Histoire de la magie avec une exposition claire et précise de ses procédés, de ses rites et de ses mystères

because initiation into magic constitutes a true royalty, and because the great art of the mages is called by all adepts: the royal art, or the holy kingdom, sanctum regnum holy kingdom.

The star that leads them is that same blazing star whose image we find in all initiations. For the alchemists, it is the sign of the quintessence the fifth element; for the magists, the great arcane; for the kabbalists, the sacred pentagram. Now, we shall prove that the study of this pentagram was bound to lead the mages to the knowledge of the new name which was to rise above all names and cause every being capable of worship to bow the knee.

Magic therefore unites, in a single science, that which philosophy possesses of the most certain and that which religion has of the infallible and eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms, which at first seem so opposed: faith and reason, science and belief, authority and liberty.

It gives to the human spirit an instrument of philosophical and religious certainty as exact as mathematics, and providing the reason for the infallibility of mathematics themselves.

Thus there exists an absolute in matters of intelligence and faith. Supreme reason has not left the glimmers of human understanding to flicker at random. There exists an incontestable truth; there exists an infallible method of knowing this truth; and by the knowledge of this truth, men who take it as their rule can give to their will a sovereign power that will make them masters of all inferior things and of all wandering spirits, which is to say, arbiters and kings of the world!

If this is so, why is this high science still unknown? How can we suppose the existence of such a splendid sun in a sky that we see as dark? High science has always been known, but only by an elite of intelligences who have understood the necessity of keeping silent and waiting. If a skilled surgeon managed, in the middle of the night, to open the eyes of one born blind, how would he make him understand, before morning, the existence and nature of the sun?

Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives to the intellectual world a life that has its regular movements and its progressive phases. It is the same with truths as with light rays; nothing that is hidden is lost, but also nothing that is found is absolutely new. God willed to give to science, which is the reflection of his glory, the seal of his eternity.

Yes, high science, absolute science, is magic, and this assertion must seem quite paradoxical to those who have not yet doubted the infallibility of Voltaire, that marvelous ignoramus, who believed he knew so many things because he always found a way to laugh instead of learning.

Magic was the science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confucius and Zoroaster. It is the dogmas of magic that were carved on stone tablets by Enoch and by Trismegistus. Moses purified them and re-veiled them The author here makes a pun on the French word "révéler" (to reveal), suggesting it means to "veil again.", which is the meaning of the word reveal. He gave them a new veil when he made the holy Kabbala the secret mystical tradition of Israel the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel and the inviolable secret of its priests.