The Book of ceremonial Magic

Satan, the apotheosis of Faust is certain. Behind the manifest exaggerations of such
definitions there lies, however, a hidden pearl of truth, which concerns the temerity of
opening the door to evil, and in this sense even the heedless act or the act of folly carries
all its consequences and all to which it may lead like an implicit within it.
255:1 But Lucifer, in ordinary cases, is contented with a cat, though it may be suggested
that it is held only as a kind of hostage.
256:1 See c. iii. sec. i.
264:1 But contracts with Infernus could apparently be repudiated with even greater
facility. "If you are disposed to renounce the devil after having entered into a compact
with him," says the Vocabulaire Infernal, "spit three times on the ground, and he will
have no further power over you,"--in which case Black Magic with all its grim theatricals
is the Art of exploiting lost Angels with impunity. But the lost angel within the operator
would not be exploited with impunity like this at the end.
CHAPTER VII
The Method of Honorius
THE Grimoire of Honorius is perhaps the most frankly diabolical of all the Rituals
connected with Black Magic, and yet, as we have already seen, its enormities have been
much exaggerated. It suffers comparison, for example, with the Key of Solomon, and it is
preferable to the Lemegeton because it is less disguised. Its most evident objections are:
1. Profanation of the mysteries of religion. 2. A bloody sacrifice, characterised by details
of a monstrous kind. A less manifest objection is the superstitious nature of some of its
ordinances. It must be confessed that such a charge seems fantastic, having regard to the
innumerable offices of vain observance with which I have been dealing. But a vain
observance, it should be remembered, is not necessarily superstitious. To assume that a
virtue is resident in parchment prepared from the skin of an animal which has not
engendered, and that such virtue is wanting in the skin of one which has reproduced its
species,