THE EQUINOX
have made the same observation on a book of St. Martin
entitled 4 Natural Picture of the Relations which exist
between God, Man and the Universe. The tradition of this
secret has, then, never been interrupted from the first ages of
the Qabalah to our own times.
The table-turners, and those who make the spirits speak
with alphabetical charts, are, then, a good many centuries
behind the times; they do not know that there exists an
oracular instrument whose words are always clear and always
accurate, by means of which one can communicate with the
seven genii of the planets, and make to speak at will the
seventy-two wheels of Assiah, of Yetzirah, and of Briah. For
that purpose it is sufficient to understand the system of
universal analogies, such as Swedenborg has set it forth in
the hieroglyphic key of the arcana; then to mix the cards
together, and draw from them by chance, always grouping
them by the numbers corresponding to the ideas on which
one desires enlightenment; then, reading the oracles as
qabalistic writings ought to be read, that is to say, beginning
in the middle and going from right to left for odd numbers,
beginning on the right for even numbers, and interpreting
successively the number for the letter which corresponds to it,
the grouping of the letters by the addition of their numbers,
and all the successive oracles by their numerical order, and
their hieroglyphic relations.
This operation of the qabalistic sages, originally intended
to discover the rigorous development of absolute ideas,
degenerated into superstition when it fell into the hands
of the ignorant priests and the nomadic ancestors of the
Bohemians who possessed the Tarot in the Middle Ages;
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