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Capital punishment is a relic of Jewish barbarity by Franz Hartmann,Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
Works of fiction are no fiction, but presentiments of what lies in the bosom of the future. Many will be the unconscious crimes committed, and many will be the victims who will innocently suffer death at the hands of the righteous judges and the too innocent jurymen, both alike ignorant of the fiendish power of suggestion. The body may be slain but not the soul. The consequences of the death penalty for judge and jury, the community at large. and not the least for the criminal, are too grim and too harsh to contemplate. Capital punishment is futile, unnecessary, and fraught with potentially dire societal harms. While the seed of a tree may be destroyed, the spiritual “seed” which produces the soul of a man cannot be destroyed by capital punishment, but will eventually produce such a man again as sure as the seed of a thistle will produce nothing else but a thistle. One’s criminal powers and proclivities cannot be eliminated by killing his body. Having been deprived of one instrument for their manifestation, such powers will manifest themselves in other, still less convenient, and more dangerous ways. Moreover, by deferring the manifestation of an evil cause we pass on to a future generation an evil inheritance, with which we ourselves ought to have contended, and which we ought to have sought to ameliorate. Mortal man is an instrument of immortal spirit. A ray of divine mind dwells in the heart of every man. But the divine mind is veiled in man; his animal brain alone philosophises. The physical man is the musical instrument; the divine the performing artist. The physical body is a transient mask of the spiritual man within, and instrument of action on the objective plane. By the power of an inequitable law the slayer’s knife did stab himself, thus the unjust judge has lost his own defender. Letter to “Lucifer” from a puzzled student. Like an eye-for-an-eye, capital punishment is nothing but a relic of Jewish barbarity. As the juryman, in deciding for a verdict of guilty, becomes an accessory in a fresh murder, so an increasing number of people refuse to repay evil for evil.
How the divinity of the Hindu Pantheon ended up dressed in biblical garb by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
At first the cosmogonical idea was one, everywhere. But as nations began fragmenting along tribal grooves, the original idea became gradually veiled with the overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the intelligent Powers of Nature received divine honours they were hardly entitled to, in others, the very thought of any such Power being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. Homer is silent with respect to the First Principle which, according to Proclus, is the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all silence, more occult than all Essence. The Jews ascended no higher than the immediate artificer of the universe; for they degraded their metaphorical deity, as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet personal God. The Jews invented the Tetragrammaton to celebrate life, to deify multiplication, and to mislead the profane. The Theosophist’s Deity is not the two-faced Tetragrammaton but the Crown, which has nought to do with the material world. The First Cause (Monad) is symbolised by a Point within the Circle of Heaven, or an Equilateral Triangle, from whence the First Cause has radiated is passed over in silence. That Point is the First Logos, not as yet the Architect of the world to be, but the unknown and unknowable cause of the Architect himself. Parabrahman cannot be seen as it is. It can only be seen by Logos but with a veil thrown over it: that veil is Mulaprakriti, the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. Mulaprakriti is the noumenon of matter, and is material to Logos, as any physical object is material to us. The Hidden Deity is represented by the circumference of a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Ain-Soph, the Kabbalistic Parabrahman, is inscrutable, unknowable, and unnameable — a Circle bound by the utmost stretch of our perception to the vault of a sphere. Deity is eternal perpetual motion, ever-becoming, universally-present, ever-existing. The Boundless Circle is its outward veil. Logos, represented by the central mathematical point, is only an organ in cosmic creation, through which radiate the energy and wisdom of Parabrahman. Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to Logos itself. In all those personations of Nature’s Female Powers, there are two distinct aspects: the noumenal and the phenomenal. The one is purely metaphysical, the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the standpoint of human conception. The Powers of Nature all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable veil between Absoluteness and the Logos of Creation. The feminine Logoi are all correlations, in their noumenal aspect, of Light, Sound, and Æther. There are four personations of Vach-Voice, vehicles of divine thought, corresponding with the higher Cosmic Principles. Vach is the female Logos, the loving mother of all that lives, milking forth sustenance and water. The most precious archaic records are utterly unknown to the Orientalists, and the dead-letter sense translations of popular Sanskrit works are merely blinds to the uninitiated. Hence the Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, they cut the Gordian knot of their perplexity by declaring the whole cosmogonical scheme figments of Brahmanical fancy and love of exaggeration. Prominent in every Cosmogony are the pre-cosmic Lords of Being, the Prajapatis or “Seven Builders,” symbolised by concentric circles. Osiris