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properly understood, is, however, an exception only on the surface--should be made in
favour of the procedure adopted by the Church for the expulsion of diabolical powers
from persons in the flesh, not because the phenomena of possession are necessarily other
than pathological, even in those cases which would appear to be marked and obstinate,
but because, on the terms of the ecclesiastical assumption, the Rite of Exorcism is a far
more exalted Rite than anything which obtains in Transcendental Magic. In this matter,
as in many other cases of much higher importance, no tolerable justice has been done to
the position of the Catholic Church. It should be observed in addition, that while
Ceremonial Magic is concerned with a variety of
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processes which may obviously tend to produce in unwary operators the phenomena
which characterise possession, there is scarcely a single process in any one of the Rituals-
-White or Black, Composite or Transcendental--which makes any pretence of relieving
persons so afflicted. 1 There is, therefore, no reason to doubt on which side of
hallucination the apparatus of the Rituals has been developed, and the sympathies of
reasonable students will be with the honourable institution which condemned the
practices and sought to liberate the victims, leaving possession itself as an open question,
and in this sense as a side issue.
TALISMAN OF ARBATEL
Even with the qualification which I have registered, the putative Transcendental Rituals
are exceedingly few. There is--1. The Enchiridion of Pope Leo the Third. 2. The Arbatel
of Magic. 3. The Celestial Magic of an anonymous German occultist, entitled Theosophia
Pneumatica, which must be held to represent and to save enumeration of one or two
similar handbooks. Of these, the first is included among the Rituals of Ceremonial
Magic: by the invincible ignorance of almost every person who has undertaken to class it.
On the other hand, the