THE COUNT OF GABALIS

OR INTERVIEW ON SECRET SCIENCES

Father Montfaucon de Villars

1670

FIRST INTERVIEW ON SECRET SCIENCES

BEFORE God Be the soul of Monsieur, the Comte de Gabalis, who has just been written to me, who died of apoplexy. Gentlemen the curious will not fail to say that this kind of death is common to those who do not spare the secrets of the Sages, and that since the blessed Raymond Lully pronounced the judgment in his will, an executing angel has never failed to promptly twist the collar of all those who have indiscreetly revealed the Philosophical Mysteries.

But let them not lightly condemn this learned man, without being clear about his conduct. He revealed everything to me, it is true; but he did so only with all the cabalistic circumspections. We must give this testimony to his memory, that he was a great zealot of the religion of his fathers the Philosophers, and that he would have suffered the fire rather than profane its sanctity, by opening himself to some unworthy prince, to some ambitious or some incontinent three sorts of people excommunicated from time immemorial by the Sages. Fortunately I am not a prince, I have little ambition, and we will see later that I even have a little more chastity than a sage needs. He found me docile, curious, not very shy in spirit;

I only need a little melancholy to make all those who would like to blame M confess, le Comte de Gabalis for having concealed nothing from me, that I was quite a subject for the Secret Sciences. It is true that without melancholy one cannot make great progress in it: but the little that I have was careful not to put him off. You have (he told me a hundred times) Saturn in an angle, in his house, and retrograde; you cannot fail to be one day as melancholy as a sage must be; for the wisest of all men (as we know in the Kabbalah) had like you, Jupiter in the Ascendant, yet he is not found to have laughed once in all his life, so much the impression of his Saturn was powerful; although it was much weaker than yours. but what little I have was careful not to put him off. You have (he told me a hundred times) Saturn in an angle, in his house, and retrograde; you cannot fail to be one day as melancholy as a sage must be; for the wisest of all men (as we know in the Kabbalah) had like you, Jupiter in the Ascendant, yet he is not found to have laughed once in all his life, so much the impression of his Saturn was powerful; although it was much weaker than yours. but what little I have was careful not to put him off. You have (he told me a hundred times) Saturn in an angle, in his house, and retrograde; you cannot fail to be one day as melancholy as a sage must be; for the wisest of all men (as we know in the Kabbalah) had like you, Jupiter in the Ascendant, yet he is not found to have laughed once in all his life, so much the impression of his Saturn was powerful; although it was much weaker than yours. however, we do not find that he laughed once in his whole life, so powerful was the impression of his Saturn; although it was much weaker than yours. however, we do not find that he laughed once in his whole life, so powerful was the impression of his Saturn; although it was much weaker than yours.

So it is my Saturn, and not M. le Comte de Gabalis, that gentlemen who are curious must blame, if I prefer divulging their secrets rather than practicing them. If the stars do not do their duty, the Count is not to blame; and if I do not have enough greatness of soul to try to become the master of Nature, to overthrow the Elements, to maintain the Supreme Intelligences, to command Demons, to engender giants, to create new worlds, to speak to God in his formidable throne and to oblige the Cherub, who defends the entrance to the earthly paradise, to allow me to go for a few turns in his alleys: it is me at most who must be blamed or complain; you must not insult the memory of this rare man, and say that he died for having taught me all these things. Is it impossible that, as these weapons are daily, he succumbed in some fight with some unruly goblin?

Perhaps when speaking to God in the flaming throne he could not help looking him in the face; but it is written that one cannot look at it without dying. Perhaps he is only apparently dead, following the custom of the Philosophers, who pretend to die in one place and transplant themselves to another. Be that as it may, I cannot believe that the manner in which he entrusted his treasures to me deserves punishment. Here is how it happened. Common sense having always made me suspect that there is a great deal of emptiness in all that is called Secret Sciences, I have never been tempted to waste time leafing through books dealing with it: but also not finding not very reasonable to condemn, without knowing why, all those who indulge in it, who are often wise people moreover, learned for the most part, and making a figure in dress and in sword; I have taken it into my head (to avoid being unjust and not to tire myself of boring reading) to pretend to be obstinate with all these Sciences, with all those I have been able to learn who are touched by them.

At first I had more success than I had even hoped for. As all these gentlemen, however mysterious and reserved they pride themselves on being, ask nothing better than to display their imaginations, and the new discoveries they claim to have made in Nature, I was in a few days confidant of the most important of them; I always had someone in my cabinet, which I had purposely furnished with their most fantastic authors. . There was no passing foreign scholar that I did not notice; in a word, apart from science, I soon found myself a great personage. I had for companions princes, great lords, men of dress, beautiful ladies, ugly ones too; doctors, prelates, monks, nuns, in short people of all kinds.

Some were angry with the angels, others with the devil, others to their genius, others to Incubi, others to the healing of all ills, others to the stars, others to the secrets of the Divinity, and almost all to the Philosopher's Stone. They all agreed that these great secrets, and especially the Philosopher's Stone, are difficult to find and that few people possess them? But they all in particular had a good enough opinion of themselves to believe themselves to be among the chosen ones. Fortunately the most important were waiting then. Looking forward to the arrival of a great German lord and great cabalist, whose lands are towards the borders of Poland. He had promised by letters to the Children of the Philosophers, who are in Paris, to come and visit them and to pass through France going to England. I had the commission to respond to the letter of this great man, I sent him the figure of my nativity, so that he could judge whether I could aspire to supreme wisdom. My face and my letter were fortunate enough to oblige him to do me the honor of replying that I would be one of the first he would see in Paris; and that if Heaven were not against it, it wouldn't be up to him that I didn't enter the Society of the Sages. To spare my happiness,

I kept up regular business with the illustrious German. From time to time I proposed to him great doubts, to reason as much as I could on the numbers of Pythagoras, on the visions of Saint John, and on the first chapter of Genesis. The greatness of the materials delighted him, he wrote unheard-of marvels to me, and I saw clearly that I was dealing with a man of very vigorous and very spacious imagination. I have sixty or eighty slow ones in such an extraordinary style that I couldn't bring myself to read anything else as soon as I was alone in my study. I was admiring one of the most sublime ones one day when I saw a very good-looking man enter who, greeting me gravely, said to me in French and in a foreign accent: Adore, my son, adore the very good and the very great God of the wise, and never be proud that he sends you one of the children of wisdom to associate you with their Company and to make you partakers of the marvels of His All. Power. “.
The novelty of the greeting astonished me at first, and I began to doubt for the first time if one does not sometimes have apparitions: nevertheless, reassuring me as best as I could, and looking at him as civilly as the small fear that I had could allow myself. - Whoever you are, I said to him, you who complimented him are not of this world, you do me a lot of honor to come and visit me: but please accept that before d 'worship the God of the Wise, I know of which Sages, and of which God you speak and if you have it agreeable, lead yourself into this chair and take the trouble to tell me what is this God, these Sages, this company, these all-powerful marvels, and after or before all this what species of creature I have the honor to speak to.

- You receive me very wisely, sir, he continued, laughing and taking the chair that I presented to him, you are first asking me to explain things to you that I will not tell you today, please. The compliment I paid you are the words that the Sages say at the first of those to whom they have resolved to open their hearts and discover their mysteries. I believed that being as learned as you appeared to me in your letters, this greeting would not be unknown to you, and that it was the most agreeable compliment that the Comte de Gabalis could give.

- Ah sir, I cried, remembering that I had a great role to play, how will I make myself worthy of so much kindness? Is it possible that the greatest of all men is in my study and that the great Gabalis honors me with his visit?

- I am the least of the Wise, he replied with a serious air, and God who dispenses the light of his Wisdom with the weight and measure that pleases his Sovereignty, has made me only a part of it. very small in comparison with what I admire with astonishment in my companions. I hope that you will be able to equal them some day, if I dare to judge by the figure of your nativity, which you have done me the honor to send me: but you want me to complain to you sir, he added, laughing at what you took me for a ghost at first Ah not for a ghost, I said to him, but I confess to you, sir, that suddenly remembering what Cardan 6 recounts that his father was visited one day in his study by seven strangers dressed in various colors, who said to him rather bizarre remarks about their nature and their job...
- I hear you, interrupted the count, it was about the Sylphs of which I will speak to you some day, which are a species of aerial substances, which sometimes come to consult the Sages on the books of Averroes which they understand only too well. . Cardan is a giddy to have published this in its intricacies; he had found those memoirs in the papers of his worst, who was one of ours; and who, seeing that his son was naturally talkative, did not want to teach him anything great and allowed him to amuse himself with ordinary astrology, by which he only knew how to foresee that his son would be hanged. This scoundrel is the cause that you insulted me by taking me for a Sylph.

- Insult? I resumed. What sir, would I be unfortunate enough to...

- I'm not angry, he interrupted, you don't have to know that all these elementary spirits are our disciples; that they are only too happy when we want to stoop to instructing them, and that the least of our Sages is more learned and more powerful than all those little gentlemen to whom we shall speak of all this some other time; it is enough for me to-day to have had the satisfaction of seeing you. Try my son to make you worthy of receiving the cabalistic lights; the hour of your regeneration has arrived, it will be up to you to be a new creature. Fervently pray to Him who alone has the power to create new hearts, to give you one capable of the great things I have to teach you, and to inspire me not to keep you silent about our mysteries.

He then got up and kissed me without giving me time to answer him:

- Adieu, my son he continued, I have to see our companions who are in Paris, after which I will give you my news. However, watch , pray, hopeand don't talk. He left my study, some will say, I complained about his short visit when driving him home, and that he had the cruelty to abandon me so soon after showing me a spark of his lights. But having assured me with very good grace that I would lose nothing in the wait, he got into his carriage, and left me in a surprise that I cannot express. I could not believe my own eyes or my ears. he seems, moreover, to be very accomplished. Could he have encoded himself with these madnesses? He spoke to me very cavalierly about these Sylphs. Could it be magic indeed, and would I have been mistaken so far in believing that there are no more? But also if there are wizards, Are they as devout as this one seems to be? "

I did not understand any of this; I resolved, however, to see the end of it; though I foresaw that there would be a few sermons to go through, and that the devil who was agitating him was highly moral and preachy.

SECOND CONVERSATION ON THE SECRET SCIENCES

The Count wanted to give me the whole night to devote myself to prayer; and the next day, at daybreak, he let me know by a note that he would come to my house at eight o'clock; and that if I wanted to, we would go for a ride together. I waited for him, he came, and after the reciprocal civilities;:

- Let's go, he said to me, to some place where we are free, and where no one can interrupt our conversation.

- Ruel, I said to him, seems to me quite pleasant and quite solitary.

- Let's go, he resumed.

We got into his carriage. Along the way I watched my new master. I have never noticed in person so great a fund of satisfaction as it seemed in every way. He had a calmer and more free spirit than it seemed to me that a wizard could have. His whole air was not that of a man whose conscience reproached him with anything black. not being able to understand how a man, who seemed to me so judicious and so accomplished in all other things, had spoiled his mind by the visions of which I had known the day before that he was wounded. He spoke to me divinely of politics, and was delighted to hear that I had read what Plato wrote about it.
- You will need all that some day, he said to me, a little more than you think. And if we agree today it is not impossible that over time you will put these wise maxims into use.

We then entered Ruel, we went to the garden, the count disdained to admire its beauty and walked straight to the labyrinth. Seeing that we were as alone as he could wish:

- I praise, he exclaimed raising his eyes and his arms to the sky, I praise Eternal Wisdom for what she inspires me not to hide from you anything of her ineffable truths. How happy you will be, my son, if she has the kindness to put in your soul the dispositions that these high mysteries require of you? You are going to learn to command all of Nature; God alone will be your master, and the Sages alone will be your equals. The supreme intelligences will glory in obeying your desires; the demons will not dare to be where you are; your voice will make them tremble in the pit of the abyss, and all the invisible peoples who inhabit the four elements will consider themselves happy to be the ministers of your pleasures. I adore you, O great God, for having crowned man with so much glory, and having established him sovereign monarch of all the works of your hands. Do you feel, my son added, turning to me, do you feel that heroic ambition which is the certain character of the Children of Wisdom? do you dare desire to serve God alone, and to rule over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? and does it not bother you to be a slave, since you were born to be sovereign? And if you have these noble thoughts (as the figure of your nativity does not allow me to doubt), consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you in reaching the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart. what is the certain character of the Children of Wisdom? do you dare desire to serve God alone, and to rule over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? and does it not bother you to be a slave, since you were born to be sovereign? And if you have these noble thoughts (as the figure of your nativity does not allow me to doubt), consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you in reaching the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart.

what is the certain character of the Children of Wisdom? do you dare desire to serve God alone, and to rule over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? and does it not bother you to be a slave, since you were born to be sovereign? And if you have these noble thoughts (as the figure of your nativity does not allow me to doubt), consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you in reaching the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart. and rule over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? and does it not bother you to be a slave, since you were born to be sovereign?

And if you have these noble thoughts (as the figure of your nativity does not allow me to doubt), consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you in reaching the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart. and rule over all that is not God? Have you understood what it is to be a man? and does it not bother you to be a slave, since you were born to be sovereign? And if you have these noble thoughts (as the figure of your nativity does not allow me to doubt), consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you in reaching the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart. consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you to reach the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart. consider carefully if you will have the courage and the strength to renounce all the things which can be an obstacle to you to reach the rise for which you were born? He stopped there and stared at me, as if waiting for my answer, or as if trying to read my heart.

- As much as the beginning of his speech had made me hope that we would soon get into the matter, so much did I despair of it by his last words. The word renounce frightened me, and I had no doubt that he was going to suggest that I renounce baptism or paradise. So not knowing how to get out of this mess:

- Give up, I said to him, sir, what, do you have to give up something?

