meetings 1 are the foulest and most degraded rituals of black 
magic, the laws of Magick are not thereby suspended. The iaws 
of Magick are the iaws of Nature. 
A singular and world-famous exampie of this is of sufficiently 
recent date to be fresh in the memory of many people now living. 
At a nigger camp meeting in the “United” States of America, 
devotees were worked up to such a pitch of excitement that the 
whole assembly deveioped a furious form of hysteria. The 
comparatively intelligible Cries of “Glory” and “Hallelujah” 
no longer expressed the situation. Somebody screamed out “Ta- 
ra-ra-boom-de-ay! ”, and this was taken up by the whole meeting 
and yelled continuously, until reaction set in. The affair got into 
the papers, and some particularly bright disciple of John Stuart 
Mill, logician and economist, thought that these words, having set 
one set of fools crazy, might do the same to ail the other fools in 
the world. He accordingly wrote a song, and produced the desired 
resuit. This is the most notorious example in recent times of the 
power exerted by a barbarous name of évocation. 
A few words may be useful to reconcile the general notion of 
Causality with that of Magick. How can we be sure that a person 
waving a stick and howling thereby produces thunderstorms ? In 
no other way than that familiar to Science ; we note that whenever 
we put a lighted match to dry gunpowder, an unintelligibly 
arbitrary phenomenon, that of sound, is observedj and so forth. 
We need not dwell upon this point ; but it seems worth while 
to answer one of the objections to the possibility of Magick, 
chosing one which is at first sight of an obviously “fatal” character. 
It is convenient to quote Verbatim from the Diary2 of a 
distinguished Magician and philosopher. 
“I hâve noticed that the effect of a Magical Work has followed 
1. See, for an account of properly-conducted congregational cérémo¬ 
nial, Equinox I, IX. “Energized Enthusiasm”, and Equinox III. I. Liber 
XV. Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae. The “Revival 
meetings” here in question were deliberate exploitations of religious hysteria. 
2. In a later entry we read that the diarist has found a similar train 
of argument in “Space, Time, and Gravitation ’, page 51* He was much 
encouraged by the confirmation of his thesis in so independent a System 
of thought. 
— 74