6. Magical Equilibriumb

Let us permit it to enjoy the easy triumph of denying what it does not know. We shall demonstrate later on that death is preceded always by a lethargic sleep, and hence takes place gradually; that resurrection is possible in certain cases; that lethargy is a real but uncompleted death; and that the final paroxysm is in many cases subsequent to inhumation. This, however, is not the subject of the present chapter. We affirm now that a lucid will can act upon the mass of the Astral Light, and in concurrence with other wills, which it absorbs and draws along, can determine great and irresistible currents. We say also that the Astral Light condenses or rarefies in proportion as currents accumulate, more or less, at certain Centres. When it is deficient in the energy required for the support of life, diseases accompanied by sudden decomposition follow, of a kind which baffle physicians. There is no other cause, for example, in the case of cholera-morbus, and the swarms of animalculae observed or supposed by some specialists may be the effect rather than the cause. Cholera should be treated therefore by insufflation, did not the operator thereby run the chance of an exchange with the patient which would be very formidable for himself. Every intelligent effort of will is a projection of the human fluid or light, and here it is needful to distinguish the human from the Astral Light, and Animal from Universal Magnetism. In making use of the word fluid, we employ an accepted expression, and seek to be understood in this manner, but we are far from deciding that the latent light is a fluid. Everything prompts us, on the contrary, to prefer the system of vibrations in the explanation of this phenomenal subject. However it may be, the light in question, being the instrument of life, cleaves naturally to all living centres, attaches itself to the nucleus of planets, even as to the heart of man - and by the heart we understand magically the great sympathetic - identifying itself with the individual life of the being which it animates, and it is by this quality of sympathetic assimilation that it is distributed without confusion. Hence it is terrestrial in its affinity with the sphere of the earth and human exclusively in its affinity with men. It is for this reason that electricity, caloric, light and magnetism, produced by ordinary physical means, not only do not originate, but tend rather to neutralize the effects of Animal Magnetism. The Astral Light, subordinated to a blind mechanism, and proceeding from arbitrary automatic centres, is a dead light and works mathematically, following given impulsions or fatal laws. The human light is fatal only to the ignorant, performing chance experiments; in the seer it is subjected to intelligence, submitted to imagination and dependent on will. This light, continually projected by the will, constitutes the personal atmospheres of Swedenborg. The body absorbs what environs it and radiates perpetually by projecting its influences and invisible molecules; it is the same with the spirit, so that this phenomenon, by some mystics termed Respiration, has really the influence, both physical and moral, which is assigned to it. It is undoubtedly contagious to breathe the same air as diseased persons, and to be within the circle of attraction and expansion which surrounds the wicked. When the magnetic atmosphere of two persons is so equilibrated that the attractive faculty of one draws the expansive faculty of the other, a tendency is produced which is termed sympathy; then imagination, calling up to it all the rays or reflections analogous to that which it experiences, makes a poem of the desires which captivate will, and if the persons differ in sex, it occasions in them, or more commonly in the weaker of the two, a complete intoxication of the Astral Light, which is termed passion par excellence, or love.