The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES science. One seeks the lovely bride, the white Meroe, and one sees no more than an old woman, the sorceress Canidia, the devourer of little children. Clinias is disabused; he thanks his master, he is saved. The vulgar are always deceived about magic, and confuse adepts with enchanters. True magic, that is to say, the traditional science of the magi, is the mortal enemy of enchantment; it prevents, or makes to cease, sham miracles, hostile to the light, that fascinate a small number of pre- judiced or credulous witnesses. The apparent disorder in the laws of Nature is a lie: it is not then a miracle. The true miracle, the true prodigy always flaming in the eyes of all, is the ever constant harmony of effect and cause; these are the splendours of eternal order! We could not say whether Cagliostro would have per- formed miracles in the presence of Swedenborg; but he would certainly have dreaded the presence of Paracelsus and of Henry Khunrath, if these great men had been his contemporaries. Far be it from us, however, to denounce Mr. Home as a low-class sorcerer, that is to say, as acharlatan. The cele- brated American medium is sweet and natural as a child. He is a poor and over-sensitive being, without cunning and with- out defence; he is the plaything of a terrible force of whose nature he is ignorant, and the first of his dupes is certainly himself. The study of the strange phenomena which are produced in the neighbourhood of this young man is of the greatest importance. One must seriously reconsider the too easy denials of the eighteenth century, and open out before K2 131