The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES A qabalistic sage may, then, still astonish the crowd and even bewilder the educated: 1°—By divining hidden things; 2°—by predicting many things to come; 3°—by dominating the will of others so as to prevent them doing what they will, and forcing them to do what they do not will; 4°—by exciting apparitions and dreams; 5°—by curing a large number of illnesses; 6°—by restoring life to subjects who display all the symptoms of death ; 7°—lastly, by demonstrating (if need be, by examples) the reality of the philosophical stone, and the transmutation of metals, according to the secrets of Abraham the Jew, of Flamel, and of Raymond Lully. All these prodigies are accomplished by means of a single agent which the Hebrew calls op, as did the Chevalier de Reichenbach, which we, with the School of Pasqualis Martinez, call astral light, which Mr. de Mirville calls the devil, and which the ancient alchemists called Azoth. It is the vital element which manifests itself by the phenomena of heat, light, electricity and magnetism, which magnetizes all terrestrial globes, and all living beings. In this agent even are manifested the proofs of the qaba- listic doctrine with regard to equilibrium and motion, by double polarity; when one pole attracts the other repels, one produces heat, the other cold, one gives a blue or greenish light, the other a yellow or reddish light. This agent, by its different methods of magnetization, attracts us to each other, or estranges us from each other, subordinates one to the wishes of the other by causing him to enter his centre of attraction, re-establishes or disturbs the equilibrium in animal economy by its transmutations and its 201