The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES One touches them as one sees them; half illusion, half magnetic and nervous force. These, it seems to us, are very precise and very clear explanations. Let us reason a little with those who support the theory of apparitions from another world : Either those hands are real bodies, or they are illusions. If they are bodies, they are, then, not spirits. If they are illusions produced by mirages, either in us, or outside ourselves, you admit my argument. Now, one remark ! It is that all those who suffer from luminous congestion or contagious somnambulism, perish by a violent or, at least, a sudden death. It is for this reason that one used to attribute to the devil the power of strangling sorcerers. The excellent and worthy Lavater habitually evoked the alleged spirit of Gablidone. He was assassinated. A lemonade-seller of Leipzig, Schroepfer, evoked the animated images of the dead. He blew out his brains with a pistol. One knows what was the unhappy end of Cagliostro. A misfortune greater than death itself is the only thing that can save the life of these imprudent experi- menters. They may become idiots or madmen, and then they do not die, if one watches over them with care to prevent them from committing suicide. Magnetic maladies are the road to madness; they are 221