is the unknown “black God” because the realm of his noumenon is darkness to the mortal. He is the Egyptian Zagreus. Osiris is Avalokiteshvara, the Universal saviour and All-merciful Master, who moves the Waters of Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ that becomes the Golden Mundane Egg, and in which the male Brahmā is created. And thus, the first Prajapati, Lord of Beings, emerges and becomes the progenitor of mankind. Like Brahmā, Zeus and all other lower deities, Jehovah is an androgyne god. But he is neither the God worshipped by Moses, nor the Father of Jesus, nor yet the Ineffable Name of the Kabbalists. He is merely a composite name for membrum virile and Eve, a hermaphrodite. He is, in one sense, Noah (Hebrew Yah) or, literally translated, inch — the British inch! For those who love Truth for her own sake, and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to reward and profit, the Cosmogony of Confucius is the most succinct and perhaps the most suggestive of all Cosmogonies. For those who are familiar with Occult Numerals, the Confucian figures indicate the progressive yet harmonious evolution of Kosmos and its beings, and the culmination of every perfection in heaven and on earth. The archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. All these represent the most abstract and highest cosmogenic visions. Confucius, a contemporary of Pythagoras, was the Easter sage of the ancient world. He taught the sphericity of the Earth and the Heliocentric system; while, at about thrice years later, the infallible Popes threatened and even burnt “heretics” for asserting the same. The great Architect of the Universe gives the first impulse to the rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping seriatim over each planet, causing each to turn around itself, and all around the Sun. Then after the Solar and Lunar Pitris take charge of their respective planets and earth to the end of the Kalpa. The Rishis are the mind-born sons of Brahmā, not priests. At the end of the first stage of evolution they are transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarshis, while their human doubles appear as heroes, kings, and sages on this earth. There are many Rishis in the Vedas. It must however be understood that in every Creation the Vedas are revealed to the same men only. The opening sentence in every Cosmogony is either a Circle, an Egg, or a Head, often surrounded by Darkness — hence, black doves, black ravens, black tongues, black waters. They all relate to the birth of Universe and Man out of the latent germ in the Eternal Egg dwelling in Darkness. The Raven, yielding the same numerical value as the Head, is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the first three Root-Races, who vanished from earth forever. Eastern Esotericism asserts that only physical man was created in the image of deity; but that deity is but a minor god. The real God is the Imperishable Higher Ego or Nous, man’s true Individuality that cloths itself in a new personality at every new birth. Yet the Jews degraded the only ennobling religion of humanity to the most unspiritual and gross phallic religion.
Evil is an illusion caused by the Circle of Necessity by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
Buddha’s doctrine shows evil immanent, not in matter which is eternal, but in the illusions created by it; and through the changes and transformations of matter generating life be-cause these changes are conditioned and such life is ephemeral. And, as life is death, so death is life, and the whole great cycle of lives forms but One Existence — the worst day of which is on our planet.
Psychological and conjuring tricks employed by strolling jugglers and fakirs by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
Magical tricks employed by strolling jugglers and fakirs. There does not exist a professional wizard, either of the North, South, or West, who can compete with anything approaching success, with the untutored, naked sons of the East. The basis of magic is the life-principle, a blind force obeying a controlling influence All magical operations consist in freeing one’s self from the coils of the Ancient Serpent. When a man, through the complete subjugation of matter, has attained that state of purification at which the spirit becomes nearly freed from its prison, he has become a creative force on earth, and can command the elements and powers of nature. Purified from the contact with matter, the powerful will and spirit of the fakir condenses the essence of plant life into its germ, and forces it to maturity ahead of its time. For will in motion is force, and force produces matter. The spirit of man is like that of his Creator, omniscient in its essence. Strolling Indian jugglers are neither pure in their modes of living, nor holy. They are generally feared and despised by the natives, for they are practitioners of the black art. Psychological versus conjuring tricks. The only explanation given by the Society for Psychical Research for these phenomena is it does not understand, and is incapable of understanding, what is going on. Fakir is a Mussulman devotee whose whole time is taken up by acts of holiness such as standing for days on one leg, or on the top of his head. But the saintly Hindu Yogi does not take “collections” after the exhibition of his psychic powers. The man Ellmore and Lessing saw was a public juggler, known in India as Jadoowalla or sorcerer. Public jugglers are not sleight of hand conjurers, they are mesmerisers endowed with phenomenal powers. Between hypnotism and Mesmerism lies an impassable chasm. Glamour and fascination are entirely different from hypnotism. Occultism does not admit claims of bodily disintegration, for a living creature, whether man or mosquito, cannot be “disintegrated” and live.
