THIS chapter is consecrated to divination, which, in its broadest sense, and following the grammatical significance of the word, is the exercise of divine power, and the realisation of divine knowledge. It is the priesthood of the magus. But divination, in general opinion, is concerned more closely with the knowledge of hidden things. To know the most secret thoughts of men; to penetrate the mysteries of past and future; to evoke age by age the exact revelation of effects by the precise knowledge of causes; this is what is universally called divination. Now, of all mysteries of nature, the most profound is the heart of man, and at the same time nature forbids its depth to be inaccessible. In spite of the deepest dissimulation, despite the most skilful policy, she herself traces, and makes plain in the bodily form, in the light of glances, in movements, in carriage, in voice, a thousand tell-tale indices. The perfect initiate has no need of these indices; he perceives the truth in the light; he senses an impression which makes known the whole man, his glance penetrates hearts, he may even feign ignorance to disarm the fear or hatred of the wicked whom he knows too well. A man of bad conscience thinks always that he is being accused or suspected; he recognises himself in a touch of collective satire, he applies that whole satire to himself, and cries loudly that he is calumniated. Ever suspicious, but as curious as he is apprehensive, in the presence of the magus he is like the Satan of the parable, or like those scribes who questioned tempting. Ever stubborn and ever feeble, what he fears above all is the recognition that he is in the wrong. The past disquiets him, the future alarms him; he seeks to compound with himself and to believe himself a well-placed and virtuous man. His life is a perpetual struggle between good aspira p. 347 tions and evil habits; he thinks himself a philosopher after the manner of Aristippe or Horace in accepting all the corruption of his time as a necessity which he must undergo; he distracts himself with some philosophical pastime, and appropriates the protecting smile of Mecænas to persuade himself that he is not simply a battener on famine like Verres or a parasite of Trimalcion. Such men are always mercenaries, even in their good works. They decide to make a gift to a public charity, and they postpone it to get the interest. The type which I am describing is not an individual but a class of men with which the magus is liable to come frequently in contact, especially in our own century. Let him follow their own example by mistrusting them, for they will be invariably his most compromising friends and most dangerous enemies.
The public exercise of divination is unbecoming at the present period in a veritable adept, for he would be frequently driven to jugglery and feats of skill in order to preserve his clients and astonish his public. Accredited diviners, both male and female, have always secret spies, who instruct them as to the private life or habits of those who consult them. A code of signals is established between cabinet and antechamber; an unknown client at his first visit receives a number; a day is arranged, and he is followed; doorkeepers, neighbours, servants are engaged in gossip, and details are thus arrived at which overwhelm simple minds, and cause them to invest an impostor with the reverence which should be reserved for true science and genuine divination.
The divination of events to come is possible only in the case of those the realisation of which is in some sense contained in their cause. The soul, scrutinising by means of the whole nervous system the circle of the astral light which influences a man and from him receives an influence, the soul of the diviner, we repeat, can compass by a single intuition all the loves and hatreds which that man has evoked about him; it can read his intentions in his thought, p. 348 foresee obstacles that he will encounter, possibly the violent death which awaits him; but it cannot foresee his private, voluntary, capricious determinations of the moment following the consultation, unless, indeed, the ruse of the diviner itself prepares the fulfilment of the prophecy. For example, you say to a woman who is becoming passé, and is anxious to secure a husband: You will be present this evening or to-morrow evening at such or such a performance, and you will there see a man who will be to your liking. This man will observe you, and by a curious combination of circumstances the result will be a marriage.
You may count on the lady going, you may count on her seeing a man and believing that he has noticed her, you may count on her anticipating marriage. It may not come to that in the end, but she will not lay the blame on you, because she would be giving up the opportunity for another illusion; on the contrary, she will return perseveringly to consult you.
We have said that the astral light is the great book of divinations; the faculty of reading therein is either natural or acquired, and there are hence two classes of seers, the instinctive and the initiated. For this reason, children, uneducated people, shepherds, even idiots, have more aptitude for natural divination than scholars and thinkers. The simple herd-boy, David, was a prophet even as Solomon, king of kabbalists and magi. The perceptions of instinct are often as certain as those of science; the persons least clairvoyant in the astral light are those who reason most. Somnambulism is a state of pure instinct, and hence somnambulists require to be directed by a seer of science; sceptics and reasoners only lead them astray. Divinatory vision operates only in the ecstatic state, to arrive at which state, doubt and illusion must become impossible by enchaining or putting to sleep thought. The instruments of divination are hence only methods of magnetising ourselves and of self-diversion from exterior light, so that we may pay attention to the interior light alone. It was for this reason p. 349 that Apollonius completely enveloped himself in a woollen mantle, and fixed his eyes on his navel in the gloom. The magical mirror of Dupotet is kindred to the device of Apollonius. Hydromancy and vision in the thumb-nail, when it has been polished and blackened, are varieties of the magical mirror. Perfumes and evocations stupefy thought; water and the colour black absorb the visual rays; a kind of dazzlement and vertigo ensue, followed by lucidity in subjects who have a natural aptitude or are suitably disposed thereto. Geomancy and cartomancy are other means to the same end; combinations of symbols and numbers, which are at once fortuitous and necessary, bear enough resemblance to the chances of destiny for the imagination to perceive realities by the pretext of such emblems. The more the interest is excited, the greater is the desire to see; the fuller the confidence in the intuition, the more clear the vision becomes. To combine the points of geomancy on chance or to set out the cards for trifling is to jest like children; the lots become oracles only when they are magnetised by intelligence and directed by faith.
