of himself with his sigil. It is apparently assumed that the spirit 
already possesses the means of working on matter. The 
conception seems to be that of a schoolboy who asks his father to 
tell the butler to do something for him. In other words, the 
theory is grossly animistic. The savage tribes described by Frazer 
had a far more scientific theory. The same may be said of 
witches, who appear to hâve been wiser than the thaumaturgists 
who despised them. - They at least made waxen images — iden- 
tified by baptism — of the people they wished to control. They 
at least used appropriate bases for Magical manifestations, such 
as blood and other vehicles of animal force, with those of 
vegetable virtue such as herbs. They were also careful to put 
their bewitched products into actual contact — material or astral 
— with their victims. The classical exorcists, on the contrary, for 
ail their learning, were careless about this essential condition. 
They acted as stupidly as people who should Write business letters 
and omit to post them. 
It is not too much to say that this failure to understand the 
conditions of success accounts for the discrédit into which Magick 
fell until Eliphas Levi undertook the task of re-habilitating it two 
générations ago. But even he (profoundly as he studied, and 
luminously as he expounded, the nature of Magick considered as 
a universal formula) paid no attention whatever to that question 
of the Magical Link, though he everywhere implies that it is 
essential to the Work. He evaded the question by making the 
petitio principii of assigning to the Astral Light the power of 
transmitting vibrations of ail kinds. He nowhere enters into 
detail as to how its effects are produced. He does not inform us 
as to the qualitative or quantitative laws of this light. (The 
scientifically trained student will observe the analogy between 
Levi’s postulate and that of ordinary science in re the luminiferous 
ether.) 
It is déplorable that nobody should hâve recorded in a syste- 
matic form the results of our investigations of the Astral Light. 
We hâve no account of its properties or of the laws which obtain 
in its sphere. Yet these are sufficiently remarkable. We may 
briefly notice that, in the Astral Light, two or more objects can 
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