Magick Without Tears

VAMPIRES 401 other of supreme importance to the continuity of life. When you can get these still alive to their function, it is best of all. That is why it is not so highly recommended to tear out and devour the heart and liver of your next-door neighbour ; you have gone far to destroy just that which is of most importance to you to keep alive. Doubtless you will reply with some apparent justice , indeed most plausible is such ratiocination, that by taking into your own body , and so preserving the life of, his heart and liver, the whole of his "vital energies" will desert the sinking ship of the physical tissue, and rush to the lifeboat provided by the vampire. Never forget that you confer an inestimable benefit upon the victim by absorbing his lower form of Energy into your higher. Read your Magick, Chapter XII! You say this strongly , my dear Sister in the Lord; your thesis is impeccably stated , your arguments are cogent, plangent , not to be repeated . But-this I put to you most solemnly-what experimental evidence do you adduce? How many hearts , how many livers, have been your spiritual sustenance? Have you excluded every source of error? Have you-here , you know the routine; write it all down and send it along to be vetted! Be that as it may, I once knew a lady of some seventy summers. She came of a noble Polish family; she was short, sturdy , rather plump but singularly agile; good-looking in a brutal sort of way. But-her eyes! For fifty years she had lived nearly all the year round in her chateau in Touraine. She had plenty of money, and had always surrounded herself with a dozen or more boys and young men. (By young I mean up to forty .) She not only looked twenty-five but she lived twenty-five. It was a genuine , natural , spontaneous twenty-five, not a gallant effort. She would dance the night through and go a long walk in the morning. You may apply to her for details of the treatment ; I dare say she is still about, though I did hear that she moved to South America when she saw 1914 coming. In any case, you have had some