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wafer in such wise that it becomes charged with the divine substance in so active a form that its 
physical injection gives spiritual nourishment to the communicant. But all our actions fit this 
equation. A tailor with the toothache takes a portion of the wealth derived from the business to 
which he has consecrated himself, a symbol of his accumulated and stored energy, in order to have 
the tooth removed and so to recover the consciousness of physical well-being. 
Put in this way, the magical theory of existence is self-evident. I did not apprehend it clearly at this 
time; but I unconsciously acted upon it as soon as I had discovered the worthlessness of the world. 
But I was so far from perceiving that every act is magical, whether one likes it or not, that I 
supposed the escape from matter to involve a definite invasion of the spiritual world. Indeed, I was 
so far from understanding that matter was in its nature secondary and symbolic, that my principal 
preoccupation was to obtain first-hand sensory evidence of spiritual beings. In other words, I 
wanted to evoke the denizens of the other planes to visible and audible appearance. 
This resolution was the first manifestation of my true will. I had thrown myself with the utmost 
enthusiasm into various occupations from time to time, but they had never occupied my entire 
attention. I had never given myself wholly to chess, mountaineering or even to poetry. Now, for the 
first time, I felt myself prepared to expend my resources of every kind to attain my purpose. 
To me the spiritual world consisted roughly of the Trinity and their angels on the one side; the devil 
and his on the other. It is absolutely sophistical to pretend that Christianity is not Manichaean in 
essence. The Vedanta theory of Advaitism in the Upanishads makes evil --- and indeed all 
manifested existence --- Maya, pure illusion. But even at this, there is no satisfactory 
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explanation of the appearance of the illusion. In Christianity evil is just as real as good; and so long 
as two opposites exist they must either be equal or there must be a third component to balance 
them. Now this is in itself sophistical, for the third component only exists as a make- weight; and it 
is pure fiction to discriminate between two things whose only function is to counterbalance a third 
thing. In respect of the universe of discourse involved, a proposition cannot have two 
contradictories. If the opposite of good exists at all, as it must, if "good" is to have any meaning, it 
must be exactly equal in quantity and quality to that good. On the Christian hypothesis, the reality 
of evil makes the devil equal to God. This is the heresy of Manes, no doubt. But those who condemn 
Manes must, despite themselves, implicitly affirm his theorem. 
I seem to have understood this instinctively; and since I must take sides with one party or the other 
it was not difficult to make up my mind. The forces of good were those which had constantly 
oppressed me. I saw them daily destroying the happiness of my fellow-men. Since, therefore, it was 
my business to explore the spiritual world, my first step must be to get into personal communication 
with the devil. I had heard a good deal about this operation in a vague way; but what I wanted was 
a manual of technical instruction. I devoted myself to black magic; and the bookseller --- Deighton 
Bell, God bless 'em! --- immediately obliged with The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, which, 
judging by the title, was exactly what I needed. 
It was with intense disappointment and distrust that I read this compilation. The author was a 
pompous, ignorant and affected dipsomaniac from America, and he treated his subject with the 
vulgarity of Jerome K. Jerome, and the beery, leering frivolity of a red-nosed music-hall comedian 
making jokes about mothers-in-law and lodgers. 
It was, however, clear, even from the garbled texts of the Grimoires which he quoted, that the 
diabolists had no conception of the Satan hymned by Milton and Huysmans. They were not 
protagonists in the spiritual warfare against restriction, against the oppressors of the human soul, 
the blasphemers who denied the supremacy of the will of man. They merely aimed at achieving 
contemptible or malicious results, such as preventing a huntsman from killing game, finding buried 
treasure, bewitching the neighbours' cows, or "acquiring the affection of a judge". For all their 
pretended devotion to Lucifer or Belial, they were sincere Christians in spirit, and inferior Christians 
at that, for their methods were puerile. The prayer book, with its petitions for rain and success in