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He had said unto them: I am He, they fell backward upon the earth. Then asked He them
again: Whom seek ye? And they said: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered: I have told you
that I am He; if therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way (speaking of His disciples).
The lance, the nails, the cross , the thorns, the death which I have endured, prove that I
have effaced and expiated the crimes of the unfortunate. Preserve me. O Lord Jesus
Christ, from all afflictions of Poverty and from the snares of my enemies. May the five
wounds of our Lord be unto me an everlasting remedy. Jesus is the Way , Jesus is the
Life , Jesus is the Truth , Jesus has suffered , Jesus has been crucified , Jesus, Son
of the living God, have Pity on me . Now, Jesus passing went through the midst of them,
and no one could place his murderous hand upon Jesus, because His hour was not yet
come.
While these prayers are in some respects curious enough, and may not be unreasonably
termed pure and simple by their intention, they compare unfavourably with the sublimity
and good sense which characterise those of the Roman Liturgy; they are inexact in their
references and confused in their method, and no person who seriously considers them
will sustain the early date which is claimed for them. Their period is subsequent to the
Renaissance, and the ignorance of liturgical formulæ which they shew, in common with
all
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similar forgeries, makes it doubtful whether they are the work of an ecclesiastic at all. In
any case, they are clumsy imitations, the product of an unskilful hand.
§ 5. Summary of Transcendental Magic
This concludes our examination of the Rituals of so-called Transcendental Magic,
comprising all those to which any currency has been given. There are no doubt other
treatises which exist only in manuscript and possess no literary history, but they scarcely
come within the scope of the present inquiry. I do not believe that anything has remained
in obscurity which is more entitled to come into notice than those which have been
mentioned briefly in the first chapter. But if I am wrong it signifies nothing, for there has
been enough and to spare already.
The general conclusion which must follow from the examination is naturally of a
foregone kind. As premised at the outset, the Rituals with which we have been dealing
are not worthy of the name Transcendental, nor does it belong to them. We have, on the
one hand, a collection of prayers, falsely attributed and modern in their origin, to which
no occult significance can be reasonably attached. Devotionally, they are innocent
enough; applied after the manner of a charm, they are offices of vain observance. On the
other hand, we have a bald rite for the Invocation of Olympic Spirits, which, despite the
grandiloquent claims of the unknown author, is rather childish than exalted, for it may be
assumed that no person is naïve enough at the present day to take the angelical offices
literally, and to believe, for example, that by the evocation of Aratron the contents of his
coal-cellar will be transformed into real treasures. Transcendental Magic is, therefore,
hyperbolical in its promises, while these from the