Transcendental Magic — Éliphas Lévi
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p. 118point ; despite her asseverations to the contrary, I have no doubt that she was addicted to necromancy and goetia. She at times lost all self-control, at others yielded to senseless fits of passion, for which it was difficult to discover a cause.
I left London without bidding her adieu, and I shall faithfully adhere to my engagement by giving no clue to her identity, which might connect her name with practices, pursued in all probability without the knowledge of her family, which I believe to be large and of very considerable position.
There are evocations of intelligence, evocations of love, and evocations of hate ; but, once more, there is no proof whatsoever that spirits really leave the higher spheres to communicate with us ; the opposite, as a fact, is more probable. We evoke the memories which they have left in the astral light, or common reservoir of universal magnetism.
It was in this light that the Emperor Julian once saw the gods manifest, looking old, ill, and decrepit — fresh proof of the influence exercised by current and accredited opinions on the reflections of this same magical agent which makes our tables talk and answers by taps on the walls.
After the evocation I have described, I re-read carefully the life of Apollonius, who is represented by historians as an ideal of antique beauty and elegance, and I then observed that towards the end of his life he was starved and tormented in prison.
This circumstance, which may have remained in my memory without my being aware of it, possibly determined the unattractive form of my vision, which I regard solely as the voluntary dream of a waking man. I have seen two other persons, whom there is no occasion to name, both differing, as regards costume and appearance, from what I had expected.
For the rest, I commend the greatest caution to those who propose devoting themselves to similar experiences ; their result is intense exhaustion, and frequently a shock sufficient to occasion illness. I must not conclude this chapter without mentioning the curious opinions of certain Kabbalists, who distinguish bep. 119tween apparent and real death, holding that the two are seldom simultaneous. In their idea, the majority of persons who are buried are still alive, while a number of others who are regarded as living are in reality dead. Incurable madness, for example, would be with them an incomplete but real death, leaving the terrestial body under the purely instinctive control of the sidereal body.
When the human soul experiences a greater blow than it can bear, it would thus become separated from the body, leaving the animal soul, or sidereal body, in its place, and these human remains would be to some extent less alive really than a mere animal. Dead persons of this kind are said to be recognised by the complete extinction of the moral and affectionate sense ; they are neither bad nor good ; they are dead.
Such beings, who are the poisonous fungi of the human race, absorb the life of living beings to their fullest possible extent, and this is why their proximity benumbs the soul and chills the heart. If such corpse-like creatures really existed, they would realise all that was recounted in former times about brocalaques and vampires.
Now, are there not certain persons in whose presence one feels less intelligent, less good, sometimes even less honest ? Are there not some whose vicinity extinguishes all faith and all enthusiasm, who draw you by your weaknesses, who govern you by your evil propensities, and make you die slowly to morality in a torment like that of Mezentius ? These are dead people whom we mistake for living beings ; these are vampires whom we regard as friends !
p. 12014 3 0 TKANSMUTATIONS SPHERA LUNAE SEMPITERNUM AUXILIUM ST AUGUSTINE questioned seriously whether Apuleius could have been changed into an ass by a Thessalian sorceress, and theologians have long debated about the transformation of Nebuchadnezzar into a wild beast, which things merely prove that the eloquent doctor of Hippo was unacquainted with magical secrets and that the theologians in question have not advanced far in exegesis.
We are concerned in this chapter with different and more incredible marvels, which are at the same time incontestable. I refer to lycanthropy, or the nocturnal transformation of men into wolves, so celebrated in rural tales of the twilight by the histories of were-wolves. These histories are so well attested that, with a view to their explanation, sceptical science has recourse to furious mania and masquerading as animals.
But such hypotheses are puerile and explain nothing.
Let us seek elsewhere for the secret of the phenomena which have been observed on this subject, and begin with establishing ; — 1, That no one has ever been killed by a were-wolf, except by suffocation, without effusion of blood and without wounds ; 2, That were-wolves, though tracked, pursued, and even wounded, have never been killed on the spot ; 3, That persons suspected of these transformations have always been found at home, after a were-wolf chase, more or less maimed, sometimes dying, but invariably in their natural form.
Let us, next, establish phenomena of a different order. Nothing in the world is better borne out by evidence than the visible and real presence of P. Alphonsus Ligouri beside the dying pope, whilst the same personage was simultaneously seen at home, far from Eome, in prayer and ecstasy.
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