The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX In the last century all Europe resounded with the miracles of Cagliostro. Who is ignorant of what powers were attri- buted to his ‘wine of Egypt,’ and to his ‘elixir’? What can we add to the stories that they tell of his other-world suppers, where he made appear in flesh and blood the illustri- ous personages of the past? Cagliostro was, however, far from being an initiate of the first order, since the Great White Brotherhood abandoned him! to the Roman Inquisition, before whom he made, if one can believe the documents to his trial, so ridiculous and so odious an explanation of the Masonic trigram, L.°. P.*. D.. But miracles are not the exclusive privilege of the first order of initiates; they are often performed by beings with- out education or virtue. Natural laws find an opportunity in an organism whose exceptional qualifications are not clear to us, and they perform their work with their invariable precision and calm. The most refined gourmets appreciate truffles, and employ them for their purposes, but it is hogs that dig them up: it is analogically the same for plenty of things less material and less gastronomical : instincts have groping presentiments, but it is really only science which discovers. The actual progress of human knowledge has diminished by a great deal the chances of prodigies, but there still remains a great number, since both the power of the imagination and the nature and power of magnetism are not yet known. The observation of universal analogies, moreover, has been neg- lected, and for that reason divination is no longer believed in. 1 This isno more an argument than to say that God “abandoned” Christ. Martyrdom is usually cited on the other side. Besides, the fate of Cagliostro is unknown—at least to the world at large—O. M. 200