The power of the magician is inversely related to his worldly interests by Eliphas Levi Pdf
Occult philosophy is the key to all divine obscurities, and the absolute queen of society in those ages when it was reserved exclusively for the education of priests and kings. The multitude never conspires except against real powers; it possesses not the knowledge of what is true, but it has the instinct of what is strong. Emperor Julian was the Don Quixote of Roman Chivalry. Julian and Socrates were put to death for the same crime. Why do priests and potentates tremble? What secret power threatens tiaras and crowns? Magic, as a science, is the knowledge of the metaphysical principles, and of the way by which the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit and its control over nature’s forces may be acquired by the individual while still in the body. Magic, as an art, is the application of this knowledge in practice. True Magic is the intimate knowledge of nature within the sanctuaries known as the “worship of the Light” and diligent research into those occult laws, which constitute the ultimate essence of every element. True Magic, being divine and spiritual wisdom, it can only be exercised by the pure in heart. Occultism is vastly different from “magic,” a term often confounded the occult sciences, including the “black arts,” and the “worship of Darkness.” The Sphinx is the living palladium of humanity and the imagination lighting up our blind senses. She is the eternal enigma of the vulgar, the granite pedestal of Divine Wisdom, the voracious and silent monster whose invariable form expresses the one dogma of the great universal mystery. By lifting the veil of Isis and balancing the twin opposing powers — spirituality and animalism — ever reacting upon each other, the Kabbalah affirms the eternal struggle of being, reconciles reason with faith, power with liberty, and science with mystery. The seeker of Truth must be fearless and forgiving, brave dangers, dishonour, and give up all expectation. Divine knowledge must be conquered by defiant intensity and virtue, before she opens the portals of her secret chambers. Unsullied by the hand of matter, she shows her treasures only to the Eye of Spirit. What is faith except the audacity of a will, which does not tarry in darkness, but moves on towards the light in spite of all ordeals, surmounting all obstacles? It is action that proves life and establishes will, therefore, we must act in order to be. Mysteries are disdained by modern science. Their primary benefit is that they forestall absolute brutality among men. Miracles are natural phenomena from occult causes. Admission of miracles implies ignorance of their causes. By providential law, the true alchemist can only exercise omnipotence in inverse proportion to his material interests: the more resigned is he to privations, and the more he esteems that poverty which protects the secrets of the magnum opus, the more gold he makes. He must be cool, dispassionate, and utterly unconcerned with self, yet ever ready to sacrifice himself for the welfare of others. He has no right to use his magnetic power to lessen his personal suffering, as long as there is a single creature that suffers and whose physical or mental pain he can lessen, if not heal. Passion forcibly projects the astral light and impresses unforeseen and uncontrollable movements on the universal agent. The more we restrain ourselves for an idea, the greater is the strength we acquire within the scope of that idea. Indolence and forgetfulness are the enemies of will, and for this reason all religions have multiplied their observances and made their worship minute and difficult. In order to do a thing we must believe in the possibility of our doing it, and this confidence must forthwith be translated into acts. Faith does not even try; it begins with the certitude of completing and proceeds calmly, as if omnipotence were at its disposal and eternity before it. True magicians are normally found in rural areas, often uninstructed folks and simple shepherds. Those who live in harmony with nature are wiser than doctors, whose spiritual perception is trammelled by the sophistries of their schools. While poverty has no natural tendency to bring forth selfishness, wealth requires it. Hardship and poverty are so favourable to spiritual progress that the greatest masters have preferred it, even when the wealth of the world was at their disposal. In poverty is benevolence assayed, and in the moment of anger is a man’s truthfulness displayed. By truth alone is man’s mind purified, and by the right discipline it does become inspired. We should always remember that we are dethroned sovereigns who consent to existence in order to reconquer our crowns. Therefore, we must avoid hideous objects and uncomely persons, must decline eating with those whom we do not esteem, and must be mild and considerate to all. The disciple, by following his inner