18. Charms And Philtresa

JUSTITIA MYSTERIUM CANES We HAVE now to approach the most criminal abuse to which magical sciences can be put, namely, venomous Magic, or rather sorcery. Let it be understood here that we write not to instruct but to warn. If human justice, instead of punishing the adepts, had proscribed only the nigromancers and poisoning sorcerers, it is certain, as we have observed previously, that its severity would have been well placed, since the most severe penalties could never be excessive in the case of such criminals. At the same time it must not be supposed that the right of life and death which belongs secretly to the Magus has been exercised always to satisfy some infamous vengeance, or some cupidity more infamous still. In the Middle Ages, as in the ancient world, magical associations have frequently struck down or destroyed slowly the revealers or profaners of mysteries, and when the magic sword has refrained from striking, when the spilling of blood was dangerous, then Aqua Toffana, poisoned nosegays, the shirt of Nessus, and other deadly instruments, still stranger and still less known, were used to carry out sooner or later the terrible sentence of the free judges. We have said that there is in Magic a great and indicible Arcanum, which is never mentioned among adepts, which the profane above all must be prevented from divining. In former times, whosoever revealed, or caused the key of this supreme secret to be discovered by others through imprudent revelations, was condemned immediately to death, and was often driven to execute the sentence himself. The celebrated prophetic supper of Cazotte, described by Laharpe, has not been understood hitherto. Laharpe very naturally yielded to the temptation of surprising his readers by amplifying the details of his narrative. Everyone present at this supper, Laharpe excepted, was an initiate who had divulged or at least profaned the mysteries. Cazotte, the most exalted of all in the scale of initiation, pronounced their sentence of death in the name of illuminism, and this sentence was executed variously but rigorously, even as several years and several centuries previously had occurred in the case of similar judgements against the Abbe de Villars, Urban Grandier and many others. The revolutionary philosophers perished, as did Cagliostro deserted in the prisons of the Inquisition; as did the mystic band of Catherine Theos; as did the imprudent Schroepffer, driven to suicide in the midst of magical triumphs and the universal infatuation; as did the deserter Kotzebue, who was stabbed by Carl Sand; as did also so many others whose corpses have been discovered without anyone being able to ascertain the cause of their sudden and sanguinary death. The strange allocution addressed to Cazotte when he himself was condemned by the president of the revolutionary tribunal will be called readily to mind. The Gordian Knot of the terrible drama of '93 is still concealed in the darkest sanctuary of the Secret Societies. To adepts of good faith, who sought to emancipate the common people, were opposed those of another sect, attached to more ancient traditions, who fought against them by means analogous to those of their adversaries: the practice of the Great Arcanum was made impossible by unmasking its theory. The crowd understood nothing, but it misdoubted everything, and fell lower still in its discouragement than some had schemed to raise it. The Great Arcanum became more secret than ever; the adepts, checkmated by each other, could exercise their power neither to govern the uninitiated nor to deliver themselves; they condemned one another to the death of traitors; they abandoned one another to exile, to suicide, to the knife and the scaffold.