THE EQUINOX
should now be able to understand the thought of the Jew
Abraham.
The secret fire of the masters of alchemy was, then,
electricity ; and there is the better half of their grand arcanum ;
but they knew how to equilibrate its force by a magnetic
influence which they concentrated in their athanor. This
is what results from the obscure dogmas of Basil Valentine,
of Bernard Trevisan, and of Henry Khunrath, who, all of
them, pretend to have worked the transmutation, like Raymond
Lully, like Arnaud de Villeneuve, and like Nicholas Flamel.
The universal light, when it magnetizes the worlds, is
called astral light; when it forms the metals, one calls it
azoth, or philosophical mercury ; when it gives life to animals,
it should be called animal magnetism.
The brute is subject to the fatalities of this light; man is
able to direct it.
It is the intelligence which, by adapting the sign to the
thought, creates forms and images.
The universal light is like the divine imagination, and
this world, which changes ceaselessly, yet ever remaining the
same with regard to the laws of its configuration, is the vast
dream of God.
Man formulates the light by his imagination; he attracts
to himself the light in sufficient quantities to give suitable
forms to his thoughts and even to his dreams; if this light
overcomes him, if he drowns his understanding in the forms
which he evokes, he is mad. But the fluidic atmosphere of
madmen is often a poison for tottering reason and for exalted
imaginations.
The forms which the over-excited imagination produces
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