- Really, he went on, you have to and you have to so necessarily that you have to start there. sin, as it does not enter into a soul prejudiced by error or malice.

The Sages will never admit you into their company unless you renounce now something which cannot sympathize with Wisdom. We must," he added quietly, bending down in my ear, "we must give up all carnal intercourse with women.

- I burst out laughing at this bizarre proposal.

- You have me sir, I cried, you left me for little.

I was expecting you to offer me some strange renunciation: but since it's only women you blame, it's been a long time since I'm chaste enough, thank God?

However, sir, as Solomon was wiser than I perhaps will be; and that all his wisdom could not prevent him from allowing himself to be corrupted, tell me, please, what expedient do you gentlemen take to do without that sex? and what inconvenience would it be if in the Paradise of the Philosophers each Adam had his Eve.

- You are asking me great things there, he went on, consulting within himself if he should answer my question. However, since I see that you will detach yourself from women without difficulty, I will tell you one of the reasons which obliged the Sages to demand this condition of their disciples: and you will know from there in what ignorance live all those who are not not of our number.

"When you are enlisted among the Children of the Philosophers, and your eyes are fortified by the use of the most holy medicine, you will first discover that the elements are inhabited by most perfect creatures, whose sin of unfortunate Adam has deprived knowledge and commerce from his too unfortunate posterity.

This immense space which is between the earth and the heavens has inhabitants far nobler than the birds and the gnats; these vast seas have many other guests than dolphins and whales; the depth of the earth is not for moles alone; and the element of fire, nobler than the other three, was not made to remain useless and empty.

“The air is full of an innumerable multitude of peoples of human figure, a little proud in appearance but docile in effect: great amateurs of the subtle sciences, officious to the Sages, and enemies of the fools and the ignorant. Their wives and daughters are male beauties such as the Amazons are depicted.

- How, sir, I cried, do you want to tell me that these goblins are married?

- Do not police yourself, my son, for so little, he replied. Believe that everything I tell you is solid and true; these are only the elements of the old Kabbalah, and it will be up to you to justify it with your own eyes: but receive with a docile spirit the light that God sends you through me. Forget all you may have heard on these subjects in the schools of the ignorant: or you would have the displeasure, when you were convinced by experience, of being obliged to confess that you were obstinate inappropriately.

So push on to the end, and know that the seas and the rivers are inhabited as well as the air; the ancient Sages named this species of people Undines, or Nymphs. They are few males, and the females are there in large numbers; their beauty is extreme, and the daughters of men have nothing to compare.

“The earth is filled almost to the center with Gnomes, people of small stature, guardians of the treasures of the mines, and of the jewels. these are ingenious man-friendly and easy to command. They provide the Children of the Wise with all the money they need, and ask for the price of their service only the glory of being commissioned. The Gnomides, their wives, are small, but very pleasant and their dress is very curious. As for the Salamanders, fiery inhabitants of the region of fire, they serve the Philosophers: but they do not eagerly seek their company; and their daughters and wives are rarely seen.

- They are right, I interrupted, and I hold them free from their appearance.

- For what ? said the count.

- Why, sir, I resumed, and what do I have to converse with such an ugly animal as the male or female salamander?

- You are wrong, he replied, it is the idea that ignorant painters and sculptors have of it; the wives of the salamanders are beautiful, and even more beautiful than all the others since they are of a purer element. I did not speak to you about them, and I succinctly passed the description of these peoples, because you will see them yourself at your leisure and easily if you have the curiosity. You will see their clothes, their provisions, their manners, their police, their admirable laws. You will be charmed by the beauty of their spirit even more than that of their body: but you will not be able to help pitying these wretches when they tell you that their soul is mortal, and that they have no hope.

in the eternal enjoyment of the Supreme Being whom they know and whom they adore religiously. They will tell you, that being composed of the purest parts of the element they inhabit, and having no contrary qualities in them, since they are made of only one element, they die only after several centuries: but what is time at the cost of eternity? It will be necessary to return eternally to nothingness. This thought afflicts them greatly, and we have great difficulty in consoling them.
“Our Fathers the Philosophers speaking to God face to face complained to him of the misfortune of these peoples: and God, whose mercy is boundless, revealed to them that it was not impossible to find a remedy for this evil. He inspired them that just as man, by the covenant which he has contracted with God, has been made partakers of the Divinity: the Sylphs, the Gnomes the Nymphs and the salamanders, by the covenant which they can contract with man, can be made partakers of immortality. Thus a Nymph or a sylph becomes immortal and capable of the beatitude to which we aspire, when she is happy enough to marry a Sage; and a Gnome or Sylph ceases to be mortal the moment he marries one of our daughters.

From this arose the error of the first centuries, of Tertullian, of the martyr Justin, of Lactantius, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, of Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher, and generally of all the writers of that time. They had learned that these elementary half-men had sought the trade of girls; and they imagined from there that the fall of the angels had come only from the love with which they had allowed themselves to be touched for women. Some Gnomes, eager to become immortals, had wanted to win the good graces of our daughters and had brought them gems of which they are natural guardians; and these authors believed, relying on the misunderstood book of Enoch, that these were the snares that the loving angels had set for the chastity of our women. In the beginning these children of heaven begot the famous giants, (as all Jews are ignorant), and after them all the authors whom I named a moment ago, said as well as Origen and Macrobi that they were angels and did not know that they were were the Sylphs and other peoples of the elements who, under the name of children of Eloym, are distinguished from the children of men. In the same way, what the wise Augustine had the modesty not to decide, concerning the pursuits that those who were called Fauns or Satyrs, made against the Africans of his time, is clarified by what I have just said, of the desire that All these inhabitants have the elements to ally themselves with men as the only means of achieving immortality which they do not have.

“Oh! our Sages are careful not to impute the fall of the first angels to the love of women; no more than subjecting men sufficiently to the power of the devil, to attribute to him all the adventures of the Nymphs and Sylphs, with which all historians are filled. There was never anything criminal in any of this. They were Sylphs who sought to become immortal. Their innocent pursuits, far from scandalizing the Philosophers, seemed to us so just that we have all resolved, by common accord, to renounce women entirely and devote ourselves only to immortalizing the Nymphs and the Sylphides.

- O God, I exclaimed, what do I hear? How far does the f,,, go

- yes, my son, interrupted the count, admire how far philosophical bliss goes! For women whose feeble charms pass away in a few days, and are followed by horrible wrinkles, the Sages possess beauties which never grow old and which they have the glory of making immortal. Judge of the love and recognition of these invisible mistresses and of what ardor they seek to please the charitable Philosopher, who strives to immortalize them. Ah sir, I give up, I cried once again

- Yes, my son, he continued again without giving me time to finish. Renounce the useless and insipid pleasures that can be found with women; the most beautiful of them is horrible to the slightest Sylphid: no disgust ever follows our wise embraces. Ignorant wretches, how pitiful you are for not being able to taste the pleasures of philosophy.

- Wretched Count de Gabalis, I interrupted with an accent mixed with anger and compassion, will you allow me to finally say that I renounce this senseless wisdom, that I find this visionary philosophy ridiculous, that I hate these abominable embraces that mingle with ghosts; and that I tremble for you, that one of your so-called Sylphides hasten to carry you off to hell in the midst of your transports, lest such an honest man as you perceive at the end of madness of this chimerical zeal, and do penance for such a great crime.

- Oh! oh, he replied, stepping back three steps and looking at me with an angry look, woe to you, unruly spirit, his action frightened me, I confess; but it was much worse when I saw that going away from me he drew from his pocket a piece of paper, which I caught a glimpse of from afar, and which was rather full of characters which I could not quite discern. He read attentively, grieved and spoke low. I believed that he evoked some spirits for my ruin, and I repented a little of my inconsiderate zeal.

If I escape this adventure, I said, the cabalist will never do anything to me. "I was staring at him like a judge who was going to sentence me to death, when I saw that his face became serene again.

- It's hard for you, he said to me, laughing and coming back to me, it's hard for you to kick back against the sting. You are a vessel of choice. Heaven has destined you to be the greatest cabalist of your century. Here is the nativity figure that cannot be missing. If not now and through me, it will be when your retrograde Saturn pleases.

- Ah if I have to become Sage, I said to him, it will never be except by the enterprise of the great Gabalis; but to speak frankly, I'm afraid it will be hard for you to bend me to philosophical gallantry.

- Could it be that you are bad enough physicist not to be convinced of the existence of these peoples?

- I don't know, I resumed, but it would always seem to me that it would only be elves in disguise.

- Will you always believe more in your nurse, he said to me, than in natural reason, than in Plato, Pythagoras, Celsus, Psellus, Procle, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Trismegistus, Nollius, Dornea, Fludd, than to the great Philipe-Aureole-Théophraste-Bombast Paracelse de Honeinhem and to all our companions.

- I would believe you, sir, I replied, as much and as much and more than all these people: but my dear sir, could you not spare with your companions that I will not be obliged to melt in tenderness with these elementary damsels.

- Alas, he resumed, you are no doubt free, and one does not like if one does not want to; few Sages have been able to defend themselves from their charms: but there have nevertheless been found some who, reserving themselves entirely to greater things (as you will learn in time), have not wished to do this honor to the Nymphs.

- I will therefore be one of this number, I resumed, even if I cannot bring myself to waste the time in the ceremonies that I heard a prelate say, which must be practiced, for the commerce of these geniuses.

- This prelate did not know what he was saying, said the count, for you will see one day that these are not geniuses; and moreover Sage never employed either ceremonies or superstition for the familiarity of geniuses, any more than for the peoples we are talking about.

- The cabalist acts only by the principles of Nature: and if sometimes one finds in our books strange words, characters and fumigations, it is only as a seal to those ignorant of physical principles. Admire the simplicity of Nature in all its most marvelous operations, and in this simplicity a harmony and a concert so grand, so right, and so necessary that it will make you return, in spite of yourself, from your feeble imaginations. What I am going to tell you, we teach to those of our disciples, that we do not want to let Nature's sanctuary completely enter, and that we do not want however to deprive elementary peoples of society, for the compassion we have for these same peoples.

“The Salamanders, as you may have already understood, are composed of the subtlest parts of the sphere of Fire, conglomerated and organized by the action of the universal fire (of which I will speak to you some day), so called because he is the principle of all the movements of Nature. The Sylphs likewise are composed of the purest atoms of air, the Nymphs, of the finest parts of water; and the Gnomes, from the finer parts of the Earth. There was a lot of proportion between Adam and these creatures so perfect, because being composed of what was purest in the four elements, he contained the perfections of these four species of peoples, and was their natural king. . But as soon as his sin had thrown him into the excrement of the elements (as you will see some other time), the harmony was disconcerted, and it had no longer any proportion, being impure and gross, with these substances so pure and so subtle. What remedy for this evil? How to reassemble this lute, and recover this lost sovereignty? O Natural, why are you studied so little? Don't you understand, my son, with what simplicity Nature can restore to man those goods he has lost?

- Alas sir, I replied, I am very ignorant in all these simplicities.

"However, it is very easy to be learned there," he went on. If we want to recover the empire over the Salamanders, we must purify and exalt the element of fire which is in us and raise the tone of this slack string. There is only to concentrate the fire of the world by concave mirrors in a glass globe; and this is the artifice which all the Ancients religiously concealed and which the divine Theophrastus discovered. There is formed in this globe a solar powder, which having been purified from itself, from the mixture of the other elements and being prepared according to the art, becomes in a very short time supremely suitable for exalting the fire which is in us. , and to make us become, so to speak, of igneous nature. From then on the inhabitants of the sphere of fire become our inferiors and, delighted to see our mutual harmony restored and that we have come closer to them, they have for us all the friendship they have for their fellows, all the respect they owe to the image and to the lieutenant of their creator , and all the care with which they can make us aware of the desire to obtain from us the immortality which they do not have. It is true that, as they are more subtle than those of the other elements, they live very long, so they are in no hurry to demand immortality from the Sages.

You could put up with one of these, my son, if the aversion you have shown me lasts you to the end, perhaps he would never speak to you of what you fear so much. and all the care that can be taken to inform the desire to obtain from us the immortality that they do not have. It is true that, as they are more subtle than those of the other elements, they live very long, so they are in no hurry to demand immortality from the Sages. You could put up with one of these, my son, if the aversion you have shown me lasts you to the end, perhaps he would never speak to you of what you fear so much. and all the care that can be taken to inform the desire to obtain from us the immortality that they do not have. It is true that, as they are more subtle than those of the other elements, they live very long, so they are in no hurry to demand immortality from the Sages. You could put up with one of these, my son, if the aversion you have shown me lasts you to the end, perhaps he would never speak to you of what you fear so much.

“It would not be the same with Sylphs, Gnomes and Nymphs. As they live less time, they rather dealof us: also their familiarity is easier to obtain. You just have to close a glass full of conglomerate air, water or earth and leave it exposed to the sun for a month. Then separate the elements according to science; which above all is very easy in water and on land. It is marvelous what a magnet it is that each of these elements purified to attract Nymphs, Sylphs and Gnomes. We have not taken so little as nothing every day for a few months, that we see in the air the flying republic of the Sylphs, the Nymphs coming in crowds to the shore and the guardians of the treasures displaying their riches. Thus without characters without ceremonies, without barbaric words, one becomes absolute over all these peoples. They demand no worship of the Sage, whom they well know who is nobler than them. Thus venerable Nature teaches her children to repair the elements by the elements. Thus harmony is restored. Thus man recovers his natural empire and can do everything in the elements, without demons and without illicit art. So you see, my son, that the Sages are more innocent than you think. You tell me nothing...

- I admire you, sir, I say to him, and I begin to fear that you will make me become a distiller.

