〈pantacle: the letters T A R O round a circle, with the sword, wand, cup and four signs〉
ST AUGUSTINE speculates, as we have said, whether Apuleius could have been changed into an ass and then have resumed his human shape. The same doctor might have equally concerned himself with the adventure of the p. 282 comrades of Ulysses, transformed into swine by Circe. In vulgar opinion, transmutations and metamorphoses have always been the very essence of magic. Now, the crowd, being the echo of opinion, which is queen of the world, is never perfectly right nor entirely wrong. Magic really changes the nature of things, or, rather, modifies their appearances at pleasure, according to the strength of the operator’s will and the fascination of ambitious adepts. Speech creates its form, and when a person, held infallible, confers a name upon a given thing, he really transforms that thing into the substance signified by the name. The masterpiece of speech and of faith, in this order, is the real transmutation of a substance without change in its appearances. Had Apollonius offered a cup of wine to his disciples, and said to them: “This is my blood, of which ye shall drink henceforth to perpetuate my life within you;” and had his disciples through centuries believed that they continued the transformation by repeating the same words; had they taken the wine, despite its odour and taste, for the real, human, and living blood of Apollonius, we should have to acknowledge this master in theurgy as the most accomplished of enchanters and most potent of all the magi. It would remain for us then to adore him.
Now, it is well known that mesmerists impart for their somnambulists any taste that they choose to plain water, and if we assume a magus having sufficient command over the astral fluid to magnetize at the same moment a whole assembly of persons, otherwise prepared for magnetism by adequate over-excitement, we shall be in a position to explain readily, not indeed the Gospel miracle of Cana, but works of the same class. Are not the fascinations of love, which result from the universal magic of nature, truly prodigious, and do they not actually transform persons and things? Love is a dream of enchantments that transfigures the world; all becomes music and fragrance, all intoxication and felicity. The beloved being is beautiful, is good, is sublime, is infallible, is radiant, beams with health and p. 283 happiness. When the dream ends we seem to have fallen from the clouds; we are inspired with disgust for the brazen sorceress who took the place of the lovely Melusine, for the Thersites whom we deemed was Achilles or Nereus. What is there we cannot cause the person who loves us to believe? But also what reason or justice can we instil into those who no longer love us? Love begins magician and ends sorcerer. After creating the illusions of heaven on earth, it realises those of hell; its hatred is absurd like its ardour, because it is passional, that is, subject to influences which are fatal for it. For this cause it has been proscribed by sages, who declare it to be the enemy of reason. Are they to be envied or commiserated for thus condemning, doubtless without understanding, the most alluring of ill-doers? All that can be said is that when they spoke thus, they either had not yet loved or they loved no longer.
Things that are external are for us what our word internal makes them. To believe that we are happy is to be happy; what we esteem becomes precious in proportion to the estimation itself: this is the sense in which we can say that magic changes the nature of things. The “Metamorphoses” of Ovid are true, but they are allegorical, like the “Golden Ass” of rare Apuleius. The life of beings is a progressive transformation, and its forms can be determined, renewed, prolonged further, or destroyed sooner. If the doctrine of metempsychosis were true, might one not say that the debauch represented by Circe really and materially changes men into swine; for, on this hypothesis, the retribution of vices would be a relapse into animal forms that correspond to them? Now, metempsychosis, which has frequently been misinterpreted, has a perfectly true side; animal forms communicate their sympathetic impressions to the astral body of man, which speedily reacts on his aptitudes according to the force of his habits. A man of intelligent and passive mildness assumes the inert physiognomy and ways of a sheep, but in somnambulism it is a p. 284 sheep that is seen, and not a man with a sheepish countenance, as the ecstatic and learned Swedenborg experienced a thousand times. In the kabbalistic book of Daniel the seer, this mystery is represented by the legend of Nabuchodonsor changed into a beast, which, after the common fate of magical allegories, has been mistaken for an actual history. In this way, we can really transform men into animals and animals into men; we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtue; we can endow minerals with ideal properties; it is all a question of willing. We can equally render ourselves visible or invisible at will, and this helps us to explain the mysteries of the ring of Gyges.
