it is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections, the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter; secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects true wonders.
tritemius “on secret things and secret spirits.”
it wanted still many minutes of midnight, and glyndon was once more in the apartment of the mystic. he had rigidly observed the fast ordained to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited fancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the flesh,— he felt above them.
mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:—
“man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. man’s natural tendency is to egotism. man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him. for several ages he saw in the countless worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean only the petty candles, the household torches, that providence had been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more agreeable to man. astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity; and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and more glorious than his own,— that the earth on which he crawls is a scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation. but in the small as in the vast, god is equally profuse of life. the traveller looks upon the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in the summer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. but in each leaf of these boughs the creator has made a world; it swarms with innumerable races. each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more populous than a kingdom is of men. everywhere, then, in this immense design, science brings new life to light. life is the one pervading principle, and even the thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, and changes to fresh forms of matter. reasoning, then, by evident analogy: if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star, a habitable and breathing world,— nay, if even man himself is a world to other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood, and inhabit man’s frame as man inhabits earth, commonsense (if your schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite which you call space — the countless impalpable which divides earth from the moon and stars — is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate life. is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space? the law of the great system forbids the waste even of an atom; it knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. in the very charnel-house is the nursery of production and animation. is that true? well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the infinite itself, is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design of universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf, than the swarming globule? the microscope shows you the creatures on the leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. yet between these last and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. and hence, by tales and legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. if more common to the earlier and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that, with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. and as the savage can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. do you listen?”
“with my soul!”
“but first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier desires. not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all lands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the communicants of inspiration. when thus prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more acute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself — the air, the space — may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry, more palpable and clear. and this, too, is not magic, as the credulous call it; as i have so often said before, magic (or science that violates nature) exists not: it is but the science by which nature can be controlled. now, in space there are millions of beings not literally spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the spirit. hence the rosicrucian’s lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. yet, in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each, than the calmuc from the greek,— differ in attributes and powers. in the drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible are some of those monster mites as compared with others. equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers between earth and heaven.
“he who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. he is exposed to strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. that intercourse once gained, i cannot secure thee from the chances to which thy journey is exposed. i cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest foes. thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. but if thou art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist’s vivifying elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? because the very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom man could bring upon himself. hence it is, that though the elixir be compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive it who has gone through the subtlest trials. nay, some, scared and daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to save than the agony and travail of nature to destroy. to the unprepared the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. amidst the dwellers of the threshold is one, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,— one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. does thy courage falter?”
“nay; thy words but kindle it.”
“follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours.”
with that, mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely simple in themselves, glyndon soon perceived were capable of very extraordinary results.
“in the remoter times,” said mejnour, smiling, “our brotherhood were often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name of sorcerers. observe how easy to construct is the spectre lion that attended the renowned leonardo da vinci!”
and glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. the magical landscapes in which baptista porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons with which albertus magnus startled the earl of holland; nay, even those more dread delusions of the ghost and image with which the necromancers of heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of plataea (pausanias,— see plutarch.),— all these, as the showman enchants some trembling children on a christmas eve with his lantern and phantasmagoria, mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
....
“and now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and the stake.”
“but the alchemist’s transmutation of metals —”
“nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are forever at change. easy to make gold,— easier, more commodious, and cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. oh, yes; wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the discovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind by the breath of consuming fire. discover what will destroy life, and you are a great man!— what will prolong it, and you are an imposter! discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! discover some mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will pull down their own houses to stone you! ha, ha, my pupil! such is the world zanoni still cares for!— you and i will leave this world to itself. and now that you have seen some few of the effects of science, begin to learn its grammar.”
mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of the night wore itself away.