11. The Magic Chain-a

MANUS FORCE THE GREAT Magical Agent, by us termed the Astral Light, by others the soul of the earth, and designated by old chemists under the names of Azoth and MAGNESIA, this occult, unique and indubitable force, is the key of all empire, the secret of all power. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the serpent of the Edenic Mystery; it is the universal glass of visions, the bond of sympathies, the source of love, prophecy and glory. To know how to make use of this Agent is to be the trustee of God's own power; all real, effective Magic, all occult force is there, and its demonstration is the sole end of all genuine books of science. To have control of the Great Magical Agent there are two operations necessary - to concentrate and project, or, in other words, to fix and to move. Fixity has been provided as the basis and guarantee of movement by the Author of all things: the Magus must go to work in like manner. It is said that enthusiasm is contagious - and why? Because it cannot be produced in the absence of rooted faith. Faith produces faith; to believe is to have a reason for willing; to will with reason is to will with power - I do not say with an infinite but with an indefinite power. What operates in the intellectual and moral world obtains still more in the physical, and when Archimedes was in want of a lever to move the world, he was seeking simply the Great Magical Arcanum. One arm of the androgyne figure of Henry Khunrath bore the word CoAGULA and the other SOLVE. To collect and diffuse are Nature's two words - but after what manner can we accomplish these operations on the Astral Light or soul of the world? Concentration is by isolation and distribution by the magical chain. Isolation consists in absolute independence of thought, complete liberty of the heart and perfect continence of the senses. Every man who is obsessed by prejudices and fears, every passionate person who is slave of his passions, is incapable of concentrating or coagulating, according to the expression of Khunrath, the Astral Light or soul of the earth. All true adepts have been independent even amidst torture, sober and chaste unto death. The explanation of such anomaly is this: in order to dispose of a force, you must not be surprised by this force in a way that it may dispose of you. But then, will exclaim those who seek only in Magic for a method of inordinately satisfying the lusts of nature: “Of what avail is power which must not be used for our own satisfaction?” Unhappy creatures who ask, if I told you, how should you understand? Are pearls nothing because they are worthless to the horde of Epicurus? Did not Curtius prefer the government of those who had gold rather than its possession by himself? Must we not be a little removed from the common man when we almost pretend to be God? Moreover, I grieve to deject or discourage you, but I am not inventing the transcendental sciences: I teach them, defining their immutable necessities in the presentation of their primary and most inexorable conditions. Pythagoras was a free, sober and chaste man; Apollonius of Tyana and Julius Caesar were both of repellent austerity; the sex of Paracelsus was suspected, so foreign was he to the weakness of love; Raymond Lully carried the severities of life to the most exalted point of asceticism; Jerome Cardan exaggerated the practice of fasting till he nearly perished of starvation, if we may accept tradition; Agrippa, poor and buffeted from town to town, almost died of misery rather than yield to the caprice of a princess who insulted the liberty of science. What then made the happiness of these men?