Elephas Levi claimed that the attraction and repulsion of the atoms is caused by the astral light. “There exists an agent which is material and spiritual, a universal plastic medium, a common receptacle of the vibrations of motions and the images of forms, a fluid and a force. By means of this force all nervous apparatuses secretly communicate with each other, thence come sympathy and antipathy, thence dreams and second sight. The existence and use of this force is the great secret of practical magic. The astral light attracts, repels, vivifies and destroys all things under the influence of powerful wills. It can be directed by the leaders of souls. By means of this agent we can correspond instantaneously from one end of the earth to the other, discern what is taking place at the antipodes, heal or hurt at a distance. The Gnostics called it the burning body of the Holy Ghost. Life is produced by the action of the astral light on the ether or matter. In man it forms the astral body, it is the first envelope of the soul, and it is by combining with the most subtil fluids that it forms this etherized body or phantom. The astral body is nourished by the astral light, as the physical body is nourished by the earth. The astral light is saturated with souls, which it releases in the incessant generation of existences, and whose imperfect wills can be dominated and employed by stronger ones. The elementary spirits are like children, they torment those who concern themselves about them. It is these that produce the raps on the walls and furniture.”—Mysteries of Magic, 65.

“An individual can leave the physical body and actually travel on either the material or astral plane in the astral body. Many persons are able to travel thus in their ordinary sleep.”—Astral World, 25.

All magic is religious, having been invented by the priests or Magi. It is said that the religious bodies copied their demonology from the Kabala of the Jews, and that the latter borrowed their system of theurgy and theology from the Egyptian and Babylonian priests. If any one outside of the religious bodies started any opposition devil-worship, they were promptly burnt. All the magic rituals are derived from the Key of King Solomon, claimed to have been found in his sepulchre at Jerusalem.

In the Magic Grimore, ascribed to Pope Honorius, he says: “We have seen with what power Jesus commanded demons, which power was transmitted to St. Peter, and, as the lawful successors of St. Peter, having the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and desiring to share the power of invoking and commanding spirits, which has been reserved unto us alone, with our brethren, we have included in this Bull the manner of their invocation. And because it is meet that the ministers of the altar should have authority over rebellious spirits, we hereby depute unto them all the powers which we possess in virtue of the Holy Apostolic Chair.”—Book of Black Magic, 100.

In invoking the Devil or other choice spirits, it is necessary to murder some being. If the conjurer cannot or dare not murder a human being, he takes an innocent virgin lamb and cuts its throat and tears off its skin to use for a magic apron or parchment. Instead of the skin of a lamb, the caul of a new-born child may be used.—Idem.

The sign manual of the demon Valefor, the patron of thieves, contains two Maltese crosses rampant and three links. As Solomon and his entourage worshipped the demon Astaroth, they probably stole from him the two pillars at the door of the Temple and the double triangle above them, for they appeared in the seal of that spirit. There are two or more crosses in each of the seals or signatures of Solomon’s seventy two black fiends. Their motto is, “In this sign we conquer.”

Solomon imprisoned the seventy two devils, with all their legions, in a brazen vessel and sank it in a deep lake in Babylon. The Babylonians, thinking that there must be a great treasure in the vessel, took it out of the lake and broke it open, when out flew the chief devils immediately, with all their legions following them.—See Waite’s Book of Black Magic.

We still worship pagan gods. The Hexagram, or double triangle of Solomon, is still used by different sects and societies. On it is the name of Agla, a pagan sun-god, and also the name of Tau, the Egyptian bull christ Taurus, with the pagan symbol, the Tau cross. The god A. and O., Alpha and Omega, with which the Hexagram is adorned, is a foul Babylonian idol, the same as IO. It has been represented that the Devil falls prostrate before the cross. But, to tell the truth, Lucifer uses the sign himself, also the double triangle and the single triangle in his signature. And Belial has four crosses by which he lies.

When a sorcerer conjures up one of the seventy two demons, he must draw the double seal of Solomon (double triangle) and the Pentagram, (five-pointed star) on a parchment of calfskin. These must be worn on his white vestment, together with the seal of the spirit invoked. And the secret seal of Solomon (the pillar standing in a circle) must be drawn with the blood of a black, virgin cock on virgin parchment. This is part of the conjuration: “I invoke and conjure you, O Spirit, by God the Father, by God the son, by God the Holy Ghost, by the Most Glorious and Holy Mother of God, by her Sacred Heart, by her Blessed Milk, by the Power and Victory of Hell, by the Ministers of the Tartarean Seat. I exorcise thee in the names of El, Elohim, Zabaoth &c. do thou forthwith appear. I conjure thee by the Living and True God Heliorem (Helios, the sun god) and Tetragrammaton Jehovah (the God of four letters). Come! I Adonai Saday, King of Kings, commands thee.” See Lesser Key of King Solomon, 55.

There is no use in trying to invoke spirits or perform any tricks in black magic unless you have confessed and received the Holy Communion, and you must pray for assistance to the pagan gods Adonai, Eloim, Ariel, Yahveh and Gibor, and fast, and abstain from the society of females for nine days, and take a bath, and wear the garb of a priest or a Levite, and you must have the sacred Masons’ implements, the sword, the staff, the rod, the sickle and the poniard. See Waite’s Book of Black Magic.

