THE EQUINOX
blamed for having worshipped Baphomet, than for allowing its
image to be perceived by the profane. Baphomet, pantheistic
figure of the universal agent, is nothing else than the bearded
devil of the alchemists. One knows that the members of the
highest grades in the old hermetic masonry attributed to a
bearded demon the accomplishment of the Great Work. At
this word, the vulgar hastened to cross themselves, and to hide
their eyes, but the initiates of the cult of Hermes-Pantheos
understood the allegory, and were very careful not to explain
it to the profane.
Mr. de Mirville, in a book to-day almost forgotten, though
it made some noise a few months ago, gives himself a great
deal of trouble to compile an account of various sorceries, of the
kind which fill the compilations of people like Delancre, Delrio,
and Bodin. He might have found better than that in history.
And without speaking of the easily attested miracles of the
Jansenists of Port Royal, and of the Deacon Paris, what is
more marvellous than the great monomania of martyrdom
which has made children, and even women, during three
hundred years, go to execution as if to a feast? What more
magnificent than that enthusiastic faith accorded during so
many centuries to the most incomprehensible, and, humanly
speaking, to the most revolting mysteries? On this occasion,
you will say, the miracles came from God, and one even
employs them as a proof of the truth of religion. But, what?
heretics, too, let themselves be killed for dogmas, this time
quite frankly and really absurd. They then sacrificed both
their reason and their life to their belief? Oh, for heretics, it
is evident that the devil was responsible. Poor folk, who
took the devil for God, and God for the devil! Why have
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