11. The Magic Chainb

The knowledge of great secrets and the consciousness of power. It was sufficient for those exalted souls. Must one be like unto them in order to know what they knew? Assuredly not, and the existence of this book is perhaps a case in point; but in order to do what they did, it is absolutely necessary to take the means which they took. Yet what did they actually accomplish? They astonished and subdued the world; they reigned more truly than kings. Magic is an instrument of divine goodness or demoniac pride, but it is the annihilation of earthly joys and the pleasures of mortal life. Why study it? ask the luxurious. In all simplicity, to know it, and possibly after to learn mistrust of stupid unbelief or puerile credulity. Men of pleasure, and half of these I count for so many women, is not gratified curiosity highly pleasurable? Read therefore without fear, you will not be magicians against your will. Readiness for absolute renunciation is, moreover, necessary only in order to establish universal currents and transform the face of the world; there are relative magical operations, limited to a certain circle, which do not need such heroic virtues. We can act upon passions by passions, determine sympathies or antipathies, hurt even and heal, without possessing the omnipotence of the Magus. In this case, however, we must realize the risk of a reaction in proportion to the action, and to such risk we may fall easily a victim. All this will be explained in our “Ritual”. To make the Magic Chain is to establish a magnetic current which becomes stronger in proportion to the extent of the chain. We shall see in the “Ritual” how such currents can be produced, and what are the various modes of forming the chain. Mesmer's trough was a chain of an exceedingly imperfect kind; several great circles of illuminati in different northern countries possess others more potent. Even that association of Catholic priests, celebrated for their occult power and their unpopularity, is established upon the plan and follows the conditions of the most potent magical chains. Herein is the secret of their force, which they attribute solely to the grace or will of God, a vulgar and easy solution for every mystery of power in influence or attraction. In the “Ritual” it will be our task to estimate the sequence of truly magical ceremonies and evocations which constitute the great work of vocation under the name of the Exercises Of St. Ignatius. All enthusiasm propagated in a society by a scheme of intercourse and fixed practices in common produces a magnetic current, and is maintained or increased by the current. The action of the current is to transport and often to exalt beyond measure persons who are impressionable and weak, nervous organizations, temperaments inclined to hysteria or hallucination. Such people soon become powerful vehicles of magical force and project efficiently the Astral Light in the direction of the current itself; opposition at such a time to the manifestations of the force is, to some extent, a struggle with fatality. When the youthful Pharisee Saul, or Schol, threw himself, with all the fanaticism and all the obstinacy of a sectarian, across the line of advancing Christianity, he placed himself unconsciously at the mercy of a power against which he thought to prevail, and he was struck down by a formidable magnetic flash, doubtless the more instantaneous by reason of the combined effect of cerebral congestion and sunstroke. The conversion of the young Israelite, Alphonus of Ratisbon, is a contemporary fact which is absolutely of the same nature. We are acquainted with a sect of enthusiasts whom it is common to deride at a distance, and to join, despite one's self, as soon as they are approached, even with a hostile intention.