PREFACE

This is the great danger that must be pointed out to young minds eager for the ideal; for the rest, follow your aspirations and beware of Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), representing skeptical rationalism and anti-clericalism. as much as Loyola Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuits, representing dogmatic religious authority..

As for us, my dear Barlet Albert Faucheux (1838–1921), known as F.-Ch. Barlet, a prominent French occultist and close associate of Papus., we have the certainty that occult science occult science: the study of hidden laws governing the universe, often involving alchemy, astrology, and magic possesses a synthetic method applicable to our contemporary knowledge, and your works are the best proof of it. We will not abandon our convictions, despite the dilettantism A superficial or amateurish interest in the arts and sciences. of which people take pleasure in accusing us; and this treatise, upon which I have been working for a long time, I am proud to entitle: TREATISE ON MAGIC, and prouder still to dedicate it to you. There my ambition ends; the future will show if we were mere dreamers, or if, on the contrary, our selfless efforts were useful to our brothers in humanity.