The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES Powdered charcoal absorbs and retains the astral light. This explains the magic mirror of Dupotet. Figures traced in charcoal appear luminous to a magne- tized person, and take, for him, following the direction indi- cated by the will of the magnetizer, the most gracious or the most terrifying forms. The astral light, or rather the vital light, of the plastic medium, absorbed by the charcoal, becomes wholly negative; for this reason animals which are tormented by electricity, as for example, cats, love to roll themselves upon coal. One day, medicine will make use of this property, and nervous persons will find great relief from it. CHAPTER II LIFE AND DEATH.—SLEEP AND WAKING SLEEP is an incomplete death; death is a complete sleep. Nature subjects us to sleep in order to accustom us to the idea of death, and warns us by dreams of the persistence of another life. The astral light into which sleep plunges us is like an ocean in which innumerable images are afloat, flotsam of wrecked existences, mirages and reflections of those which pass, presentiments of those which are about to be. Our nervous disposition attracts to us those images which correspond to our agitation, to the nature of our fatigue, just as a magnet, moved among particles of various metals, would attract to itself and choose particularly the iron filings. 117