and that his goodness directed by the eternal
reason is the subordinate providence of beings placed by
nature, under its influence and under its domination; religion
[553] then will have nothing more to fear from progress, and will take the
direction.
A doctor justly venerated in the teachings of
Catholicism, Blessed Vincent de Lérins, expresses
admirably this harmony of progress and authority
conservative.
According to him, true faith is worthy of our trust only by
this invariable authority which makes its dogmas inaccessible
to the whims of human ignorance. “And yet, adds
Vincent de Lérins, this immobility is not death; we
let us preserve, on the contrary, for the future, a germ of life. What
we believe today without understanding it, the future the
will understand and be happy to know about it. Posteritas intellectum gratuletur, quod ante vetustas non intellectum venerabatur. So if we are asked: Does any progress
is excluded from the religion of Jesus Christ? No doubt, and we
hope for a very large one.
“What man, indeed, would be jealous enough of men,
enemy of God, to want to prevent progress? But it is necessary
that it is really a progress, and not a change of
belief. Progress is growth and development
of everything in its order and in its nature. The disorder,
it is the confusion, and the mixing of things and their nature.
Without a doubt, there must be, for all men in
general than for each in particular, according to the natural course
of the Church ages, different degrees of intelligence, of
science and wisdom, but in such a way that everything is
preserved, and that the dogma always keeps the same spirit and the
[554] same definition. Religion must successively develop the
souls, as life develops bodies that grow and are
yet still the same.
“What is the difference between the infantile flower of the first age and the
maturity of old age! The old men are nevertheless the
same, as to the person, that they were in adolescence; he
only the exterior and appearances have changed. The members
from the child to the cradle are very frail, and yet they have the
same rudimentary principles and the same organs as the
men; they grow without their number increasing, and the
an old man has nothing more in this than the child had. And that
must be so, under pain of deformity or death.
“So it is with the religion of Jesus Christ, and the progress
for it is accomplished under the same conditions and according to the
same laws. The years make her stronger and grow her,
but add nothing to everything that makes up his being. She is born
complete and perfect in its proportions, which can grow and
expand without changing. Our fathers sowed wheat, our nephews
must not reap the weeds. The harvests
intermediaries do not change the nature of the grain; we must
take it and always leave it the same.
“Catholicism has planted roses, should we substitute
brambles? No doubt, or woe to us! The balm and the cinname
of this spiritual paradise must not be changed under our hands
in aconite and poison. All that, in the Church, this beautiful
campaign of God, was sown by the fathers, must be cultivated there
and maintained by the sons: this is what must always grow
and bloom; but it can grow and must develop. God
[555] allows indeed that the dogmas of this celestial philosophy
be, by the progress of time, studied, worked, polished in
somehow; but what is forbidden is to change them; this
which is a crime is to truncate and mutilate them. That they
receive new light and more learned distinctions,
but that they always keep their fullness, their integrity, their
property.”
Let us therefore take it for granted for the benefit of the universal Church
all the achievements of science in the past, and
let us promise him, with Vincent de Lérins, the complete legacy of
progress to come! To her all the great aspirations of
Zoroaster and all the discoveries of Hermes! To her the key to
the holy ark, to it the ring of Solomon, for it represents
the holy and immutable hierarchy. Her struggles made her more
strong, its apparent drops will make it more stable; she
suffers to reign, she falls to grow up by getting up, she
die to be resuscitated!
“You must be ready,” said Count Joseph de Maistre, “to
an immense event in the divine order, towards which we
walk with an accelerated speed which must strike every
observers; formidable oracles announce moreover that
the times have arrived. Several prophecies contained in
the Apocalypse pertained to our modern times. A writer
went so far as to say that the event had already started, and that
the French nation was to be the great instrument of the most
great revolutions. There may not be a man
truly religious in Europe (I’m talking about the class
educated) who is not expecting something
[556] extraordinary. Now, is it just this general cry that
announces great things? Go back to past centuries,
transport yourself to the birth of the Savior; at that time, a
loud and mysterious voice, part of the eastern regions,
she cried: “The East is on the verge of triumph …
victor will depart from Judea … A divine child is given to us;
it will appear; he descends from the highest of the heavens; he will bring back
the golden age on earth. ” These ideas were universally
widespread, and as they lent themselves infinitely to poetry, the
greatest Latin poet seized them, and coated them with colors
the brightest in his Pollion. Today, as in
Virgil’s time, the universe is waiting. How? ‘Or’ What
would we despise this great persuasion, and by what right
would we condemn the men who, warned by these divine signs,
engage in holy research?