light, will never be found judging, and far less condemning those weaker than himself. The lamp of truth guides his learning, the mantle which enwraps him is his discretion, the staff is the emblem of his strength and daring. Let us then learn diligently; and when we know, let us have the will to act in unison with the Cosmic Will. He who has silenced lusts and fears is a king among the wandering mass. Fragments of relative truths can be communicated orally by the Sage to the disciple, but not the complete, everlasting Truth. Therefore Sages speak sparingly not to disclose but to lead the pure in heart to discover. Energetic ecclesiastical mediocrity has managed to supplant modest superiority, misunderstood because of its feigned modesty. A man who is truly man can only will that which he should reasonably and justly do; so does he silence lusts and fears, that he may hearken solely to reason. Such a man is a natural king and a shepherd for the wandering multitude. Life is aspiration and respiration. Creation is the assumption of a shadow to serve as a bound to light, of a void to serve as space for the plenitude, of a passive fructified principle to sustain and realise the power of the active generating principle. Movement is the outcome of a preponderance of one over the other force (positive and negative) as determined by the laws of affinity and antipathy. If both forces are absolutely and invariably equal, the world will come to a stand-still. “If the two forces are expanded and remain so long inactive, as to equal one another and so come to a complete rest, the condition is death.” Man can produce two breathings at his pleasure, one warm and the other cold; he can also project either the active or passive light at will. Will is the offspring of Divinity; desire, the motive power of animal life. Miracles are the inexplicable effects of natural causes. They are commonly regarded as contradictions of nature or sudden vagaries of the divine mind — not seeing that a single causeless effect would reduce the universe to chaos. Anthropomorphism is the parent of materialism and author of black magic. God operates by His works in heaven by angels, and on earth by men. But in the “heaven” of human conceptions, it is humanity that creates God, and men think that God has made them in His image because they have made Him in theirs. The man who has come to fear nothing and desire nothing is master of all. Nothing on earth can withstand the power of rational will. Warm breathing attracts, cold repels, for heat is positive electricity; cold, negative electricity. Warm insufflation restores the circulation of the blood, cures rheumatic and gouty pains, restores the balance of the humours, and dispels lassitude. Cold insufflation soothes pains occasioned by congestions and fluidic accumulations. Occult medicine is essentially sympathetic. Good will and reciprocal affection must exist between doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have little inherent virtue. Rabelais compelled his patients to laugh, and all the remedies he subsequently gave them succeeded better, as a result; he established a magnetic sympathy between himself and them, by means of which he communicated to them his own confidence and good humour; he flattered them in his prefaces, called them his precious, most illustrious patients, and dedicated his books to them. The cause of every bodily disorder can be traced back to a moral disorder. But the power to heal is never possessed by those addicted to vicious indulgences. Only the pure in heart can heal the ills of the body by exercising divine gifts. Such only can give peace to the disturbed spirit of their brothers and sisters, for their power to heal come from no poisonous source.
The Pernicious Sophistry of Hypocrisy by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,Elizabeth Montagu Pdf
While every vice is hid by hypocrisy, every virtue is suspected to be hypocrisy. Christian societies roll around the mire of hypocrisy, steeped in false pretence. Deceit and hypocrisy are at work for dear self’s sake, in every nation as in every individual. Selfishness, whether it breeds ambition for aggrandizement of territory, or competition in commerce at the expense of one’s neighbour, can never be regarded as a virtue. The middle classes are honeycombed with false smiles, false talk, and mutual treachery. For the majority, religion has become a thin veil thrown over the corpse of spiritual faith. Our century is a boastful age, as proud as it is hypocritical; as cruel as it is dissembling. There are more hypocrites in a square yard of our “civilized soil” than antiquity has bred of them on all its idolatrous lands. Instead of courtesy and sincerity, we have feigned politeness and falsification on every plane; falsification of moral food, and the same falsification of eatable food. Sanctimonious hypocrisy has stifled genuine religious spirit, which is now regarded as madness.
