Magick Without Tears

FASCINATIONS 191 Did I hear you mutter "Transmutations? Werewolves? Golden Hawks?" Likely enough; it's time we touched on that. In certain types of animal there appears, if tradition have any weight, to be a curious quality of-sympathy? I doubt if that be the word, but can think of none better-which enables them to assume at times the human form. No. I-and the rest are also rans-is the seal. There is a whole body of literature about this. Then come wolves, hyc:enas, large dogs of the hunting type; occasionally leopards. Tales of cats and serpents are usually the other way round; it is the human (nearly always female) that assumes these shapes by witchcraft . But in ancient Egypt they literally doted on this sort of thing. The papyri are full of formulas for operating such transmutations. But I think that this was mostly to afford some relaxation for the spirit of the dead man; he nipped out of his sarcophagus, and painted the town all the colours of the rainbow in one animal shape or another. The only experience I have of anything of this sort was when I was in Pacific waters, mostly at Honolulu or in Nippon. I was practicing Astral Projection. A Sister of the Order who lived in Hong Kong helped me. I was to visit her, and the token of perfect success was to be that I should knock a vase off the mantel-piece. We appointed certain days and hours-with some awkwardness, as my time-distance from her was constantly growing shorter-for me to pay my visit. We got some remarkable results; our records of the interview used to tally with surprising accuracy; but the vase remained intact! This is not one of my notorious digressions; and this is how transmutation comes into it. I found that by first taking the shape of a golden hawk, and resuming my own form after landing in her "temple" -a room she had fitted ad hoc-the whole operation became incomparably easier. I shall not indulge in hypotheses of why this should have been the case. A little over four years later-in the meantime we had met and worked at Magick together-we resumed these