- Oh God forbid you, my child, he cried, it is not for such trifles that your nativity destines you. On the contrary, I forbid you to amuse yourself with it; I told you that the Sages only show these things to those they don't want to admit into their troop. You will have all these advantages, and infinitely more glorious and more agreeable ones, by these very different philosophical processes. I have only described these manners to you to show you the innocence of this philosophy and to relieve you of your panicky terrors.

- Thank God, sir, I replied, I am not so afraid as I was a while ago. And although I am still undecided about the accommodation you offer me with the Salamanders, I am still curious to learn how you discovered that these Nymphs and Sylphs die.
- Really, he says, they tell us and we see them die.

- How can you see them die, I replied, since your trade makes them immortal?

- it would be good, he said, if the number of the Sages equaled the number of these peoples; besides that there are several among them who would rather die than risk, by becoming immortal, being as unhappy as they see the demons are, it is the devil who inspires these feelings in them, for there is nothing he will not do to prevent these poor creatures from becoming immortal through our covenant. So that I look, and you must look, my son, as a very pernicious temptation and as a very uncharitable movement, this aversion which you have there.

"Moreover, as regards the death of which you speak to me, who compelled the oracle of Apollo to say that all those who spoke in the oracles were mortal as well as he, Count Porphyry relates? And what do you think that meant that voice which was heard on all the shores of Italy and which frightened all those who found themselves on the sea? BIG PAN IS DEAD. It was the peoples of the air who gave notice to the peoples of the waters that the first and oldest of the Sylphs had just died.

- When this voice was heard, I said to him, it seems to me that the world adored Pan and the Nymphs. These gentlemen whose business you preach to me, were then the false gods of the pagans?

"It is true, my son," he replied. The sages are careful not to believe that the devil ever had the power to make himself worshipped. He is too unhappy and too weak to have ever had this pleasure and this authority. But he was able to persuade these hosts of the elements to show themselves to men and to have temples erected for them; and by the natural dominion which each of them has over the element which he inhabits, they troubled the air and the sea, shook the earth and dispensed the fires of heaven at their whim, so that they did not had little difficulty in being taken for divinities, while the sovereign Being neglected the salvation of the nations. Laughing the devil did not receive from his malice all the advantage he hoped for, because it happened from there that Pan, the Nymphs and the other elementary peoples,

- I can't hear you, sir, I resumed.

- You do not care to hear me, he continued, laughing and in a mocking tone, here is what passes you and who would also pass all your doctors who do not know what beautiful physics is, here is the great mystery of all this part of philosophy which looks at the elements, and which will surely take away from you (if you have a little around for yourself) this so unphilosophical repugnance that you are showing me today. Know then, my son (and do not divulge this great Arcanum to some ignorant unworthy), know that, as the Sylphs acquire an immortal soul by the alliance which they contract with men who are predestined, so men who have no right to eternal glory, these unfortunates to whom immortality is only a fatal advantage for whom the Messiah was not sent...

- So you are also Jansenists, gentlemen cabalists? I interrupt.

- We do not know what it is, my child, he continued abruptly, and we disdain to inform ourselves of the different sects and the various religions with which the ignorant are infatuated. We hold to the ancient religion of our fathers the Philosophers, of which I will have to instruct you one day. But to resume our point: these men whose sad immortality would only be an eternal misfortune, these unfortunate children, whom the Sovereign Father has neglected, still have the resource that they can become mortal by allying themselves with the elementary peoples. . So you see that the Sages risk nothing for eternity; if they are predestined, they have the pleasure of leading to heaven (leaving the prison of this body) the Sylphid or the Nymph whom they have immortalized; and if they are not predestined, the trade of the Sylphide renders their soul mortal and delivers them from the horrors of the second death. Thus the demon saw himself escaping all the pagans who allied themselves with the Nymphs. Thus the Sages or the friends of the Sages to whom God inspires us to communicate some of the four elementary secrets (which I have taught you more or less) free themselves from the danger of being damned.

"Without lying, sir," I would write to myself, not daring to put him in a bad mood, and finding it expedient to postpone telling him fully my feelings, until he had discovered to me all the secrets of his cabal, which I judged by this sample to be very bizarre and recreational. Without lying you push well before Wisdom And you were right to say that this would pass all our doctors. I even believe that this would pass all our magistrates, and that if they could discover who are those who escape the devil by this means, as ignorance is iniquitous, they would take the interests of the devil against these fugitives and make them look bad.
“So it is for that,” resumed the count, “that I recommended you and that I holy recommend the secret to you. Your judges are strange! They condemn a very innocent action as a very dark crime. What barbarity to have had these two priests burned, whom the Prince of Mirande says he knew, who had each had his Sylphide for the space of forty years! What inhumanity to have killed Jeanne Hervillier who had worked to immortalize a Gnome for thirty-six years! And what ignorance in Bodin to treat her as a witch and to take up the subject of her adventure, to authorize popular chimeras concerning so-called sorcerers by a book as impertinent as that of his republic is reasonable.

"But it's late, and I don't notice you haven't eaten yet."

- So it is for you that you speak, sir, I said to him, because for me I would listen to you until tomorrow without inconvenience.

- Ah! for me, he continued, laughing and walking towards the door, it seems that you hardly know what Philosophy is. The Sages only eat for pleasure and never for necessity.

- I had a completely opposite idea of ​​Wisdom, I replied, I believed that the Sage should eat only to satisfy the need.

- You were mistaken, said the count. How long do you think our Sages can last without eating?

- What can I know? I said. Moses and Elijah spent forty days, your sages are probably a few days less.

- What a fine effort that would be, he went on. The most learned man who ever was, the Divine, the almost adorable Paracelsus assures that he has seen many Sages, to have spent twenty years without eating anything. Himself, before having reached the monarchy of Wisdom, whose scepter we have rightly given to him, wanted to try to live several years by taking only half a scruple of solar quintessence. And if you want to have the pleasure of making someone live without eating, you only have to prepare the earth, as I said it can be prepared for the society of the Gnomes. This earth, applied to the navel and renewed when it is too dry, makes it possible to do without eating and drinking without any trouble: as the truthful Paracelsus says he tried it for six months.

“But the use of cabalistic Catholic medicine frees us much better from all importunate necessities, to which nature subjects the ignorant. We eat only when we please, and all the superfluity of meat vanishing by insensible perspiration, we are never ashamed of being men.

He then fell silent, seeing that we were near our people. We went to the village to have a light meal, following the custom of the heroes of Philosophy.

THIRD CONVERSATION ON THE SECRET SCIENCES

ATAFTER having dinner, we returned to the labyrinth. I was a dreamer, and the pity I felt for the count's extravagance, from which I judged it would be difficult for me to cure him, prevented me from being amused by everything he had said to me. , as much as I would have done, if I had hoped to bring him back to common sense. I was looking in antiquity for something to oppose to him, to which he could not reply, for in alleging the feelings of the Church to him, he had declared to me that he only held to the ancient religion of his fathers the Philosophers; and to want to convince a cabalist by reason, the enterprise was a long one: apart from the fact that I was careful not to argue against a man whose principles I did not yet know. It occurred to me that what he had told me of false gods, for which he had substituted the Sylphs and the other elementary peoples, could be refuted by the oracles of the pagans, whom Scripture everywhere treats of devils and not of Sylphs. But as I did not know if, in the principles of his cabal, the count would not attribute the answers of the oracles to some natural cause, I thought it would be proper to have him explain fully what he thought of them. . It gave me reason to put it in matter, when before engaging in the labyrinth, he turned to the garden. I thought it would be appropriate to make him explain fully what he thought of it. It gave me reason to put it in matter, when before engaging in the labyrinth, he turned to the garden. I thought it would be appropriate to make him explain fully what he thought of it. It gave me reason to put it in matter, when before engaging in the labyrinth, he turned to the garden.

- That's quite beautiful, he said, and these statues have a pretty good effect.
“The cardinal,” I replied, “who had them brought here, had an imagination not worthy of his great genius. He believed that most of these figures once delivered oracles, and he had bought them very expensively, on that footing.

- It is the disease of many people, continued the count. Ignorance causes a very criminal form of idolatry to be committed every day, since the idols believed to be once used by the devil to make themselves love. O God, will it never be known in the world that you have from the birth of centuries thrown your enemies under the stool of your feet and that you hold the demons prisoners under the earth, in the whirlwind of darkness? This curiosity, so unlaudable, of assembling these pretended organs of demons in this way, could become innocent, my son, if one wanted to be persuaded that the angels of darkness have never been permitted to speak in the oracles.

- I do not think, I interrupted, that it would be easy to establish that among the curious, but it would perhaps be among the strong minds. For it was not long since decided in a conference expressly given on this matter, by minds of the first order, that all these pretended oracles were but a deception of the avarice of the Gentile priests or only an artifice of the policy of sovereigns.

"Was it," said the count, "the Mahometans sent as ambassadors to your king who held this conference and who thus decided this question?"

- No, sir, I replied.

- What religion are these gentlemen then, he replied, since they do not count for anything the divine Scripture which makes mention in so many places of so many different oracles? And mainly pythons which made their residence and which returned their answers in the parts intended for the multiplication of the image of God?

I spoke, I replied, of all these gossiping bellies, and pointed out to the company that King Saul had banished them from his kingdom, where he still found one on the eve of his death, whose voice had the admirable power to raise Samuel to his prayer and to his ruin. But these learned men did not fail to decide that there were never any oracles

- If Scripture did not touch them, said the Count, they had to be convinced by all of Antiquity, in which it was easy to show them a thousand marvelous proofs of it. So many virgins pregnant with the destiny of mortals, who gave birth to the good or the bad adventures of those who consulted them. Why don't you allege Chrysostom, Origen and Oecumenius, who mention these divine men, whom the Greeks called Engastrimandres, whose prophetic belly articulated such famous oracles. And if your gentlemen do not like Scripture and the Fathers, it was necessary to highlight those miraculous daughters, of which the Greek Pausanias speaks, who changed into doves, and in this form made the famous oracles of the Dodonid doves , or else you could say to the glory of your nation that there were formerly in Gaul illustrious maidens who metamorphosed into all shapes, according to those who consulted them, and who, in addition to the famous oracles they gave , had an admirable empire over the waves and a salutary authority over the most incurable diseases.

- we would have treated all these fine proofs as apocrypha, I told him.

- Does antiquity make them suspect? he resumed. You had only to point out to them the oracles which still occur every day.

- And where in the world? I said.
- In Paris, he replied.
- In Paris! I will write to myself.

- Yes, in Paris, he continued. You are master in Israel and you do not know that. Do we not consult the aquatic oracles every day in glasses of water or in basins, and the aerial oracles in mirrors and on the hands of virgins? Do we not thus recover lost rosaries and stolen watches? Do we not thus learn news from distant lands and do we not see the absent?

- Hey sir, what are you telling me? I said.

- I tell you, he continued, what I know about which happens every day and of which it would not be difficult to find a thousand eyewitnesses,

"I don't believe that, sir," I said. Magistrates would be some example of such a punishable action, and idolatry would not be allowed...

- Ah! how prompt you are,” interrupted the count. There is not so much evil as you think in all this, and Providence will not allow us to extirpate this remnant of Philosophy which has saved itself from the lamentable shipwreck which truth has made. If there still remains some vestige among the people of the formidable power of the divine names, would you be of the opinion that it should be erased and that we lose the respect and the recognition which we owe to the great name (.. ....), who works all these wonders, even when he is invoked by the ignorant and by sinners, and who would do many other miracles in a cabalistic mouth. If you had wanted to convince your gentlemen of the truth of the oracles, you had only to exalt your imagination and your faith, and turning towards the East cry aloud (...)
- Sir, I interrupted, I was careful not to make this kind of argument to such honest people as those with whom I was, they would have taken me for a fanatic, for assuredly they have not of faith in all that and had I known of the cabalistic operation of which you speak to me, it would not have succeeded by my mouth: I have even less faith in it than they.

- Well, well, said the count, if you don't have any, we'll send you some. However, if you had thought that your gentlemen had not given credence to what they can see every day in Paris, you could tell them a fairly recent story. The oracle which Celius Rhodiginus says he saw himself, rendered about the end of the past century, by that extraordinary man who spoke and foretold the future through the same organ as Plutarch's Eurycles.

- I would not have liked, answered I, to quote Rhodiginus; the quotation would have been pedantic and then they would not have failed to tell me that this man was doubtless a demoniac.

"You would have said that very monastically," he resumed.

- Sir, I interrupted, despite the cabalistic aversion that I see you have for the monks, I cannot but be for them in this meeting. I believe it wouldn't be so bad to deny outright that there ever were oracles than to say that it wasn't the demon that spoke in them. Because finally the fathers and the theologians...
- After all, he interrupted, don't the theologians still agree that the learned Sambethé, the oldest of the Sibyls, was the daughter of Noah?

- Hey? whatever, I resumed.

- Plutarch, he replied, does he not say that the most ancient Sybille was the first who delivered oracles at Delphi? This spirit that Sambethe lodged in his bosom was therefore not a devil, nor his Apollo a false god, since idolatry did not begin until long after the division of languages; and it would be unlikely to attribute to the father of lies the sacred books of the Sibyls and all the proofs of the true religion that the Fathers have drawn from them. And then, my child, he continued, laughing, it is not for you to break off the marriage that a great cardinal has made of David and the Sybille, nor to accuse this learned personage of having compared a great prophet and an unhappy fanatic For either David strengthens the testimony of the Sybille, or the Sybille weakens David's authority.
- I beg you, sir, I interrupted, resume your seriousness.

- I don't mind, he said, on condition that you don't accuse me of being too much. Is the devil, in your opinion, ever divided against himself? And is it sometimes against his interests?

- Why no ? I said.