Hylo-Idealism is a fig leaf for Crass Materialism by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
Privileged man! Evolution-forsaken baboon! Hylo-Idealism asserts that the origin of man has to be sought in the vesiculo-neurine of his hemispherical ganglia, and that even ingratitude is a phenomenon of atavism. Psychical Research is a misnomer for Pseusmatical Research. Modern Idealism is the great ally of Materialism. Their conclusions are so far stretched, that they both converge in their atheism and pessimism. The “scientific” union of Materialism and Idealism takes place in grey matter, affirms Dr. Lewins. New philosophies are the spawn of overworked intellect. They keep sprouting like mushrooms from their mycelium after a rainy morning — interminable, outlandish, multisyllabled, and multicipital. While we tearfully beg Dr. Lewins, in the interests of humanity, to have pity on his poor readers, we shall fight the usurper “Solipsism” in favour of the legitimate King of the Universe — Egoism. Hylo-Idealism is at odds with Hylo-Ideaism. Since Dr. Lewins regards consciousness as a function of the nerve-tissue, he is an uncompromising materialist. If apart from brain there is no Ego, no external world, what then is the brain itself — this solitary object in a void universe? On the one hand, matter is asserted; on the other, matter is denied. The Vedantins symbolise Cosmic Duality by Logos and Mulaprakriti, i.e., Universal Spirit and Noumenon of Matter. The latter is the metaphysical basis of the intelligent operations in Nature. The orthodox concept of God is not, as Dr. Lewins contends, a myth or phantasm of the brain; it is an individualised ray of the all-pervading Logos, the inner light of which is blurred by the fog of lower minds. Modern Idealism is based upon gigantic paradoxes and even contradictions in terms. Venus, the morning star, was created before the sun and the moon — metaphorically, not astronomically. Venus-Aphrodite is one with the Astarte-Astoreth, the moon-goddess of generation presiding at human birth, just as Jehovah is the god of generation, foremost of all. Astoreth, as a planet, is one with Lucifer, the Morning Star. Like modern Spiritualism, Hylo-Idealism is transcendental Materialism. No man can be at once a Materialist and an Idealist, and remain consistent. The new school teaches that brain is the Creator of the Universe and originator of consciousness; that in it alone all our ideas are born, and that, apart from it, nothing has real existence, everything being illusion. By denying the Vedantic idea of non-separateness, the Hylo-Idealists vitiate every one of their arguments. The real “I” which thinks, feels, and acts is a ray of Absolute Consciousness, which is no “consciousness.”
Insights to the high idealism and quaint wit of Eliphas Levi by Arthur Edward Waite, Boris Mihailovich de Zirkoff Pdf
Intensely suggestive, he is at the same time without much depth; splendid in generalisation, he is without accuracy in detail. It would be difficult to cite a worse guide over mere matters of fact. Had Lévi been left to himself, he would not have got far in occult science because his Gallic vivacity would have been blunted too quickly by the horrors of studious research. But he did somehow fell within a circle of initiation which curtailed the necessity for such research, and put him in the right path. Lévi was scarcely a transcendentalist, not even a mystic. Instinctively a materialist, he approached perilously towards atheism as when he stated that God is a hypothesis which is “very probably necessary.” His prophetic utterances upon the mission of Napoleon III have been stultified by subsequent events. Éliphas Lévi reflected a high idealism and an inner revolt against the injustices of the times. To Madame Blavatsky he was “undoubtedly a great occultist,” but “being a charming and witty writer,” has “more mystified than taught in his many volumes on magic.” Under no circumstances did she look upon him as an Initiate or a practical occultist. His style is poetical and quite charming. But what has he really taught us? Nothing, absolutely nothing — except, perhaps, the exuberance of the French language and his quaint wit. Not one single aspirant has become an Occultist by following the teaching of the French magus simply because, though Lévi evidently got his secrets from an Initiate, he never received the right to initiate others, says Blavatsky.
