13. Necromancyb

We enter into communion with larvae, with dead or perishing substances, by this operation. The beings in question, for the most part, cannot speak except by a ringing in our ears produced by the nervous shock to which I have referred, and commonly they can reason only by reflecting our thoughts and our reveries. To behold these strange forms we must put ourselves in an abnormal condition akin to sleep or death; in other words, we must magnetize ourselves and enter into a kind of lucid and waking somnambulism. Then Necromancy has real results, and the evocations of Magic can produce actual visions. We have said that in the Great Magical Agent, which is the Astral Light, there are preserved all impressions of things, all images formed either by rays or reflections. In this same light our dreams come to us; it is this which befools the insane and misguides their dormant judgement in pursuit of the most bizarre phantoms. To insure vision without illusion in such light, a powerful will must help us to isolate reflections and attract rays only. To dream awake is to see in the Astral Light, and the orgies of the Sabbath, described by so many sorcerers in their criminal trials, came to them solely in this manner. The preparations and the substances used to obtain this result were often horrible, as we shall see in the “Ritual”, but the result itself was never doubtful. They saw, they heard, they handled the most abominable, most fantastic, most impossible things., We shall return to this subject in our fifteenth chapter; at the present moment we are concerned only with evocation of the dead. In the spring of the year 1854 I had undertaken a journey to London, that I might escape from internal disquietude and devote myself, without interruption, to science. I had letters of introduction to persons of eminence who were anxious for revelations from the supernatural world. I made the acquaintance of several and discovered in them, amidst much that was courteous, a depth of indifference or trifling. They asked me forthwith to work wonders, as if I were a charlatan, and I was somewhat discouraged, for, to speak frankly, far from being inclined to initiate others into the mysteries of Ceremonial Magic, I had shrunk all along from its illusions and weariness. Moreover, such ceremonies necessitated an equipment which would be expensive and hard to collect. I buried myself therefore in the study of the transcendent Kabalah, and troubled no further about English adepts, when, returning one day to my hotel, I found a note awaiting me. This note contained half of a card, divided transversely, on which I recognized at once the seal of Solomon. It was accompanied by a small sheet of paper, on which these words were pencilled: “Tomorrow, at three o'clock, in front of Westminster Abbey, the second half of this card will be given you.” I kept this curious assignation. At the appointed spot I found a carriage drawn up, and as I held unaffectedly the fragment of card in my hand, a footman approached, making a sign as he did so, and then opened the door of the equipage. It contained a lady in black, wearing a thick veil; she motioned to me to take a seat beside her, showing me at the same time the other half of the card. The door closed, the carriage drove off, and the lady raising her veil I saw that my appointment was with an elderly person, having grey eyebrows and black eyes of unusual brilliance, strangely fixed in expression. “Sir,” she began, with a strongly marked English accent, “I am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous amongst adepts; a friend of Sir B---L--- who has seen you, knows that you have been asked for phenomena, and that you have refused to gratify such curiosity.