Of all oracles, the Tarot is the most astounding in its answers, because all possible combinations of this universal key of the kabbalah give oracles of science and of truth for their solutions. The Tarot was the sole book of the ancient magi; it is the primitive Bible, as we shall prove in the following chapter, and the ancients consulted it as the first Christians at a later date consulted the Sacred Lots, that is, Bible verses selected by chance and determined by thinking of a number. Mlle. Lenormand, the most celebrated of our modern fortune-tellers, was unacquainted with the science of the Tarot, or knew it only by derivation from Etteilla, whose explanations are shadows cast upon a background of light. She knew neither high magic nor the kabbalah, but her head was filled with ill-digested erudition, and she was intuitive by an instinct which deceived her rarely. The works she left behind her are Legitimist tomfoolery, ornamented with classical quotations, but her oracles inspired by the p. 350 presence and magnetism of those who consulted her, were often astounding. She was a woman in whom extravagance of imagination and mental rambling were substituted for the natural affections of her sex; she lived and died a virgin, like the ancient druidesses of the isle of Sayne. Had nature endowed her with beauty, she might have easily at a remoter epoch played the part of a Melusine or a Velléda.
The more ceremonies employed in the practice of divination, the more we excite imagination both in ourselves and in those who consult us. The Conjuration of the Four, the Prayer of Solomon, the magic sword to disperse phantoms, may thus be resorted to with success; we should also evoke the genius of the day and hour of operation, and offer him a special perfume; next we should enter into magnetic and intuitive correspondence with the consulting person, inquiring with what animal he is in sympathy and with what in antipathy, and so also concerning his favourite flower or colour. Flowers, colours, and animals connect in analogical classification with the seven genii of the kabbalah. Those who love blue are idealists and dreamers; lovers of red are material and passionate; those who love yellow are fantastic and capricious; lovers of green are frequently commercial and crafty; the friends of black are influenced by Saturn; the rose is the colour of Venus, &c. Lovers of the horse are hard-working, noble in character, and at the same time yielding and gentle; friends of the dog are affectionate and faithful; those of the cat are independent and libertine. Frank persons hold spiders in special horror; those of haughty nature are antipathetic to the serpent; upright and fastidious persons cannot tolerate rats and mice; the voluptuous loathe the toad, because it is cold, solitary, hideous, and miserable. Flowers have analogous sympathies to those of animals and colours, and as magic is the science of universal analogies, a single taste, one tendency, in a given person, enables all the rest to be divined; it is an application of the analogical anatomy of Cuvier to phenomena in the moral order.
The physiognomy of face and body, the wrinkles on the brow, the lines on the hands, equally furnish the magus with precious indications. Metoposcopy and chiromancy have become separate sciences; their observations, purely empirical and conjectural, have been compared, examined, and then united into a body of doctrine by Goglenius, Belot, Romphile, Indagine, and Taisnier. The work of the last-mentioned writer is the most important and complete; he combines and criticises the observations and conjectures of all the others. A modern investigator, the Chevalier D’Arpentigny, has imparted to chiromancy a fresh degree of certitude by his remarks on the analogies which really exist between the characters of persons and the form of their hands as a whole or in detail. This new science has been further developed and verified by an artist who is also a man of letters, rich in originality and skill. The disciple has surpassed the master, and our amiable and spiritual Desbarrolles, one of those travellers with whom our great novelist Alexandre Dumas delights to surround himself in his cosmopolitan romances, is already cited as a veritable magician in chiromancy.
The consulting person should also be questioned upon his habitual dreams; dreams are the reflection of life, both interior and exterior. The old philosophers paid them great attention; the patriarchs regarded them as certain revelations; most religious revelations have been given in dreams. The monsters of perdition are nightmares of Christianity, and as the author of Smarra has ingeniously remarked, never could pencil or chisel have produced such beings if they had not been beheld in sleep. We should beware of persons whose imagination continually reflects deformities. Temperament is, in like manner, manifested by dreams, and as this exercises a permanent influence upon life, it is necessary to be well acquainted therewith if we would conjecture a destiny with certitude. Dreams of blood, of enjoyment, and of light indicate a sanguine temperament; those of water, mud, rain, tears, are occasioned p. 352 by a more phlegmatic disposition; fire by night, darkness, terrors, spectres, belong to the bilious and melancholic. Synesius, one of the greatest Christian bishops of the first centuries, the disciple of that beautiful and pure Hypatia who was massacred by fanatics after presiding gloriously over the school of Alexandria, in the inheritance of which school Christianity should have shared—Synesius, lyric poet like Pindar and Callimachus, priest like Orpheus, Christian like Spiridion of Tremithonte—has left us a treatise on dreams which has been supplied with a commentary by Cardan. No one concerns themselves now with these magnificent researches of the mind, because successive fanaticisms have wellnigh forced the world to despair of scientific and religious rationalism. St Paul burned Trismegistus; Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus and of St Paul. O persecutors! O incendiaries! O scoffers! when will ye end your work of darkness and destruction?
