THE EQUINOX
spreading like an intellectual plague. Young America raves,
she has fever; she is, perhaps, cutting her teeth. But
France! France to accept such things! No, it is not pos-
sible, and it isnot so. But while they refuse the doctrines,
serious men should observe the phenomena, remain calm in
the midst of the agitations of all the fanaticisms (for in-
credulity also has its own), and judge after having examined.
To preserve one’s reason in the midst of madmen, one’s
faith in the midst of superstitions, one’s dignity in the midst
of buffoons, and one’s independence among the sheep of
Panurge, is of all miracles the rarest, the finest, and the most
difficult to accomplish.
CHAPTER IV
FLUIDIC PHANTOMS AND THEIR MYSTERIES
THE ancients gave different names to these: larvae,
lemures (empuses). They loved the vapour of shed blood,
and fled from the blade of the sword.
Theurgy evoked them, and the Qabalah recognized them
under the name of elementary spirits.
They were not spirits, however, for they were mortal.
They were fluidic coagulations which one could destroy by
dividing them.
They were a sort of animated mirages, imperfect emana-
tions of human life. The traditions of Black Magic say that
they were born owing to the celibacy of Adam. Paracelsus
says that the vapours of the blood of hysterical women people
the air with phantoms; and these ideas are so ancient, that
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