Section VI. The Dangers of Practical Magic.
Magic is a dual power: nothing is easier than to turn it into Sorcery; an evil thought suffices for it. Therefore while theoretical Occultism is harmless, and may do good, practical Magic, or the fruits of the Tree of Life and Knowledge,[116] or otherwise the “Science of Good and Evil,” is fraught with dangers and perils. For the study of theoretical Occultism there are, no doubt, a number of works that may be read with profit, besides such books as the Finer Forces of Nature, etc., the Zohar, Sepher Jetzirah, The Book of Enoch, Franck's Kabalah, and many Hermetic treatises. These are scarce in European languages, but works in Latin by the mediæval Philosophers, generally known as Alchemists and Rosicrucians, are plentiful. But even the perusal of these may prove dangerous for the unguided student. If approached without the right key to them, and if the student is unfit, owing to mental incapacity, for Magic, and is thus unable to discern the Right from the Left Path, let him take our advice and leave this study alone; he will only bring on himself and on his family unexpected woes and sorrows, never suspecting whence they come, nor what are the powers awakened by his mind being bent on them. Works for advanced students are many, but these can be placed at the disposal of only sworn or “pledged” chelâs (disciples), those who have pronounced the ever-binding oath, and who are, therefore, helped and protected. For all other purposes, well-intentioned as such works may [pg 068] be, they can only mislead the unwary and guide him imperceptibly to Black Magic or Sorcery—if to nothing worse.
The mystic characters, alphabets and numerals found in the divisions and sub-divisions of the Great Kabalah, are, perhaps, the most dangerous portions in it, and especially the numerals. We say dangerous, because they are the most prompt to produce effects and results, and this with or without the experimenter's will, even without his knowledge. Some students are apt to doubt this statement, simply because after manipulating these numerals they have failed to notice any dire physical manifestation or result. Such results would be found the least dangerous: it is the moral causes produced and the various events developed and brought to an unforeseen crisis, that would testify to the truth of what is now stated had the lay students only the power of discernment.
The point of departure of that special branch of the Occult teaching known as the “Science of Correspondences,” numerical or literal or alphabetical, has for its epigraph with the Jewish and Christian Kabalists, the two mis-interpreted verses which say that God
ordered all things in number, measure and weight;[117]
and:
He created her in the Holy Ghost, and saw her, and numbered her, and measured her.[118]
But the Eastern Occultists have another epigraph: “Absolute Unity, x, within number and plurality.” Both the Western and the Eastern students of the Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth. Only the latter are perhaps more sincere in their confessions. Instead of putting a mask on their Science, they show her face openly, even if they do veil carefully her heart and soul before the inappreciative public and the profane, who are ever ready to abuse the most sacred truths for their own selfish ends. But Unity is the real basis of the Occult Sciences—physical and metaphysical. This is shown even by Éliphas Lévi, the learned Western Kabalist, inclined as he is to be rather jesuitical. He says:
Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason of things. Therefore, that reason can be neither one person, nor three persons; it is Reason, and pre-eminently Reason (raison par excellence).[119]
The meaning of this Unity in Plurality in “God” or Nature, can be solved only by the means of transcendental methods, by numerals, as by the correspondences between soul and the Soul. Names, in the Kabalah as in the Bible, such as Jehovah, Adam Kadmon, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, are all of them more intimately connected, by geometrical and astronomical relations, with Physiology (or Phallicism) than with Theology or Religion. Little as people are as yet prepared to admit it, this will be shown to be a fact. If all those names are symbols for things hidden, as well as for those manifested, in the Bible as in the Vedas, their respective mysteries differ greatly. Plato's motto “God geometrises” was accepted by both Âryans and Jews; but while the former applied their Science of Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and sublime truths of Nature, the latter used their acumen to conceal only one—to them the most divine—of the mysteries of Evolution, namely, that of birth and generation, and then they deified the organs of the latter.