The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX Black Magic, are absolutely recognized for the signatures of demons. Astral writings are often ridiculous or obscene. The pretended spirits, when questioned on the greater mysteries of Nature, often reply by that coarse word which became, so they say, heroic on one occasion, in the military mouth of Cambronne. The drawings which pencils will trace if left to their own devices very often reproduce shapeless phalli, such as the anemic hooligan, as one might picturesquely call him, sketches on the hoardings as he whistles, a further proof of our hypothesis, that wit in no way presides at those mani- festations, and that it would be above all sovereignly absurd to recognize in them the intervention of spirits released from the bondage of matter. The Jesuit, Paul Saufidius, who has written on the manners and customs of the Japanese, tells us a very remark- able story. A troop of Japanese pilgrims one day, as they were traversing a desert, saw coming towards them a band of spectres whose number was equal to that of the pilgrims, and which walked at the same pace. These spectres, at first without shape, and like larvze, took on as they approached all the appearance of the human body. Soon they met the pilgrims, and mingled with them, gliding silently between their ranks. Then the Japanese saw themselves double, each phantom having become the perfect image and, as it were, the mirage of each pilgrim. The Japanese were afraid, and prostrated themselves, and the bonze who was conducting them began to pray for them with great contortions and great cries. When the pilgrims rose up again, the phantoms had disappeared, and the troop of devotees was able to continue 230