- Why no ? he said Because what Tertullian so happily and so magnificently called the Reason of God does not find it appropriate. Satan is never divided by himself. It follows then, either that the devil never spoke in the oracles, or that he never spoke there against his interests. It therefore follows that if the oracles spoke against the interests of the demon, it was not the devil who spoke in the oracles.

- But could not God have forced the demon, I said to him, to bear witness to the truth and to speak against himself?

"But," he resumed, "if God has not forced him to do so?"

- Ah in that case, I replied, you will have more reason than the monks.

- Let us see then, he continued, and to proceed invincibly and in good faith I do not want to bring the testimonies of the oracles that the Fathers of the Church report although I am persuaded of the veneration that you have for these great men. Their religion and the interest they had in the matter could have prevented them, and their love for truth some ornament of the lie itself: they were men and they can therefore - according to the maxim of the Poet of the Synagogue - have been unfaithful witnesses.

"I am therefore going to take a man who cannot be suspected in this cause: a pagan, and a pagan of another species than Lucretius or Lucian or the Epicureans, a pagan infatuated that he is gods and demons without number, superstitious beyond measure , great magician, or so-called such, and consequently great partisan of the devils, is Porphire. Here are word for word some oracles that he reports.

ORACLE
THERE IS ABOVE THE HEAVENLY FIRE AN INCORRUPTIBLE FLAME, ALWAYS SPARKLING, SOURCE OF LIFE, FOUNTAIN OF ALL BEINGS AND PRINCIPLE OF ALL THINGS, THIS FLAME PRODUCES EVERYTHING, AND NOTHING PERISHES BUT WHAT IT CONSUMES, IT IS MAKES ITSELF KNOWN; THIS FIRE CANNOT BE CONTAINED AT ANY LOCATION; IT IS BODYLESS AND WITHOUT MATTER, IT SURROUNDS THE HEAVEN AND A LITTLE SPARK SHEETS FROM IT THAT MAKES ALL THE FIRE OF THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE STARS. HERE IS WHAT I KNOW OF GOD, DO NOT SEARCH TO KNOW MORE, BECAUSE IT PASSES YOUR REACH, WISE WHATEVER YOU ARE. FOR THE REST, KNOW THAT THE UNJUST AND WICKED MAN CANNOT HIDE HIMSELF BEFORE GOD. NEITHER ADDRESS NOR EXCUSE CAN DISGUISE ANYTHING FROM HIS SHEARY EYES. EVERYTHING IS FULL OF GOD, GOD IS EVERYWHERE.

- You can see, my son, that this oracle does not really feel his demon.

- At least, I answered, the devil comes out of his character enough there,

- Here is another, he said, who preaches even better.

THERE IS IN GOD AN IMMENSE DEPTH OF FLAME & THE HEART SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID OF TOUCHING THIS ADORABLE FIRE OR OF BEING TOUCHED BY IT THE LINK, THE HARMONY AND THE DURATION OF THE WORLD. NOTHING SUBSISTS ONLY BY THIS FIRE, WHICH IS GOD HIMSELF. NO ONE HAS BEGOTTEN HIM, HE IS MOTHERLESS, HE KNOWS EVERYTHING, AND WE CANNOT TEACH HIM ANYTHING: HE IS STEADLESS IN HIS DESIGNS, AND HIS NAME IS INEFFECTIVE THIS IS WHAT GOD IS BECAUSE FOR WE WHO ARE HIS MESSENGERS, WE ARE JUST A SMALL PART OF GOD.

- Well ! How about this one?

- I would say of both, I replied, that God can force the father of lies to bear witness to the Truth.

"Here's another one," resumed the Count, "which will relieve you of this scruple."

ORACLE
ALAS TRIPODS, CRY AND SAY YOUR APOLLO'S FUNERAL ORATION; HE IS MORTAL HE WILL DIE HE IS EXTINGUISHED, BECAUSE THE LIGHT OF THE CELESTIAL FLAME MAKES IT EXTINGUISHED.
- You see well, my child, that whoever it may be who speaks in these oracles, and who explains so well to the pagans the Essence, the Unity, the Immensity, the Eternity of God, he admits that he is mortal and only a spark of God. It is therefore not the demon who speaks since he is immortal and God would not force him to say that he is not. It is decreed that Satan does not divide against himself. Is it the way to be adored to say that there is only one God? He says he is mortal; since when is the devil so humble as to take away even his natural qualities? you see then, my son, that if the principle of him who is called par excellence the God of the Sciences subsists, it cannot be the demon who spoke in the oracles.

- But if it is not the demon, said I to him, or lying with lightheartedness, when he calls himself mortal or speaks true by force, when he speaks of God, to what then will your cabal attribute all the oracles you support that have actually been delivered? Will it be the exhalation of the earth, like Aristotle, Cicero and Plutarch?

- Oh no, not that, my child, said the count. Thanks to the damned cabal, I don't have the wounded imagination up to that point.

- How, I replied, do you hold that very visionary opinion? His supporters, however, are people of common sense.

- They are not, my son, at this point here, he continued, and it is impossible to attribute to this exhalation all that has passed in the oracles. For example, this man, in Tacitus, who appeared in a dream to the priests of a temple of Hercules in Armenia and who ordered them to keep ready for him runners equipped for hunting. Until then it could be the exhalation, but when these runners came back to see him quite outraged and the quivers empty of arrows, and when the next day we found as many dead animals in the forest as we had put arrows in the quivers, you see clearly that it could not not be the exhalation which produced this effect? “It was even less the devil, for it would be to have an unreasonable and uncabalistic notion of the misfortune of the enemy of God, to believe that he was allowed to amuse himself by chasing the deer and the hare.

- To what then the sacred cabal, I said to him, attributes all this to you?

- Wait he replied. Before I reveal this mystery to you, I must cure your mind well of the prevention where you could be for this alleged exhalation, because it seems to me that you have quoted with emphasis Aristotle, Plutarch and Cicero, you could still quote Iamblichus who, great mind as he was, was for some time in this error which he nevertheless soon discovered, when he had examined the thing closely in the book of the Mysteries .. “Pierre d'Apone, Pomponace, Levinius, Sirenius and Lucilio Vanino are still delighted to have found this defeat in some of the Ancients. All those so-called strong spirits who, when they speak of divine things, rather say what they desire than what they know, do not want to confess anything superhuman in the oracles, for fear of recognizing something above the 'male. They are afraid that a ladder will be made for them to climb up to God whom they fear to know by the degrees of spiritual creatures, and they prefer to make one for themselves to descend into nothingness. Instead of rising towards the sky they dig the earth and, instead of seeking in beings superior to man the cause of these transports which raise him above himself and make him a kind of divinity. ,
“Such is man's misery, when the spirit of contradiction and the mood of Thinking differently than others possess him? Far from achieving its ends, it envelops and hinders itself. These libertines do not want to subject man to substances less material than himself, and they subject him to an exhalation; and, without considering that there is no connection between this chimerical smoke and the soul of man, between this vapor and future things, between this frivolous cause and these miraculous effects, it suffices for them to be singular to believe that they are reasonable. It is enough for them to deny spirits and make spirits strong.

- Do you really dislike the singularity, sir? I interrupted.

- Oh? my son, he told me, it is the plague of common sense and the stumbling block of the greatest minds. Aristotle, great logician as he is, could not avoid the trap into which the fantasy of singularity leads those whom it affects as violently as he does.

- He couldn't avoid, I say, embarrassing himself and cutting himself. He says in the Book of the Generation of Animals and in his Morals , that the spirit and understanding of man comes to him from outside and that it cannot come to us from our father; and by the spirituality of the operations of our soul he concludes that it is of another nature than this material compound which it animates, and whose coarseness only offends speculations, far from contributing to their production.

- Blind Aristotle, since according to you our material compound cannot be the source of our spiritual thoughts, how do you mean that a weak exhalation can be the cause of the sublime thoughts and the effort that the Pythians who give the oracles take ? You can clearly see, my child, that this strong spirit cuts itself off and that singularity makes it go astray.

- You are reasoning very correctly, sir, I said to him, delighted to see indeed that he spoke of very common sense and hoping that his madness would not be an incurable disease, God grant that...

- Plutarch, so solid moreover he continued interrupting me, is pitiful in his dialogue: Why the oracles have ceased? He is objected to by convincing things that he does not resolve. why does he not respond to what is said to him? That if it is the exhalation that makes this transport, all those who approach the fateful tripod would be seized with enthusiasm, and not a single girl, even if she is a virgin. But how can this vapor articulate voices through the belly? Moreover, this exhalation is a natural and necessary cause which must have its effect regularly and always; why is this girl only agitated when we consult her? And what most urges why has the earth surrounded to thus push forth divine vapours? Is she less earthy than she was? Does it receive other influences? Does it have other seas and other rivers? Who thus blocked its pores or changed its nature?

“I admire Pomponace, Lucile and the other libertines, for having taken Plutarch's idea and having abandoned the way in which he explains himself. He had spoken more judiciously than Cicero and Aristotle, as he was a man of very good sense; and, not knowing what to conclude from all these oracles after a tiresome irresolution, he had decided that this exhalation, which he believed to issue from the earth, was a very divine spirit; thus he attributed to the divinity these extraordinary movements and lights of the priestesses of Apollo. This divining vapor is, he says, a very divine and very holy breath and spirit .

“Pomponace, Lucile and modern atheists do not adapt to these ways of speaking which presuppose divinity. “These exhalations, they say, were of the nature of the vapors which infest the atrabilaria which speak languages ​​which they do not understand. "But Fernel refutes these impious people well enough by proving that bile, which is a peccant humor, cannot cause that diversity of languages ​​which is one of the most marvelous effects of consideration and an artificial expression of our thoughts. However, he decided the thing imperfectly when he subscribed to Psellus and to all those who have not penetrated far enough into our holy philosophy. Not knowing where to find the causes of these surprising effects, he did like the women and the monks, and attributed them to the devil.

- To whom, then, should they be attributed? I said. I have been waiting for this cabalistic secret for a long time.

- Even Plutarch marked it very well, he said to me, and he would have done well to stop there. This irregular way of being explained by an indecent organ not being serious enough and worthy enough of the majesty of the gods, says this pagan, and what the oracles said surpassing also the forces of the soul of man, those They have rendered a great service to philosophy, which have established mortal creatures between the gods and man, to whom we can refer everything that surpasses human weakness and does not approach divine greatness.

“This opinion is part of all ancient philosophy. The Platonists and the Pythagoreans had taken it from the Egyptians, and these from Joseph the savior and from the Hebrews who dwelt in Egypt before the passage of the Red Sea. The Hebrews called those substances which are between the angel and the man, Sadaim; and the Greeks, transposing the syllables and adding only one letter, called them Daimonas . These demons are among the ancient philosophers an aerial race, dominant over the elements, mortal, engendering, misunderstood in this century by those who seek little truth in its former home, that is to say in the Kabbalah and in theology. of the Hebrews, who had on their side the particular art of maintaining this aerial nation and of conversing with all these inhabitants of the Air.

- Here you are, I think, back to your sylphs again, sir? I interrupted.

Yes, my son, he continued. The Theraphim of the Jews was only the ceremony that had to be observed for this trade; and that Jew Michas, who complains in the Bookof the Judges that his gods have been taken from him, only mourns the loss of the little statue in which the Sylphs kept him. The god Rachel stole from her father was still a Theraphim. Michas nor Laban are not rebuked with idolatry, and Jacob would not have taken care to live fourteen years with an idolater nor to marry his daughter; it was only a trade of Sylphs, and we know, by tradition, that the synagogue held this trade permitted and that the idol of David's wife was only the Theraphim by whose favor she maintained the elementary peoples , for you judge well that the Prophet of the heart of God would not have suffered idolatry in his house.

“These elemental nations, so long as God neglected the salvation of the world in punishment for the first sin, took pleasure in explaining to men in oracles what they knew of God, in showing them how to live morally, in giving them very wise advice and very useful, such as we see in large numbers in Plutarch and in all historians.

“As soon as God took pity on the world and wanted to become its doctor himself, these little masters retired. Hence came the silence of the oracles.

"So it follows from all your talk, sir," I replied, "that there were certainly oracles, and that it was the Sylphs who rendered them and who even render them every day in glasses or in mirrors. .

- The Sylphs or the Salamanders, the Gnomes or the Merfolk, resumed the count.

- If so, sir, I replied, all your elementary peoples are very dishonest people. .

- Why is that ? he said.

"Hey, can't you think of anything more rogue," I continued, "than all those two-way answers they always gave.

- Always? he went on, oh no, not always. This Sylphide who appeared to this Roman in Asia and who predicted to him that he would return there one day with the dignity of proconsul, did she speak very obscurely? And doesn't Tacitus say that it happened as it was predicted? This inscription and these famous statues in the history of Spain, which taught the unfortunate King Rodrigues that his curiosity and his incontinence would be punished by men dressed and armed as they were, and that these black men seize Spain and reign there for a long time? Could all this be clearer, and did not the event justify it the same year? Did not the Mores come to dethrone this effeminate king? You know the story, and you see that the devil, who since the reign of the Messiah does not dispose of empires, could not have been the author of this oracle, and that it was certainly some great cabalist who had learned it from some of the most learned salamanders. For as the Salamanders are very fond of chastity, they willingly teach us of the misfortunes which must befall the world through the lack of this virtue.

- But, sir, I said to him, do you find very chaste and well worthy of cabalistic modesty, this heterogeneous organ which they used to preach their morality?

- Ah for this time, said the Count laughing, you have a wounded imagination, and you do not see the physical reason why the flaming Salamander naturally likes the most igneous places, and is attracted to...

- I hear, I hear, I interrupted, there's no need to explain to you any longer.

- As for the obscurity of some oracles, he continued seriously, which you call roguery, is not darkness the ordinary habit of truth? Does God not like to hide from their dark veil, and the continual oracle that he left to his children the divine Scriptures is it not enveloped in an adorable obscurity, which confounds and leads astray the superb as much that his light guides the humble?

