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blood and floats about the places where the pleasures of its life elapsed. It watches
over treasures which it possessed and buried; it expends itself in painful efforts to
make fresh material organs and so live again. But the stars draw it up and absorb
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64 The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic
it; it feels its intelligence weaken, its memory gradually vanishes, all its being dis-
solves . . . . Its former vices rise up before it, assume monstrous shapes and pursue
it; they attack and devour it . . . . The unfortunate creature thus loses successively
all the members which have ministered to his iniquities; then he dies a second
time and for ever, because he loses his personality and his memory. Souls which
are destined to live, but are not yet purified completely, remain captive for a
longer or shorter period in the astral body, wherein they are burned by the odic
light, which seeks to absorb and dissolve them. It is in order to escape from this
body that suffering souls sometimes enter the organisms of the living and dwell
therein in that state which Kabalists term embryonic. Now, it is these aerial bodies
which are evoked by Necromancy. We enter into communion with larvae, with
dead or perishing substances, by this operation. The beings in question, for the
most part, cannot speak except by a ringing in our ears produced by the nervous
shock to which I have referred, and commonly they can reason only by reflecting
our thoughts and our reveries. To behold these strange forms we must put our-
selves in an abnormal condition akin to sleep or death; in other words, we must
magnetize ourselves and enter into a kind of lucid and waking somnambulism.
Then Necromancy has real results, and the evocations of Magic can produce
actual visions. We have said that in the Great Magical Agent, which is the Astral
Light, there are preserved all impressions of things, all images formed either by
rays or reflections. In this same light our dreams come to us; it is this which
befools the insane and misguides their dormant judgement in pursuit of the most
bizarre phantoms. To insure vision without illusion in such light, a powerful will
must help us to isolate reflections and attract rays only. To dream awake is to see
in the Astral Light, and the orgies of the Sabbath, described by so many sorcerers
in their criminal trials, came to them solely in this manner. The preparations and
the substances used to obtain this result were often horrible, as we shall see in the
Ritual , but the result itself was never doubtful. They saw, they heard, they han-
dled the most abominable, most fantastic, most impossible things., We shall
return to this subject in our fifteenth chapter; at the present moment we are con-
cerned only with evocation of the dead.
In the spring of the year 1854 I had undertaken a journey to London, that I
might escape from internal disquietude and devote myself, without interruption,
to science. I had letters of introduction to persons of eminence who were anxious
for revelations from the supernatural world. I made the acquaintance of several
and discovered in them, amidst much that was courteous, a depth of indifference
or trifling. They asked me forthwith to work wonders, as if I were a charlatan,
and I was somewhat discouraged, for, to speak frankly, far from being inclined to
initiate others into the mysteries of Ceremonial Magic, I had shrunk all along from
its illusions and weariness. Moreover, such ceremonies necessitated an equipment
which would be expensive and hard to collect. I buried myself therefore in the
NECROMANCY 65
study of the transcendent Kabalah, and troubled no further about English adepts,
when, returning one day to my hotel, I found a note awaiting me. This note con-
tained half of a card, divided transversely, on which I recognized at once the seal
of Solomon. It was accompanied by a small sheet of paper, on which these words
were pencilled: Tomorrow, at three o'clock, in front of Westminster Abbey, the
second half of this card will be given you. I kept this curious assignation. At the
appointed spot I found a carriage drawn up, and as I held unaffectedly the frag-
ment of card in my hand, a footman approached, making a sign as he did so, and
then opened the door of the equipage. It contained a lady in black, wearing a
thick veil; she motioned to me to take a seat beside her, showing me at the same
time the other half of the card. The door closed, the carriage drove off, and the
lady raising her veil I saw that my appointment was with an elderly person, hav-
ing grey eyebrows and black eyes of unusual brilliance, strangely fixed in expres-
sion. Sir, she began, with a strongly marked English accent, I am aware that
the law of secrecy is rigorous amongst adepts; a friend of Sir B---L--- who has
seen you, knows that you have been asked for phenomena, and that you have
refused to gratify such curiosity. You are possibly without the materials; I should
like to show you a complete magical cabinet, but I must exact beforehand the
most inviolable silence. If you will not give me this pledge upon your honour, I
shall give orders for you to be driven to your hotel. I made the required promise
and keep it faithfully by not divulging the name, position or abode of this lady,
whom I soon recognized as an initiate, not exactly of the first order, but still of a
most exalted grade. We had a number of long conversations, in the course of
which she insisted always upon the necessity of practical experience to complete
initiation. She showed me a collection of magical vestments and instruments, lent
me some rare books which I needed; in short, she determined me to attempt at her
house the experiment of a complete evocation, for which I prepared during a
period of twentyone days, scrupulously observing the rules laid down in the thir-
teenth chapter of the Ritual .
The preliminaries terminated on 2nd July; it was proposed to evoke the phan-
tom of the divine Apollonius and interrogate it upon two secrets, one which con-
cerned myself and one which interested the lady. She had counted on taking part
in the evocation with a trustworthy person, who, however, proved nervous at the
last moment, and, as the triad or unity is indispensable for Magical Rites, I was
left to my own resources. The cabinet prepared for the evocation was situated in a
turret; it contained four concave mirrors and a species of altar having a white
marble top, encircled by a chain of magnetized iron. The Sign of the Pentagram,
as given in the fifth chapter of this work, was graven and gilded on the white mar-
ble surface; it was inscribed also in various colours upon a new white lambskin
stretched beneath the altar. In the middle of the marble table there was a small 1
copper chafing-dish, containing charcoal of alder and laurel wood; another chaf-
66 The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic
ing-dish was set before me on a tripod. I was clothed in a white garment, very
similar to the alb of our catholic priests, but longer and wider, and I wore upon
my head a crown of vervain leaves, intertwined with a golden chain. I held a new
sword in one hand, and in the other the Ritual . I kindled two fires with the req-
uisite prepared substances, and began reading the evocations of the Ritual in a
voice at first low, but rising by degrees. The smoke spread, the flame caused the
objects upon which it fell to waver, then it went out, the smoke still floating white
and slow about the marble altar; I seemed to feel a quaking of the earth, my ears
tingled, my heart beat quickly. I heaped more twigs and perfumes on the chaf-
ing-dishes, and as the flame again burst up, I beheld distinctly, before the altar,
the figure of a man of more than normal size, which dissolved and vanished away.
I recommenced the evocations and placed myself within a circle which I had
drawn previously between the tripod and the altar. Thereupon the mirror which
was behind the altar seemed to brighten in its depth, a wan form was outlined
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