100
THE DOCTKINE OF TKANSCENDENT MAGIC
occult power and their unpopularity, is established upon the plan and follows the conditions of the most potent magical
and herein is the secret of their force, which they attribute solely to the grace or will of God, a vulgar and cheap
chains,
solution for every mystery of power in influence or attraction. In the Eitual it will be our task to estimate the sequence of
truly magical ceremonies and evocations which make up the great work of vocation under the name of the Exercises of St Ignatius.
All enthusiasm propagated in a society by a series of communications and practices in common produces a magnetic The -current, and continues or increases by the current. is to carry away and often to exalt beyond measure persons who are impressionable and weak, nervous organisations, temperaments inclined to hysteria Such people soon become powerful or hallucination. the vehicles of magical force and efficiently project
action of the current
in the light at such a opposition astral
force
When with
direction
of
time to the
the
current
manifestations
itself
of
;
the
a struggle with to some extent, fatality. the youthful Pharisee Saul, or Schol, threw himself, all the fanaticism and all the determination of a is,
sectarian,
across
the
aggressive line of Christianity, he himself at the mercy of a power
unconsciously placed against which he thought to prevail, and hence he was struck down by a formidable magnetic flash, doubtless the
more instantaneous by reason
of the
combined
effect of cere-
congestion and sunstroke. The conversion of the young Israelite, Alphonsus of Ratisbonne, is a contemporary fact are acquainted which is absolutely of the same nature.
.bral
We
with a sect of enthusiasts
whom
it is
common
to deride at a
and
to join, despite one's self, as soon as they are with a hostile intention. I will go further, even approached, and affirm that magical circles and magnetic currents estab-
distance,
and have an influence, according to fatal upon those on whom they can act. Each one of us is drawn within a circle of relations which constitutes his
lish themselves,
laws,