The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE EQUINOX for example, who live in isolation, deprived of all communica- tion with humanity, and who are daily in fluidic sympathy with animals gathered together in great number, as is ordin- arily the case with shepherds, are possessed of the demon whose name is /egion,; in their turn they reign despotically over the fluid souls of the flocks that are confided to their care: consequently their good-will or ill-will makes their cattle prosper or die; and this influence of animal sympathy can be exercised by them upon human plastic mediums which are ill defended, owing either to a weak will or a limited intelligence. Thus are explained the bewitchments which are habitually made by shepherds, and the still quite recent phenomena of the Presbytery of Cideville. Cideville is a little village of Normandy, where a few years ago were produced phenomena like those which have since occurred under the influence of Mr. Home. M. de Mirville has studied them carefully, and M. Gougenet Des- mousseaux has reprinted all the details in a book, published in 1854, entitled Mawrs et pratiques des démons. The most remarkable thing in this latter author is that he seems to divine the existence of the plastic medium or the fluidic body. “We have certainly not two souls,” said he, “ but perhaps we have two bodies.” Everything that he says, in fact, would seem to prove this hypothesis. He saw a shepherd whose fluidic form haunted a Presbytery, and who was wounded at a distance by blows inflicted on his astral larva. We shall here ask of MM. de Mirville and Gougenet Des- mousseaux if they take this shepherd for the devil, and if, far or near, the devil such as they conceive him can be scratched 252