Magick Without Tears

182 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS demons, or what not; for when he was in Paris, arrangements were made for him to meet Eliphas Levi forthwith "he abandoned the unequal contest, and fled in terror from the accursed spot." What annoyed Browning was that he had added to his collection of "Femora I have pulled," those appendages of Elizabeth Barrett; and where R.B. was there was no room for anyone else-as in the case of Allah! R.B. was accordingly as spiteful as he could be, and that was not a little. It is not fair to tar all mediums with the Sludge brush; there are many who could advance quite sincerely some of the apologia of Sludge. Why should a medium be immune to self-deception spurred by the Wish-Fiend? While there are people walking about outside the Bug-house who can find Mrs. Simpson and Generals de Gaulle, Franco, Allenby, Montgomery and who else in the "Centuries" of Nostradamus, we should be stupid to assign everything to conscious fraud. No, by no means always fraud. Yet at any seance the "investigators" take no magical precautions soever-against, say, the impersonation of lophiel by Hismael, or the Doves of Venus by the A'arab Zareg. All they attempt, especially at "demonstrations" and "materializations," is to guard with great elaboration and (as a rule) complete futility against the deceptions of the common conjuror. They are not expecting any genuine manifestation of the "Spirit World" ; and this fact makes clear their true subconscious attitude. As for those mediums who possess magical ability, they almost always come from the most ignorant classes-Celts are an exception to this rule-and have no knowledge whatever of the technique of the business. Worse, they are usually of the type that delights in secret dirty affinities, and so naturally and gladly attract entities of the Qliphothic world to their magical circle. Hence tricksters, of the lowest elemental orders, at the best, come and vitalize odds and ends of the Ruach of people recently deceased, and perform astonishing impersonations. The hollow shells glow with