24 
Necromancy and Spiritism 
Cara Soror, 
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 
Really, you make me ashamed of you! To write to 
ignorant me to wise you up about necromancy, when you 
have at your elbow the one supreme classic-Levi's Chapter 
XIII in the Dogme et Rituel! 1 
What sublimity 
of approach! 
What ingenuity of 
"considerations"! 
With what fatally sure steps marches his 
preparation! With what superb technique does he carry out 
his energized enthusiasm! And, finally, with what exact 
judicial righteousness does he sum the results of his great 
Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana! 
Contrast with this elaborate care, rightness of every detail, 
earnestness and intentness upon the goal-contrast, I say, the 
modem Spiritist in the dingy squalor of her foul back street 
in her suburban slum, the room musty, smelling of stale food, 
the hideous prints, the cheap and rickety furniture, calling up 
anyone required from Jesus Christ to Queen Victoria, all at a 
bob-a-nob! 
Faugh! Let us return to clean air, and analyse Levi's 
experiment: I believe that by the application of the principles 
set forth in my other letters on Death and Reincarnation, it 
will be simple to explain his partial failure to evoke 
1. Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. 
178