“If you have only this difficulty, my son, I do not advise you to postpone entering into commerce with the elementary peoples. You will find them very honest people, benevolent scholars and God-fearing. I am of the opinion that you begin with the Salamanders: for you have a Mars high in the sky in your face; which means that there is fire in all your actions. And for the wedding I am of the opinion that you take a Sylphide; you will be happier with her than with the others, because you have Jupiter at the tip of your ascendant, which Venus looks down by a sextil. Now Jupiter presides over the air and over the peoples of the air. However, you must consult your heart on this; because as you will see one day, it is by the interior stars that the Sage governs himself, and the stars of the outer sky only serve to make him know more surely the aspects of the stars of the inner sky which are in each creature. So, it is up to you to tell me now what your inclination is, so that we proceed to your alliance with the elementary peoples that will please you best.

- Sir, I answered, this business requires in my opinion a little consultation.
- I respect you for this answer, he said putting his hand on my shoulder. Consult this matter carefully, especially with the one who calls himself the angel of the Grand Council par excellence: go and pray, and I will come to your house tomorrow at two o'clock in the afternoon.

We returned to Paris. I put it back during the journey on the discourse against atheists and libertines: I have never heard reasoning so well nor saying things so lofty and so solid for the existence of God and against the blindness of those who pass their life without giving oneself entirely to a serious and continual worship of Him from whom we hold and who preserves our being for us. I was surprised at the character of this man, and I could not understand how he could be at the same time so strong and so weak, so admirable and so ridiculous.

FOURTH CONVERSATION ON THE SECRET SCIENCES

I WAITED at my house for M. le Comte de Gabalis, as we had arrested him when we left. He came at the appointed hour, approaching me with a laughing air.

- Well my son, he said to me, for which kind of invisible people does God give you more inclination, and which alliance will you like better, that of the Salamanders or the Gnomes, the Nymphs or the Sylphs?

- I have not quite resolved this marriage yet, sir, I left.

- So what is he up to? he resumed.

- Frankly, sir, I said to him, I cannot cure my imagination; she always represents to me these so-called hosts of the elements as devils' thirdlets.

- O Lord, he cried, dissipate, to the God of light, the darkness that ignorance and perverse education have spread in the mind of this chosen one, whom you have made known to me and whom you intend to such great things. And you, my son, do not close the passage to the truth which wants to enter your home; be docile. But no, I dispense you from having to be: for it is also insulting to the truth to prepare the way for it. She knows how to force iron doors, and enter where she wants, despite all the resistance of lies. What can you have to oppose him? Could not God have created these substances in the elements as I have depicted them?

- I have not examined, I said to him, if there is impossibility in the thing itself, if a single element can provide blood, flesh and bones, if there can be a unmixed temperament, and actions without annoyance; but suppose God could have done it, what solid proof is there that he did it?

- Would you like to be convinced of that later on, he resumed without so much ado. I am going to bring the Sylphs of Cardan, you will hear from their own mouths what they do, and what I have taught you.

- No, not that, sir, please, I cried abruptly, postpone, I beg you, this kind of proof, until I am convinced that these people are not enemies. of God ; for until then I would rather die than do this wrong to my conscience of...

- There you have the ignorance and false piety of those unhappy times, interrupted the count in an angry tone. So why don't we erase the greatest of anchorites from the calendar of the saints? And why don't we burn his statues? It is a great pity that we do not insult his venerable ashes and throw them to the wind, as we would those of the unfortunates who are accused of having had dealings with demons. Did he take it into his head to exorcise the Sylphs? and did he not treat them like men? What have you to say to that, Mr. Scrupulous, you, and all your miserable doctors? The sylph who discussed his nature with this patriarch, in your opinion, was it a demon's triplet? Was it with a leprechaun that this matchless man conferred the gospel? And do you accuse him of having profaned the adorable mysteries by discussing them with a phantom enemy of God? Athanasius and Jerome are then very unworthy of the great name they have among your scholars, for having described with so much eloquence the praise of a man who treated the devils so humanely? if they took this sylph for a devil, it was necessary either to hide the adventure, or to cut off the preaching in spirit or this apostrophe so pathetic thatthe more zealous and credulous anchorite than you made to the city of Alexandria; and if they took him for a creature havingshare, as he assured, in the Redemption as well as we do, and if this apparition is in their opinion an extraordinary grace that God gave to the saint whose life they write, are you reasonable in wanting to be more learned than Athanasius? and Jerome, and holier than divine Antony? What would you have said to this admirable man if you had been one of the ten thousand solitaries to whom he related the conversation he had just had with the sylph? Wiser and more enlightened than all these earthly angels, you would no doubt have shown the holy abbot that his whole adventure was nothing but a pure illusion, and you would have dissuaded his disciple Athanasius from letting the whole earth know a story. so inconsistent with religion, philosophy and common sense. Isn't it true?

- It is true, I said to him, that I would have been of opinion, either to say nothing at all, or to say more.

- Athanase and Jerome were careful, he resumed, to say more; for they only knew that, and if they had known everything, which cannot be if we are not one of us, they would not have divulged the secrets of Wisdom recklessly.

- But why, I went on, didn't this Sylph propose to Saint Anthony what you are proposing to me today?

- What, said the Count laughing, the wedding? Ah, would that have been good?

- It is true, I resumed, that apparently the good man did not accept the party.

- No, certainly not, said the count, because it would have been tempting God to marry at that age and to ask him for children.

- How, I resumed, do you marry these Sylphs to have children?

- Why then, he said, is it ever permitted to marry for any other purpose?

- I did not think, I answered, that one pretended lineage, and I only believed that all that only resulted in immortalizing the Sylphides.

- Ah, you were wrong, he continued, the charity of the philosophers makes them propose as an end the immortality of the Sylphides: but Nature makes them desire to see them fruitful. You will see, when you want, in the air these philosophical families. Happy the world, if there were only such families, and if there were no children of sin.

- What do you call children of sin, sir? I interrupted.

- These are, my son, he continued, these are all the children who are born by the ordinary way; children conceived by the will of the flesh, not by the will of God; children of wrath and curse, in a word, children of man and woman. You want to interrupt me, I see what you want to tell me yes, my child, know that it was never the will of the Lord that the man and the woman have children as they do. The design of the very wise workman was much more noble; he wanted to populate the world much differently than he is. If the miserable Adam had not grossly disobeyed the order he had from God not to touch Eve and had contented himself with all the rest of the fruits of the garden of voluptuousness, with all the beauties of the Nymphs and Sylphids,

- What, sir, I said to him, you believe, from what I see, that Adam's crime is something other than having eaten the apple?

- What, my son, resumed the count, are you among those who have the simplicity to take the story of the apple literally? Ah, know that the holy language uses these innocent metaphors to ward off from us the dishonest ideas of an action which has caused all the misfortunes of the human race. So when Solomon said, I want to climb the palm, and I want to pick the fruits, he had another appetite than eating dates. Cure tongue which the angels consecrate, and which they use to sing hymns to the living God, has no term which expresses what it names figuratively, calling it apple or date.. But the sage easily disentangles these chaste figures. When he sees that the taste and the mouth of Eve are not punished and that she gives birth in pain, he knows that it is not the taste that is criminal and, discovering what was the first sin by the care that the first sinners to hide certain parts of their bodies with leaves, he concludes that God did not want men to be multiplied by this cowardly way. O Adam? you were to engender only men like yourself or engender only heroes or giants.

- Hey what expedient had he, I interrupted, for one or the other of these marvelous generations?

- Obey God, he replied, only touch Nymphs, Gnomes, Sylphs or Salamanders. Thus he would have seen only heroes born, and the universe would have been peopled with wonderful people, full of strength and wisdom. God wanted to conjecture the difference that there would have been between this innocent world and the guilty world that we see, by allowing from time to time that we see children born from the force that he had projected it?

- So we have sometimes seen Monsieur, I said to him, these children of the elements? And a graduate of the Sorbonne, who quoted to me the other day Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome and Gregory of Nazianzus, was therefore mistaken, believing that no fruit can be born from these loves of the spirits for our women, or from trade that men can have with certain demons that he called hyphialtres.

- Lactantius has reasoned better, resumed the count, and the solid Thomas Aquinas has learnedly resolved that not only can these trades be fruitful, but that the children who are born from them are of a much more generous and more heroic nature. You will indeed read when it pleases you the high deeds of these powerful and famous men whom Moses says who were born of force; we have the stories of it before us in the book of the wars of the Lord, quoted in the twenty-third chapter of Numbers . However, judge what the world would be like if all its inhabitants resembled Zoroaster, for example.

- Zoroaster, I said to him, who is said to be the author of the Necromance?

- It is himself, said the count, of whom the ignorant have written this calumny. He had the honor of being the son of Salamander Oromasis and Vesta, wife of Noah. He lived twelve hundred years the wisest monarch in the world, and then was kidnapped by his father Oromasis in the region of Salamanders.

- I have no doubt, I said to him, that Zoroaster is with the Salamander Oromasis in the region of fire: but I would not want to do Noah the outrage you are doing him.

- The outrage is not so great as you might think, resumed the count, all these patriarchs held it to great honor to be the putative fathers of the children, that the children of God wanted to have from their wives, but this is still too strong for you. Back to Oromasis; he was loved by Vesta, wife of Noah. This Vesta, being dead, was the tutelary genius of Rome, and the sacred fire which she wanted virgins to keep so carefully was in honor of the Salamander her lover. Besides Zoroaster, there was born of their love a daughter of rare beauty and extreme wisdom; it was the divine Egeria, from whom Numa Pompilius received all the laws. She forced Numa, whom she loved, to build a temple in Vesta, her mother, where the sacred fire would be maintained in honor of her father Oromasis. This is the truth of the fable, that Roman poets and historians have told of this nymph Egeria. Guillaume Postel (the least ignorant of all those who have studied the Kabbalah in ordinary books) knew that Vesta was Noah's wife, but he did not know that Egeria was daughter of this Vesta and not having read the secret books of the old cabal, of which the Prince de la Mirande bought a copy so dearly, he confused things and only believed that Egeria was the good genius of Noah's wife.

We learn in these books that Egeria was conceived on the water when Noah was wandering on the avenging waves that flooded the universe: the women were then reduced to this small number who fled in the cabalistic Ark, that this fruitful father of the world had built; this great man groaning to see the terrible punishment with which the Lord punished the crimes caused by the love that Adam had had for his Eve, seeing that Adam had lost his posterity by preferring Eve to the daughters of the elements, and by taking her away to that of the Salamanders or the Sylphs who would have known how to make her love him. Noah, I say, having become wise by the fatal example of Adam, consented that Vesta his wife should give herself to the salamander Oromasis, prince of igneous substances; and persuaded his three other children to also cede their three wives to the princes of the other three elements. The universe was in a short time repopulated with heroic men so learned, so beautiful, so admirable, that their posterity, dazzled by their virtues, took them for divinities. One of Noah's children, rebellious at his father's counsel, could not resist the attractions of his wife any more than Adam the charms of his Eve; but as Adam's sin had blackened all the souls of his descendants, the lack of complacency that Cham had for the sylphs marked all his dark posterity. From this comes (say our cabalists) the horrible complexion of the Ethiopians and of all those hideous peoples, who are commanded to dwell under the torrid zone, as a punishment for the profane ardor of their father.

- These are very particular traits, sir, I said, admiring the bewilderment of this man, and your cabal is of marvelous use in clearing up Antiquity.

- Wonderful, he resumed gravely, and without it, Scripture, history, fable and nature are obscure and unintelligible. You believe, for example, that the insult that Ham made to his father is such as it seems to the letter; really it is quite another thing; Noah left the Ark and, seeing that Vesta, his wife, was only embellishing by the intercourse she had with her lover Oromasis, became passionate for her again Cham, fearing that her father was still going to populate the land of ' children as black as his Ethiopians, took his time, one day when the good old man was full of wine. and castra him without mercy. You laugh?

- I laugh at Cham's indiscreet zeal, I tell him.

- We must rather admire, resumed the count, the honesty of the Salamander Oromasis, that jealousy did not prevent from having pity on the disgrace of his rival. He taught his son Zoroaster, otherwise called Japhet, the name of the Almighty God who expresses his eternal fertility: Japhet pronounced six times, alternately with his brother Sem, walking backwards towards the Patriarch, the fearsome name Jabamiab, and they restored the old man whole.

This story, misunderstood, made the Greeks say that the oldest of the gods had been castrated by one of his children: but here is the truth of the matter. From where All can see how much the morality of the people of the fire is more human than ours, and even more than that of the people of the air or the water; for the jealousy of these is cruel, as the divine Paracelsus showed us in an adventure which he relates, and which was seen by the whole town of Staufemberg. A Philosopher, with whom a Nymph had entered into commerce for immortality, was dishonest enough a man to love a woman; as he dined with his new mistress and some of his friends, the most beautiful thigh in the world was seen in the air; the invisible lover wanted to show her to the friends of her unfaithful, so that they could judge of the wrong he had to prefer a woman to him. After which the indignant Nymph caused him to die instantly.

- Ah sir, I cried, it could well disgust me with these lovers so delicate.

- I confess, he resumed, that their delicacy is a little violent. But if we have seen among our wives irritated lovers putting their perjured lovers to death, we must not be surprised that these lovers, so beautiful and so faithful, lose their temper when they are betrayed; all the more so since they require of men only to abstain from women, whose faults they cannot bear, and that they allow us to love among them as many as we please. They prefer the interest and the immortality of their companions to their particular satisfaction; and they are very glad that the Sages give to their republic as many immortal children as they can give.

- But after all, sir, why is it that there are so few examples of everything you tell me?

