Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

the différence between live and dead matter. We pass by with deserved contempt the pseudo-scientific experiments of American charlatans who daim to hâve established that weight is lost at the moment of death, and the unsupported statements of alleged clairvoyants that they hâve seen the soûl issuing like a vapour from the mouth of persons in articulo mortis; but his expériences as an explorer hâve convinced the Master Therion that méat loses a notable portion of its nutritive value within a very few minutes after the death of the animal, and that this loss proceeds with ever-diminishing rapidity as time goes on. It is further generally conceded that live food, such as oysters, is the most rapidly assimilable and most concentrated form of energy. * 1 Laboratory experiments in food-values seem to be almost worthless, for reasons which we cannot here enter into; the general testimony of mankind appears a safer guide. It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of those savages who tear the heart and liver from an adversary, and devour them while yet warm. In any case it was the theory of ukill” Steel, and “raise it from the dead”; and flies drowned in ice- water can be resuscitated. That it should be impossible to create high organic life is scientifically unthinkable, and the Master Therion believes it to be a matter of few years indeed before this is done in the laboratory. Already we restore the apparently drowned. Why not those dead from such causes as syncope? If we understood the ultimate physics and chemistry of the brief moment of death we could get hold of the force in some way, supply the missing element, reverse the electrical conditions or what not. Already we prevent certain kinds of death by supplying wants, as in the case of Thyroid. I. One can become actually drunk on oysters, by chewing them completely. Rigor seems to be a symptom of the loss of what I may call the Alpha-energy and makes a sharp break in the curve. The Beta and other energies dissipate more slowly. Physiologists should make it their hrst duty to measure these phenomena; for their study is evidently a direct line of research into the nature of Life. The analogy between the living r.nd complex molécules of the Uranium group of inorganic and the Protoplasm group of organic éléments is extremely suggestive. The faculties of growth, action, self-recuperation, etc., must be ascribed to similar properties in both cases; and as we hâve detected, measured and partially explained radioactivity, it must be possible to contrive means of doing the same for Life. 94 —