“Do you want proof of what’s to come?” look for it in
Sciences; consider the progress of chemistry, of
astronomy itself, and you’ll see where they take us.
Would you believe, for example, that Newton takes us back to Pythagoras,
and that soon it will be demonstrated that “the heavenly bodies are
driven precisely, like the human body, by intelligences which
are united to them ”without knowing how: this is however what
is about to come true, without there soon being any
way to argue. This doctrine may seem paradoxical without
doubt, and even ridiculous, because the surrounding opinion in
imposed; but wait until the natural affinity of religion and
science unites them in the head of a single man of genius.
The appearance of this man cannot be remote. So some
[557] opinions which seem to us today or bizarre or foolish
will be axioms that cannot be doubted, and we
will talk about our current stupidity as we talk about the
superstition of the middle age [24]. “
[Note 24: Joseph de Maistre, Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, 1821,
p. 308.]
In tome tenth of his works, page 697, Saint Thomas says
this beautiful saying: “All that God wills is just, but the
just should not be so named just because God the
wants: non ex hoc dicitur justum quod Deus illud vult. ” The
moral doctrine of the future is contained there entirely; and of
this fruitful principle we can immediately deduce the following:
Not only is it good, from the point of view of faith, to do this
that God commands, but again, from the point of view of reason, he
it is good and reasonable to obey him. The man will therefore be able to say: I
do good not only because God wills, but also
because I want it. The human will will thus be subdued and
free at the same time; because reason, demonstrating in a way
beyond question, the wisdom of the prescriptions of faith, will act
own movement by regulating itself according to the divine law, of which it
will become in a way the human sanction. Then there will be
no more superstition, no impiety possible, we understand it
easily from what we have just said: therefore, in religion
and in practical philosophy, that is to say in morality, the authority
absolute will exist and moral dogmas can only then be
reveal and settle.
Until then we will have the pain and dread to see all
[558] days to question the simplest principles and
more common law and duty among men. Without a doubt,
the blasphemers will be silenced; but something else is to impose
silence, something else, to persuade and convert.
As long as high magic has been desecrated by the wickedness of
men, the Church had to proscribe it. False Gnostics have
decried the first pure name of Gnosticism, and sorcerers have
wrongs the children of the Magi; but religion, friend of
tradition and guardian of the treasures of antiquity cannot
postpone longer a doctrine that predates the Bible, and
which accords so perfectly with the traditional respect of the
past, the most living hopes of progress and
the future?
The people are initiated by work and by faith in property and
to science. There will always be a people, as there will be
still children; but when the aristocracy became learned
will be a mother to the people, the ways of emancipation will be
open to all, personal emancipation, successive,
progressive, by which all the called ones will be able, by their
efforts, to reach the ranks of the elect. It is this mystery of the future that
the ancient initiation hid under its shadows; it is for these elected officials
of the future reserved for the miracles of nature
subject to the will of man. The priestly staff must be
the wand of miracles, it was in the time of Moses and
Hermes, and he will be again. The mage’s scepter will revert to
that of the king or the emperor of the world, and that one will be of right
the first among men, who will in fact prove to be the strongest
by science and by virtue.
Then magic will no longer be an occult science except for
[559] ignorant, but it will be an incontestable science for all.
Then the universal revelation will weld together
all the rings of his gold chain. The human epic will be
finished and even the efforts of the Titans will have served only
raising the altar of the true God.
So all the forms that thought has successively taken
divine will be reborn immortal and perfect.
All the features that the successive art of nations had sketched
unite and form the complete image of God.
The dogma purified and out of chaos will naturally produce morality
infallible, and the social order will be formed on this basis. The
systems that collide now are the dreams of twilight.
Let them pass. The sun shines and the earth continues its
market; foolish would he be who would doubt the day!
There are those who say: Catholicism is no more than a trunk
arid, let’s carry the ax there.
Fools! don’t you see that under the withered bark
constantly renews the living tree. The truth has neither passed nor
to come up; it is eternal. What ends is not her, this
are our dreams.
The hammer and the ax which destroy in the eyes of men,
are in the hand of God as the pruning hook, and the
dead branches, i.e. superstitions and heresies,
in religion, science and politics, can only be
cut from the tree of beliefs and eternal convictions.
Our History of Magic aimed to demonstrate that in
[560] the principle, the great symbols of religion were at the same
time those of science then hidden.
May religion and science, united in the future,
therefore help each other and love each other like two sisters, since they
had the same cradle!
END
This was translated by machine learning. I cannot attest to the accuracy.