- There are a large number of them, my child continued, but we do not think about them, or we do not believe them, or finally we explain them badly, for lack of knowledge of our principles. One attributes to the demons all that one should attribute to the peoples of the elements. A little gnome endears himself to the famous Magdeleine de la Croix, abbess of a monastery in Cordoba, Spain; she makes him happy from the age of twelve, and they continue their trade for the space of thirty. An ignorant manager persuades Magdeleine that her lover is a goblin and forces her to seek absolution from Pope Paul III. However, it is impossible that it was a demon; for all Europe knew, and Cassiodorus Renius wished to teach posterity, of the miracle which was performed daily in favor of the holy daughter, which apparently would not have happened if his dealings with the gnome had been as diabolical as the venerable headmaster imagined. That doctor would have boldly said, if I am not mistaken, that the sylph who immortalized himself with the young nun Gertrude of the monastery of Nazareth in the diocese of Cologne was some devil.

- Certainly, I tell him, and I believe it too.

- Ah my son, continued the count laughing, if that is the case, the devil is hardly unhappy to be able to maintain a business of gallantry with a girl of thirteen, and to write to her the love letters which were found in her casket.
“Believe my child, believe that the demon has, in the region of death, occupations sadder and more in keeping with the hatred that the God of purity has for him: but this is how one voluntarily closes the eyes. We find, for example, in Titelius, that Romulus was the son of Mars; strong minds say: “The theologians are a fable: “He was the son of a devil incubus”; jokers: "Miss Sylvia had lost her gloves and she wanted to cover her shame by saying that a god had stolen them from her." "We who know Nature, and whom God has called from this darkness to his admirable light, we know that this pretended Mars was a Salamander who, in love with young Sylvie, made her the mother of the great Romulus, this hero who, after having founded his beautiful city, was carried off by his father in a fiery chariot, as Zoroaster was by Oromasis.” Another Salamander was the father of Servius Tullius; Livy says that it was the god of fire, deceived by the resemblance, and the ignorant have made the same judgment of him as of the father of Romulus. The famous Hercules and the invincible Alexander were sons of the greatest of the Sylphs. Historians not knowing this said that Jupiter was its father: they were telling the truth, for, as you have learned, these Sylphs, Nymphs and Salamanders having set themselves up as divinities, the historians who believed them such called children of the gods all those born of it.

The famous Hercules and the invincible Alexander were sons of the greatest of the Sylphs. Historians not knowing this said that Jupiter was its father: they were telling the truth, for, as you have learned, these Sylphs, Nymphs and Salamanders having set themselves up as divinities, the historians who believed them such called children of the gods all those born of it. The famous Hercules and the invincible Alexander were sons of the greatest of the Sylphs. Historians not knowing this said that Jupiter was its father: they were telling the truth, for, as you have learned, these Sylphs, Nymphs and Salamanders having set themselves up as divinities, the historians who believed them such called children of the gods all those born of it.

“Such was the divine Plato, the most divine Apollonius Thianeus, Hercules, Achilles, Sarpedon, the pious Aeneas, and the famous Melchisedec; for do you know who the father of Melchisedec was?

- No really, I told him, because Saint Paul did not know.

- Say then that he did not say it, resumed the count, and that he was not permitted to reveal the cabalistic mysteries. He knew well that the father of Melchizedek was Sylph, and that this king of Salem was conceived in the Ark by the wife of Shem. The manner of sacrificing of this pontiff was the same as his cousin Egeria taught King Numa, as well as the adoration of a sovereign divinity without image and without statue: on account of which the Romans, who had become idolaters, some time later burned the holy books of Numa that Egeria had dictated. The first god of the Romans was the true God, their sacrifice was the true one, they offered bread and wine to the Sovereign Ruler of the world, but then all this perverted. God did not allow, however, in recognition of this first worship, to give to this city,

- Sir, I interrupted, please leave Melchizedek, the Sylph who fathered him, his cousin Egeria and the Sacrifice of Bread and Wine. These proofs seem to me a little remote; and you would oblige me to tell me fresher news, for I heard a doctor say, who was asked what had become of the companions of this species of satyr who appeared to Saint Anthony and whom you named sylphe, that all these people are now dead. Thus the elementary peoples could well be perished since you admit them to be mortal and we have no news of them.

- I pray to God, replied the count with emotion, I pray to God who knows nothing, to want to ignore this ignoramus who decides so foolishly what he ignores. God confounds him and all his fellows. From where did he learn that the elements are deserted and that all these marvelous peoples are annihilated? if he would take the trouble to read the stories a little and not attribute to the devil, as good women do, everything that passes the chimerical theory he has made of Nature, he would find in all time and everywhere proofs of what I have told you. What would your doctor say to this authentic story that recently arrived in Spain?

A beautiful Sylphide made herself loved by a Spaniard, lived with him for three years, had three beautiful children and then died. Will it be said that he was a devil? The scholarly answer according to which physics can the devil organize a woman's body, conceive, give birth, breastfeed? What proof is there in Scripture of this extravagant power which your theologians are obliged in this meeting to give to the devil? And what probable reason can provide them with their weak physique? The Jesuit Delrio as he is in good faith - naively recounts several of these adventures and, without bothering with physical reasons, gets out of the difficulty by saying that these Sylphides were demons; so true it is that your greatest doctors know no more often than mere women So much it is true that God loves to withdraw into his nebulous throne and, thickening the darkness that surrounds his redoubtable Majesty, He dwells in an inaccessible light and allows his truths to be seen only by the humble of heart.

Learn to be humble, my son, if you want to penetrate this sacred darkness that surrounds the truth. Learn from the Sages not to give the demons any power in Nature, since the fatal stone enclosed them in the pit of the abyss. Learn from the Philosophers to always look for natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when the natural causes fail, have recourse to God and his holy angels and never to the demons who can no longer do anything but suffer; otherwise you would often blaspheme without thinking about it and attribute to the devil the honor of Nature's most marvelous works. if you want to penetrate this sacred darkness which surrounds the truth. Learn from the Sages not to give the demons any power in Nature, since the fatal stone enclosed them in the pit of the abyss. Learn from the Philosophers to always look for natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when the natural causes fail, have recourse to God and his holy angels and never to the demons who can no longer do anything but suffer; otherwise you would often blaspheme without thinking about it and attribute to the devil the honor of Nature's most marvelous works.

if you want to penetrate this sacred darkness which surrounds the truth. Learn from the Sages not to give the demons any power in Nature, since the fatal stone enclosed them in the pit of the abyss. Learn from the Philosophers to always look for natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when the natural causes fail, have recourse to God and his holy angels and never to the demons who can no longer do anything but suffer; otherwise you would often blaspheme without thinking about it and attribute to the devil the honor of Nature's most marvelous works. Learn from the Philosophers to always look for natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when the natural causes fail, have recourse to God and his holy angels and never to the demons who can no longer do anything but suffer; otherwise you would often blaspheme without thinking about it and attribute to the devil the honor of Nature's most marvelous works. Learn from the Philosophers to always look for natural causes in all extraordinary events; and when the natural causes fail, have recourse to God and his holy angels and never to the demons who can no longer do anything but suffer; otherwise you would often blaspheme without thinking about it and attribute to the devil the honor of Nature's most marvelous works.
“When you were told, for example, that the divine Apollonius Thianeus was conceived without the operation of any man, and that one of the highest Salamanders descended to immortalize himself with his mother, you would say that this Salamander was a demon, and you would give the glory to the devil of the generation of one of the greatest men who have come out of our philosophical marriages?

- But sir, I interrupted, this Apollonius is reputed among us for a great wizard, and that is all the good that is said of him.

“Here,” continued the Count, “is one of the most admirable effects of ignorance and bad education. Because you hear your nurse tell sorcerer's tales, anything extraordinary can only have the devil as its author. The greatest doctors do their best, they won't be believed if they don't talk like our nurses. Apollonius was not born of a man; he hears the language of the birds; it is seen on the same day in various places in the world; he disappears before the emperor Domitian who wants to have him mistreated; he resuscitates a girl by the virtue of onomance; he said at Ephesus in an assembly of all Asia that at this same hour the tyrant was killed in Rome. It is a question of judging this man, the nurse says: “He is a sorcerer.

“Saint Jerome and Saint Justin the Martyr say that he is only a great Philosopher? Jerome, Justin and we cabalists will be visionaries, and the sissy will prevail. Ah, may the ignorant perish in his ignorance, but you, my child, save yourself from shipwreck "When you read that the famous Merlin was born without the operation of any man, of a nun, daughter of the king of the Great Brittany and predicted the future more clearly than a Tyresi; do not say with the people that he was the son of a demon incubus, since there never was one, nor that he prophesied by the art of demons, since the demon is the most ignorant of all creatures , following the holy Kabbalah. Say with the wise, that the English princess was consoled in her solitude by a Sylph who took pity on her, that he took care to entertain her, that he knew how to please her,

"Neither do you insult the counts of Cleves by saying that the devil is their father, and have a better opinion of the Sylph, whom history says, who comes to Cleves on a miraculous ship drawn by a swan, who was there tied with a silver chain. This Sylph, after having had several children by the heiress of Cleves, left one day at noon in full view of everyone on his aerial ship. What has he done to your doctors that compels them to make him a demon?

But will you spare the honor of the House of Lusignan enough? And will you give your counts of Poitiers a diabolical genealogy? How about their famous mother?

- I believe, sir, I interrupted, that you are going to tell me Melusine's tales.

- Ah if you deny me the story of Mélusine, he continued, I give you won; but if you deny it, you will have to burn the Books of the great Paracelsus who maintains in five or six different places that there is nothing more certain that this Melusine was a Nymph; and it will be necessary to deny your historians who say that since her death, or better said since she disappeared from the eyes of her husband, she has never failed, whenever her descendants were threatened with some disgrace or that some king de France was to die extraordinarily from appearing in mourning on the great tower of the chateau of Lusignan which she had had built. You will have a quarrel with all those who descend from this Nymph or who are allies of her House, if you persist in maintaining that she was a devil.

- Do you think, sir, I said to him, that these lords prefer to be from the Sylphs?

- They would like it better, no doubt, he replied, if they knew what I am telling you and they would hold these extraordinary births in great honor. They would know if they had any light of cabala, that this kind of generation being more conformable to the manner in which God intended at the beginning that the world should multiply, the children who are born of it are happier more valiant, wiser more renowned and more blessed by God. Is it not more glorious for these illustrious men to descend from these creatures so perfect, so wise and so powerful, than from some filthy elf or some infamous Asmodeus?

- Sir, I said to him, our theologians are careful not to say that the devil is the father of all these men who are born without anyone knowing who brings them into the world. They recognize that the devil is a spirit, and therefore cannot beget.

- Gregory of Nice, continued the count, does not say that because he holds that demons multiply among themselves like men.

- We are not of his opinion, I replied, but it happens, say our doctors, that...

"Ah, don't say," interrupted the count, "don't say what they say, or you would say something very dirty and very dishonest like them." What abominable defeat did they find there? It is astonishing how they all unanimously embraced this filth, and how they took pleasure in posting goblins to ambushes to profit from the idle brutality of the Solitaires, and promptly bring into the world these miraculous men whose illustrious memory they blacken. by such an ugly original Do they call that philosophizing? Is it worthy of God, to say that he has this kindness for the devil to favor these abominations, to grant them the grace of fruitfulness which he has refused to great saints, and to reward these filths by creating for these embryos of iniquity more heroic souls than for those who have been formed in the chastity of a legitimate marriage? Is it worthy of religion to say, as your doctors do, that the devil can by this detestable artifice make a virgin pregnant during sleep without prejudice to her virginity; which is as absurd as the story that Thomas Aquinas (moreover a very solid author and who knew a little of the Kabbalah) forgets himself enough to tell in his sixth that the demon can by this detestable artifice make a virgin pregnant during sleep without prejudice to her virginity; which is as absurd as the story that Thomas Aquinas (moreover a very solid author and who knew a little of the Kabbalah) forgets himself enough to tell in his sixth that the demon can by this detestable artifice make a virgin pregnant during sleep without prejudice to her virginity; which is as absurd as the story that Thomas Aquinas (moreover a very solid author and who knew a little of the Kabbalah) forgets himself enough to tell in his sixthQuodlibet ; of a girl lying with her father, to whom he makes happen the same adventure that some heretical rabbis say that happened to the daughter of Jeremiah, to whom they cause the great cabalist Bensyrah to conceive by entering the bath after the prophet. I'd swear this impertinence was dreamed up by some...

- If I dared, sir, to interrupt your declamation, I said to him, I would confess to appease you that it would be to wish that our doctors had imagined some solution whose pure ears like yours would be less offended. Or else they had to completely deny the facts on which the question is based.

- Good expedient, continued the count, Eh the means of denying constant things? Put yourself in the place of an ermine-furred theologian, and suppose that happy Danhuzerus comes to you as the oracle of his religion...

In this place a lackey came to tell me that a young lord was coming to see me.

- I don't want him to see me, said the count.

- I beg your pardon, sir, I said to him, you can well judge in the name of this Lord, that I cannot make it known that no one sees me: therefore take the trouble to enter this closet.

- It's not worth it, he said, I'm going to make myself invisible.

- Ah sir, I'll write to myself, enough devilry (please) I don't hear any raillery on that.

- What ignorance, said the count, laughing and shrugging his shoulders, not to know that to be invisible you only have to put before you the opposite of light. my bedroom; I begged her forgiveness and did not speak to her of my adventure.

FIFTH CONVERSATION ON THE SECRET SCIENCES

The great lord having gone out, I found the Comte de Gabalis coming to see him back to my room.

