THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
Powdered charcoal absorbs and retains the astral light.
This explains the magic mirror of Dupotet.
Figures traced in charcoal appear luminous to a magne-
tized person, and take, for him, following the direction indi-
cated by the will of the magnetizer, the most gracious or
the most terrifying forms.
The astral light, or rather the vital light, of the plastic
medium, absorbed by the charcoal, becomes wholly negative;
for this reason animals which are tormented by electricity,
as for example, cats, love to roll themselves upon coal. One
day, medicine will make use of this property, and nervous
persons will find great relief from it.
CHAPTER II
LIFE AND DEATH.—SLEEP AND WAKING
SLEEP is an incomplete death; death is a complete sleep.
Nature subjects us to sleep in order to accustom us to the
idea of death, and warns us by dreams of the persistence of
another life.
The astral light into which sleep plunges us is like an
ocean in which innumerable images are afloat, flotsam of
wrecked existences, mirages and reflections of those which
pass, presentiments of those which are about to be.
Our nervous disposition attracts to us those images
which correspond to our agitation, to the nature of our
fatigue, just as a magnet, moved among particles of various
metals, would attract to itself and choose particularly the
iron filings.
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