Preface-g

Within an hour of the ceremony I felt a change, and it is only upon the rarest occasions since then, after some psychic injury, that I have had a temporary return of those depleting attacks of exhaustion. I have told this story in detail because it is a useful illustration of the manner in which the little-known powers of the mind can be abused by an unscrupulous person. First-hand experience is of far more value than any amount of illustration from the pages of history, however well authenticated. If such a transaction had taken place during the Middle Ages, the parish priest would have organised a witch-hunt. In the light of my own experiences I am not at all surprised that people who had acquired a reputation for the practice of witchcraft were lynched, the methods are so terrible and so intangible. We may think the records of the witch-trials are ridiculous, with their tales of wax images melting in front of slow fires, or the crucifying of christened toads, or the reciting of little jingles, such as “Horse, hattock, To ride, to ride.” But if we understand the use of mind-power we soon realise that these things were simply aids to concentration. There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal may as truly be said of the practitioners of Black Magic as of the Church. My own case belongs more to the realm of psychology than to occultism, the method employed being an application of hypnotic power to improper ends; I have given it, however, because I am convinced that hypnotic methods are very largely used in Black Magic, and that telepathic suggestion is the key to a large proportion of its phenomena. I cite my own case, painful as it is to me to do so, because an ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory. It was this experience which led me to take up the study of analytical psychology, and subsequently of occultism. As soon as I touched the deeper aspects of practical psychology and watched the dissection of the mind under psycho-analysis, I realised that there was very much more in the mind than was accounted for by the accepted psycho logical theories. I saw that we stood in the centre of a small circle of light thrown by accurate scientific knowledge, but around us was a vast, circumambient sphere of darkness, and in that darkness dim shapes were moving. It was in order to understand the hidden aspects of the mind that I originally took up the study of occultism. I have had my full share of the adventures of the Path; have known men and women who could indubitably be ranked as adepts; seen phenomena such as no seance room has ever known, and borne my share in it; taken part in psychic feuds, and stood my watch on the roster of the occult police force which, under the Masters of the Great White Lodge, keeps guard over the nations, each according to its race; kept the occult vigil when one dare not sleep while the sun is below the horizon; and hung on desperately, matching my staying-power against the attack until the moon-tides changed and the force of the onslaught blew itself out. And through all these experiences I was learning to interpret occultism in the light of psychology and psychology in the light of occultism, the one counterchecking and explaining the other. Because of my specialised knowledge people came to me when an occult attack was suspected, and their experience reinforces and supplements my own.