In the first place, let us remove from the mind of our readers all supposition of the absurd; that is, of an effect devoid of cause or contradicting its cause. To become invisible one of three things is necessary—the interposition of some opaque medium between the light and our body, or between our body and the eyes of the spectators, or the fascination of the eyes of the spectators in such a manner that they cannot make use of their sight. Of these methods, the third only is magical. Have we not all of us observed that under the government of a strong preoccupation we look without seeing and hurt ourselves against objects in front of us? “So do, that seeing they may not see,” said the great Initiator, and the history of this grand master tells us that one day, finding himself on the point of being stoned in the temple, he made himself invisible and went out. There is no need to repeat here the mystifications of popular grimoires about the ring of invisibility. Some ordain that it shall be composed of fixed mercury, enriched by a small stone which it is indispensable to find in a pewit’s nest, and kept in a box of the same metal. The author of the “Little Albert” ordains that this ring should be composed of hairs torn from the head of a raging hyena, which recalls the history of the bell of Rodilard. The only writers who have discoursed seriously of the ring of Gyges are Jamblichus, Porphyry, and Peter of Apono. What they say is evidently p. 285 allegorical, and the representation which they give, or that which can be made from their description, proves that they are really speaking of nothing but the great magical arcanum. One of the figures depicts the universal movement, harmonic and equilibrated in imperishable being; another, which should be formed from an amalgam of the seven metals, calls for a description in detail. It has a double collet and two precious stones—a topaz, constellated with the sign of the sun, and an emerald with the sign of the moon; it should bear on the inner side the occult characters of the planets, and on the outer their known signs, twice repeated and in kabbalistic opposition to each other; that is, five on the right and five on the left; the signs of the sun and moon resuming the four several intelligences of the seven planets. Now, this configuration is no other than that of a pantacle signifying all the mysteries of magical doctrine, and here is the occult significance of the ring: to exercise the omnipotence, of which ocular fascination is one of the most difficult demonstrations to give, we must possess all science and know how to make use of it.
Fascination is fulfilled by magnetism. The magus inwardly forbids a whole assembly to see him, and it does not see him. In this manner he passes through guarded gates, and departs from prison in the face of his petrified gaolers. At such times a strange numbness is experienced, and they recall having seen the magus as if in a dream, but never till after he has gone. The secret of invisibility, therefore, wholly consists in a power which is capable of definition—that of distracting or paralysing attention, so that the light reaches the visual organ without impressing the eye of the soul. To exercise this power we must possess a will accustomed to sudden and energetic actions, great presence of mind, and skill no less great in causing diversions among the crowd. Let a man, for example, who is being pursued by his intending murderers, dart into a side street, return immediately, and advance with perfect calmness towards his pursuers, or let him mix with them and seem p. 286 to be engaged in the chase, and he will certainly make himself invisible. A priest who was being hunted in ’93, with the intention of hanging him from a lamp-post, fled down a side street, assumed a stooping gait, and leaned against a corner, with an intensely preoccupied expression; the crowd of his enemies swept past; not one saw him, or, rather, it never struck anyone to recognise him; it was so unlikely to be he! The person who desires to be seen always makes himself observed, and he who would remain unnoticed effaces himself and disappears. The true ring of Gyges is the will; it is also the rod of transformations, and by its precise and strong formulation it creates the magical word. The omnipotent terms of enchantments are those which express this creative power of forms. The tetragram, which is the supreme word of magic, signifies: “It is that which it shall be,” and if we apply it to any transformation whatsoever with full intelligence, it will renew and modify all things, even in the teeth of evidence and common sense. The hoc est of the Christian sacrifice is a translation and application of the tetragram; hence this simple utterance operates the most complete, most invisible, most incredible, and most clearly affirmed of all transformations. A still stronger word than that of transformation has been judged necessary by councils to express the marvel, that of transubstantiation.
The Hebrew terms יהוה, אגלא, אהיה, אמן, have been considered by all kabbalists as the keys of magical transformation. The Latin words, est, sit, esto, fiat, have the same force when pronounced with full understanding. M. de Montalembert seriously relates, in his legend of St Elizabeth of Hungary, how one day this saintly lady, surprised by her noble husband, from whom she sought to conceal her good works, in the act of carrying bread to the poor in her apron, told him that she was carrying roses, and it proved on investigation that she had spoken truly; the loaves had been changed into roses. This story is a most gracious magical apologue, and signifies that the truly wise man p. 287 cannot lie, that the word of wisdom determines the form of things, or even their substance independently of their forms. Why, for example, should not the noble spouse of St Elizabeth, a good and firm Christian like herself, and believing implicitly in the real presence of the Saviour in true human body upon an altar where he beheld only a wheaten host, why should he not believe in the real presence of roses in his wife’s apron under the appearances of bread? She exhibited him loaves undoubtedly, but as she had said that they were roses, and as he believed her incapable of the smallest falsehood, he saw and wished to see roses only. This is the secret of the miracle. Another legend narrates how a saint, whose name has escaped me, finding nothing to eat on a Lenten day or a Friday, commanded the fowl to become a fish, and it became a fish. The parable needs no interpretation, and it recalls a beautiful story of St Spiridion of Tremithonte, the same who evoked the soul of his daughter Irene. One Good Friday a traveller reached the abode of the holy bishop, and as bishops in those days took Christianity in earnest, and were consequently poor, Spiridion, who fasted religiously, had in his house only some salted bacon, which had been made ready for Easter. The stranger was overcome with fatigue and famished with hunger; Spiridion offered him the meat, and himself shared the meal of charity, thus transforming the very flesh which the Jews regard as of all most impure into a feast of penitence, transcending the material law by the spirit of the law itself, and proving himself a true and intelligent disciple of the man-God, who hath established his elect as the monarchs of nature in the three worlds.