22. The Book Of Hermes-o

Then comes the victory, and the wounded on both sides, now brothers in suffering and before humanity, will meet in the ambulances of the conquerors. Such are the consequences of the philosophical dogma of Hermes; such has been from all time the ethic of true adepts; such is the philosophy of the Rosicrucian inheritors of all the ancient wisdoms; such is the Secret Doctrine of those associations that are treated as subversive of the public order, and have ever been accused of conspiring against thrones and altars. The true adept, far from disturbing the public order, is its firmest supporter. He has too great a respect for liberty to desire anarchy: child of the light, he loves harmony and knows that darkness begets confusion. He accepts everything that is and denies only what is not. He wills true religion, practical, universal, full of faith, palpable, realized in all life; he wills it to have a wise and powerful priesthood, surrounded by all the virtues and all the prestige of faith. He wills the universal orthodoxy, the absolute, hierarchic, apostolic, sacramental, incontestable and uncontested catholicity. He wills an experimental philosophy, real, mathematical, modest in its conclusions, untiring in its researches, scientific in its progress. Who, therefore, can be against us if God and reason are with us? Does it matter if man prejudge and slander us? Our entire justification is in our thoughts and our works. We come not, like Oedipus, to destroy the sphinx of symbolism; we seek, on the contrary, to resuscitate it. The sphinx devours only blind interpreters; and he who slays it has not known how to divine it properly; it must be subdued, enchained and compelled to follow us. The sphinx is the living palladium of humanity, it is the conquest of the King of Thebes; it would have been the salvation of Oedipus, had Oedipus understood its whole enigma! In the positive and material order, what must be concluded from this work? Is Magic a force which science may abandon to the boldest and wickedest? Is it a cheat and falsehood invented by rogues to cozen the ignorant and feeble? Is Philosophical Mercury the exploitation of credulity by address? Those who understand us know already how to answer these questions. In these days, Magic can be no longer the art of fascinations and illusions: those only who wish to be deceived can be deceived now. But the narrow and rash incredulity of the last century is denied in totality by Nature herself. We are environed by prophecies and miracles; unbelief once denied them unwisely; now, science explains them. No, M. le Comte de Mirville, a lost spirit is not allowed to disturb the empire of God! No, things unknown cannot be explained by things impossible! No, invisible beings are not permitted to deceive, torment, seduce and even kill the living creatures of God, poor human beings, so ignorant, as it is, so weak, scarce able to combat their own delusions! Those who told you all this in your childhood, M. le Comte, have deceived you, and if you were child enough once to listen, be man enough now to disbelieve. Man is himself the creator of his heaven and hell, and there are no demons except our own follies. Minds chastised by truth are corrected by that chastisement, and dream no more of disturbing the world. If Satan exist, he can be only the most unfortunate, most ignorant, most humiliated and most impotent of beings. The existence of a universal agent of life, a living fire, an Astral Light, is demonstrated by facts.