That part of nature called the astral light or universal spirit was virtually the supreme god of all religions. It was the Heaven or Nirvana of the Buddhist, (where the soul is blown out like a lamp some believed.) When he attained to perfection and was reabsorbed in this godhead, he had stormed the heights of Heaven and attained eternal bliss. He considered that his spirit would no longer be subjected to endless incarnations in material forms. But there is no knowing when it would again by choice or compulsion enter the ether and form another atom and again commence the unavoidable cycle.

All the vile religions have scared the human race into ca’niption fits by their assertion that our souls will be lost unless we bow down to their priests and worship their idols. According to the original parent religion, the Hindu, if we obey the priests faithfully, we will go to Nirvana and become a creator or electron, or elementary spirit. And all the authorities, both pagan and Christian, agree that the elementary spirits are mischievous, wicked entities. It would be better to lose our souls, for in that case they are banished into the ether or chaos and become the nucleus of a material atom. If we go to Nirvana, we are one step farther removed from the ultimate goal of all the ambitions of all the heavenly electrons and material atoms, the supreme pinnacle of attainment, man’s high estate, which is greater than that of the gods.

The Theosophists revel in the mystic and occult. If they can construct a sentence that no one can understand, and that they do not know the meaning of themselves, they are in the seventh heaven of delight, their wisdom borders on the Divine. Stating their doctrine of transmigration in plain language: God sits at his desk in Heaven, with a great lot of pigeonholes before him, in each one of which is a soul in a state of coma. When he receives a wireless from the earth that Pat and Biddie McGee have formed in their marital relationship a psychic vortex, or soul vortex, he makes a grab at the pigeonholes and lights perhaps on the soul of Pythagoras and sticks it into the new-born embryo, which already has a soul, and there is no room for any other. See “Spermatozoa,” Stand. Dic., and note those very energetic individuals in a frantic race to enter the ovum and blossom out as human beings. You will then realize that the child already has a very lively soul, provided by nature, and there is no occasion for any doped soul, supplied by any idiotic human plan.

“The astral light keeps an unmutilated record of all that was, that is, or ever will be. The minutest acts of our lives are imprinted on it, and even our thoughts rest photographed on its eternal tablets. It is the Book of Life, it is the memory of God. If the medium or subject’s sight is ably directed by the mesmerizer, magician or spirit, the light must yield up its most secret records to our scrutiny.”—Astral World. It is claimed that each person’s atmosphere in the astral light is peopled with the images of his or her immediate family, thus accounting for the assertions of the mediums that they see the spirits of our lost ones.

Swedenborgians claimed that the human body is sometimes abandoned by the soul in consequence of overpowering fright, grief, despair or sickness, and that we encounter every day such living corpses. Into these bodies may enter the soul of an adept sorcerer or some earth-bound, disembodied soul. In insanity the astral soul is partly paralyzed, bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has departed forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampire or human soul near its own dissolution, and clinging desperately to earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this expedient.

The ancients claimed that the soul was located in the solar plexus, and it was asserted that they could read, hear, see and smell through the navel. In our vermiform stage of development before evolution had supplied us with heads, the soul was perhaps in the stomach, but it may have moved since. Plato says that the divine part of the soul is located in the head. Haeckel says that the human soul is a combination of the souls of all the cells of the body. It is impossible to destroy any simple substance, and if it affords you any comfort, you can assume that the soul or ego is an indestructible electron. The Stoics claimed that the soul is in the heart, and that although it outlives the body, it is yet perishable and can only endure at the longest till the termination of the world period, 4,320,000,000 years. Epicurus claimed that “nothing that exists will ever cease to exist. Atoms exist from all eternity, and worlds were formed by their vortical motion. The soul is material and composed of exceedingly fine atoms, and is dispersed through the whole body. The rational soul is in the breast.” Stephanus, of Alexandria, says that “copper is like a man, it has a soul and body.” Yoga Ramacharaka says that “iron is alive and may be killed by poison.”

“Transmigration of the soul takes place in all flesh, in beasts, reptiles and fowls. For one form of uncleanness the soul will pass into a Gentile, for another into a mule, for others into an ass, a woman, a bat, a she-mule or a camel.”—Kabala Nishmath Chaim, Ch. 13, No. 1. It sometimes happens that one sacrifices an animal with a human soul in it. Therefore the slaughtering knife must be without defect, and the slaughter must needs be delicately done to avoid cutting the gizzard out of the human soul. “The soul of a murderer is transmigrated into water. Let no man drink from a running stream, lest the soul of a wicked sinner pass into him.”—Kabala Emeh Hamelech, fol. 153, col. 1.

“By a combination of the letters of the ineffable name Rava once created a man and sent him to Rav. Zera. The man being unable to reply when spoken to, the Rabbi said to him: ‘Thou art a creation of the company (of necromancers) return to thy dust.’ By the same means a Rabbi created pumpkins, melons, deers and roes.”—Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrim, ch. 7.

The soul, called Psyche, when she is at home, lives in that part of the brain called the Medulla Oblongata, and the spirit, called Budhi, lives in the next house up the street, the Pineal Gland. When Budhi, or the Word, wins the affections of Psyche, and they are married, the Word saves the soul, and the man who harbors these entities is illuminated and becomes a master.

If you read Genesis in the original Hebrew, you will find that Al or El, the sun, not the Christian God, says: “To every beast of the earth I gave a living soul.” The souls of human beings are composed of material as refined and spiritual as that of the souls of cockroaches and bedbugs, and men, if they behave themselves, are equally as good as those animals and of just as much importance in the universe.