- It is a great pity, he said to me, that this lord who has just left you will one day be one of the seventy-two princes of the Sanhedrin of the new law; for otherwise he would be a great subject for holy cabala; he has a clear, vast, sublime and bold mind; here is a figure of Geomance which I have just cast for him, while you were talking together; I have never seen happier points which marked such a beautiful soul; see this Mother , what magnanimity she gives him. This Daughter will procure for him the purple; I resent it and fortune because they take away from Philosophy a subject which perhaps would surpass you. But where were we when he came?

- You spoke to me, sir, I said to him, of a blessed that I have never seen in the Roman calendar, it seems to me that you named him Danhuzerus.

Ah, I remember, he went on, I told you to put yourself in the place of one of your doctors and to suppose that the happy Danhuzeru s comes to reveal his conscience to you and says to you:

Sir, I come from beyond the mountains, to the noise of your science; I have a little scruple which pains me. There is in a mountain of Italy a Nymph who holds her court there: a thousand Nymphs serve her, almost as beautiful as she; very well made men, very learned and very honest people come there from all the habitable earth; they love these Nymphs and are loved by them; they lead there the sweetest life in the world; they have very beautiful children of what they love; they adore the living God; they harm no one; they hope for immortality. I was walking one day in this mountain; I no longer like the Nymph-Queen, she makes herself visible, shows me her charming court.

The wise, who realize that she loves me, respect me almost as their prince; they exhort me to allow myself to be touched by the sighs and the beauty of the Nymph; she tells me about her martyrdom, forgets nothing to touch my heart and finally shows me that she will die if I don't want to love her, and that if I love her, she will owe me her immortality. The reasonings of these learned men have convinced my mind, and the attractions of the nymph have won my heart; I love her, I have children of great hope from her; but in the midst of my fidelity I am troubled sometimes by the recollection that the Roman Church perhaps does not approve of all that too much. I come to you, sir, to consult you, what is this Nymph, these Sages, these children, and in what state is my conscience? and that if I love her, she will owe me her immortality. The reasonings of these learned men have convinced my mind, and the attractions of the nymph have won my heart; I love her, I have children of great hope from her; but in the midst of my fidelity I am troubled sometimes by the recollection that the Roman Church perhaps does not approve of all that too much.

I come to you, sir, to consult you, what is this Nymph, these Sages, these children, and in what state is my conscience? and that if I love her, she will owe me her immortality. The reasonings of these learned men have convinced my mind, and the attractions of the nymph have won my heart; I love her, I have children of great hope from her; but in the midst of my fidelity I am troubled sometimes by the recollection that the Roman Church perhaps does not approve of all that too much. I come to you, sir, to consult you, what is this Nymph, these Sages, these children, and in what state is my conscience? I have children of great hope from them; but in the midst of my fidelity I am troubled sometimes by the recollection that the Roman Church perhaps does not approve of all that too much. I come to you, sir, to consult you, what is this Nymph, these Sages, these children, and in what state is my conscience? I have children of great hope from them; but in the midst of my fidelity I am troubled sometimes by the recollection that the Roman Church perhaps does not approve of all that too much. I come to you, sir, to consult you, what is this Nymph, these Sages, these children, and in what state is my conscience?

- That doctor, what would you say to Lord Danhuzerus?

- I would say to him, I answered: “With all due respect to you Lord Danhuzerus, you are a little fanatic or else your vision is an enchantment; your children and your mistress are elves your sages are madmen and I have your conscience very cauterized.

- With this answer, my son, you could deserve the doctor's cap; but you do not deserve to be received among us, resumed the count with a heavy sigh. This is the barbarous disposition in which all the doctors of today are. A poor sylph would not dare show himself unless he was first taken for a goblin; a Nymph cannot work to become immortal without passing for an impure phantom; and a salamander dares not appear for fear of being taken for a devil; and the pure flames that compose it for the hellfire that accompanies it everywhere. In vain, to dissipate these insulting suspicions, they make the sign of the cross when they appear, bend the knee before the divine names, and even pronounce them with reverence. All these precautions are in vain.

- All right, sir, I said to him, do you think that these sylphs are very devout people?

- Very devout, he replied, and very zealous for divinity. The excellent discourses they give us of the divine Essence and their admirable prayers greatly edify us.

- Do they have prayers too? I said to him, I would like one their way.

- It is easy to satisfy you, he went on, and in order not to bring you any suspicious and that you can suspect me of having fabricated, listen to the one that the Salamander.

- who answered in the temple of Delphi, was willing to teach the pagans, and that Porphyry reports; it contains a sublime theology, and you will see by this that it was not due to these wise creatures that the world should not adore the true God.

SALAMANDER PRAYER

IMMORTAL, Eternal, Ineffable and Sacred Father of all things, who art borne on the ever-rolling Chariot of ever-turning Worlds. Dominator of the Ethereal Fields, where is raised the throne of your Power, from the height of which your formidable eyes discover all, and your beautiful and holy ears listen to all, hear your children whom you have loved from the birth of the ages; for your golden and great and eternal Majesty shines above the world and the sky of stars; you are lifted up on them, o sparkling fire. There you kindle and sustain yourself by your own splendour; and from your Essence flow inexhaustible streams of light which nourish your infinite Spirit. This infinite Spirit produces all things and makes this inexhaustible treasure of matter, which cannot fail the generation which always surrounds it because of the numberless forms with which it is pregnant, and with which you filled it in the beginning.

From this spirit also originate those most holy kings who stand around your Throne, and who compose your Court, O universal Father.' O Unique.' O Father of the blessed mortals and immortals! You created in particular Powers which are marvelously similar to the eternal roof Thought, and to your adorable Essence. You have established them above the angels who announce your Wills to the world. Finally you have created for us a third kind of rulers in the Elements. Our continual exercise is to praise you and adore your desires. We burn with the desire to possess you, O Father, O most tender Mother of Mothers! O admirable example of the feelings and tenderness of Mothers. O Son, the flower of all Sons! O Form of all Forms! Soul, Spirit, Harmony and Number of all things.

- What do you say to this prayer of the Salamanders? Isn't she very learned, well brought up and very devout?

- And moreover very obscure, I answered. I had heard her paraphrase a preacher who thereby proved that the devil, among other vices he has, is above all a great hypocrite.

- Well, cried the count, what resource do you have then poor elementary people? You speak marvels of the nature of God, of the Father, of the Son of the Holy Spirit, of the assisting intelligences, of the angels, of the heavens; you make admirable prayers and teach them to men; and, after all, you are only hypocritical elves

"Monsieur," I interrupted, "you don't give me pleasure in shouting at these people like that.

- Well, my son, he continued, do not fear that I call them, but that your weakness at least prevent you from being surprised in the future that you do not see as many examples as you wanted of them. their alliance with men. Alas, where is the woman whose imagination your doctors have not spoiled, who does not look upon this trade with horror and who does not tremble at the sight of a Sylph? Where is the man who does not run away from seeing them, if he prides himself on being a good man? Do we very rarely find an honest man who wants their familiarity? And are there only the debauched or the miserly, or the ambitious or the rascals who seek this honor, which they will nevertheless never have (LONG LIVE GOD) because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of the wisdom.

- What becomes then, I said to him, all these flying people, now that the good people are so preoccupied against them?

- Ah! the arm of God, he says, is not shortened, and the devil does not derive all the advantage he hoped for from the ignorance and error he has spread to their Philosophers who are in great number, remedy it as much as they can by renouncing women altogether, God has allowed all these peoples to use all the innocent artifices they can think of to converse with men in without their knowledge.

- What are you telling me, sir? I exclaimed.

- I tell you the truth, he continued.

- Do you believe that a dog can have children from a woman?

- No, I answered.

- And a monkey? he added.

- Not either, I replied.

- And a bear? he continued.

- Neither dog, nor bear, nor monkey, I said to him, that is undoubtedly impossible; against Nature, against reason and common sense.

- Very well, said the count, but weren't the kings of the Goths born of a bear and a Swedish princess?

- It is true, I went on, that history says so.

- And the Pegusians and Syonians of the Indies, he replied, were they not born of a dog and a woman?

- I read that again, I tell him.

- And this Portuguese woman, he continued, who, being exposed on a desert island, had children by a great ape?

- Our theologians, I said to him, answer to that, sir, that the devil taking the form of these beasts...

- You are going to allege to me again, interrupted the count, the dirty imaginations of your authors. Understand then, once and for all, that the Sylphs, seeing that we take them for demons when they appear in human form, to diminish this aversion we have of them, take the figure of these animals and thus accommodate themselves to the bizarre weakness of women who would have a horror of a handsome Sylph and who don't care so much for a dog or a monkey. I could tell you several stories about these little Bologna dogs with certain maidens around the world, but I have a greater secret to teach you.

“Know my son, that so and so believes he is the son of a man who is the son of a Sylph. One thinks he is with his wife who, without thinking about it, immortalizes a Nymph. Such a woman thinks of kissing her husband who holds a Salamander in his arms; and such a girl would swear when she wakes up that she is a virgin who has had an honor during her sleep which she does not suspect. Thus the devil and the ignorant are equally deceived.

- What? could not the demon, said I to him, wake up this sleeping girl, to prevent this Salamander from becoming immortal?

"He could," replied the Count, "if the Sages did not order it; would we teach all these people the means to bind the demons and to oppose their effort. Didn't I tell you the other day that the Sylphs and other elemental lords are only too happy that we want to show them the cabal? Without us the devil their great enemy would worry them greatly, and they would have difficulty in immortalizing themselves without the knowledge of the girls.

- I cannot, I say, sufficiently admire the profound ignorance in which we live. It is believed that the powers of the air sometimes help lovers achieve what they desire. The thing is therefore quite different; the powers of the air need men to serve them in their loves.

- you said it my son, continued the count, the Sage gives help to these poor people without him too unhappy and too weak to be able to resist the devil: but also when a Sylph learned from us to pronounce cabalistically the powerful name NEHMAHMIHAH , and combining it in the forms with the delicious name ELIAEL all the powers of darkness flee, and the Sylph peacefully enjoys what he loves.

“Thus was immortalized this ingenious Sylph who took the form of the lover of a young lady from Seville; the story is well known. The young Spaniard was beautiful, but as cruel as she was beautiful. A Castilian horseman, who loved him uselessly, took the resolution to leave one morning without saying a word, and to go traveling until he was cured of his useless passion. A Sylph finding the beauty to his liking decided to take time and arm himself with everything that one of ours taught him to defend himself from the crosses that the devil, envious of his happiness, could have caused him. He goes to see the young lady in the form of the distant lover, he complains, he sighs, he is put off. He presses, he solicits, he perseveres: after several months he touches, he makes himself loved, he persuades, and finally he is happy. From their love is born a son whose birth is secret and unknown to the parents by the address of the aerial lover.

The love continues, and he is blessed with a second pregnancy. However, the horseman cured by absence returns to Seville, and impatient to see his inhuman again, goes as quickly as possible to tell her that at last he is in a condition to no longer displease her, and that he has come to announce to her that he will not please her. love more.

“Please imagine the girl's astonishment, her response, her tears, her reproaches, and all their startling dialogue. She maintains to him that she has made him happy: he denies it; that their common child is in such a place that he is the father of another whom she bears. He persists in disavowing. She is upset, tears her hair, the parents come running to her cries, the desperate lover continues her complaints and her invectives; it is verified that the gentleman had been absent for two years; we look for the first child, we find him, and the second was born in his term

- And the aerial lover, I interrupted, what character was he playing during all this?

"I can see," replied the Count, "that you find it wrong that he abandoned his mistress to the rigor of his parents, or to the fury of the inquisitors: but he had a reason to complain of her. She was not devout enough; for when these gentlemen have immortalized themselves, they work seriously and live very holy so as not to lose the right they have just acquired to the possession of the sovereign good. Thus they want the person, with whom they are allied, to live with an exemplary innocence, as we see in this famous adventure of a young Bavarian lord.

“He was inconsolable over the death of his wife whom he loved passionately. A Sylphid was advised by one of our Sages to take the figure of this woman; she believed him and went to present herself to the afflicted young man, saying that God had raised her to life to console him for his extreme affliction. They lived together for several years, and had very beautiful children. But the young lord was not good enough to hold back the wise Sylphide: he swore and spoke dishonest words. She often warned him but seeing that his remonstrances were useless, she disappeared one day, and left him only her skirts and the repentance of not having wanted to follow his holy advice. So you see my son, that the Sylphs sometimes have reason to disappear and you see that the devil cannot prevent,

- But in good faith, sir, I resumed, are you convinced that the devil is such a great enemy of these bribes of young ladies?

- Mortal enemy, said the count, especially Nymphs, Sylphs, and Salamanders. For as for the Gnomes, he does not hate them so much because, as I believe I have taught you, these Gnomes, afraid of the howls of the devils which they hear in the center of the earth, would rather remain mortal than run the risk of being thus tormented, if they acquired immortality. Hence it is that these Gnomes and the demons their neighbors have enough trade. These persuade the Gnomes who are naturally very friendly to man, that it is doing him a great service and delivering him from great danger to oblige him to renounce his immortality. They undertake for that purpose to furnish to whomever they can persuade this renunciation, all the money which he asks for; to avert the dangers that could threaten his life for a certain time,

- How sir, I cried, these pacts in your opinion, of which the demonographers tell so many examples, are not made with the devil?

“Certainly not,” resumed the count. Wasn't the prince of the world driven out? Isn't he locked up? Isn't it related? Isn't it the accursed and damned land, which remained at the bottom of the work of the supreme and archetypal distiller? Can he ascend into the region of light, and spread the concentrated darkness there? He can do nothing against man. He can only inspire the Gnomes, who are his neighbors, to come and make these proposals to those among men whom he fears the most to be saved so that their soul dies with the body.

- And according to you, I added, these souls die?

- They die my child, he replied.

- And those who make these pacts are not damned, I continued?

