13. Necromancy-c

There are two kinds of Necromancy, that of light and that of darkness - the evocation by Prayer, Pantacle and Perfumes, and the evocation by blood, imprecations and sacrilege. We have practised only the first, and advise no one to devote themselves to the second. It is certain that the images of the dead do appear to the magnetized persons who evoke them; it is certain also that they never reveal any mysteries of the life beyond. They are beheld as they still exist in the memories of those who knew them, and doubtless as their reflections have left them impressed on the Astral Light. When evoked spectres reply to questions addressed them, it is always by signs or by interior and imaginary impressions, never with a voice which really strikes the ears; and this is comprehensible enough, for how should a shadow speak? With what instrument could it cause the air to vibrate by impressing it in such a manner as to make distinct sounds? At the same time, electrical contacts are experienced from apparitions and sometimes appear to be produced by the hand of a phantom; but the phenomena is wholly subjective, is occasioned solely by the power of imagination and the local wealth of that occult force which we term the Astral Light. The proof of this is that spirits, or at least the spectres pretended to be such, may indeed touch us occasionally, but we cannot touch them, and this is one of the most affrighting characteristics of these apparitions, which are at times so real in appearance that we cannot unmoved feel the hand pass through that which seems a body and yet make contact with nothing. We read in ecclesiastical historians that Spiridion, Bishop of Tremithonte, afterwards invoked as a saint, called up the spirit of his daughter, Irene, to ascertain from her the whereabouts of some concealed money which she had taken in charge for a traveller. Swedenborg communicated habitually with the so-called dead, whose forms appeared to him in the Astral Light. Several credible persons of our acquaintance have assured us that they have been revisited for years by the dead who were dear to them. The celebrated atheist Sylvanus Marechal appeared to his widow and one of her friends, to acquaint her concerning a sum of 1,500 francs which he had concealed in a secret drawer. This anecdote was related to us by an old friend of the family. Evocations should have always a motive and a justifiable end; otherwise, they are works of darkness and folly, most dangerous for health and reason. To evoke out of pure curiosity, or to find out whether we shall see anything, is to court fruitless fatigue. The transcendental sciences admit of neither doubt nor puerility. The permissible motive of an evocation may be either love or intelligence. Evocations of love require less apparatus and are in every respect easier. The procedure is as follows. We must collect, in the first place, carefully the memorials of him-or her-whom we desire to behold, the articles he used, and on which his impression remains; we must also prepare an apartment in in which the person lived, or otherwise one of similar kind, and place his portrait veiled in white therein, surrounded with his favourite flowers, which must be renewed daily. A fixed date must then be chosen, being that of the person's birth, or one that was especially fortunate for his and our own affection, one of which we may believe that his soul, however blessed elsewhere, cannot lose the remembrance. This must be the day of evocation, and we must prepare for it during the space of two weeks. Throughout the period we must refrain from extending to anyone the same proofs of affection which we have the right to expect from the dead; we must observe strict chastity, live in retreat and take only one modest and light collation daily.