That, however, which God and the Christian Saints are justified in doing, becomes a crime, if successful, in simple mortals.
Sorcery and incantations are regarded as fables now; yet from the day of the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws against witchcraft of England and America -- obsolete but not repealed to this day -- such incantations, even when only suspected, were punished as criminal.
Why punish a chimera?
And still we read of Constantine, the Emperor, sentencing to death the philosopher Sopatrus for unchaining the winds, and thus preventing ships loaded with grain from arriving in time to put an end to famine.
Pausanias, when affirming that he saw with his own eyes "men who by simple prayers and incantations " stopped a strong hail-storm, is derided.
This does not prevent modern Christian writers from advising prayer during storm and danger, and believing in its efficacy.
Hoppo and Stadlein two magicians and sorcerers -- were sentenced to death for throwing charms on fruit and transferring a harvest by magic arts from one field to another, hardly a century ago, if we can believe Sprenger, the famous writer, who vouches for it: " Qui fruges excantassent segetem pellicentes incantando.
" Let us close by reminding the reader that, without the smallest shadow of superstition, one may believe in the dual nature of every object on Earth -- in the spiritual and the material, the visible and the invisible nature, and that science virtually proves this, while denying its own demonstration.
For if, as Sir William Grove has it, the electricity we handle is but the result of ordinary matter affected by something invisible, the " ultimate generating power" of every Force, the " one omnipresent influence, " then it only becomes natural that one should believe as the ancients did; namely, that every Element is dual in its nature.
"ETHEREAL fire is the emanation of the KABIR proper; the aerial is but the union (correlation) of the former with terrestrial fire, and its guidance and application on our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a lesser dignity" -- an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it; and the same may be said of every Cosmic Element.
No one will deny that the human being is possessed of various forces: magnetic, sympathetic, antipathetic, nervous, dynamical, occult, mechanical, mental -- every kind of force; and that the physical forces are all biological in their essence, seeing that they intermingle with, and often merge into, those forces that we have named intellectual and moral -- the first being the vehicles, so to say, the upadhi, of the second.
No one, who does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in [[Vol.
1, Page]] 470 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
saying that their presence and commingling are the very essence of our being; that they constitute the Ego in man, in fact.
These potencies have their physiological, physical, mechanical, as well as their nervous, ecstatic, clairaudient, and clairvoyant phenomena, which are now regarded and recognised as perfectly natural, even by science.
Why should man be the only exception in nature, and why cannot even the ELEMENTS have their vehicles, their "Vahans" in what we call the PHYSICAL FORCES?
And why, above all, should such beliefs be called "superstition" along with the religions of old?
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The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage maps parallel structures across scales: ethereal/aerial/terrestrial fire correspond to the human's physical/intellectual/moral forces, with physical forces serving as 'upadhi' (vehicles) for the higher.
Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.
The passage explicitly asserts 'the dual nature of every object on Earth—in the spiritual and the material, the visible and the invisible nature' as a fundamental structural claim about reality.
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The 'one omnipresent influence' described as the 'ultimate generating power of every Force' pervades all matter, and every element is said to possess a spiritual nature interpenetrating the material.
Naturally-existing, non-human intelligences native to a single element — earth, air, fire, or water — rather than the fourfold-composite human nature: Paracelsus's gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines; the Deva Kingdom or fairy kingdom of Western occultism, forming their own parallel kingdom capable of incarnating in or forming relationships with humans. Distinct from artificial_elemental (a manufactured thought-entity deliberately created by a single operator, not a naturally-occurring species) and animism (the general doctrine that nature-places host indwelling spirits, of which this is one specific taxonomic system organised around the four elements rather than locality).
The passage explicitly names 'a Kabir of a lesser dignity' and 'an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it' as the guiding intelligence of the aerial element, directly invoking the taxonomy of elemental intelligences.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage describes a clear downward cascade: 'ETHEREAL fire is the emanation of the KABIR proper; the aerial is but the union (correlation) of the former with terrestrial fire, and its guidance...belongs to a Kabir of a lesser dignity.'
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The passage frames sorcery and incantations as knowledge that is criminal for mortals though justified for God, touching on the theme of transgressive knowing against prohibition.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The passage's central argument is that every object possesses a dual nature—spiritual and material, visible and invisible—and that an invisible 'one omnipresent influence' underlies all physical forces, making the non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical the core thesis.
The doctrine that human volition, cultivated by discipline and emancipated from passion and servitude, is the primary instrument of magical operation — will confirmed by persistent acts acquires causal power over self, others, and nature; distinct from faith and from mere desire.
The historical examples of operators effecting changes in nature (stopping storms, transferring harvests) presuppose that trained human volition has causal power over natural phenomena.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The passage draws a parallel between the human being's multiple forces (physical, intellectual, moral) and the elements' own vehicles and dual natures, asking 'why should man be the only exception in nature.'
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
The dual nature of every element (ethereal/aerial/terrestrial, spiritual/material, visible/invisible) is presented as a structural law of all things, with each pair being two aspects of the same reality.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The passage marshals historical examples of incantations stopping hailstorms, unchaining winds, and transferring harvests by magic arts to argue for the causal efficacy of spoken magical formulas.