- They cannot be, he said, because their soul dies with the body.

- So they are quits cheaply, I resumed, and they are very lightly punished for having committed such an enormous crime as to renounce their baptism, and the death of the Lord.

- Do you want, rejoined the count, to be lightly punished than to return to the black abysses of nothingness? know that it is a greater punishment than to be damned that there is still a remnant of mercy in the justice that God exercises against sinners in hell, that it is a great grace not to consume them by the fire that burns them. Nothingness is a greater evil than hell; this is what the Sages preach to the Gnomes when they assemble them, to make them understand how wrong they are to prefer death to immortality, and nothingness to the hope of blessed eternity, that they would be entitled to possess, if they allied themselves with men without demanding of them these criminal renunciations. Some believe us, and we marry them off to our daughters.

- So you evangelize the underground peoples, sir? I said.

- Why no ? he resumed. We are their teachers as well as people of fire, air and water; and philosophical charity spreads indiscriminately over all these children of God. As they are more subtle and more enlightened than ordinary men, they are more docile and more capable of discipline, and they listen to the divine truths with a respect that delights us.

"It must be delightful indeed," I cried, laughing, "to see a cabalist in the pulpit preaching to all these gentlemen, you will have the pleasure of it, my son, whenever you like," said the Count, "and if you desire, I will assemble them this evening, and I will preach them at midnight.

- At midnight, I cried, I have heard that it is the hour of the Sabbath.
The count began to laugh:

- You remind me there, he said, of all the follies that the demonographers tell about this chapter of their imaginary Sabbath. I would like for the rarity of the fact, that you believe them too.

- Ah for the tales of the Sabbath, resumed I, I assure you that I do not believe one of them.

- You are doing well, my son, he said, because (once again) the devil does not have the power to play with the human race in this way, nor to make a pact with men, even less to make them adore them, as the inquisitors believe, what has given rise to this popular rumor is that the Sages - as I have just told you - assemble the inhabitants of the elements to preach their mysteries and their morality to them; and as it usually happens that some Gnome comes back from his gross error, understands the horrors of nothingness, and consents to being immortalized, he is given a daughter, he is married, the wedding is celebrated with all the rejoicing that conquest demands. what we just did. These are the dances and cries of joy which Aristotle says were heard in certain islands, where, however, no one was to be seen. The great Orpheus was the first who summoned these subterranean peoples; at his first warning Sabasius the oldest of the Gnomes was immortalized; and it is from this Sabasius that this assembly took its name, in which the Sages spoke to him while he lived, as appears in the hymns of the divine Orpheus. The ignorant have confused things, and have taken occasion to tell a thousand impertinent tales about it, and to decry an assembly which we convoke only for the glory of the sovereign Being.

- I never imagined, I told him, that the Sabbath was a devotional assembly.

- Yet it is one, he replied, very holy and very cabalistic; which the world would not easily persuade themselves. But such is the deplorable blindness of this unjust century: people persist in popular noise, and they do not want to be undeceived. The Sages say it in vain, the fools are rather believed. In vain does a philosopher show to the eye the falsity of the chimeras which one has forged, and give manifest proofs to the contrary: whatever experience and whatever solid reasoning he has employed, if there comes a man with a hood who is false, experience and demonstration no longer have any force, and it is no longer in the power of truth to re-establish its empire, one believes more in this chaperone than in one's own eyes. In your France there has been a memorable proof of this popular stubbornness.

“The famous cabalist Zedechias took it into his head, during the reign of your Pepin, to convince the world that the elements are inhabited by all these peoples whose nature I have described to you. The expedient he thought of was to advise the Sylphs to show themselves in the air to everyone; they did it with magnificence; one saw in the air these admirable creatures in human form, sometimes drawn up in battle array, marching in good order, or standing under arms, or encamped under superb flags: sometimes on aerial ships of admirable structure, whose fleet flying sailed at the whim of the zephyrs. What happened? Do you think that this ignorant century took it into its head to reason about the nature of its marvelous spectacles? The people first thought they were sorcerers, who had seized the air to stir up storms and to make hail on the crops. Scholars, theologians, and jurisconsults were soon of the opinion of the people: the emperors also believed it; and this ridiculous chimera went so far, that the wise Charlemagne, and after him Louis le Débonnaire, imposed serious penalties on all these pretended tyrants of the air, see this in the first chapter of the Capitularies of these two emperors.

"The Sylphs, seeing the people, the pedants, and even the crowned heads thus police themselves against them, resolved, in order to put an end to the bad opinion we had of their innocent fleet, to kidnap men from all parts, to make them to see their beautiful women, their republic and their government, and then put them back on the ground in various places around the world. They did it as they had planned. The people, who saw these men descending, came there from all sides, warned that they were sorcerers who were detached from their companions to come and throw venom on the fruits and in the fountains following the fury inspired by such imaginations, dragged down these innocents in torment. It is amazing how many he slew with water and fire in all this kingdom.

“It happened that one day, among others, three men and a woman were seen descending from these airships; the whole city gathers around, shouts that they are magicians and that Grimoald, Duke of Benevent, enemy of Charlemagne, sends them to destroy the harvests of the French. The four innocents may say in their justification that they are from the same country, that they were recently kidnapped by miraculous men who showed them unheard-of wonders and asked them to tell the story. The stubborn people do not listen to their defence, and they were about to throw them into the fire when the worthy Agobard, bishop of Lyons, who had acquired a great deal of authority as a monk in that city, came running up to the noise and having heard the accusation of the people and the defense of the accused, gravely pronounced that both were false. That it was not true that these men had descended from the air, and that what they said they saw there was impossible. “The people believed more in what their good father Agobard was saying than in their own eyes, calmed down, gave freedom to the four ambassadors of the Sylphs and received with admiration the Book that Agobard wrote to confirm the sentence that he had given ; thus the testimony of these four witnesses was rendered vain.

“however, as they escaped the torture, they were free to relate what they had seen, which was not entirely without fruit; for if you remember well, the century of Charlemagne was fertile in heroic men; which shows that the woman, who had been among the Sylphs, found credence among the ladies of that time, and that by the grace of God many Sylphs were immortalized. Several Sylphides also became immortal by the account that these three men made of their beauty, which obliged the people of that time to apply themselves a little to Philosophy; and from there came all those stories of the fairies which you find in the amorous legends of the century of Charlemagne and the following ones. All these so-called fairies were only Sylphides and Nymphs. Have you read those stories of heroes and fairies?

- No, sir, I tell him.

- I am sorry, he continued, because they would have given you some idea of ​​the state to which the Sages have resolved to reduce the world one day. These heroic men, these loves of the Nymphs, these journeys to earthly paradise, these palaces and enchanted woods, and all the charming adventures you see there, are only a small idea of ​​the life led by the Sages and of what the world will be like when they make Wisdom reign there. We will only see the heroes there, the least of our children will be of the strength of Zoroaster, Apollonius or Melchizedek; and most will be as perfect as the children that Adam had by Eve if he had not sinned with her.

- Didn't you tell me sir, I interrupted, that God didn't want Adam and Eve to have children, that Adam should only touch Sylphides, and that Eve should only think of someone. one of the Sylphs or the Salamanders?

- It is true, said the Count, they should not have children by the way they did.

- your cabal, sir, I continued, gives then some invention to the man and the woman to make children otherwise than with the ordinary method?
"Certainly," he resumed.

- Hey sir, I continued, teach me that, please.

- You won't know today, please, he said to me, laughing. I want to avenge the peoples of the elements for what you have had so much trouble undeceiving yourself from their alleged devilry. I have no doubt that you have now recovered from your panicky terrors. I therefore leave you to give you the leisure to meditate and deliberate before God, to what kind of elementary substances it will be more appropriate for his glory and yours to share your immortality. . However, I'm going to meditate a bit for the speech you made me want to give last night at the Gnomes.

- Are you going, I said to him, to explain some chapter of Averroes to them?

“I believe,” said the Count, “something of that may well enter into it; for I intend to preach to them the excellence of man, to lead them to seek his alliance. And Averroès after Aristote, held two things which it will be good that I clarify; one was the nature of the understanding, and the other was the supreme good. He says that there is only one created understanding, which is the image of the Uncreated, and that this unique understanding suffices for all men; this requires explanation. And for the sovereign good, Averroes says that it consists in the conversation of the angels, which is not cabalistic enough, because man from this life can and is created to enjoy God, as you will hear one day and as you will experience when you are in the rank of the Sages.

*
* *

Thus ended the interview with the Comte de Gabalis. He came back the next day and brought me the speech he had made to the underground peoples, it is wonderful
I would give it with the continuation of the conversations that a viscountess and I had with this great man, if I were sure that all my readers had the right spirit and did not find it bad that I am entertained at the expense of madmen. If I see that people want to let my book do the good that it is capable of producing and that people do not do me the injustice of suspecting me of wanting to give credit to the secret sciences, under the pretext of turning them into ridiculous, I would continue to rejoice in M, le comte, and I could soon give another volume.

LETTER TO MONSEIGNEUR

MY LORD

You have always seemed to me so ardent for your friends that I thought you would forgive me for the liberty I take in favor of the best of mine, to beg you to be kind enough to make you read His book. I do not claim to commit you by this to any of the consequences that my friend the author may be hoping for, because authors are gentlemen. Subjects to have hopes. I even told him often enough that you make it a point of honor to never say what you think, and that he doesn't expect you to get rid of a quality so rare and so new to the Court, to say that his book is good, If you find it naughty. But what I would like from you, MON LORD, and what I very humbly pray for, is that you be kind enough to settle a dispute that we have had together. You didn't have to study so much, MONSEIGNEUR, and become a prodigy of science, if you didn't want to be exposed to being consulted in preference to doctors. Here is the argument I have with my friend.

I wanted to force Him to completely change the form of His work. This pleasant trick he gave her doesn't seem to me to be specific to her. Kabbalah, I told him, is a serious science, which many of my friends study Seriously; it had to be refuted in the same way. As all his errors are on divine things, besides the difficulty of making an honest man laugh on any subject whatsoever, it is moreover very dangerous to jeer in this one, and it is very much to be feared. that devotion does not seem to be interested in it. A cabalist must be made to speak like a saint, where he plays his role very badly; and if he speaks as a Saint, he imposes on weak minds by this apparent Holiness, and he persuades his visions more than all the jokes that can be made of them refute them.

My friend replies to this - with that presumption that authors have when they defend their books - that if the Kabbalah is a serious Science, it is because there are only melancholic people who indulge in it; that having first wanted to try out the Dogmatic Style on this subject, he had found himself so ridiculous in dealing seriously with nonsense, that he had deemed it more appropriate to turn this ridicule against the Lord Count de Gabalis. The Cabal, he says, is one of those chimeras, which one authorizes when one fights them seriously, and which one should undertake to destroy only by playing oneself.

As he knows the Fathers well enough, he told me about Tertullian. You who know it better than he and I, judge, MONSEIGNEUR, If he quoted it wrongly, Multa sunt risu digna revinci, ne gravitate adorentur. He says that Tertullian said this beautiful word against the Valentinians who were a kind of very visionary cabalists. As for devotion, which is almost always present in all this work, it is an inevitable necessity, he says, that a cabalist speaks of God; but what is fortunate in this subject is that it is of an even more inevitable necessity, in order to preserve the cabalistic character, to speak of God only with extreme respect; thus religion cannot receive any attack from it; and weak minds Will be weaker than the Lord of Gabalis If they allow themselves to be enchanted by this extravagant devotion or if the taunts that are made of it do not lift the charm. it is an inevitable necessity, he says, that a cabalist speaks of God; but what is fortunate in this subject is that it is of an even more inevitable necessity, in order to preserve the cabalistic character, to speak of God only with extreme respect; thus religion cannot receive any attack from it; and weak minds Will be weaker than the Lord of Gabalis If they allow themselves to be enchanted by this extravagant devotion or if the taunts that are made of it do not lift the charm. it is an inevitable necessity, he says, that a cabalist speaks of God; but what is fortunate in this subject is that it is of an even more inevitable necessity, in order to preserve the cabalistic character, to speak of God only with extreme respect; thus religion cannot receive any attack from it; and weak minds Will be weaker than the Lord of Gabalis If they allow themselves to be enchanted by this extravagant devotion or if the taunts that are made of it do not lift the charm.

it is that it is of an even more inevitable necessity, in order to preserve the cabalistic character, to speak of God only with extreme respect; thus religion cannot receive any attack from it; and weak minds Will be weaker than the Lord of Gabalis If they allow themselves to be enchanted by this extravagant devotion or if the taunts that are made of it do not lift the charm. it is that it is of an even more inevitable necessity, in order to preserve the cabalistic character, to speak of God only with extreme respect; thus religion cannot receive any attack from it; and weak minds Will be weaker than the Lord of Gabalis If they allow themselves to be enchanted by this extravagant devotion or if the taunts that are made of it do not lift the charm.

For this reason and for several others which I will not relate to you, MY LORD, because I want YOU to agree with me, my friend claims that he must have written against the cabal while sporting. Agree, please. I maintain that it would be good to proceed against the cabalists and against all the Secret sciences by serious and vigorous arguments. He says that the truth is cheerful in its nature, and that it has much more power when it laughs, because an elder - whom you doubtless know - says somewhere, of which you will be sure to remember with this memory so beautiful that God has given you, Convenit veritati ridere, quia laetans.
He adds that the Secret Sciences Are dangerous if they are not treated with the turn necessary to inspire contempt for them, to vent their ridiculous mystery and to divert the world from wasting time in their search by teaching them the thinner and showing him the extravagance. Speak, MONSEIGNEUR, these are our reasons. I will receive your decision with that respect which you know always accompanies the ardor with which I am,

MONSIEUR,

Your very humble and very obedient servant .