Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 2)

examples of the mistakes of the diviners as evicience tîiat their ait is fatuous. Every one knows that the simplest Chemical experi- ments often go wrong. Every one knows the eccentricities of fountain pensj but nobody outside Evangelical circles makes fun of the Cavendish experiment, or asserts that, if fountain pens undoubtedly work now and then, their doing so is mer ely coincidence. The fact of the case is that the laws of nature are incomparably more subtle than even science suspects. The phenomena of every plane are intimately interwoven. The arguments of Aristotle were dépendent on the atmospheric pressure which prevented his blood from boiling away. Tliere is notiiing in the universe wliicli does not influence every otlier thing in one way or another. There is no reason in Nature why the apparently chance combinations of half-a-dozen sticks oï tortoise-shell should not be so linked both with the human mind and with the entire structure of the Universe that the observation of their fall should not enable us to rneasure ail things in heaven and earth. With one piece of curved glass we hâve discovered uncounted galaxies of suns; with another, endless orders of existence in the infinitésimal. With the prism we hâve analysed light so that matter and force hâve become intelligible only as forms of light. With a rod we hâve summoned the invisible energies of electricity to be our familiar spirit serving us to do our Will, whether it be to outsoar the condor, or to dive deeper into the démon world of disease than any of our dreamers dared to dream. Since with four bits of common glass mankind has learnt to know so much, achieved so much, who dare deny that the Book of Thoth, the quintessentialized wisdom of our ancestors whose civilizations, penshed though they be, hâve left monuments which dwarf ours until we wonder whether we are degenerate from them, or evolved from Simians, who dare deny that such a book may be possessed of unimaginable powers? It is not so long since the methods of modem science were scoffed at by the whole cultured world. In the sacred halls themselves the roofs rang loud with the scornful laughter of the high pnests as each new postulant approached with his unorthodox offeiing. 174 —