The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE EQUINOX already understand the possible abuses and predict the errors to which the Qabalah was obliged to give birth. The law of analogies, in fact, has been for qabalists of a secondary rank the object of a blind and fanatical faith. It is to this belief that one must attribute all the superstitions with which the adepts of occult science have been reproached. This is how they reasoned: The sign expresses the thing. The thing is the virtue of the sign. There is an analogical correspondence between the sign and the thing signified. The more perfect is the sign, the more entire is the correspondence. To say a word is to evoke a thought and make it present. To name God is to manifest God. The word acts upon souls, and souls react upon bodies; consequently one can frighten, console, cause to fall ill, cure, even kill, and raise from the dead by means of words. To utter a name is to create or evoke a being. In the name is contained the verda/ or spiritual doctrine of the being itself. When the soul evokes a thought, the sign of that thought is written automatically in the light. To invoke is toadjure, that is to say, to swear by a name; it is to perform an act of faith in that name, and to communi- cate in the virtue which it represents. Words in themselves are, then, good or evil, poisonous or wholesome. The most dangerous words are vain and lightly uttered words, because they are the voluntary abortions of thought. 190