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IT is only within recent times that the attempt to communicate with the dead has been
elevated to the dignity of White Magic. Here it is necessary to affirm that the phenomena
of Modern Spiritualism are to be distinguished clearly from those of old Necromancy.
The identity of purpose is apt to connect the methods, but the latter differ generically. To
compare them would be almost equivalent to saying that the art of physical Alchemy is
similar to mercantile pursuits because the acquisition of wealth is the end in either case.
To appreciate the claim of Modern Spiritualism would be to exceed the limits of this
inquiry; it is mentioned only with the object of setting it quite apart. It should, however,
be added that occult writers--with the indiscrimination which is common to their kind-have
sometimes sought ambitiously to represent the communication with departed souls
by means of Ceremonial Magic as something much more exalted than mere Spiritualism,
whereas the very opposite is nearer the truth. Ancient Necromancy was barbarous and
horrible in its rites; it is only under the auspices of Éliphas Lévi and Pierre Christian that
it has been purged and civilised, but in the hands of these elegant magicians it has
become simply a process of auto-hallucination, having no scientific consequence
whatever. The secret of true evocation belongs to the occult sanctuaries, by the
hypothesis of those who are their spokesmen; it is not the process
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of Spiritualism, and still less, so far as may be gleaned, is it that of the magical Rituals,
nor would the secret at best seem respected by those who possess it, because the higher
soul of man transcends evocation, and that which does respond ought to be beneath the
initiate. The claim, however, is naturally one of delusion complicated by imposture.
In any case, the Necromancy of the Rituals is, properly speaking, a department of Black
Magic, and for this reason no doubt it was excluded from the theurgic scheme of the
Arbatel; nor do even such composite works as the two Keys of Solomon and the Magical
Elements contain any account of a process which was always held in execration. It was
lawful apparently for the Magus to conjure and compel the devils, to rack the hierarchy of
Infernus by the agony of Divine Names, but he must leave the dead to their rest.
Where the process is given, as in the Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa, it is confined to
the evocation of those souls who might be reasonably supposed to be damned, and it
involves revolting rites. It assumes that the evil liver carries with him into the next world
the desires which have depraved him here, and it allures him by his persistent affinities
with the relinquished body. 1 In this way the use of blood came to be regarded as
indispensable, because blood was held to be the medium of physical life; so also a portion
of the body itself, whether flesh or bone, was prescribed in the rite. There is not any need
to say that evocations involving the use of such materials belong to Black Magic, but they
would not in any case offer a redeeming feature to the consideration of the informed
student.
"It is also to be understood," says pseudo-Agrippa, "that
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