The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES The initiate, on the contrary, respects the hierarchy before all, he loves and preserves order, he bows before sincere beliefs, he loves all signs of immortality in faith, and of redemption by charity, which is all discipline and obedience. We have just read a book published under the influence of astral and magnetic intoxication, and we have been struck by the anarchical tendencies with which it is filled under a great appearance of benevolence and religion. At the head of this book one sees the symbol, or, as the magi call it, the signature, of the doctrines which it teaches. Instead of the Christian cross, symbol of harmony, alliance and regularity, one sees the tortuous tendrils of the vine, jutting from its twisted stem, images of hallucination and of intoxication. The first ideas set forth by this book are the climax of the absurd. The souls of the dead, it says, are everywhere, and nothing any longer hems them in. It is an infinite over- crowded with gods, returning the one into the other. The souls can and do communicate with us by means of tables and hats. And so, no more regulated instruction, no more priesthood, no more Church, delirium set upon the throne of truth, oracles which write for the salvation of the human race the word attributed to Cambronne, great men who leave the serenity of their eternal destinies to make our furniture dance, and to hold with us conversations like those which Beroalde de Verville! makes them hold, in Le Moyen de Parvenir. All this is a great pity; and yet, in America, all this is 1 Born in 1538—died in 1612, Author of Le Moyen de Parvenir. The Bibliophile Jacob suggests that Verville stole his Woyen de Parvenir from a lost book of Rabelais. Verville was a Canon of St. Gatien, Tours, and is associated with Tours and Touraine. Balzac’s Contes Dvélatiques are deemed to have been more inspired by Verville than by Rabelais TRANS. Q 225