Elementary Treatise on Practical Magic

what supports to what governs, or matter to the will.

If you have truly grasped all of this, you know how to observe a hansom cab, and you are very close to knowing what magic is.

You understand, in fact, that the important point to know will be the art of driving the horse, the means of avoiding its fits and its veering off course, the means of making it yield the maximum of effort at a given moment and of sparing it when the route must be long, etc., etc.

Now, in practice, the driver is the human will; the horse is life, identical in its causes and effects for all inanimate beings; and life is the INTERMEDIARY, the LINK, without which the will would act no more upon matter than the driver acts upon his carriage if his horse were taken away.

Ask your doctor what happens when your brain no longer has enough blood to ensure its functions. At that moment, no matter how much your will desires to set your body in motion, you will have dizziness, blurred vision, and, should it continue, you will quickly lose consciousness. Now, anemia is the lack of dynamism in the blood, and this dynamism, this force that the blood brings to all the organs, including the brain—call it oxygen, heat, or oxyhemoglobin—you are only describing its exterior, its clothes; call it vital force, and you will describe its true character.

And now, see how useful it is to observe the cabs wandering the street: there is our horse, become the image of the blood, or rather of the vital force in action within our organism; and, quite naturally, you will find that the carriage is the image of our body, and the driver, that of our will.

Now, when we become angry to the point of losing our heads, the blood rushes to the brain—that is to say, the horse runs away—and goodness, watch out for the driver if he does not have a firm grip. In this case, the duty of the driver is