Theological malice is the root cause of Satanic Magic by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
The Theosophist believes in neither Divine nor Satanic miracles. There is neither Saint nor Sorcerer, neither Prophet nor Soothsayer for him. There are only Adepts, or proficients in the production of feats of a phenomenal character, to be judged by their words and deeds. It is only theological bigotry and intolerance that could so maliciously and arbitrarily separate two harmonious parts, psychic and physical phenomena, into two distinct manifestations of Divine and Satanic Magic, or “godly” and “ungodly” works. The very name Apocrypha forbids critics to trust them for information. The Occultists, however, claim that, one-sided and prejudiced as they may be, the Apocryphal Gospels contain far more historically true events and facts than does the New Testament, the Acts included. The former are crude tradition; the latter (the official Gospels), an elaborately made up legend. Simon Magus was a Kabbalist and a Mystic who, like so many other reformers, endeavoured to found a new Religion based on the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, yet without divulging more than necessary of its mysteries. He rejected the individuality of his personal spirit, and recognized the Divine Ray which dwells in his Higher Ego as a reflection of the Universal Spirit. By Simon Magus we must understand the Apostle Paul, whose Epistles were secretly, as well as openly, calumniated and opposed by Peter. The Church extols unstintingly his wonderful magic feats. On the other hand, Scepticism, represented by scholars and learned critics, tries to make away with him altogether. Thus, after denying the very existence of Simon, they have finally thought fit to merge his individuality entirely in that of Paul. The virus of insatiable power and ambition, culminating finally in the dogma of infallibility and tyrannical authority of the Churches, are the curse of humanity and the great extinguishers of Light and Truth. The aim of the Tannaïm, ancient Israeli Initiates, who were Kabbalists of the same secret school as John of the Apocalypse, was to conceal the real meaning of the names in the Mosaic Books. Be that as it may, no Christian could rival Simon’s thaumaturgic deeds. Simon could not submit to the leadership or authority of any of the Apostles, least of all to that of either Peter or John, the fanatical author of the Apocalypse.
Christian Lectures on Buddhism, and plain facts by Buddhist by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Pdf
France, Germany, and Italy are eaten to the core with free-thought and Atheism. Let us not talk of “pseudo-Buddhists” in the face of millions of “pseudo-Christians,” nominal and more “Grundy-fearing” than God-fearing. Sir Monier-Williams’s Oxford rival, Professor Max Müller, pronounces the moral code of Buddhism as one of the most perfect the world has ever known. The leading organ of Roman Catholic Englishmen admits that the Buddhists’ standard of morality is so high that “however much we Christianize them, we cannot succeed in making them altogether as bad as ourselves.” No better answer than this could a Buddhist find as a reply to the uncharitable and incorrect comparisons between the two creeds instituted by Sir Monier-Williams.
On malevolent bewitchments and venomous magic by Eliphas Levi, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Paracelsus Pdf
Bewitchment, whether voluntary or involuntary, physical or moral is a homicide — and the more infamous because it eludes self-defence by the victim and punishment by law. Moral maladies are far more contagious than physical. Some triumphs of infatuation are comparable to leprosy or cholera. Bewitchment by means of currents is exceedingly common, morally as well as physically; most of us are carried away by the crowd. Absolute hatred, unleavened by rejected passion or personal cupidity, is a death sentence for its object. Black magic is a graduated combination of sacrileges and murders designed for the perversion of the human will. It is the religion of the devil, the cultus of darkness, and the hatred of good carried to the height of paroxysm. Not only do the wicked torment the good, but the good torture the wicked unconsciously. We may die through love as well as through hate, for there are absorbing passions under the breath of which we feel depleted like the spouses of vampires. Antipathy is the presentiment of a possible bewitchment, either of love or hatred, for we find love frequently succeeding repulsion. Instantaneous sympathies and electric infatuations are explosions of the astral light, which is akin to the discharge of strong magnetic batteries. Bewitchment by a will persistently confirmed in ill-doing, cannot be pulled back without risk of death. The spell may be staved off by substitution or deflection of the astral current. But the sorcerer who releases a spell must have another object for his malevolence, or he himself will perish by his own spell because every poisoned magnetic emission that cannot reach its target will return with force to its point of