THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
A useless word is a crime against the spirit of intelli-
gence; it is an intellectual infanticide.
Things are for every one what he makes of them by
naming them. The word of every one is an impression or an
habitual prayer.
To speak well is to live well.
A fine style is an aureole of holiness.
From these principles, some true, others hypothetical, and
from the more or less exaggerated consequences that they
draw from them, there resulted for superstitious qabalists an
absolute confidence in enchantments, evocations, conjurations
and mysterious prayers. Now, as faith has always accom-
plished miracles, apparitions, oracles, mysterious cures, sudden
and strange maladies, have never been lacking to it.
It is thus that a simple and sublime philosophy has
become the secret science of Black Magic. It is from this
point of view above all that the Qabalah is still able to excite
the curiosity of the majority in our so distrustful and so
credulous century. However, as we have just explained, that
is not the true science.
Men rarely seek the truth for its own sake; they have
always a secret motive in their efforts, some passion to
satisfy, or some greed to assuage. Among the secrets of the
Qabalah there is one above all which has always tormented
seekers; it is the secret of the transmutation of metals, and
of the conversion of all earthly substances into gold.
Alchemy borrowed all these signs from the Qabalah, and
it is upon the law of the analogies resulting from the harmony
of contraries that it based its operations. An immense
physical secret was, moreover, hidden under the qabalistic
gl