INTRODUCTION

inherent in all indolence and routine seeks an escape from the conclusion that one feels is imminent.

They institute inquiries to establish facts, they write thick books to summarize the favorable conclusions of the inquiry, they found tedious and scientific journals to establish statistics on psychic facts, and they hold congresses to find "acceptable" terms for the use of the narrow brains of neo-philosophers and the even narrower conceptions of the jockeys and dolls who constitute, in "chic" circles, the perfumed audience of our amiable professors of intellectuality.

There are two paths to follow. One can be content with assembling these strange facts without ever daring to approach head-on the teachings that emerge from them. That is the so-called scientific career that we recommend particularly to young doctors hungry for large salaries and academic chairs. One can also go back to the origin of these occult sciences hidden or secret knowledge, study the ancients who knew these facts and others analogous to them, call things by their true name, and then one is performing magic in a conscious and rational way: this is the path of the reprobates, the plague-stricken, and the damned. We do not recommend it to anyone, for it leads neither to fortune nor to official honors, and he who approaches it must, before undertaking the journey, be ready to endure the three great initiatory expiations and know how to suffer, to abstain, and to die.

But whatever fate awaits him, the guardian of the sacred tradition the lineage of esoteric wisdom must not fail in his mission. Until now, the teachings of esotericism the inner or secret philosophy have been enclosed within the occult fraternities secret societies that have kept them intact. The moment has come to emerge from a reserve hitherto necessary and