departure. Virtue is one of the elixirs of long life and well-being. While vice is hid by hypocrisy, virtue is suspected to be hypocrisy. Sorcery, whether by spells or love-potions, is venomous magic. We write not to instruct but to warn. Sorcerers are often poor country folks, repulsed by all, and therefore afflicted by enduring bitterness. The fear which they inspired was their consolation and their revenge. Magical emblems and characters, engraved on amulets and talismans, are relics of old religious rites, the meaning of which is no longer understood. Only harmlessness and brotherhood in thought and deed, coupled with non-resistance to evil, can shield us from evil. Real protection comes from personal merit and virtue, not from talismans. Nought is permitted to the virtuous man. Love, above all in a woman, is a veritable hallucination; for want of a prudent motive, it will frequently select an absurd one. Cyanide, when not lethal, will enfeeble the mind already poisoned by an evil will. Stay clear of bitter almonds (as well as the kernels of apricot, peach, and cherry), almond flavour extracts such as Amaretto, almond milk, soaps, and perfumes, Datura stramonium, and other hallucinogens. Tobacco, by smoking or otherwise, is a dangerous and stupefying philtre and brain poison. Nicotine is not less deadly than cyanide. Moreover, the latter is present in tobacco in larger quantities than in bitter almonds. But the most terrific of all philtres is the exaltation of misdirected devotion. By fuelling the imagination, excessive fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Goodness is much stronger than evil. Rise then above childish fears and dumb desires. Stamp out evil influence by controlling unbridled imagination and fanciful speculation. Believe in supreme wisdom for true wisdom cannot ensnare your intelligence. Poisons can may make you ill but never immoral. Weakness sympathises with vice because vice itself is a weakness that assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. Every human being, whether magus or not, should oppose violence by mildness, chastise evil by good, cruelty by tenderness. There can be nothing more dangerous than to make magic a pastime, or part of an evening’s entertainment. Magnetic experiments, performed under such conditions, can only exhaust the subjects, mislead opinions, and defeat science. The milder and calmer you are, the more effective will be your anger; the more energetic you are, the more precious will be your forbearance; the more skilful you are, the better will you profit by your intelligence and even by your virtues; the more indifferent you are, the more easily will you make yourself loved. Excessive love produces antipathy; blind hate counteracts and scourges itself; vanity leads to abasement and the most cruel humiliations. Remember that the magus is sovereign, and a sovereign never avenges because he has the right to punish; in the exercise of this right he performs his duty, and is implacable as justice. The way to see clearly is not to be always looking; and he who spends his whole life upon a single object will not attain it. Ceremonies are methods to create a habit of will, however, redundant when the habit is firmly established. We will now expose and stigmatise some of the most abhorrent acts. What sorcerers seek above all, in their evocations of the impure spirit, is that magnetic power which is the possession of the true adept, so that they can shamefully abuse it. Providence seems to scorn those who despise the martyrs, and to slay those who would deprive them of life. The terrible menace of hell inflicted by Christianity upon its flock has created more nightmares, more nameless diseases, more furious madness, than all vices and excesses combined. That is what the Hermetic artists of the middle ages represented by the incredible and unheard-of monsters, which they carved at the doors of basilicas. Moral equilibrium rests upon the immutable distinction between true and false, good and bad; one must place himself, by his works, in the empire of truth and goodness or relapse eternally, like the rock of Sisyphus, into a pandemonium of falsehood and evil. Wash carefully your clothes before giving them away. In times of epidemic the terror-struck are the first to be attacked. The secret of not fearing evil is to ignore it altogether. The wise men have scarcely any sorceries to fear, save those of fortune, but when called upon to advise they must persuade the bewitched to do some act of goodness to his bewitcher, to render him some service which he cannot refuse, and lead him to the communion of salt. The chemist imitates nature, the alchemist surpasses nature herself. Chemistry decomposes and recombines material substances, it purifies simple substances of foreign elements, but leaves the primitive elements unchanged. Alchemy changes the character of things, and raises them up into higher states of existence. As all the powers of the universe are potentially contained in us, our body and its organs are the representatives of the powers of nature and a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky.