The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX spreading like an intellectual plague. Young America raves, she has fever; she is, perhaps, cutting her teeth. But France! France to accept such things! No, it is not pos- sible, and it isnot so. But while they refuse the doctrines, serious men should observe the phenomena, remain calm in the midst of the agitations of all the fanaticisms (for in- credulity also has its own), and judge after having examined. To preserve one’s reason in the midst of madmen, one’s faith in the midst of superstitions, one’s dignity in the midst of buffoons, and one’s independence among the sheep of Panurge, is of all miracles the rarest, the finest, and the most difficult to accomplish. CHAPTER IV FLUIDIC PHANTOMS AND THEIR MYSTERIES THE ancients gave different names to these: larvae, lemures (empuses). They loved the vapour of shed blood, and fled from the blade of the sword. Theurgy evoked them, and the Qabalah recognized them under the name of elementary spirits. They were not spirits, however, for they were mortal. They were fluidic coagulations which one could destroy by dividing them. They were a sort of animated mirages, imperfect emana- tions of human life. The traditions of Black Magic say that they were born owing to the celibacy of Adam. Paracelsus says that the vapours of the blood of hysterical women people the air with phantoms; and these ideas are so ancient, that 226