One of the greatest magi of the Christian era, Trithemius, irreproachable abbot of a Benedictine monastery, learned theologian, and master of Cornelius Agrippa, has left among his unappreciated and inestimable works, a treatise entitled, De septem secundeis, id est intelligentiis sive spiritibus orbes post Deum moventibus. It is a key of all prophecies new or old, a mathematical, historical, and simple method of surpassing Isaiah and Jeremiah in the prevision of all great events to come. The author in bold outline sketches the philosophy of history, and divides the existence of the entire world between the seven genii of the kabbalah. It is the grandest and widest interpretation ever made of those seven angels of the Apocalypse who appear successively with trumpets and cups to pour out the word and its realisation upon the earth. The duration of each angelic reign is 354 years and four months, beginning with that of Orifiel, the angel of Saturn, on the 13th of March, for, according to Trithemius, this was the date of the world’s creation; it was a period of savagery and darkness. Next came the p. 353 reign of Anaël, the spirit of Venus, on the 24th of June, in the year of the world 354, when love began to be the instructor of mankind; it created the family, and the family led to association and the primitive city. The first civilisers were poets inspired by love; presently the exaltation of poetry produced religion, fanaticism, and debauchery, culminating subsequently in the deluge. This state of things continued till the 25th of October, being the eighth month of the year A.M. 708, when the reign of Zachariel, the angel of Jupiter, was inaugurated, under whose guidance men began to acquire knowledge, and dispute the possession of lands and dwellings. It was also the epoch of the foundation of towns and the limitation of empires; its consequences were civilisation and war. The need for commerce began, furthermore, to be felt, at which time—namely, the 24th of February, A.M. 1063—was inaugurated the reign of Raphael, angel of Mercury, angel of science and of the word, of intelligence and industry. Then letters were invented, the first language being hieroglyphic and universal, a monument of which has been preserved in the book of Enoch, Cadmus, Thoth, and Palamedes; the kabbalistic clavicle adopted later on by Solomon, the mystical book of the Theraphim, Urim, and Thummim, the primeval Genesis of the Zohar, and of William Postel, the mystical wheel of Ezekiel, the rota of the Kabbalists, the Tarot of the Magi and the Bohemians. Then were arts invented, and navigation was attempted for the first time; relations extended, wants multiplied, and there followed speedily an epoch of general corruption, preceding the universal deluge, under the reign of Samaël, angel of Mars, which was inaugurated on the 26th of June, A.M. 1417. After long stupefaction, the world strove towards a new birth under Gabriel, the angel of the moon, whose reign began on the 28th of March, A.M. 1771, when the family of Noah became multiplied, and re-peopled the whole earth, after the confusion of Babel, until the reign of Michael, angel of the sun, which commenced on the 24th of February, A.M. 2126, to which epoch must be referred the p. 354 origin of the first dominations, the empire of the children of Nimrod, the birth of sciences and religions, and the first conflicts between despotism and liberty. Trithemius pursues this curious study throughout the ages, and at corresponding epochs exhibits the recurrence of ruins; then civilisation, born anew by means of poetry and love; empires, reconstituted by the family, enlarged by commerce, destroyed by war, repaired by universal and progressive civilisation, subsequently absorbed by great empires, which are the syntheses of history. The work of Trithemius, from this point of view, is more comprehensive and independent than that of Bossuet, and is a key absolute to the philosophy of history. His exact calculations lead him to the month of November in the year 1879, epoch of the reign of Michael and the foundation of a new universal kingdom, prepared by three centuries and a half of anguish, and a like period of hope, coinciding exactly with the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and first part of the nineteenth centuries for the lunar twilight and expectation, with the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, and second half of the eleventh centuries for the ordeals, the ignorance, the sufferings, and the scourges of all nature. We see, therefore, according to this calculation, that in 1879—that is, in twenty-four years’ time, a universal empire will be founded, and will secure peace to the world. This empire will be political and religious; it will offer a solution for all problems agitated in our own days, and will endure for 354 years and 4 months, after which it will be succeeded by the return of the reign of Orifiel, an epoch of silence and night. The coming universal empire, being under the reign of the sun, will belong to him who holds the keys of the East, which are now being disputed by the princes of the world’s four quarters. But intelligence and activity are the forces which rule the sun in the superior kingdoms, and the nation which now possesses the initiative of intelligence and life will possess also the keys of the East, and will establish the universal kingdom. To do this it may previously have to undergo a cross and martyrdom p. 355 analogous to those of the Man-God; but, dead or living, among nations its spirit will prevail, and all peoples will acknowledge and follow in four-and-twenty years the standard of France, ever victorious, or miraculously raised from the dead. Such is the prophecy of Trithemius, confirmed by all our previsions, and grounded in all our hopes.