14. Transmutationsc

She accused him when he wished to withdraw from her, and the conversion of this young woman was a revenge, for there is nothing more cruel than depraved passions. An influential society, which intervened in the trial of Grandier for the destruction of the possible heretic, in this case rescued Father Girard for the honour of the order. Moreover, Grandier and Girard attained the same results by very different means, with which we shall be concerned specially in the sixteenth chapter. We act by our imagination on the imagination of others, by our sidereal body on theirs, by our organs on their organs, in such a way that, through sympathy, whether of inclination or obsession, we possess one another reciprocally and identify ourselves with those whom we wish to affect. Reactions against such dominations may cause the most pronounced antipathy to succeed the liveliest sympathy. Love has a tendency to unify beings; in thus identifying, it renders them rivals frequently, and hence enemies, if in the depth of the two natures there is some unsociable disposition like pride. To fill two united souls with pride in an equal degree is to disjoin them by making them rivals. Antagonism is the necessary consequence of a plurality of gods. When we dream of any living person, either his sidereal body presents itself to ours in the Astral Light or at least a reflection thereof, and our impressions at the meeting may often make known his secret dispositions in our regard. For example, love fashions the sidereal body of the one in the image and likeness of the other, so that the psychic medium of the woman is like a man and that of the man like a woman. It was this transfer which the Kabalists sought to express in an occult manner when they said, in explanation of an obscure passage in Genesis: “God created love by placing a rib of Adam in the breast of the woman and a portion of the flesh of Eve in the breast of the man, so that at the bottom of woman's heart there is the bone of man, while at the bottom of man's heart there is the flesh of woman” - an allegory which is certainly not devoid of depth and beauty. We have referred, in the previous chapter, to what the masters in Kabalah call the embryonic condition of souls. This state, completed after the death of the person who thereby possesses another, is commenced often in life, whether by obsession or by love. I knew a young woman whose parents inspired her with a great terror, and who began suddenly to inflict upon an inoffensive person the very acts she dreaded in them. I knew another who, after participating in an evocation concerned with a guilty woman suffering in the next world for certain eccentric acts, began to imitate, without any reason, the peculiarities of the dead person. To this occult influence must be attributed the terrible power of a parent's curse, which is feared by all nations on earth, as also the imminent danger of magical operations when anyone has not reached the isolation of true adepts. This virtue of sidereal transmutation, which really exists in love, explains the allegorical marvels of the wand of Circe. Apuleius speaks of a Thessalian woman who changed herself into a bird; he won the affections of her servant to discover the secrets of the mistress, but succeeded only in transforming himself into an ass. This allegory contains the most hidden secrets of love. Again, the Kabalists say that when a man falls in love with a female elementary - undine, sylphide or gnomide, as the case may be - she becomes immortal with him, or otherwise he dies with her. We have seen already that elementaries are imperfect and as yet mortal men.