21. Divinationb

In philosophy, it gives absolute certitude; in religion, the universal secret of faith; in physics, the composition, decomposition, recomposition, realization and adaptation of Philosophical Mercury, called AzOTH by the alchemists; in dynamics it multiplies our forces by those of perpetual motion; it is at once mystical, metaphysical and material, with correspondent effects in the three worlds; it procures charity in God, truth in science and gold in riches, for metallic transmutation is at once an allegory and reality, as all the adepts of true science are perfectly well aware. Yes, gold can be made really and materially by means of the Stone of the Sages, which is an amalgam of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, thrice combined in AzOTH by a triple sublimation and a triple fixation. Yes, the operation is often easy and may be accomplished in a day, an instant; at other times it requires months and years. But to succeed in the Great Work, one must be divinus - a diviner, in the kabalistic sense of the term - and it is indispensable to have renounced, in respect of personal interest, the advantage of wealth, so as to become its dispenser. Raymund Lully enriched sovereigns, planted Europe with institutions and remained poor. Nicholas Flamel, who in spite of his legend is really dead, only attained the Great Work when asceticism had detached him completely from riches. He was initiated by a suddenly imparted understanding of the book Aesh Mezareph , written in Hebrew by the Kabalist Abraham, possibly the compiler of the Sepher Yetzirah . Now this understanding was for Flamel an intuition deserved, or rather, rendered possible, by the personal preparations of the adept. I believe that I have spoken sufficiently. Divination is therefore an intuition, and the key of this intuition is the universal and magical doctrine of analogies. By means of these analogies the Magus interprets visions, as did the patriarch Joseph in Egypt, according to Biblical history. The analogies in the reflections of the Astral Light are as exact as the shades of colour in the solar spectrum, and can be calculated and explained with great accuracy. It is, however, indispensable to know the dreamer's degree of intellectual life, which, indeed, he will himself reveal completely by his own dreams and in a manner that will astonish himself. Somnambulism, presentiments and second sight are simply an accidental or induced disposition to dream in a voluntary or awakened sleep - that is, to perceive the analogous reflections of the Astral Light, as we shall explain to demonstration in our “Ritual”, when providing the long-sought method of regularly producing and directing magnetic phenomena. As to divinatory instruments, they are simply a means of communication between diviner and consultant, serving merely to fix the two wills upon the same sign. Vague, complex, shifting figures help to focus reflections of the astral fluid, and it is thus that lucidity is procured by coffee-grouts, mists, the white of egg, etc., which evoke fatidic forms, existing only in the TRANSLUCID - that is, in the imagination of the operators. Vision in water is operated by the dazzlement and fatigue of the optic nerve, which then resigns its functions to the TRANSLUCID and produces a brain illusion, in which reflections of the Astral Light are taken for real images. Hence nervous persons, of weak sight and lively imagination, are best fitted for this species of divination, which indeed is most successful when exercised by children. Let us not misinterpret, however, the function which we attribute to imagination in divinatory arts.